Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 April 16

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April 16

Need help!! Is Geacron.com a reliable source for articles?

Hello, recently I have come back from Wikipedia after nearly two years and it seems that I have been thrusted into a reiteration of a topic by association. One that I fought hard to end bring an end to and it worked for about two years.

It is as of recent I have come to a dispute on what sources are reliable or not when it comes to a fellow Wikipedia editor.

The person that I had a conversation with presented me with this map of the Sasanian Empire, created by people from the University of Michigan:

https://27a0436a-a-ab15346e-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/umich.edu/imladjov/maps/SasanidEmpire590-628.jpg?attachauth=ANoY7cowVVPecS4U_KoX08N0X4VlT0G3IfBlMj-FJswxHAhgo2Kj1OxGiywTQoL3S17gmjRu5SoSuL4ENSBOs9DYEqklXY3lJvxjV4LGKgtBSDkIZqpqhu8QCyWiQPPtkfQiBzA5OwljXYSoQ8u_pxvBpRdAcPmPYQK6Ja65JbfyNeiFXRU_OBff_gqTncXoMo86jvr01oVQTHCVwhMNCu_MNQlOM7a6g8o1uOqDOQ6TaJOd57LyJGM%3D&attredirects=0

Then I showed my map that was from Geacron.com, a website created and worked on by people from the Universities of Madrid and the University of California Berkeley.

For proof: Here is the link:

http://geacron.com/the-geacron-project/

Here is the map that shows the Sasanian Empire's greatest extent according to them:

http://geacron.com/home-pt/?v=m&lang=pt-pt&z=5&x=51.1303798952&y=34.047191769328&nd=6&d=227A254A268A339A396A426A603A637A643A652&di=603&tm=r&ly=yyyy&fi=217&ff=661&sp=149A671A121A145&e=0A1A0A0&rp=0A0A0A0&re=0A0A0A0&nv=2A1A1A1&sid=GeaCron450008

The basis of this question pretty much boils down to this. Is Geacron a reliable source or not? Kirby (talk) 00:09, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Keeby101: Firstly, please do take this as being definitive on this subject, it is only my opinion that Geacron.com does not meet WP:RS guidelines because it hasn't been carefully weighed. Though the principles at this private concern do claim their being educated with respectable universities, this is not a university sponsored enterprise. They, also, freely admit that their methodology is new (i.e. untested/verified): We propose a different approach. We created a system to represent the historical events and the geopolitical maps of any region in the world, for any given historical time period. Time, I believe, will test their ultimate reliability, but without further evidence showing this is true I would suggest caution in citing them. Hope this helps you and this discussion. Thanks. Picomtn (talk) 17:11, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

References

Wikipedia:Autopatrolled

Hi there modirators and Wikiveterans,

1. I understant there are two major patroling projects in wiki. One is newpages patrol and the other is Recent change patrol. Also there is Pending Changes Reviwer and Rollbackers. Im curious about the wiki policy on that aspect. Do we wish every edit would be patroled by trustworthy community members? If so, i wonder for your thoughts on the next question:

2. I wonder weather autopatrolled users are not being checked for any of their edits, or just for new articles they create? If it's just for new ones, what would be the implications of creating a new status for complete autopatrolled users? These users would be automarked for each edit they make, meaning every edit is autopatrolled. This way they would also get some kind of patroling effect when they revert or change any page they edit. Do you think it can help monitor pages?

3. In general, are there any technical abilitis given to Wikipedians by personal nomination? Meaning without voting and without any notice from the foundation? I think rollbackers fit in this list. Any else?

Thank you!

Mateo (talk) 03:35, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

@Mateo: Unlike some other Wikis we do not require every edit to be patrolled. That is not what autopatrolled is for. It is simply to limit the workload of new page patrollers by "auto patrolling" any new pages they make removing them from the backlog. There are plenty of people that patrol recent changes both manually and with semiautomated scripts like Huggle. I believe there has been past discussions on turning on full edit patrolling but I will have to search for it (obviously since we don't have it the community consensus was to not turn it on). There are a few different rights that people can apply for. These can be found at WP:PERM along with the descriptions and requirements for each. Generally, rights are not granted unless you prove why you need them and that you will not abuse them. --Majora (talk) 04:21, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

1. Do you know which wikis do require every edit to be patrolled? Are there statistics on the matter?

2. I know many people are practicing patrols unofficially thorough the projects mentioned above. They are not appointed to do so, and don't have any privileges. But there are exceptions. Pending Changes Reviewer is one, but Rollbackers are best example. They basically have a right by nomination to revert any edit upon their judgment, and effectively they are more official "recent changes patrol".

