Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2020 November 2

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November 2

Can't reset my password

I've been a Wikipedia editor for five years or so, and the system has now lost contact with me and will not let me login. I have repeatedly tried to request a password reset link, the system says I will be emailed the link ... and nothing happens.

The email I am looking for is not in my email Trash or Spam folder. It just never came. I am certain that I have entered a case-correct username, spelled correctly, and a correct gmail.com email address, the one I have used for years with Wikipedia.

Can anyone suggest a way I can get direct help from Wikipedia to resolve this problem? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.72.181.187 (talk) 01:56, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

There isn't one - nobody on Wikipedia's end has any access to your password. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Takes a strong man to deny...} 06:21, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@162.72.181.187: Wikipedia always says it is emailing the link, even if you have entered incorrect information. Make sure that when you're entering your info on the reset form that you enter a username OR an email address, NOT BOTH. If you enter an account then Wikipedia will email instructions to that account's confirmed email, if there is one. If you enter an email address that is associated with an account then Wikipedia will send instructions to that address. If you enter both then the system gets confused, and in all other cases the request is dropped, but you see the "if the information submitted is valid, a password reset email will be sent" message no matter what. The system will also only process one reset request per account per 24 hours, so it's possible you have the right information but have already exceeded the limit for today. If you know you have the right account name or email address then try entering one or the other, and if it doesn't work then try again at least 24 hours later. Unfortunately it's true that administrators cannot do anything more to help in this situation. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:28, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

It's a basic technical fact that if you don't remember your e-mail address, or entered it wrong in the first place, or can't access it any more, there is absolutely nothing anyone here can do. No one here knows your password - it's stored only on the Wikipedia servers, which we can't access. The only thing the Wikipedia servers can do is e-mail you a reset password link, but if you can't receive one, there's nothing to be done. JIP | Talk 20:36, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Updating information in a side panel

I am Mary-Anne Cosgrove, the former president of the Council of Australian Humanist Societies, and am now Acting Chair of Humanists Australia, a new organisation.

My name appears in the side panel of the entry for CAHS. How can I get this changed to the new president, Murray Love?

Also is it appropriate for me to add a page for Humanists Australia? I had the impression you are not supposed to edit pages you have a close relationship with? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.8.241.63 (talk) 07:10, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I changed the president's name in the infobox. —teb728 t c 08:04, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi IP editor! You would be strongly discouraged from editing an article directly if you have a conflict of interest. In such cases, it's standard to propose changes on the article's talk page through edit requests. If you are creating a new article from scratch it's strongly recommended that you go through Articles for Creation. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 08:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Please also declare your relationship with the subject (either WP:COI or WP:PAID). This is easiest to do if you create an account, as that will let you create a WP:USERPAGE. -Arch dude (talk) 15:40, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Nancy Grace

olease remove all referance apart from Nancy grCE IS A SCARE MONGER ONLY IN NEWD FOR THE MONEY.

SHE REGULARLY COMPINS ABOUT SUSPECTS BEING GRNTED THEIR RIGHTS WHEN NOT CONVICTED, CLAIMING THEY are guity but provides no evidence. when proven wrong she tries to refute proven evidence stating then th suspect proven innocent is still guity.

in the sme situation she would claim the same rights she refuses to give others.

a person making a living by denying legal rights to others no longer has a lace in ou=r world. it is time for her to get a real job and produce facts from her own research and investigation rathr than second hand info. once she does and can prove her claims i will support her %00 not %0 until she does, becuse nti proven she lives of the midery of others.

yes lots of typos, but nancy does not deserve going through spell check

Craig — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.93.183 (talk) 10:25, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia has articles about subjects that receive significant coverage in independent reliable sources, showing how they meet Wikipedia's definition of notability. That includes people who do good things as well as people who do bad things. As long as Nancy Grace is written about in independent reliable sources, she will merit a Wikipedia article. 331dot (talk) 10:46, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

• Nancy Grace#Controversies is the lengthiest paragraph of the article by far, so I do not think the article is biased towards her point of view. She might be a greedy scaremonger, but she is a notable one. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 12:44, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Userspace Subpages

