Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2020 February 10

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February 10

Personal privacy

I need some guidance please.

I am trying to make some small changes to my husband's Wikipedia page.

It is not well written and quite a few facts are missing.

I tried to do 2 things: 1. Add details of a new award he received 2. Remove his birthdate for privacy reasons.

I've been chastised and threatened with blockage for doing this, by two anonymous contributors.

I cannot understand this. Do we have no rights to protect our own privacy?

No one asked us if a reference to Who's Who could be used. This was done without our knowledge.

We have no desire to add any promotion or advertising, simply to clear up the entry.

I would be grateful for some help on this issue.

Many thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sifriyah67 (talk • contribs) 02:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Your user talk page gave you a link to guidance about how to deal with subjects where you have a conflict of interest. And just to clarify it's not your husband's Wikipedia page, it's a Wikipedia article about your husband. --David Biddulph (talk) 03:07, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

• I have removed the day of birth (not the year) per our policy about date of birth privacy. I rather doubt that one can make a case that this person is well-notable and thus the complete date of birth is warranted, though I am certainly among the most privacy-oriented editors so maybe the case could be argued either way.

I think Sifriyah67 received quite an appaling reception for a newcomer. Since nobody explained to them in simple terms what happened, here goes:

1. "Conflict of interest" is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests (...) and serving one interest could involve working against another (our article), which is quite a large definition. Writing a Wikipedia page about a family member certainly qualifies: as a Wikipedia editor you want pages to follow the guidelines, and as a wife you want information about your husband to be restricted or put in a good light. It does not forbid you from editing but it does mean you should be more careful about it.
2. Wikipedia pages are not controlled by their subjects, family members, employees etc. (and thankfully so). If you want to make edits stick, you should follow the guidelines (which is hard to do because there are so many of them, but if you read the warnings you were given, the most relevant are explained in the hyperlinks). In particular, "I do not like it this way" is not a convincing argument to remove sourced information.

Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 12:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Edits you don't have to sign

I see you don't have to sign when you use Template:Single-purpose account‎. Not a big fan of that, but I do understand. Since it's on my radar now, I'm seeing people going and changing, say, a couple words in a paragraph they wrote on a talk page, but they aren't necessarily putting little strikes and signatures and timestamps. Seems like in the old days you could only add another paragraph (or whatever) with timestamp explaining what was wrong with your first paragraph. What are the rules on this sort of thing nowadays? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Peregrine Fisher, As long as you aren't changing the meaning of what you have written, and you originally wrote it, its fine to do without signing.

If someone has already replied to your comment, or its been there a while, it is best practice to sign and state changes, per wp:redact. ~~ Alex Noble - talk 08:11, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Deleted a Wikipedia page

Hi my name is Valdair and I'm inquiring about taking down a Wikipedia page. My client, Mez, at Creative Artist Agency would like to delete his Wikipedia article. Please advise on next steps to get it taken down. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.171.135.185 (talk) 06:35, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

If you are in fact the representative of the subject, and can prove it, you should email Wikipedia by going to this page: Wikipedia:Contact_us/Article_subjects. The point of emailing will be to confirm that you are the representative, and give a reason as to why you request deletion of the article. Requesting deletion does not guarantee deletion. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:21, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Courtesy link: Mez (rapper). --CiaPan (talk)

Your client doesn't "have" a Wikipedia page. There is an article in Wikipedia about your client; but it is not his. The talk page of that article can be used to discuss anything which is inaccurate in that article. --Orange Mike | Talk 07:08, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

The history of the IP contributions (Special:Contributions/108.171.135.185) somehow makes me suspicious of this request. Also, the introduction like 'my name is Valdair' doesn't seem very professional to me... --CiaPan (talk) 09:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

It's possible that a case could be made that the person is not notable enough for an article per WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE; the claim to fame stated in the article is that they worked with Dr. Dre- but notability is not inherited. I'm not seeing how they meet the musician notability criteria. 331dot (talk) 10:50, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Contact another user

Hi,

I'm trying to reach a solid contributor to olympic pistol shooting competitor profiles, "Sauer202" to see if he is going to make a page on the new phenom in our sport. How can I reach out to him?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by HBowman00 (talk • contribs) 06:41, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Hbowman00: You can contact them at their talk page which is User talk:Sauer202. Or you can ping them from any talk page by adding {{ping|Sauer202}} to the start of your post and signing it by typing four tildes (~~~~). The message, the ping and signature must be added all in one message or it will not work. Eagleash (talk) 07:09, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

The San Jose Cyberrays

You’ve missed a WUSA Professional athlete that played for the CyberRays. I’m the brother of Lakeysia R Beene. Betsy A Barr, is missing. Every player on that teams has to be in Wikipedia for it to work. They all contributed to that team. Also Dawn C Greathouse wasn’t in either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.211.181 (talk) 11:14, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Please address any concerns about an article's content to its associated talk page(click the "Talk" tab at the top of the article if viewing on a computer). 331dot (talk) 11:23, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Often when folks don't have an article, its not because we've missed them, its because no one has yet taken it upon themselves to write that article. Wikipedia is by no means complete, and is run by volunteers. In time a sports editor will get to the page and create it. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:17, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Where can I go to complain about another language wikipedia?