3. Correct me if im wrong, but in simple terms what autopatrolling means is that "this user will always create useful and well written new pages, therefore checking him/her is pointless". This a strong right, that show great deal of respect to the wikiped. It is also a given by nomination, rather than by consensus or voting. My question essentially is what will happened if we extend this right to autopatrolling each and every edit? Do you think there were discussion on this topic? I searched and couldn't find it.

Thanks again

¬¬¬¬Mateo (talk) 12:07, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

@Mateo: I like to start a little out of order with your questions. Rollbacker. It is not a right to revert any edit upon their judgment. Rollback is only to be used in 100% clear cut examples of vandalism. Period. It is not to be used in any other cases and if it is used in any other way that is grounds for removal. Rollback is for people that fight so much vandalism that the normal undo button is slowing them down. Pending Changes Reviewer is for the very very small subset of articles that are under pending changes protection. Neither of these are appointed, per say. They are requested and an administrator evaluates the request and approves or denies it. A lot of people get denied pretty much on a daily basis because they either don't show why they need it or they do not meet the requirements for the permission.

Off the top of my head, the Ukrainian Wikipedia has full edit patrol on. The only reason I know this is because I was reverting a few cross-wiki mistakes and I happened to notice it. If you go to my contribs there you will see that the one line is red. Which means it has not been reviewed yet. Also on the article in question you will see just below the title a little notice that says that there are unreviewed edits on that page. That is what full patrol looks like. For very very large wikis, like the English Wikipedia, it is pretty unfeasible as we would have thousands upon thousands of edits to patrol on a daily basis.

Your explanation of autopatrolled seems pretty spot on to me. It is for people that create enough good articles that their work is just clogging up the new pages feed and they don't have to be checked. It is not really a strong right it is just a technical solution to limit the workload of new page patrols. As for past discussions on full edit patrol, I was able to find Wikipedia:Checked edits brainstorming which is from 2005. I can't seem to find an actual disable discussion but I am sure it is just buried somewhere in the village pump archives. --Majora (talk) 18:02, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

First of all great stuff man, much appreciated.

Taking the parameters you put for rollbacking at heart, allow me to continue by asking:

A. One can say that also full-on Administrators are just given a technical took upon request. They are still appointed, only but by the community. My interest here is for functionaries that are appointed out of construction from above. My question is, do you know if EngWiki has official "roles" like this?

B. Please take notice that not only high-in-the-sky Ombudsman commission suites here, Rollbackers do too, as they can be nominated by administrator without any community approval. Though you are absolutely right it's not a big role and has well written terms of use. Same goes to Autopatrolled users that also get a (passive) tool by appointment. BTW what did you think about my "suggestion" of extending the tool so that any edit made by AP users will be marked? Do you know about discussion on related issues?

C. Let me se if i understand the Uk WIKI. it shows that an edit has not been reviewed, but it remains unclear how are they are going to mark it, correct? Do you have any guess?

D. Basically you are saying that EngWiki wont go full-patrol due to practical reasons alone. I will read the discussion you shared but for now, would you support A full-on edit-patrol if it was possible?

Z. As a side note, maybe you would be interested in Forensic social science.

Happy days,

01:46, 17 April 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mateo (talk • contribs)

@Mateo: Admins are not made admins by request. Quite the opposite actually. It requires community consensus and if you take a look at WP:Requests for adminiship you will see that the process is not a walk in the park by any means. Enwiki has a lot of various permissions that can be assigned to an account. You can see them all here: Special:ListGroupRights. The word "functionaries" has a different meaning here. Functionaries are those with oversight and checkuser access. Those are highly restrictive rights that are only granted by the arbitration committee after community input. The ombudsman commission is maintained by the WMF Board of Trustees to investigate alleged abuses of the functionary tools.

Any community member is allowed to give input for any permission request. From pending changes all the way up to oversight and checkuser. No permission is granted in a vacuum and while administrators can, and do, often grant permissions without any input that is just because nobody cares to give input most of the time.

