Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2018 October 8

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October 8[edit]

Joke Cycles[edit]

What does Category:Joke cycles signify, and how does the cat benefit the reader?

The only definitions I can find are blogs like this one,[1] which defines it as "A cycle is a grouping of jokes that form around a specific current event." --Guy Macon (talk) 01:35, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy Macon: Take a look at the entries in the category. Each "cycle" is a set of two or more jokes sharing a theme or a structure. I agree that the name of the category is poor, but it clearly serves the purpose of collecting these categories into a useful parent category. Can you think of a better name? if so, nominate the category for a name change. -Arch dude (talk) 02:18, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The term "joke cycle" pops up in academic papers and books: "The Helen Keller Joke Cycle" in the Journal of American Folklore, a definition in Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis, etc. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:53, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
How about this, then; put the definition of Joke Cycle in Wictionary and link to it from the cat page. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:18, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have accidently removed a file of Princess Eugenie on this page - trying to make it larger. Please replace if able. It was in the "announcement..." section Sorry 203.132.68.1 (talk) 04:10, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 Done (It doesn't need to be any larger) Eagleash (talk) 04:30, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bovine Colostram[edit]

Please produce an article on bovine colostram: and the (un) Ethical Treatment of the mother cow and her baby. This colostram has become the new panacea remedy for cancer, immunity boosting, cartilage repair. . Huge money making business. There is no material to be found regarding the unethical treatment of the mother cow and her separated calf for the purpose of colostram business. Not much on the its general composite of artificial additives fed her, subsequent to the mother cow's colostram and how that possibly effects the human consumer overall. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.57.129.59 (talk) 04:47, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you can quote reliable sources to back your assertions, please feel free to add to our article Colostrum. Rojomoke (talk) 05:26, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:SOFIXIT. We are all volunteers, and each of us does whatever the heck we want to. You have just as much right and responsibility to improve that article as any other editor. Please do read up on our guidelines, first. -Arch dude (talk) 15:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

flooded house[edit]

hello i want to ask michael healy rae for his help i live in ballyduff tralee co kerry and my house gets flooded every year all the water comes from the public road and runs down my driveway right up to my front door also my parents house is next door and the same happens to their house i tried 3 years ago with kerry council but nothing has been done i appreciate your help in the matter thank you michaela layden — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anne layden (talkcontribs) 10:34, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Anne layden: This page is for asking help with using Wikipedia, and is not a general question forum or place to post grievances with your local government. We cannot help you with those. 331dot (talk) 10:39, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why isn't mobile number and / or email required for new User Creation?[edit]

A lot of time is wasted in sockpuppet investigations and still they seem to have infested Wiki.My suggestion is to require email and / or mobile validation to create new accounts on Wiki. Existing users should also provide them to continue using their IDs. Email authentication is free of cost and easiest to set up, while mobile number verification may require sending an OTP to the number which can have a minuscule cost involved of sending an SMS. Email verification would be sufficient since to create new email IDs, the companies send OTPs to the mobile and user cannot register multiple email IDs linked to a single mobile number. Even small websites have these type of validations then why can't Wiki? Since sockpuppetry is becoming a nuisance on Wiki. Hopefully something gets done in this regard, if this is not the place for suggestion kindly let me know where to write it. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.222.30.200 (talk) 12:52, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The places for new proposals are the proposals section and idea lab at the Village pump. The proposals section is generally for well-developed, clearly defined suggestions and proposals often include a section for support/oppose polling, while the idea lab covers newer ideas that might need discussion on fine detail before becoming a full proposal. I think your suggestion would be best suited there. Regarding the idea itself, it might at least slow down sockpuppet account creation, but the drawbacks are that it would slow down creation of legitimate accounts as well. Also, many users would be adverse to providing their personal information, especially when not strictly necessary. Thanks for trying to improve Wikipedia! TeraTIX 13:12, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your encouraging words! Should I submit this at both the places or just Idea Lab? I think legitimate users won't have to worry about their information if they are legitimate. It will completely eradicate socks form Wiki forever, the only reason there is socks on Wiki because it does require anything from the users to validate and every Tom, Dick and Harry can join it. The downside of sockpuppetry is quite evident and and extremely dangerous for vulnerable articles. Thanks again! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.222.30.200 (talk) 13:20, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Users could easily create disposable email accounts for the purpose of being a sock. 331dot (talk) 13:25, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It will still slow them down and not many companies offer free disposable IDs, if found that a particular domain or company is used to abuse, IDs belonging to it should have a blanket ban. Thanks for the input! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.222.30.200 (talk) 13:31, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Because very few people would be willing to supply their genuine personal details to the WMF, given their history of leaking. All this would do in practice is add a second step to the signup process of "go to mail.com and create a burner account". Anything involving mobile verification—whether directly by the WMF or as part of an email account creation process—is a non-starter; the number of people who own a mobile phone is quite a bit lower than you'd think, and the number of people who'd willingly supply their personal phone number to the WMF is quite a bit lower than that. Consequently, this would do little to reduce disruptive sockpuppetry, while greatly inconveniencing potential new users attempting to create accounts. ‑ Iridescent 13:46, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It is somewhat pointless to force email verification for creating an account when one doesn't even need to use an account to sock, i.e as long as IP editing is still allowed. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:57, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Genuine details" are not necessary as long as they not "Multiple details" as is the case with socks having multiple accounts. Personal information is unwarranted and the editor can always choose a pseudo name, but not multiple names. If they wish to remain anonymous, they can, using their IPs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.222.30.200 (talk) 14:31, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What problem do you think this would solve, and why do you think the benefits would outweigh the obvious disadvantages? Creating a throwaway email account is literally a case of heading to gmail or mail.com and a couple of mouse clicks, so it won't discourage a single sockmaster, but it will hugely inconvenience thousands of legitimate users who will need to go through the rigmarole of creating and registering a disposable email account just to retain access to the account they've used for years without issue. ‑ Iridescent 15:34, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I made a bit of a mess of this, but it turns out there's already a discussion on this at the idea lab. If you're interested, check out WP:VPI#Accounts without email addresses. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:37, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Help Editing Map[edit]

