Help desk
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December 25[edit]

Patrick Moore[edit]

I think the page about Patrick Moore the British Astronomer needs some rework from someone with more credibility than I. His autobio, which is the main reference about him (especially his early life and personal claims) is very unreliable. At least two claims in the autobio (bomber pilot part and Mare Orientale discovery) are already stated on Wikipedia to be untrue and yet remain, and several others (dentures, etc) seem implausible. I think a reliable veteran editor should remove those two, and likely the less plausible claims as well. I tried a few months ago but was treated as a vandal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.197.220.252 (talk) 07:28, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the article history, it seems like multiple IPs have been told to go to the talk page to discuss these claims. I'm not sure which one is you (or if it's multiple), but I would still go there before making these changes. (I also added a header with the name Patrick Moore for this section in the help desk.) Skarmory (talk • contribs) 08:09, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is really a talk page rather than a help desk issue. Moore's autobiography is a classic example of WP:AUTO, because he says several things in it that were not backed by the recollection of other people.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:19, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Jonathon Phelps[edit]

User:Jonathon Phelps has recently been reverting edits to just about any article, leaving "stop vandalising or you will be blocked" notices to the contributors' talk pages. I have temporarily blocked him for 24 hours to stop the disruptive editing. I don't know if he is really doing all this vandalism by hand or if the account is a malfunctioning bot or anything, but it's really disruptive. What should be done about this? JIP | Talk 12:49, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As it is clear the account is only used for vandalism, I have blocked it indefinitely. JIP | Talk 13:00, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You did right, JIP. (Incidentally, there may exist worthwhile editors with blank user pages; but if so, I haven't encountered any of them.) -- Hoary (talk) 13:14, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What about Trappist the monk? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 19:05, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The last time I looked, Tenryuu, the Monk modestly refrained from having a user page (and actually prevented its creation). That's very different from creating a blank one. -- Hoary (talk) 22:46, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Jonathon Phelps contains a period and was created by Fma12 after the account was blocked. I don't know why. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:14, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It never occurred to me to check who created it. Excellent observation, PrimeHunter; and yes, it's mystifying. -- Hoary (talk) 01:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:PrimeHunter: My only intention was leaving him a message about the revert of my previously edit on Nocona Athletic Goods Company. Then I realised that he had been vandalising other edits and leaving that "warning" message to other users as he did with me. My only intereset is that guy don't mess with me again so if that account remains blocked for one day or one year, I don't care. Cheers. Fma12 (talk) 02:28, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

2006 legacy editing toolbar help[edit]

hello, i was trying to enable the legacy toolbar, but when i enabled it it did not work. i also disabled the "enable the editing toolbar" option like it said, but it is still not working. i did almost everything; cleared my browsers cache, made sure it was enabled, and it is still not working. can anybody help? anchoritium (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

if you don't know what i am talking about, click this. anchoritium (talk) 19:03, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Anchoritium: It works for me with Firefox, Vector at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, Windows 10. Do you get no toolbar, the normal toolbar, or what happens? Does this work? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:03, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter sorry for the late reply, i get the normal toolbar when i edit, not the legacy toolbar. i was using the monobook theme but then tested it on vector, but it is still not working. if it helps, i am using microsoft edge on windows 11. anchoritium (talk) 00:17, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Anchoritium: You shouldn't get the normal toolbar when "Enable the editing toolbar" is disabled. I don't know how you cleared your browser cache but try Ctrl+F5 on an edit page. F5 or clicking the reload icon may not clear scripts. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:24, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter ok, i have some good news. when i go to edit my common.js page, the legacy toolbar works! but, it is only on my common.js page. i don't really know what else to do though. anchoritium (talk) 00:43, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Anchoritium: js and css pages use the "code editor" by default. It has a different toolbar so it's not a big surprise that the behaviour is different. When "Enable the editing toolbar" is enabled, on js and css you can switch between the code editor and the normal toolbar on a <> icon at the start of the toolbar. I know that doesn't solve your problem. Can you confirm the following:

You have disabled "Enable the editing toolbar" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing.
You have enabled "Enable the legacy (2006) editing toolbar" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets.
You have pressed "Save" at the bottom of preferences after doing this.
After the above you have pressed Ctrl+F5 on [1].
You still see

The legacy toolbar works for me in Edge on Windows 10. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:26, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter i can confirm. anchoritium (talk) 02:05, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bronteroc[edit]

I think the Bronteroc in Don’t Look Up needs a Wikipedia article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:8000:9703:F507:6C7D:5CF7:7011:B5EC (talk) 19:22, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Highly doubtful, as it's not notable in itself beyond the movie. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 19:34, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Wikipedia is created by thousands of volunteer editors, who work on what they choose. So that's going to happen in only one of two ways: either you create the article yourself (not recommended for inexperienced editors: it's much harder than it looks), or you manage to get another editor interested in working on it. You're more likely to do that if you post somewhere like Talk:Don't Look Up (2021 film) or WT:WikiProject Film, where people interested in that subject are more likely to hang out. You're also much more likely to interest somebody if you have already done some of the "spade work" of showing that the Bronteroc (whatever that is - I have no idea, and it's not mentioned in the article) is suitable for an article by Wikipedia's criteria, not yours - that's what Tenryuu means when they consider whether or not it is notable. Are there any articles about the Bronteroc specifically, in reliable sources such as major newspapers or professionally published magazines (and not written by anybody connected with the film)? If you can find two or three such, then it might be worth considering an article. If not, then you will be wasting your own time, and that of anybody else who tried to create such an article. --ColinFine (talk) 19:55, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Citing ProQuest[edit]

