Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 December 28

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December 28

How to view most recent articles created in Wikipedia

I want to view some of the pages that have been created today (or yesterday). How do I access these recent pages?Neldama (talk) 01:57, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Neldama: You want Special:NewPagesFeed or Special:NewPages. Eman235/talk 02:30, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Event name problem

What is the best place beside the article talk page to have more people from different section involved to propose a name change after chaotic dispute? Village pump work? UFC Fight Night: Zabit vs. Kattar Regice2020 (talk) 02:44, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

@Regice2020: it's best to ask for opinions on the talk pages of the wikiprojects that have interest in article, because that's where the interested editors hang out. Ask them to keep the discussion on the article's talk page. If that fails, please try one more time to get to a coherent consensus, and only if that fails proceed to WP:DISPUTE. Village pump is not content disputes. It's for technical discussions and new ideas.-Arch dude (talk) 04:34, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

WT:MMA should be your first point of call to get some more eyes. You can also go down the DISPUTE route that Arch dude commented, or if it's something that has run on for a long time, you could go down the requests for comment route. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:55, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Inaccurate listing for "American Dad" seasons and episodes

The page currently listing "American Dad" seasons and episodes is inaccurate per listings as noted through television and streaming on Hulu. The seasons' and episodes' numberings on the page are mislabeled, with season 14 listed as 16, and likely include additional errors. Please have an active editor correct this or add a disclaimer note indicating the specific errors.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.36.44.22 (talk) 02:47, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

There is no mechanism for assigning tasks to "active editors". YOU are one of the 120,000 or so editors who have been active in the last 30 days, and YOU have exactly the same rights and responsibilities rest of us. Please go ahead and fix the article. If (as is perfectly reasonable) you feel uncomfortable doing it yourself, please post your suggestions, together with your references, on the article's talk page. But we would really appreciate it if you would try to do it yourself. We need the help, and the worst that can happen is that you mess it up and then you or another editor reverts it. -Arch dude (talk)

Before making a major change, though, consider that season/series numbers can vary among sources, so you'll want to check out the sources in the article, and discuss any major changes on the talk page, incuding your own sources, to get input from other editors that work on the article. One such series that comes to mind is Air Disasters, which airs with different season and episode numbers and titles in different countries. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 10:47, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Incorrect word

I searched for 'Fire department' .in the searched results ,under the fire brigade's pic ,in 1st paragraph,12th line and 2nd word county's spelling is wrong . please make it correct to "'country"' ......thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.204.96.188 (talk) 03:19, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

If you're referring to the sentence Fire departments are most commonly a public organization who operate within a municipality, county, state, nation, or special district., then I'm fairly sure "county" is correct; see county. "Country" is already covered by "nation". Eman235/talk 03:27, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

The 'incorrect word' may not be familiar in some Anglophone nations and in some non-Anglophone nations. In the United States, a county is a second-level administrative subdivision, being a subdivision of a state. In the United Kingdom, a county is a second-level administrative subdivision, being a subdivision of a constituent country (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland.) In the Republic of Ireland, a county is a subdivision of the Republic of Ireland. It is roughly equivalent to a district in India, or to a canton in some European nations. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:56, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Continuous editing conflict

At 04:49, 19 August 2019 (UTC), I came to ask for help because often when I saved edits I got a false "edit conflict" warning. I discovered that several other editors had the same problem. Please see Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 August 19#Continuous editing conflict. I edit Wikipedia using Google Chrome (up-to-date) running under Win 10 Pro (also up-to-date); nothing exotic. The problem for me has escalated from frequent to constant. It is a real handicap in editing Wikipedia because it wastes a lot of my time. I do not have any beta gadget enabled and my broadband connection is fast enough. I would appreciate help with this problem in editing Wikipedia. Thank you.—Finell 06:34, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

You are probably using User:Cacycle/wikEd. Ruslik_Zero 13:13, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I have used wikEd under Windows 10 Pro and Chrome for several years with no difficulty. I disabled wikEd and made a handful trouble-free edits. However, when I saved a prior version of this response (the one with "Thanks!" in the edit summary), I got a false editing conflict warning for the saved edit. There were no intervening edits that could have caused an "edit conflict" warning. Do you have any other ideas?—Finell 02:23, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Wondering about books, notability, and some things along those lines