I just read about user pages and the userspace. What could user subpages be used for? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TappyTurtle13 (talk • contribs) 14:23, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

TappyTurtle13, user talk subpages are typically used for archives. Actual userpage subpages can be used when there is not enough space. It can also be used for templates, guestbooks, or others. Mr. Heart ^(talk) 14:25, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@TappyTurtle13: they can also be used as sandboxes for work in progress and experimentation, and for reading lists, to-do lists, etc. -Arch dude (talk) 15:35, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@TappyTurtle13: there's a brief explanation of user subpages at WP:USERSUBPAGE. Seagull123 Φ 17:54, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Weird lines on a timeline chart

Resolved

 – Turner Street (talk) 17:04, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi, can someone with more knowledge than me take a look at the timeline chart for Duran Duran members here. There are some weird lines on it and I can't see how to remove them. Thanks, Turner Street (talk) 14:51, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Turner Street, it looks fine, could you please tell me what lines specifically that should be removed? Mr. Heart ^(talk) 14:52, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Turner Street: Everything seems to be in order on my end. I'll link to what I see here. Do you still see "weird lines"? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 15:18, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I presume he's talking about those angle black and grey bars that seem to emerge from an out-of-frame "vanishing point" and run across the chart. They seem to tell us precisely nothing, and they obscure almost to unreadable several names in the far left column of the chart. Uporządnicki (talk) 15:23, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

AzseicsoK, I am not seeing this. It looks fine, if you are talking about the horizontal bars, it is used to find which person they are talking about. If you are talking about the vertical bars, they show when the studio and live albums were released. Mr. Heart ^(talk) 15:28, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

AzseicsoK, the horizontal alternating lines? I'm under the impression that they're used to visually separate the artists from one another. That parameter is controlled by BackgroundColors = bars:bars in the wikitext. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 15:30, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Tenryuu HeartatSchool, no, but now I have a new clue. This time (not before), when I clicked the link above, I was taken to in Imgur something, and then the black and grey lines made sense. They represent albums, so you can tell which members were there at the time. On that Imgur thing, they are vertical, as--I now see--they should be. But when I go to the article, they run diagonally; they start at the lower left, to the left of the names, then run upwards and to the right, fanning out. They obscure several of the names. Uporządnicki (talk) 15:40, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@AzseicsoK: So we're talking about the album lines? Do they change if you WP:PURGE the page? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 15:47, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Tenryuu: I didn't know anything about that. I looked at that page you linked and tried Ctrl-F5. It seems to have worked. Uporządnicki (talk) 15:56, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I get the same strange slanted lines on both Firefox and Chrome. Looking at the HTML source that was served to Firefox, I see that the server somehow generated a .png file and then served it. In my case the .png file is //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/ffc6acd5ac757a9ca85acf58f777287b.png. I do not know how persistent this file is. That file has the slanted lines, so I don't think it's generated from code in the browser. Maybe other browsers advertize some other capabilities and get served some other representation? -Arch dude (talk) 16:04, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Arch dude, I am currently using chrome and it looks fine to me. Did purging the page do anything? Mr. Heart ^(talk) 16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

HeartatSchool Yes, purging seems to have fixed it. But about my last remark, please note that the Ctrl-F5 I did was specifically for Firefox on PC. I found the instruction in a short table a long way down in the page on Purge someone referenced above. Uporządnicki (talk) 16:25, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your responses, it seems to be fixed now. Odd that some people could see it and others couldn't. Cheers, Turner Street (talk) 16:35, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Changing title of a page for a business

Hello,

I am the Marketing Director at Bergen Town Center in Paramus, NJ. I am looking to edit/rename the wikipedia page entitled "The Outlets at Bergen Town Center" to "Bergen Town Center" since we are rebranding the center. Please let me know if there is anything I need to do on my end tp make this change. Thanks in advance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outlets_at_Bergen_Town_Center — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.70.224.62 (talk) 15:33, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Please read WP:COI before editing. As for the renaming, please cite a source of the name change and read WP:MOVE. Mr. Heart ^(talk) 15:37, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I would add that Wikipedia does not necessarily use official or legal names, but uses the name most commonly found in independent reliable sources, see WP:COMMONNAME. 331dot (talk) 15:41, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

