Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2020 January 13

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January 13

Ninas wikipedia article

Where is article for Nina on Wikipedia i thought you had a article on her — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.173.77.247 (talk) 00:43, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, a little more detail would help to identify the person you wish to search for; or click here for a list of people with the name. Nina of Nina & Frederik can be found at Nina van Pallandt. Eagleash (talk) 01:07, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

My "Your Notices" thing says 99+ and I can't get it to go to 0 and be useful

Help please. Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:15, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

I've had this problem for months so it's difficult to see notifications despite opting to clear all of the notices. There must be a solution for this! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:18, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

I just marked all as read about ten times, about then different ways, and then it finally did it. Now I'm trying to get alerts to zero and it's being stubborn! Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:29, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

What exactly did this edit do?

What exactly did this edit do? I can't figure it out. The edit is this one:

 19:16, January 12, 2020‎ 98.217.31.244 talk‎ 6,813 bytes +1‎ undo Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit 

at the article Disappearance of Jennifer Dulos. Thanks. Also, what do I have to type, here, to show the "diff". Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 06:15, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: the edit appears to have added a space after the period at the end of the paragraph. I do no know the correct way to identify the "diff" but I just copy the URL like this [1]. -Arch dude (talk) 06:22, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Very odd. What (possible) reason would a person have to add a space after that period? When I "copy and paste" the title of the page, with the diff, and try to link it ... I get this: Disappearance of Jennifer Dulos: Difference between revisions. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 06:56, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: The Wikipedia:Simplest diff guide explains a way to make a link to a diff. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:22, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro: You are confusing the URL with the page title. You used the title (the English-readable heading) with the URL (the machine-readable thingee that starts with "https://" and has slashes in it). -Arch dude (talk) 15:44, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

An IP user with no other edits made a one-character change that did nothing to change the appearance of the article. It seems pointless to speculate on why. But here's a hypothesis: they wanted to find what their current IP address was, so they made a harmless edit and then looked at the article's edit history. Maproom (talk) 14:34, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@Joseph A. Spadaro:

1. I have formatted your question a bit.
2. Possibly a new user tested whether they actually can modify any article in Wikipedia.
3. Once you identified the edit in the article's history, click at the timestamp part (01:16, 13 January 2020‎) and you'll get the difference view at the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Disappearance_of_Jennifer_Dulos&oldid=935505850 — then you can copy the revision ID, which is a number after the oldid= part, that is 935505850 in this case. Then you can form a wikilink like Special:Diff/935505850 or use some of {{diff}} templates. --CiaPan (talk) 14:51, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@CiaPan: Thanks for re-formatting my question ... and thanks for the info! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:46, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Editors might look at an article and want to mark the fact that they have been there on a certain date and examined it, finding nothing to fix or change. They then add a harmless little space, thereby recording their visit in the history (really for their own use). I have done this myself. Surely, though, the editor should mark in the Edit summary exactly what he or she has done. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 15:55, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

OK. That makes sense. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't seem fair to intentionally burden other people's watchlists like that. I've long suspected that there are use cases with some editing tools (like the visual or mobile tools) that end up inserting extra blank spaces or newlines, probably when the user does and undoes something, and then saves the change to exit the editing page instead of just closing it or going back. I see it a lot, with or without other changes. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 22:41, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:47, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Resolved

How to stop people from altering text?

Hello, I seem to be finding difficulties in the Qasem Soleimani's personal life subsection. People are referring to his relatives and children in past tense but they are in fact still alive. I tried adding notices in the source of the article but it doesn't help. I also tried searching the edit history to find some answers why my edit was reverted but I just find "Fixed" in the quick summary. Is there a better way to protect this subsection without applying protection to the entire article? At the time of writing this question I reverted the edit again on the article. LukeA1 (talk) 15:01, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Click on "Talk" at the top of the page you want to edit and raise the matter calmly in a discussion with the other editors on the Talk page. Yours, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 15:04, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @LukeA1: 'Had' (past tense) is correct. He is no longer alive, so "had 'X' children" is the way it is excpressed. Eagleash (talk) 15:08, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure if I'm at fault. I mean, by reading that sentence with the word "had" I get the felling that they deceased (and not Soleimani himself!). A few authors thanked me for that edit but as I said, I'm not sure. Still, I want to know how can I protect the text from future occasions like this if they occur? Can I file a request for a partial article protection? LukeA1 (talk) 15:17, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@LukeA1: His children are alive, but he died. So they exist in the present and he is in the past. Hence they are his children, but he was their father. And a relation of having children or father is somewhat like a process rather than a state, so when one end of the relation ceased to exist, the relation disappears, too – he had children, they had a father. --CiaPan (talk) 15:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@LukeA1: No. you cannot protect subsections. That is not what protection is for and it is not how Wikipedia works. When you and another editor disagree, you are supposed to discuss the issue with the other editors and reach consensus. The other editor's initial reversion is a signal that such a discussion is needed: you are not supposed to re-apply your edit until you reach a consensus: see WP:BRD. Protection is intended to freeze an article when an edit war or vandalism is disrupting the article. Protection is not supposed to "take sides" in an edit war, but to force the editors to begin discussion, so protection will freeze the article in what at least one side considers to be the "wrong" state. -Arch dude (talk) 15:38, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Edit count