I came across this article, about a series of books. The article pretty much solely consists of pretty lengthy plot outlines of the books. There's a single reference which doesn't seem particularly relevant (and is also listed as an 'official site' on the page despite this not being clear at all in the source itself, and there's zero citations. Linked in the article, there's also this, this, and this, three articles about subseries in this series, which seem to basically do the same thing, redundantly containing the same sort of long plot outlines with no citations or anything else. And all 11 books in the overall series also have their own individual pages, which again redundantly contain the long plot outlines with basically nothing else and no citations, though with the exception of a few of the articles having a brief section about reception with a couple citations for reviews. There's also three articles linked to in the 'see also' section of the first article I mentioned, for 'historical characters', 'fictional characters', and 'institutions' in the series, all three of which consist of long lists with next to no citations. Also, multiple pages for these books contain things like user created maps for the situation in the books, and even in a few instances infoboxes for the (fictional) military conflicts in the books that are made pretty much like how infoboxes for actual historical conflicts are done here on wikipedia

I don't do a huge amount of editing on wikipedia, and mostly limit myself to kind of basic things, so I'm not entirely sure what's wrong here or what specifically to do about it, but it kind of seems like stuff could be possibly wrong here... the general vibe I got from these articles is that they were pretty good articles-for, say, a fandom wikia sort of thing, but that there's a lot of stuff that probably doesn't meet notability guidelines or something like that. Looking at things like this, it looks like articles about books aren't supposed to just be plot summaries. Which, like, looks like it might consist of a fair amount of articles for books, or at least when I looked at a some articles of other books in the genre to the series above (intending to find some that seemed like a good example of how an article should probably look like, to compare to these ones), I found that the ones I was looking at often had these issues too. Or I found articles that consisted of just a plot summary... and also a brief section for one or two reviews to be cited

And I'm kind of wondering what exactly warrants a book getting a wikipedia article anyway? What establishes notability and such? It looks like just a plot summary isn't supposed to be enough. Is "just a plot summary AND a couple reviews that can be cited" enough? Do reviews establish notability? Should there be additional sources discussing the book for it to be notable?

And in a different direction... while the 'fictional/historical characters' and 'institutions' lists for the series that I was looking at seemed kind of maybe not something that would be considered article-worthy, looking a bit more, I've found at least 'character lists' for various rather more popular/well-known media, which doesn't necessarily mean anything, but if it exists for more commonly viewed and edited things, then it seems like its a legit thing to do, though I'm not sure about the guidelines for these sorts of lists regarding notability or when they should exist and how much they should contain and so on

--HelpPls? (talk) 10:00, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

You might want to start at Wikipedia:Notability (books). EdChem (talk) 10:08, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Oh wow yeah that's pretty useful and I feel kind of dumb that I didn't manage to find that earlier--HelpPls? (talk) 10:48, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Creating an article

I am in the process of creating an article. The article is called Draft:Bahamas Life. I am trying to find some good sources I could use for the article. Can you find some good sources that are independent and reliable that talk about the subject in detail I can use for this article? Interstellarity (talk) 13:52, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Opening the "editor resources" tab on the AfC submission template reveals a range of search engines that should provide the desired sources. You may also consider searching the sources listed at WP:TV/RS. Good luck! – Teratix ₵ 14:08, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

@Teratix: When I did a Google search for this topic, I get a lot of results that are not related to the TV show. Can you find pages that have the information I need to create the article? Interstellarity (talk) 14:23, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Try adjusting your search to generate more relevant results. For example, search "bahamas life tv" if you are getting too many results about the actual place. – Teratix ₵ 14:28, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: or adding a castmember, e.g. "bahamas life" AND "aldijana myrick" —[AlanM1(talk)]— 02:44, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Draft:2021 NHL Winter Classic

Can you fix the error please. 68.103.78.155 (talk) 16:02, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

The word "help" in the error message is in blue, indicating that it is a wikilink, in this case to Help:CS1 errors#bad url. --David Biddulph (talk) 16:07, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Hello! What error would that be? I'm not sure it's all that notable for a rumoured match taking place in almost two years. See WP: CRYSTALBALL Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:10, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Notifications and Alerts Question

Is there a Help file that explains how to go back to notifications and alerts that I have previously viewed? Or, how do I go back to notifications and alerts that I have previously viewed?

If I am viewing Wikipedia on my mobile device, it displays the count of total notifications and alerts, and the number is in red if there are notifications or alerts that I have not yet viewed. (On a real computer, it lists the notifications and the alerts separately, and any new alerts are red and any new notifications are blue.) However, after I look at one, I can't bring it back to view it on a real computer. At least, I don't know how to bring it back, and so if I want to view the page in more detail, I have to remember or search on my computer. Is there any way that I can bring back previous notifications and alerts?

