Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2022 December 31

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December 31

Twinkle

I used to use Twinkle a lot to revert vandalism. Then I retired from Wikipedia, and now I returned. But the Twinkle buttons of revert and rollback are no longer there in the edit history of articles, it's only the regular "undo" button. what happened to the Twinkle features? I checked and I still have Twinkle enabled. Philosophy2 (talk) 02:59, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Philosophy2! Have you tried turning it off and back on again? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:07, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Philosophy2 I'd say you check your twinkle preferences, particularely under "General" "Turn off the selected Twinkle modules:" (you do not want "Revert and Rollback" to be checked here) and under "Revert and rollback" "Show rollback links on these pages:" Victor Schmidt (talk) 08:16, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Victor Schmidt I turned on the "show rollback links on these pages", and now I see the rollback link but I don't see revert links. Where can I turn on revert links? Philosophy2 (talk) 16:51, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@Philosophy2: I am afraid I am not certain where those are enabled, or if those have a seperate preference (Twinkle seems to use "revert" and "rollback" somewhat interchangeably although for the MediaWiki software revert and rollback are different things). Victor Schmidt (talk) 07:29, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

English language

Why does Wikipedia use present tense to describe events that occurred in the past? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:9800:B513:6621:9D9:6D8D:E93F:4311 (talk) 04:25, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Can you give an example? —C.Fred (talk) 04:26, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

The guideline for tense is at MOS:TENSE. We use present tense in many cases, including for books, TV shows, movies, etc. even if those works were produced in the past and are no longer produced, since they still exist. But we should use past tense for events in the past. If you see articles using present tense to describe past events, please provide examples. CodeTalker (talk) 05:16, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

We have six million articles. Always say where you saw something. We have no way of telling why an unindentified page does something or whether it should change. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:21, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

IP editor. The historical present may even be the accepted way to describe events from the past. It all depends on context, so as already suggested you need to give an example of where you think an article has this wrong. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Help to correct the reference to the 2000 Greece adjutant of the Army Alkiviadis Stefanis

I need help here to correct the reference for the Adjutant of the Greek Army Alkivadis Stefanis for the President of the Hellenic Republic Constantinos Stephanopoulos in Greece in 2000. 100.2.114.167 (talk) 05:32, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

 Fixed Victor Schmidt (talk) 08:16, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Death of Mahsa Amini

Someone moved the page to Killed of Mahsa Amini and I can't undo it but Killed just doesn't make any sense. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 08:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Solved by Liz!. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 08:48, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Tracy Caulkins was transfer from Sports Reference to Olympedia reference biography

I want to explain with all the help to make an updates that I make mistakes. Can you help me? Swimmer Gold medalist and Olympic Champion Tracy Caulkins was transfer from Sports Reference when the Olympic Sites was closed on May 26, 2020 and it's moved to Olympedia.org. I can prove it. www.sports-reference.com/olympics.html and https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/50983 It's all in her story reference. Can you do it for me and make an updates. I want to learn it. Thank you. I'll apologize. And I'm sorry. 100.2.114.167 (talk) 09:22, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for wanting to improve Wikipedia, but the correct place to suggest improvements to any article is on the Talk page of the article in question. Please be more specific (e.g. for text X substitute text Y) and be sure to include a WP:Reliable source to back up your suggestion. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:42, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not affiliated with Sports-reference.com or with Olympedia. You need to ask for help with Olympedia somewhere on their Web site, and the same for Sports-Reference (if you need help there). I hope this helps. David10244 (talk) 10:40, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Help with Persian

Scholarly sources say that the Persian name of Mount Ararat is کوه نوح, Kūh-e Nūḥ, which is presumably the traditional name. But Persian Wikipedia has کوه آرارات (Ararat). So can any native Persian speaker help figure this out. Is Kūh-e Nūḥ the traditional name and is not currently in use? What do Persian maps say? Thanks. --Երևանցի ^talk 12:42, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Yerevantsi, this is a helpdesk for questions about editing en Wikipedia, and helpers are unlikely to speak Persian. You could try Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. You could also try Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Iran if your question does relate to editing the encyclopedia. TSventon (talk) 13:10, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Now at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Help with Persian. TSventon (talk) 14:09, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

How do I insert a star symbol in a name?

There is a game called Warstar (now on List of play-by-mail games) where the second "a" is actually a star symbol. This symbol is not available in the symbol drop-down list, so I used the closest symbol I could find, which is incorrect. Is there Wiki Markup for a star in place of a letter? Thanks! Airborne84 (talk) 14:06, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@Airborne84 I would have used a simple asterisk * from my keyboard (shift-8 on my PC) which is the conventional way to show a wildcard character. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:17, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Mike Turnbull. I'm OK with that, but still wondering if there is a Wiki markup star symbol. Airborne84 (talk) 15:43, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@Airborne84: How about HTML entities star and starf, resulting in ☆ and ★? --CiaPan (talk) 15:57, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@Airborne84: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks#General rules says:

• Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words or letters (e.g., "♥" used for "love", "!" used for "i") or for normal punctuation, unless a significant majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject consistently include the special character in the subject's name.

I couldn't find any source which mentions the game under any name so it must have low notability. Do you have a link to a place showing how the star looks? "Advanced" and "Symbols" above the edit area has two stars ☆★. We use Unicode which has around 150,000 characters including many stars. Star (glyph) shows many but some may be uncommon with limited browser support. You can copy-paste symbols. If you know a Unicode code point like U+2605 then you can also write ★ to produce ★. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:00, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @PrimeHunter. No, the name is in an article from an out-of-print magazine. It's not notable enough for its own article, IMO. But it looks like the filled-in star that @CiaPan noted. Thanks!Airborne84 (talk) 19:14, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Can Anybody published this site?

