Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 September 14

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September 14

Jim McIngvale

Jim McIngvale (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Jim McIngvale: I heard of this guy the first time today. Thought I'd look him up. His whole wiki bio read like an advertisement for his business. From sales and discounts to store locations, advertising, volume of merchandise, to giveaways. And "a portion of proceeds goes to charity" doesn't make him a philanthropist. I have no grudge against the guy, but his bio is less bio, and more sales pitch. I tried deleting a ton of it, and it wouldn't let me. So much of this stuff is irrelevant. It's a bio of a person, not the company's sales pitch. Thanks for helping to change this shameful bio. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:4C0:8100:9F0:ADE7:7291:CD84:272D (talk) 02:16, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I've deleted about a third of the article, as being about the subject's furniture business rather than himself. I think there's scope for further improvement.

Thanks for fixing it. The "philanthropy" portion bothers me too. Inviting the former President to a fundraiser for a religious charity (Salvation Army), and then donating a tiny amount of money to your church is hardly philanthropy. That's either political or religious, but the Salvation Army spreads Christianity, not philanthropy. And opening your warehouse for a few days during a hurricane when you can't sell furniture anyways isn't philanthropy either. It's just doing a nice thing for displaced neighbors. Call the section "charitable contributions" or something. The man is supposedly worth $75 million (https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/business-executives/jim-mcingvale-net-worth), and a tiny $50,000 donation to his church doesn't making him a philantropist. Thanks for fixing this, as people labeling themselves "philantropists" need scrutinized. Maproom (talk) 07:17, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, me again. So I started looking through the sources, and many of them are sourced from his company's website. That doesn't seem to be an acceptable source to me. From his invented mattress, to his donation to the mobile stroke unit, it's just a dead link on his company's website. You can't claim you did something, then write up a wikipedia article based on your claims. That's essentially what's going on here. Beyond that, most of the sources seem to be garbage websites from the beginning. None of this stuff is verifiable. One source is "Free Enterprise Land". What the heck is? Google's never heard of it. #13, 14, 18 and 19 are either sourced from his website, or from his facebook page. #9 is unverifiable. #10 is just an opinion column in trade magazine that reads like an advertisement for his business. We gotta clean this up. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:4C0:8100:9F0:A170:7FD2:607D:AB07 (talk) 04:05, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Block?

Why is there a message saying I'm blocked from editing for VANDALISM? For what, on relation to what? isn't there supposed to be warnings given according to Wikipedia? Is the person who did this really an administrator and, if so, why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theamrad (talk • contribs) 05:55, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

The above is the only contribution you have ever made to Wikipedia, at least while logged in as Theamrad. And your talk page is blank. Where did you see the message? Maproom (talk) 07:20, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Maproom for taking the time to reply. Sorry I don't even know if this is the correct way to reply. The message appeared when the editor was loading and referenced an IP address, which in my case is dynamic (Indonesia ISP at the moment). But it also mentioned the block was against my username which seemed strange and stated it had 75 days to run. Theamrad (talk) 07:11, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

@Theamrad: it also mentioned the block was against my username - without the URL, or at least the exact text of the message, it is hard to investigate. The likely case is that your ISP gave you an IP that was blocked due to someone else's vandalism (so, not a username block). 75 days sounds like a long block for an IP address, though (precisely because long IP blocks are only issued when the address is fairly stable and the blocked IP has no useful contributions in recent months/years). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 12:39, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Help me

I was trying to export this file to Commons. But there is an abuse filter blocking me because I am not an OTRS member. So I removed the permission template and tried again. Again I failed to export it. And now I cannot revert my edit because of the abuse filter. Please revert my edit. Thanks in advance. Masum Reza^📞 12:09, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

 Done The OTRS template has been restored by Vermont. Eagleash (talk) 14:19, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion

Hi there. Is it only administrators that can remove speedy deletion templates? (I'm talking about reasonable speedy deletion candidates). In other words, is it only administrators that can review speedy deletions (I know non-admins can't delete pages). Thanks, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 15:38, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Willbb234. WP:SPEEDY says "The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag from it. Only an editor who is not the creator of a page may do so. A creator who disagrees with the speedy deletion should instead click on the Contest this speedy deletion button that appears inside of the speedy deletion tag"/ Does this answer your question? --ColinFine (talk) 16:26, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the response ColinFine. No, in this case, it was not the creator of the article that removed the CSD template. Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 16:29, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

​Also on WP:SPEEDY - If an editor other than the creator removes a speedy deletion tag in good faith, it should be taken as a sign that the deletion is not uncontroversial and another deletion process should be used.. ~~ OxonAlex - talk 17:00, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Draft Article I would like to publish.

Hello,

I created a draft article for the World Pro Ski Tour I would like to publish. How can I do this.

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Camburgey (talk • contribs) 17:52, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@Camburgey: Welcome to Wikipedia, and thanks for wanting to add to it. When your draft at Draft:World_Pro_Ski_Tour is ready for review, you may add {{subst:submit}} at the top and it will show a button you can use to put it on the list to be reviewed. However, it is not ready for that yet. Look at WP:YFA for guidance on what is needed to create and article, and then add in the needed citations. WP:REFB will show you how to do the referencing. RudolfRed (talk) 21:02, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Jayley Woo

I'm having a strange problem here. I have Jayley Woo watchlisted, and it was recently edited. When I try to open it, it causes my tab to crash. I'm also unable to open all the other pages that have been edited by the same IP, but can open everything else on my watchlist. I'm unsure if this is a problem with my computer or with something that was inserted into the article -- can someone else take a look? Thanks! aboideau^talk 19:32, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I am using Firefox on Windows 10 and for me it works fine. What are you using? I don't see anything special about the edits other than the fact they are using Chinese characters. Poveglia (talk) 20:45, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Firefox with Linux Mint. Just a glitch, I guess. Thank you for checking. aboideau^talk 22:11, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll mark this as resolved for now, if the problem re-appears feel free to remove the resolved tag or start a new section. I believe that there is a decent chance a reboot would fix this weird problem. Poveglia (talk) 23:05, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

Watchlist and notifications/Bots

I have two questions:

Question 1
I would like to get a notification when one of the pages on my watchlist gets edited. Is that possible?