Do I need to explain the question in more detail, or is this clear enough? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:05, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

(If I understand you correctly) On a real computer, you can click either the Notifications icon or Alerts icon, and at the bottom of the screen that opens, click "All notifications". Is that what you're looking for? Schazjmd (talk) 18:09, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Schazjmd - Close enough. That gives me the Unread notifications, but gives me the choice of All, Read, and Unread. The problem had been that it was defaulting the view to Unread, and I want to read the Read Notifications or Read Alerts again because I have a better screen now. Close enough. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:58, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Music player does the melody right but chops up the written lyrics of "O Canada"

Each time I click on the arrow to play "O, Canada", the national anthem, the melody of the first stanza plays while a chopped up version of the lyrics of the first stanza appears above.

This is on the National symbols of Canada page in the section on the national anthem.

Is there any way to fix these chopped up lyrics? --AlainV (talk) 19:35, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

This appears to be a result of how the file is being displayed on the page. If you go to File:O Canada.ogg it displays the lyrics properly in a slightly larger box. I'm not super familiar with the coding used in this specific instance but my guess is that it could be altered to fix this, WP:VPT may have a better answer on that. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:56, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I tied just removing some of the extraneous code and to my eye it is  Fixed. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:01, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Is there a way you can automate the fix or does it have to be done for each instance of the player? While waiting for an answer I went around and found the trouble also on List_of_national_anthems --AlainV (talk) 21:49, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I feel lucky I figured it out at all, I have no idea how to automate it, but you can see what I did here, I just removed the *sound2 template and converted it to a bare link to the ogg file. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:01, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

The clip for "God Save the Queen" is off, too. Maineartists (talk) 18:18, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

And so is the one for "The Star-Spangled Banner". --AlainV (talk) 23:22, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

"Forward" on Mobile Device?

Is there anything equivalent to a "forward" button when I am viewing Wikipedia on a mobile device? On a real computer I have a back button and a forward button. However, on a mobile device I sometimes accidentally go back, and then there is no easy way to go forward to the page I was viewing, unless I see a link to click.

Can I go forward on a mobile device, or do I just have to be more careful to avoid going back accidentally? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:53, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

​On iOS Safari you can drag on the right side on the screen. You can do the same in Android Chrome if you turn on this flag. – Thjarkur (talk) 22:30, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Þjarkur - I tried that with Android Chrome. I enabled the flag. However, now what sort of swiping motion do I do at the right side of the screen? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:01, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

The same swipe as you do on the left. I just tested it and I note it doesn't always work or was slow/fast, but this is not unexpected since the feature is still experimental as they say. However, for going forward you can use the forward navigation arrow in the menu list. You'll see the arrow after tapping on the three dots in the top right corner of the screen. – Ammarpad (talk) 08:10, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I'm afraid I have no idea how it works at every mobile in the world, but in my phone's native Samsung Internet app (about 4 years old now) it's enough to drag the page downwards a bit (as to see its upper part). Then a toolbar appears at the bottom of the window with Back, Forward, Favorites, Home, Tabs and Setting buttons. HTH. --CiaPan (talk) 08:27, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Just as an FYI, if you use Chrome, just click the options button top right, and there is a dedicated button, next to the star to favourite the page. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:43, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Unlock archive

What is the process to extract information from archive? (223.230.150.20 (talk) 22:43, 28 December 2019 (UTC))

It might help to know which archive you are referencing and what exactly you mean by 'extract information'. 331dot (talk) 23:08, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• Awards related archive. "Extract information" mean to say that using it as a reference in an article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.230.150.20 (talk) 23:38, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello IP user. You asked the same question on my talk page here. You referred to this article talk page where you asked the same question, linked to this URL. Turns out it's not an archive but an unsourced plain HTML file. You basically cannot use it as a reference in a Wikipedia article. For more information on how to cite reliable sources as references in an article, please read WP:Verifiability and WP:Citing sources. Wakari07 (talk) 00:02, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

There are more than 1.5 billion web sites on the Internet. Only a tiny percentage of them are reliable sources or are traceable to non-Internet reliable sources. See WP:RS. In this case, you will need to find the (possibly non-Internet) journal or conference proceedings that this page presumably summarises, and reference that instead of this web page. -Arch dude (talk) 18:29, 29 December 2019 (UTC)