What is the problem.? can anybody explained, what i did wrong? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Thiago_Piraju Tolgato93 (talk) 16:12, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@Tolgato93, well, at the very least, you might mention what sport he plays. There's a lot more, but I'll leave the rest for people more knowledgeable than I am. Uporządnicki (talk) 16:18, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@tolgato93:

1. your draft does not meet wikipedia's strict sourcing requirements for living people.
2. another big issue is that the article has a lot of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors.
3. another issue is that there are weird formatting errors like a link to just the non-existent article at the top.
4. you have not even submitted the draft for approval yet. when the draft is ready (and it is currently not ready), add {{subst:submit}} to the top of your draft to submit.

lettherebedarklight晚安 16:36, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. i'm co-writer. Now I Understand. Tolgato93 (talk) 16:46, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Please address the undisclosed paid editing and what is your connection to the draft creator User:Santimedia (now blocked) please? Theroadislong (talk) 17:06, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

What the problem? Have he make something wrong? I was only helped. Not more. Tolgato93 (talk) 22:25, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Tolgato93. I've draftified Amanda Chisom as Draft:Amanda Chisom since it's not ready for article status and almost certainly is going to end up either tagged or nominated for deletion (perhaps rather quickly) if it remains in the mainspace. By draftifying the article, you will have the opportunity to continue to improve it and bring it up to Wikipedia standards. You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Notability (people), Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure (very important you comply with this page) and even perhaps Wikipedia:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing (even if you're not creating an article about yourself) for some information about Wikipedia that you might not know and which you might find helpful. I don't recommend that you yourself try and move the draft to the mainspace again. You can continue working on it and then when you think it's ready for review, you can submit it to WP:AFC by clicking on the blue "Submit this draft for review" button at the top of the draft. Finally, the images being used in the draft have problems and have been tagged as copyright violations as a result. Image licensing can be quite tricky and files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons need to clearly satisfy c:Commons:Licensing. The acceptance of the draft as an article doesn't depend on whether it has images; so, I suggest you focus on the text content of the draft and establishing that Chisom is clearly Wikipedia notable, and worry about images once the draft has been accepted as an article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Reading List on the phone app not synced to browser

I have been using the Wikipedia phone app for a couple of years to build a reading list of articles as reference for a book, and now I'm trying to work with the list on a laptop, but I can't figure out how to view my reading list. Note that this isn't a watchlist-- I don't need updates on changes in these articles-- its a collection of articles that are all of interest when I'm writing. Is there a super obvious "reading list" button on the browser version of Wikipedia that I'm just not seeing? LewBasnight (talk) 18:31, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@LewBasnight: No, your reading list cannot be seen in a browser. mw:Wikimedia Apps/Synced Reading Lists#Web browser extension says: "As of April 2019, Reading Lists can still only be viewed within Wikipedia Android and iOS apps, but there is a browser extension for adding articles to a user's Reading List from the web available on Chrome and Firefox." PrimeHunter (talk) 19:23, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello, LewBasnight. Additional information is available Here and List of Wikipedia mobile applications may also be of interest. Cullen328 (talk) 19:28, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Is there a software that allows you to browse Wikipedia offline?

Hello! I'm new to Wikipedia, and I found the articles, and some of the other projects very interesting, and I was wondering if there was a piece of software that downloads/fetches all of Wikipedia, (well obviously not all but a large part of it), and stores it locally to read it while offline. Kind of like Kiwix. I'm looking into that, but if there's any alternatives, or something better to Kiwix, let me know! WhatDoesOneChoose (talk) 22:14, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@WhatDoesOneChoose:Wikipedia is big: see Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia. More importantly, Wikipedia changes rapidly, so your snapshot will become out of date. -Arch dude (talk) 23:01, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@WhatDoesOneChoose: I was not aware of Kiwix. Looks interesting. -Arch dude (talk) 23:09, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I was trying to look for another device, it was a physical black box. I believe it was called the WikiReader. Kiwix appears to be the modern version of it. Surprisingly, The WikiReader still a website. It's even powered by WordPress, and they have a GitHub too. Looks like to be fully open source according to the site. I'm not sure how to exactly highlight link on Mac, but in the Developers section of that page, it says that. WhatDoesOneChoose (talk) 23:21, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@WhatDoesOneChoose: If you are competent in installing complex Open Source software, you can install the webserver version of Kiwix on a little bitty computer like a Raspberry Pi or even something physically smaller as long as it can run Linux and has WiFi. Everybody on your LAN can then connect via WiFi and read the Wikipedia pages. These tiny computers are very inexpensive (<$30.00 for a NanoPi Duo2 or <$60.00 by the time you put it in a case and add the thumb drive). -Arch dude (talk) 01:02, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I am surprised that all of en:wp will fit on a flash drive, but the Kiwix article says that it takes 87 GB compressed (as of Dec 2021, with images). Cool! David10244 (talk) 10:57, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Reference of Tracy Caulkins compete in Women's Swimming 400m Individual Medley 1984

I need help about Tracy Caulkins, the Olympian, Swimmer, and Gold medalist who have compete for the Women's Swimming 400m Individual Medley at the Los Angeles Olympics 1984 that put in on Olympedia. Can you fix it for me? Number 24 reference section. Thank you. And I want it to be improved. We're going to transfer from Sports Reference to Olympedia.org. 100.2.114.167 (talk) 23:48, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

See section #Tracy Caulkins was transfer from Sports Reference to Olympedia reference biography above. - David Biddulph (talk) 00:09, 1 January 2023 (UTC)