I was working on Draft:Join the Party and came across some ProQuest sources (see references 5, 6, and 10). What is the appropriate way to cite ProQuest and did I do it correctly? Should I be using the Website template or Journal template? Should I include the word "issue" when indicating what the series identifier is? Should I use "Published via" to mention ProQuest? Is there a unique id field for ProQuest or should I just use "id"? Any other corrections would be appreciated as well. TipsyElephant (talk) 21:27, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

{{cite periodical}} because you are citing a newsletter and not a scientific or scholarly journal. Don't bother with |archive-url=, |archive-date=, |url-status= because all that is at archive.org is the same teaser that is at ProQuest. Because anything at ProQuest is behind a paywall or registration barrier, |url-access=subscription or |url-access=registration. But, perhaps better, don't use |url= and |url-access=; instead, use |id={{ProQuest|<proquest id>}} (there is no unique |proquest=) because |url= generally holds a periodical's url only when the url links to a free-to-read copy of the source. Yes, use |via= because the source is delivered by a provider that is not the publisher.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:50, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Native name returns error when in template: infobox mountain[edit]

An error message is seen when a mountain infobox has a native name in it, can someone fix it? see Mount Fuji for an example Tai123.123 (talk) 21:49, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Tai123.123: after consulting the infobox documentation and a quick view into the source code, the problem seems to be that {{Infobox mountain}} expects |native_name= and |native_name_lang= to both be present and filled so that they can be passed to {{native name}} as {{native name|native_name_lang|native_name}}. I have fixed this particular instance here, however, someone needs to go over all of these and fix them too, or possibly altering Template:Infobox mountain to support a single {{native name}} template as the argument to |native_name=. Victor Schmidt (talk) 22:21, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think the code in the article worked until today. The issue appears to be that the infobox uses #iferror and expects {{native name}} to produce text with class="error" in some cases where it no longer does after Trappist the monk made an edit [2] today to Module:Lang. {{Infobox mountain}}, {{Infobox river}}, {{Infobox body of water}} and possibly others have similar expectations so Category:Lang and lang-xx template errors suddenly got a bunch of articles using those infoboxes. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, you might say that it worked (sort of) but, really, it didn't work. When Module:Lang sets class="error", {{native name}} renders the native name as a string of text in an undefined language text. That is improper because browsers and screen readers can only guess at proper rendering and pronunciation. But, because there was no indication that |native_name_lang= is missing, no one realizes that something is amiss so the errors never get fixed. This 'not knowing' has caused editors to write silly stuff like this (from Asir Mountains):

 | native_name      = {{lang|ar|جِبَال ٱلْعَسِيْر}} <small>{{in lang|ar}}</small>

when they should have written:

| native_name      = جِبَال ٱلْعَسِيْر
| native_name_lang = ar

If the language is truly undefined, set |native_name_lang=und else set |native_name_lang= to the ISO 639 language tag appropriate to the name in |native_name=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:29, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Trappist the monk: The infoboxes were coded to support more than one native name without more than one set of parameters. Matterhorn calls {{Infobox mountain}} with |native_name = {{native_name|frp|Gran Bèca}}<br/>{{native name|wae|Horu}}, and no native_name_lang since there are two languages. This worked before. The infobox says {{#iferror:{{native name|{{{native_name_lang|}}}|{{{native_name}}}}} and expects class="error" if native_name_lang is not set. In that case the infobox just displays {{{native_name}}} with whatever it contains. If {{native name}} no longer produces the error class then the infoboxes have to be recoded. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:00, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Purpose of short citations?[edit]

Ak-eater06 (talk) 21:50, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see your recent edits have reduced the number of cited sources for Ernest Manning from 24 to 12, which seems a bit worrying. But I don't know what you mean by "short citations". Maproom (talk) 22:48, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Maproom reason is because the editor plagirized and also half of those citations didn't work or redirected. Also see Help:Shortened footnotes, this is what I'm talking about. Ak-eater06 (talk) 23:45, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ak-eater06, if you're asking "What advantages do 'shortened footnotes' have over regular references (as supplemented by Template:Rp)?", then my own answer is "none that I can think of". But I'm willing to believe that I've missed something. I hope that Rommel's editor's attention has been drawn to Talk:Ernest Manning#Copyright problem removed: that talk page is where to start a discussion of plagiarism, reference style, or both. -- Hoary (talk) 03:24, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind, I figured it out. Ak-eater06 (talk) 04:06, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]