As for full patrol, if you look at their version of the group rights page, uk:Спеціальна:Права груп користувачів, and give it a rough translation you will see something called Reviews (Рецензенти). These people have a right called review whose translated description is refer versions of the pages as "proven». So people with that right can mark edits as reviewed. Personally, I think that is a bad idea for Enwiki for two reasons. One, we would just have such an enormous backlog that it would be impossible to keep up. And two, we have plenty of people already patrolling recent changes without the need for a user right that grants that ability.

Z: Thanks for the link! I'll have to read that --Majora (talk) 02:31, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I see what your saying there. Wonder what can be the inner-politics implications on a given status of "reviewer". I asked similler questions on the pump and very interested to see what answers. So far it didn't recive much attention. Any idea how can i Hollaout some people to see and respond?

Once again, Thank you for discussion.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mateo (talk • contribs) 14:41, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

@Mateo: You can't really get people to join in if they dont' want to and I doubt I am the only one that thinks full patrol would be a bad idea here. The fact that other wikis have it is not a secret and it has probably been brought up before. I just haven't dug very deep into the archives to find past discussions. In my opinion, it would be pretty close to impossible to get a full consensus of editors to agree to turn on full patrol and to create another backlog when we already have so many that have been sitting around for a long time. --Majora (talk) 21:28, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Persondata

When you delete it, are you supposed to save the info somewhere else first? Clarityfiend (talk) 10:26, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

It's not essential to do so as the info. should already (at least partially) have been transferred to Wikidata. I pretty much always check as I've been deleting P'data since it was first deprecated about June last year. To see what has been transferred click on the Wikidata link in the tools on the left of the page. You should find that you are automatically logged in there and you can add or alter fields as required. Eagleash (talk) 11:13, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

(ec) It's supposed to go to Wikidata but the procedure for doing it is obscure. IMHO the decision to simply delete persondata out of hand, is wrong, it should be systematically transferred to Wikidata and only then deleted. The process of importing the information to WD doesn't actually leave any indication on the article that it has been done. This means persondata is actually getting deleted before it gets to WD. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:19, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

The fact that there is a link in the tools indicates that at least some information already exists on wikidata. Last Summer, some wikidata items were inaccurate or or lacking information. However, there has been a definite improvement of late with many more fields completed. As noted though, the process for transferring is not clear and to start with, at least, seemingly relied upon the efforts of individual editors. Eagleash (talk) 11:54, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Persondata tools?

The question about persondata above brought to mind a question I've had in the back of my mind... Is there a way to find articles using the template? As far as I know, you find an article by editing random articles, see if there is a persondata template, (if there is) you check WikiData for that info, and delete the template if everything is in WD. But how do you not waste a lot of time hitting "edit" on articles that are already fixed? Dismas|^(talk) 12:01, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

@Dismas: How about Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Persondata? Or Persondata transclusions in article space? -- John of Reading (talk) 12:07, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

infobox book does not work

Resolved

why does the infobox I added here: The Other Side of Deception not work? --AvatarBenesch (talk) 13:33, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed. One square bracket was missing. Eagleash (talk) 13:36, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error group refs without references

Resolved

The Wonder A Woman Keeps A Secret

References — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eagreaves (talk • contribs) 20:34, 16 April 2016‎ (UTC)

I have fixed the cite errors on The wonder a woman keeps a secret. This page is no sufficiently cited as is though, as it only cites Wikipedia, which is inadvisable per WP:CIRCULAR. Additionally, it might not meet WP:N. —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 20:39, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Not certain what your actual question is/was. The reference did not display as you might have been expecting as the page was missing the ==References== heading and the {{reflist}} template which goes on the next line. However other Wikipedia pages are not regarded as acceptable references, which should be independent reliable sources (see WP:RS) so I'm afraid the ref. has been removed. Eagleash (talk) 20:46, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

delete / rename request

Three part request:

1. Please delete Talk:6th Division (Norway)/Archive 1 - the content of this archive is at Talk:6th Division (Norway)
2. Then rename Talk:6th Division (Norway)/Archives/2012/April/Archives/2012/April to Talk:6th Division (Norway)/Archive 1
3. Then delete Talk:6th Division (Norway)/Archives/2012/April - this is just a redirect

Thank you--76.14.40.2 (talk) 23:45, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

There is a dedicated page/procedure for requested moves (WP:RM). It's okay if you post simple cases here, but JFTR routine stuff is not exactly the purpose of the help desk. –Be..anyone 💩 08:07, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and done the work needed here. No move needed, only transferring content and the deletion of the pages. -- The Voidwalker ^Discuss 18:34, 17 April 2016 (UTC)