Question 2
I am interested in creating a bot that automatically tags drafts for speedy deletion when they have not been edited in six months. Could you help me get started on that?

Please ping me in your responses.

Thanks in advance from Interstellarity (talk) 20:34, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: Which programming language would you like to use for the bot? I would recommend using Pywikibot. Poveglia (talk) 20:41, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Poveglia, I have no preference in the programming language. Interstellarity (talk) 20:57, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

If you have no preference for a specific programming language then you should take a look at Pywikibot; using something like that instead of starting from scratch might save you a lot of work. Poveglia (talk) 21:27, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@Poveglia and RudolfRed:, Please make sure that you answer my first question. Interstellarity (talk) 21:39, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Also, I do know a little bit of Python, though I am not an expert at it. I am also new to making bots I have read the pages at this link and find that confusing. Could you give me a step by step process on how to do this? I think it will be a great experience for me if I create a bot that makes life a little bit easier for everyone. Interstellarity (talk) 22:06, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: From what I can tell, AFC draft submissions not edited in 6 months or more are automatically added to Category:G13_eligible_AfC_submissions. It seems like your proposed bot would just add the speedy tag to all of these? RudolfRed (talk) 20:59, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

RudolfRed, Correct. Interstellarity (talk) 21:00, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

​1. You can go to Preferences > User profile > Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed. It's not possible to be notified via the ping system. 2. You can a) go to WP:BOTREQ to request bots b) read the documentation on how to use Pywikibot (Python) or Nodemw (NodeJS) and take it through WP:BRFA, or c) Create or request a user script that goes through these articles (probably the easiest solution). However I want to discourage you from doing that since many old drafts are actually suitable for mainspace and I feel an editor should take a final look and decide whether a draft should be G13'd, G13-postponed, or mainspaced. – Thjarkur (talk) 22:29, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Þjarkur, Thank you for answering my first question. It seems like you are recommending me to not create a bot and that the best solution is to check the article to see whether it should be G13'd or not. I appreciate your assistance and I will come back here or ask you if I have any more questions. Interstellarity (talk) 23:31, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't have much to add to User:Þjarkur's answer to question #1.

I think its not unimaginable that people would oppose mass nominating those articles by bot because there is no WP:DEADLINE; rather than nominating them en mass we could more slowly reduce the WP:BACKLOG and perhaps give every article a somewhat better change at being rescued or at least a bit more human touch.

I'm not necessarily agreeing with that but for a first bot-task I would recommend doing something rather boring that no one could find any reason to oppose (an example of such a task would be adding a section header with the date on a page like this).

For the task you proposed you don't really need a bot; there is currently a bit of a backlog but I don't think there are many new articles being added to that category every day.

WP:AWB can load all articles that are in a specific category in a list, so we can make a list of everything in Category:G13_eligible_AfC_submissions. Then you could configure AWB to prepend each article with the nomination tag.

I explicitly do recommend that you write a bot (although I'd pick a different task) because it is fun and you learn a lot.

You already know some Python and Pywikibot's library can save you a lot of time.

If you want to play around a bit you can Google "bitnami mediawiki" to install your own MediaWiki installation on your computer.

Poveglia (talk) 23:52, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Poveglia, Would you recommend requesting the AutoWikiBrowser permission so that I can continue doing that? Would this be a permission that I need? Interstellarity (talk) 00:03, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter, Eagleash, David Biddulph, Arch dude, Lourdes, ColinFine, Dbfirs, Maproom, Joseph A. Spadaro, and 331dot: Did anyone see my question above? Interstellarity (talk) 11:50, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure which question you are referring to, Interstellarity, or why you pinged me, or several other editors. If no volunteer editors choose to answer a question, there may be a reason for that. But pinging a list of editors like that comes over to me as an impatient demand, that I (at least) am disinclined to respond to. --ColinFine (talk) 10:03, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

ColinFine, Is it better to wait 24 hours for a response? If no one responds within that period, what should I do? Interstellarity (talk) 10:22, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: I enjoyed reading How To Ask Questions The Smart Way by Eric Steven Raymond. I think its safe to assume that many people here have demanding jobs and kids and a significant other and perhaps a dog or a cat; they'll have a lot of responsibilities and tasks that are more important to them than helping a random stranger. A day is rather short, but if for example the section is archived without any responses you could perhaps try somewhere else. Poveglia (talk) 17:10, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Poveglia, Thanks for the book recommendation. I am also busy in real life as well. I'm sorry for any disruption I've done on this forum. Interstellarity (talk) 20:48, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Interstellarity Disruption? Au contraire; as a jaded old person I am glad to see someone who is enthusiastic about the kind of stuff I like. Poveglia (talk) 20:52, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

​AWB can tag them for deletion, but it can't notify the author. There's really no rush. – Thjarkur (talk) 13:36, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Þjarkur, If I get granted this permission, is it necessary to notify the author? Interstellarity (talk) 13:50, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

​I'd say so, otherwise we might lose plenty of good content that the authors just forgot about. If we were in a hurry an admin could just nuke CAT:G13. – Thjarkur (talk) 13:55, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Þjarkur, I have requested the permission at WP:RFP/AWB. Interstellarity (talk) 14:23, 15 September 2019 (UTC)