Why is my edit count in preferences different than here? Interstellarity (talk) 15:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Because that's where 'they' have put it; whoever they may be. It's also in the page you linked at the end of 'basic information'. Eagleash (talk) 16:03, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

​I don't know what they're counting differently in "Basic information", but you will see the same number as the one in your preferences under "Global edit counts". – Thjarkur (talk) 17:02, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

There are several edge cases where different algorithms count edits differently, Interstellarity. For example, a page move may be counted as a single edit, or as one edit to the source page (creating a redirect) and one to the target page. I think the Xtools counter is probably the most accurate, but it is also on the slow side. I believe there are at least three different page count algorithms in current use. The results are normally close enough that the differences don't matter for most purposes. Ask on the technical pump if you want details. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 17:31, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@DESiegel: What do you mean by technical pump? Interstellarity (talk) 17:39, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Interstellarity: WP:VPT. --ColinFine (talk)

Asked there. Interstellarity (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, yeah, there's no official algorithm for this, certain things are debatable (like deleted edits, page moves etc.) Beware of WP:EDITCOUNTITIS. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:53, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Where was the policy on trademarks / commercial packaging established?

This is in regards to the following thread:

• Talk:Sriracha sauce (Huy Fong Foods)#Infobox bottle image 2

I would like to read the discussion where the current policy at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks#Use of graphic logos was established. I am mostly interested in the English Wikipedia policy, but I would also like to see where any related policies on commons were established.

At first glance it seems that we are using a more narrow definition of free use than most of the rest of the world is using (pretty much nobody has a trademark or copyright problem with using an image of a product), but I have a basic distrust in the "whatever seems right to Guy Macon" standard and would like to carefully consider the reasons why such a policy was implemented before challenging it. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:54, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon on copyright policy, including the use of copyrighted logos, Wikipedia policy is clealtry and intentionally stricter than the law requires, and has been so since before I started editing back in 2005.

I am not a lawyer, but I am something of a legal amateur (and was for a time one of the leading responder on the legal site of stack exchange law.se) particularly on copyright issues. Wikipedia's limits on fair use go well beyond what a US court would require. I think this is partly to counter the internet culture where many assume that if it is online it is free to reuse, no mater what, often under a bogus claim of fair use. It is also partly to be sure that we are so clearly in compliance that it is unlikely that anyone would ever bring suit, and if anyone did, it would be quickly dismissed. I suspect in early days the prospect of large copyright damages was considered an existential threat to the site. Now that is simply not true, If it ever was, but the strict copyright rules help enforce a requirement to create original prose, and to detect spam. There is also a heritage of principle from the Free Software movement, and the later Open Content movement. We could probably loosen our policy a bit without legal jeopardy, but I doubt consensus for that will ever be achieved. I don't know where this policy was initially discussed. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 18:07, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: You can search the archives of the images talk pages with relevant terms for past discussions. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:53, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

I just spent 40 minutes searching. I found several discussion about what the policy already is, but nothing from before the decision talking about what the policy should be. It appears that the policy calling for not using images of common products because they (of course) contain trademarks by the makers of those products sprang out of the forehead of Zeus full formed and fully armed and armored. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:22, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• @Guy Macon: The local policy Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Trademarks#Use_of_graphic_logos might be linked with WP:NFCCP #3 (minimal usage of copyrighted content). But that's a guess.