I am looking to use this map (or an equivalent one) and mark pinpoint locations on it. I'm playing around with it myself to see if it is possible and how to do it, but I thought it might be faster to ask here to see if anyone has prior experience doing this. Anyone know how? Thanks. -Vrobowp (talk) 13:50, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

USA edcp location map lite
Vrobowp This is done through {{Location map}}, and one can see examples of how to do it at Template:Location_map#Examples Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:51, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Example with the US: {{Location map|United States|lat_deg = 44.44|lon_deg = -70|caption = Example}} giving Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way to do it within the SVG code itself so the image can be easily shared? -Vrobowp (talk) 13:58, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That you'd have to do with Inkscape or another SVG editor Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:00, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Or you could take a screenshot of the image with the pins overlaying it to get a PNG Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:02, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple cites from the same book[edit]

Do we have a help page or example page for citing several different pages in the same printed book to support different claims in an article? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Help:Referencing for beginners#Page references --David Biddulph (talk) 16:27, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Also, look through the article to see which method is being used, and use the same method. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:52, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Double protection notice on some ref desk pages[edit]

On some of the Reference Desk pages, there are two notices at the top of the page about semi-protection, such as at WP:RDC and WP:RDE. But on others, there is only one notice at the top of the page, such as at WP:RDH and WP:RDM. I tried to fix it, but I cannot tell how the notices are getting there twice. Can someone explain how to fix this? RudolfRed (talk) 16:25, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed by removing code which was duplicated from a transcluded page.[2][3] PrimeHunter (talk) 22:31, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page footnote shuffle after edit[edit]

Hi, a dangling footnote after new section on the Hans Günther talk page
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hans_F._K._G%C3%BCnther#Confusing_book_title_translation . Fixerupper appreciated, tia. T 88.89.217.49 (talk) 21:45, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. When you encounter this, find the section that defines the footnote and add {{reflist talk}} at the bottom of that section. -Arch dude (talk) 22:04, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, super, thx a lot. T 88.89.217.49 (talk) 22:30, 15 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Page created in Sandbox is not published[edit]

I have created my page about "Simha Prasad" on 09/24/18 and published from sandbox. Till now I dont see it as published. Please guide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SriSuryaC/sandbox is the url of the page — Preceding unsigned comment added by SriSuryaC (talkcontribs) 22:31, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Before you try to get the article published, you should read WP:GNG. You will need to find and include some media coverage to more clearly demonstrate the author's notability. The current sourcing in the draft is insufficient. This is a bigger issue than just copy editing. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 22:47, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have added a box with a submit button. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:04, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

On this page reference 64 and then refs. 67 through to 87 are all in red. I did not do these refs. Please fix if able. Thanks 203.132.68.1 (talk) 23:30, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Clan Buchanan uses a mix of standard citations and misformatted Harvard-style citations, but has no bibliography section, making the Harvard-style citations useless without some research. It has been that way for at least five years. It's beyond my capacity to clean up this mess. Maproom (talk) 07:09, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The two main references with errors were reasonably-well defined at the first instance and I was able to find some additional info. on one of them. It was then a case of re-formatting the existing refs. Two 'individual' refs still have errors and little clue to the publications to which they relate. Eagleash (talk) 12:29, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]