I just saw on the front page of the Afrikaans wiki that it shows images of sexual positions as the featured article. I don't believe showing something like this should be permitted if not on a relevant article. Is there a place like this where I can comment to Wikipedia as a whole?—Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 18:31, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Naddruf:Each Wikipedia is independently operated by its own community. For a complaint like yours, I would to to the talk page of the main page of the Afrikaans Wikipedia. For more serious complaints, (such as widespread, systemic abuse) there is Meta. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 18:35, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Note that meta is at meta:main page - the above link is to mw:main page, which is the main page for MediaWiki, our software. ~~ Alex Noble - talk 19:33, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Oops. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:43, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know about that version but here we have WP:NOTCENSORED. 331dot (talk) 19:49, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I know it's not censored, but there are common sense guidelines of what to include on the front page.—Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 00:47, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Note, this is the featured article: af:Seks for which the "other language" link in English is to Sexual Intercourse. So it looks like it was intended by the people who do the featured article on the Afrikaans wikipedia rather than some sort of vandalism. I'd be taken somewhat aback if the equivalent was the featured article on the english language wikipedia.Naraht (talk) 12:30, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Image choice for mobile

How are the images chosen for the mobile view? I notice that this very important article 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries has multiple images in the desktop view, but on a mobile (not the mobile view on a desktop) the image is Biden. That isn’t neutral.S Philbrick(Talk) 19:21, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: When I use my mobile device to go to that page, I see all the same images I see on my desktop system. Can you clarify what you are seeing? RudolfRed (talk) 19:23, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

RudolfRed, I see an image of Biden. (I tried the mobile view on a desktop which shows multiple images.) S Philbrick(Talk) 19:29, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I see them all on mobile. Sometimes it's how the browser reads the page, but the mobile view doesn't exclude any images particularly. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:33, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Some features use mw:Extension:PageImages#Image choice to select one image to represent an article. This for example happens in mobile search results, and in mw:Page Previews (not the same feature as Navigation popups which displays another image). I don't know a feature which only displays the page image when you view the article itself but I haven't tried any of the apps to read Wikipedia. The image of Joe Biden is the page image for 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:04, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, I should have mentioned that I was viewing using the Wikipedia beta app. I assume that uses the option you suggested. I suppose it is of some comfort that it is algorithmicly determined, rather than editor choice, but it doesn't feel right. I didn't see an easy way to override the choice. S Philbrick(Talk) 20:47, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I think I saw a Michael Bennett image the other day with navigation popups, and now it's back to Biden. (The image that MediaWiki considers the "page image" is just a map.) User:Bawolff explained some of this to me not too long ago. Any thoughts (other than that we still really need a parser function to allow defining an image for a page)? —Emufarmers^(T/C) 03:14, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

PageImages selects 2 images - the best image, and the best image with a free license. I think the difference is that navpopups will always use the free image and use nothing if no free image is available, where some other things care less about the license. I personally never understood why there isn't a parser function to override the choice. Yes it makes sense to pick something automatically 95% of the time, but there's always the 5% where that gives a non-ideal result. I have no idea what the mobile (As in the wikipedia app?) does. Bawolff (talk) 12:04, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Bawolff, I think this is a good example of the 5%, or it may even be lower, but this is a good example where allowing the algorithm leads to what is perceived to be a biased result. S Philbrick(Talk) 01:16, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Can you watch a section somehow?

Some pages, for instance this one, have so much traffic that watching doesn't really work when I ask a question and am not interested in other peoples questions and answers. We got something for that? Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:36, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Peregrine Fisher: There is no way to watch only a section of a page. RudolfRed (talk) 21:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Yet. There is no way to watch a section of a page yet. The WMF has (in theory) been working on software changes that would let people do that for some time. The problem is they try to wrap it up in a whole new "talk page redesign" with cute names like "flow" and there are a lot of problems with what they end up creating. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 14:22, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Single dataset rendered as multiple table(s) and/or a graph(s)

In the 2019nCov pages, there is quite a bit of hard coded data. For example, cumulative number of confirmed cases on given date. That specific number appears in-line in various paragraphs, in histograms, in tables, etc ....

Even in a single histogram a number is entered multiple times, for example the number 170 in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_data/China_medical_cases_(confirmed), or the daily figures in any line, such as

{{Bar stacked|2020-02-09| 40,171 (+08%)|red|{{#expr: 908/170}}|dodgerblue|{{#expr: 3281/170}}|orange |{{#expr: (40171-3281-908) /170}}}}

The hardcoding inhibits creating new views (tables/graphs). For example, in analogy to semi-log plots, I'd like to see a logarithm-of-counts version of the above mentioned histogram.

Is there a way to avoid all this hard-coding duplication?SailBelow (talk) 21:27, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Drug testing

I failed a drug test for meth and i have never used in my life. My daughter on the other hand does smoke it. Can 2nd hand smoke cause me to fail a drug test or could it be some of the medications i am on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:A000:6E06:F00:4418:492:DBFF:A399 (talk) 21:52, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Hello, this is the desk for help in using or editing Wikipedia; we cannot answer questions on other topics here. Our reference desk *might* be able to suggest somewhere more relevant that you could contact... but will not be able to give any medical advice or information themselves. Eagleash (talk) 22:07, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Jamison Building

I would like to know how to provide a picture for Jamison Building. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1234celly (talk • contribs) 22:31, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

1234celly, have you taken a picture? You can upload it at commons:upload wizard, which guides you thriygh the process. ~~ Alex Noble - talk 22:44, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Worm Composting Septic Systems - Can't find information on them?

I can find plenty of people selling worm composting sepytic systems and they have been on TV but they are expensive and i wanted to learn more about them so maybe i could make my own. Thought Wikipeadia might have information about these systems but can't find anything? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.188.0.37 (talk) 22:36, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Please try the reference desk, where someone may be able to help you. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:30, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

We are not a self help/DIY website. We only write about stuff that is encyclopedically notable. A better bet would be looking for DIY websites or blogs that discuss it. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 23:31, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article on them: vermifilter.   Maproom (talk) 08:00, 11 February 2020 (UTC)