You will also need to read and make the declaration required by the paid editing policy. That's easier to do if you create an account for yourself. 331dot (talk) 15:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Hatnote " no inline citations"

Resolved

 – Arminden (talk) 16:06, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

How can I add a banner at top of an article (or section) reading, more or less, "This [article/section] does not have [enough/any] inline citations"? As a first I want to use it for Tobiads: a relatively long, sophisticated article with only 2 secondary literature footnotes (plus 5 sending to primary sources, the Bible and Josephus). It reads like a long essay where you need to trust the editor(s) who has/have written it that they've a) read, b) understood correctly, and c) summed up correctly the very limited sources. If other hatnotes or tags other than "citation needed" & "clarify/dubious" are appropriate, please indicate too. Thank you, Arminden (talk) 15:35, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Arminden, use a tag at the very top. I suggest {{More footnotes}}. Read Template:More footnotes needed that shows how to use it. Mr. Heart ^(talk) 15:40, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Lost draft

Hey Guys! recently, I created a new page and it was stored in public drafting area. I cannot find the draft, where can I find my deleted draft? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajaraink (talk • contribs) 18:03, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Ajaraink: Hello, your contributions from the account used to post here show only this thread and there aren't any messages at your talk page which might indicate it had been deleted. Did you create the draft without using a logged-in account? Can you provide the exact title you used? Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 18:15, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Eagleash: Hi there, thanks for your prompt reaction. I am pretty sure i was logged in.. I want to create a page for Bunq. So the title i used is - Bunq. I was about to edit my draft, as I understood from guidelines I would be able to edit my draft after submission. :)

Ajaraink, like Eagleash noted, you've only made 2 edits on this account, both of which are here on the help desk. What do you mean by public drafting area? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 18:21, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

(Please remember to sign your posts on talk pages by typing four keyboard tildes like this: ~~~~. Or, you can use the [ reply ] button, which automatically signs posts.) —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 18:22, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Tenryuu: It says here that all drafts are stored in public drafting area: Important

Please note: Once you click the "publish" button, your draft is saved in a public drafting area. You may continue to work on your draft as long as you like; there is no deadline, but bear in mind that if the draft isn't edited in six months, it may be deleted. If the draft is declined, you will still be able to edit it. It is simply marked as declined. Ajaraink (talk) 19:06, 2 November 2020 (UTC) Ajaraink

We had an article called Bunq created in 2017 which was recently deleted (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bunq) but you did not edit it. If you were creating a draft for a new article then I would expect it to be created at Draft:Bunq, but no page has ever existed there. As the others have already said there are no contributions associated with your account other than your edits on this page, and you also have no previous contributions from this account that have been deleted, and none on other Wikipedia projects. Maybe your edit didn't save? Anyway, unless you did use a different account to create the article and/or can remember the exact title you saved it under, it looks like we can't help you find it unfortunately. You can start again at Draft:Bunq if you like, but please have a look at the deletion discussion first, and only create the article if you think you can correct the issues that led to it being deleted. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:18, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@Ivanvector:, Thank you! I will create a new draft there and yes, i will definitely take all the issues into account and correct them. Thanks once again :) Ajaraink (talk) 19:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)Ajaraink (talk)

Citations on my draft

On my draft article, Draft:Carnejy Antoine, I cannot get the citations in the infobox to work. Please help. 76.103.46.252 (talk) 23:40, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

You've put quotation marks around ref name, which shouldn't be there. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:53, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I have fixed some of them for you, I'll let you or someone else fix the rest. To clarify: you have to type <ref name="FD">, not <"ref name"=FD>. JIP | Talk 00:37, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much! As a side note, how do I link a {{flagicon image}}? 76.103.46.252 (talk) 16:35, 3 November 2020 (UTC)