As for Commons, I believe it is pretty much the cornerstone of the project that only "free" images, i.e. images under a CC BY SA license (which depending on your taste might too free because you would like to restrict commercial use, or too unfree because anything except CC0 aka public domain, but it is highly unlikely you can get community and WMF Legal support for changing the way it is), can be uploaded here, so that users can pull images from there without asking themselves any questions.

Regarding the sauce packaging thingie: the logo is likely copyrighted and the image contains the logo in a way that could be extracted (with non-abysmal contrast, resolution etc.) from the image, thus the image cannot be licensed as CC BY SA (which would include a reuser's right to carve out the logo and use it), thus it cannot be uploaded on Commons. That follows pretty quickly from Commons' licensing policy. Whether it cannot be uploaded/used locally (en-wp): see my guess above.

All that is linked to copyright, not trademarks. There is even commons:Template:Trademarked for the case of trademarked-but-not-copyrighted elements. (I would argue that accepting trademarked-but-not-copyrighted elements conflicts with the philosophical goal of (care)free reuse of Commons images, but the case is extremely rare anyway.) Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 15:50, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Are you saying that you cannot release a picture that you yourself took under CC BY-SA if the picture contains any material that is copyrighted? I thought the argument was that you cannot release a picture that you yourself took under CC BY-SA if the picture contains any material that is trademarked. In the case of Huy Fong Foods brand Sriracha sauce the rooster is a trademark, but every word on the label is copyrighted. Creative commons says

"CC licenses do not license rights other than copyright and similar rights... For example, they do not license trademark or patent rights, or the publicity, personality, and privacy rights of third parties.".

and WMF Legal says

"If you are concerned about content that is not just the marks, but happens to include a mark (like a picture of the office that happens to have a shot of the puzzle globe on wall in it), those images are fine to license under CC BY-SA or any other copyright license. Even if the Foundation does not claim copyright on those images, we do claim trademark rights to the marks contained in those images. This means a reuser can use the image that contains the marks, but they cannot use the marks themselves without committing trademark infringement."

--Guy Macon (talk) 18:02, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: Are you saying that you cannot release a picture that you yourself took under CC BY-SA if the picture contains any material that is copyrighted? Yes, in general, making a derivative work does not wash away the copyright of the original work. There are exceptions; the most common in Wikipedia-experience is probably freedom of panorama (and some countries do not have it). There is also in most (all?) jurisdictions a requirement that the original work is a significant part of the derivative work in order to matter, so that a photograph centered on a copyrighted building involves the building's copyright whereas a photograph where the building is out of focus far in the background does not have that problem. (The "significance" test depends on the jurisdiction and is probably hard to assess in a general way.)

Copyright prevents the distribution of creative works whereas trademarks forbids the use of brand-identifying elements (creative or not) in commercial settings. Trademark is therefore very rarely a problem on Wikipedia because the article about (say) Coca-Cola is not part of an advertising campaign for a soda and no reader of that article is going to click the donation button under the impression that they are purchasing a Coca-Cola product by doing so.

The WMF Legal that you cited actually illustrates this: the WMF does not claim copyright on the Wikipedia globe, and therefore images containing those globes they can be relicensed as CC-BY-SA copyright; but this does not eliminate the trademark, so if I start to sell printouts of Wikipedia pages with the globe on the cover page, a buyer may think that operation is affiliated with the WMF, so the WMF has a case for trademark infringement. On the other hand, I can still sell a printout of the Wikipedia page, including the globe as the main picture, because (unless I fiddled with the formatting) the image is clearly part of the article about another entity than that which is selling the printout. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 14:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! That all makes perfect sense, but I am still puzzled as to why we pixelated the rooster on the Huy Fong Foods Sriracha sauce bottle (the rooster is a trademark) but not the rest of the label (the entire label is copyrighted). --Guy Macon (talk) 15:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Template:Infobox comic book title

Setting the parameter

| 1shot = Y

in the "Infobox comic book title" does not seem to be automatically adding [[Category:One-shot comic titles]]. See this edit for reference. Is there something more complex than just setting that value to Y in play?
Thanks,
2pou (talk) 23:45, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@2pou: It seems to only add that category (and others) if |sort= is set. See Template talk:Infobox comic book title#Auto-categorization. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 00:58, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@AlanM1: Interesting... Thanks for the help! -2pou (talk) 01:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)