Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2021 December 31

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December 31

Wikipedia solicitations for donations

How do I turn off your annoying please for donations? I donated to Wikipedia for a long time, but based on your policies, I withdrew my monthly donation, and will NEVER give you another penny. I will use your service as often as I want, but won't ever donate to your "cause". Stop asking for my money, until you revise your stupid policies ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jerry-hogan72 (talk • contribs) 05:05, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Welcome and thank you for your question about donations! To hide the fundraising banners, you can create an account and uncheck Preferences → Banners → Fundraising. The Wikimedia Foundation does not track the identity of IP addresses, so it doesn't know your age, income level or whether you donated in the past.
None of the Wikipedia volunteer editors here who add and improve content in articles receive any financial benefit. We all simply contribute our time because we care about building a great encyclopedia for you and innumerable others around the world to use.
If you cannot afford it, no one wants you to donate. Wikipedia is not at risk of shutting down, and the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the Wikipedia platform and is asking for these donations, is richer than ever.
We are led to believe that users who allow cookies are less likely to see these banners on repeat visits (further information is available here), and you are welcome to communicate directly with the donor-relations team by emailing donate@wikimedia.org. Thank you! ClaudineChionh (talk – contribs) 05:14, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jerry-hogan72: You're going to want to go to uncheck Preferences → Banners → Fundraising. Donations (which editors don't even receive in the first place) don't dictate policies, so do as you will. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 05:14, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jerry-hogan72: Please do not donate if you do not like Wikipedia's policies. Our policies are the result of twenty years of consensus and refinement. You can discuss each policy on the talk page of that particular policy if you think it should be changed. We at the help desk cannot respond to a generic complaint about "policies". We would need to know specifically what you object to. -Arch dude (talk) 06:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

• Jerry-hogan72 If there is a policy that you wish to change, you are free to work towards changing it. Or, if a policy is not being applied properly, we want to know about that too. You are free to donate or not donate based on whatever criteria you wish, but donations do not determine what policies are, we do. 331dot (talk) 10:39, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Image upload

Hi, I'd like to request this image (source) of the band Mecano be uploaded to Commons please.
I'm assuming it's fair use, being the cover of their single "Perdido En Mi Habitación / Viaje Espacial".
I'd like to add it to the "Characteristics" section of the New Romantic page, as an example of Middle Eastern or gypsy-inspired clothing mentioned at 1980s in fashion#New Romantic, also worn by Spandau Ballet and Steve Strange. -- Franbegbi (talk) 10:38, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Franbegbi. I'm afraid that you have misunderstood Wikipedia:image policy and fair use. Commons accepts only freely reusable images - either public domain, or licensed under a licence such as CC-BY-SA. Wikipedia allows non-free images in certain circumstances (narrower than "Fair use"), laid out in the non-free content criteria. I'm afraid that your proposed use would not meet those criteria. --ColinFine (talk) 12:10, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Fixing list

Hi All,

Could someone help fixing the automatically generated list in Wikipedia:Academic studies of Wikipedia? It stopped a while ago, I've tried to fix it but I don't really know SPARQL. Thank you!

Best, --Adam Harangozó (NIHR WiR) (talk) 13:39, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't know SPARQL, either, but I've done one more change to put the query back to how it was when it was working, so let's see what happens when the bot next runs. --David Biddulph (talk) 14:17, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. When I click on "update list know" it still comes back with an error. --Adam Harangozó (NIHR WiR) (talk) 14:43, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it works again. The sparql parameter of the {{Wikidata list}} needs to be in lower case and there was a missing WHERE statement. Vexations (talk) 16:32, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

A change to Bethune history from France & Scotland

Hi to all Happy Holidays and my question is can you please edit stuff about Bethune to be nice and kind and instead of saying no one is alive today, maybe say there maybe people alive, but we are not sure. As we are descendants of the Bethune family and clan Bethune from Scotland and France. Thank you and I hope this year is awesome!! We just don't want to be wiped out but be a possibility. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.7.157.37 (talk) 16:42, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, IP editor, which articles are you referring to? There is a list at Bethune (disambiguation). Bethune (surname) lists several living people. TSventon (talk) 16:49, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

House of Béthune says "This family became extinct in 1807 with Maximilien-Alexandre de Béthune, duke of Sully", and Bethune baronets says "The title became extinct on the death of the tenth Baronet in 1997". If any of this is incorrect, provide a source that says otherwise. The place to discuss changes to the article text is the talk page of the article, Talk:House_of_Béthune or Talk:Bethune_baronets. Vexations (talk) 17:17, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Line spacing after tables (done)

How can I get rid of the excess line spacing after the tables, before the section heading here?--Hildeoc (talk) 16:44, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Remove the empty line before

{{col-2}}

, it inserts an empty paragraph Vexations (talk) 17:50, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Vexations: Thanks a lot – that works! Happy New Year--Hildeoc (talk) 19:02, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

How do I edit my talk page?

I want to know how can I edit my talk page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ReallyAmazingDude13 (talk • contribs) 17:24, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Go to User talk:ReallyAmazingDude13 and click the word "Edit" at the top of the page. Type what you want in the text box, then click on "Publish changes". You can also preview the page before it is saved.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:29, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Money

Can you (Personal attack removed) stop begging for money? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:ADB1:1400:18C6:DA79:FB77:B516 (talk) 19:37, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Welcome and thank you for your question about donations! To hide the fundraising banners, you can create an account and uncheck Preferences → Banners → Fundraising. The Wikimedia Foundation does not track the identity of IP addresses, so it doesn't know your age, income level or whether you donated in the past.
None of the Wikipedia volunteer editors here who add and improve content in articles receive any financial benefit. We all simply contribute our time because we care about building a great encyclopedia for you and innumerable others around the world to use.
If you cannot afford it, no one wants you to donate. Wikipedia is not at risk of shutting down, and the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the Wikipedia platform and is asking for these donations, is richer than ever.
We are led to believe that users who allow cookies are less likely to see these banners on repeat visits (further information is available here), and you are welcome to communicate directly with the donor-relations team by emailing donate@wikimedia.org. Thank you! --David Biddulph (talk) 19:42, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Requesting template edit/revert to fix parameter error

Hello! I hope this desk is the right place to ask this. If it is not, please redirect me to where I could find better help for this issue.

I'm an editor that cleans up Category:Lang and lang-xx template errors, fixing errors in uses of Template:Lang. I usually check the category monthly, and at the beginning of November there were no pages in it. Currently, there are over 1,600 pages in the category. All the pages I have skimmed through are about rivers, lakes, hills, mountains, or streets. River pages seem to make up a majority of the errors. I also noticed that a number of infoboxes are in this error category, including Template:Infobox mountain, Template:Infobox river, Template:Infobox street, etc.

The infobox template itself appears to have an error relating to the native name parameter, which affects the pages using it. I don't know why this occurred, nor am I experienced at fixing issues like this and don't have template editing permission, so I'm not sure how to solve it. If anybody here can edit/revert (or knows someone who can edit) these infoboxes to fix this issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you and Happy New Year,

Normal Name (talk) 23:28, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I did that. The problem is with the logic that underlies |native_name= (and |name_native= in {{infobox river}}) in that is suppresses valid errors. The topic is discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes § native name parameters. I hope that the lack of participation there is an artefact of the holidays and not apathy.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:55, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining and linking the discussion, I understand the reason for the change now and support the initiative. I assume all the pages left in the category have to be manually edited to fit the changed parameters then? I can get started on that if so. – Normal Name (talk) 01:56, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't do that just yet; except in certain cases. When you can determine from the article text what IETF language tag should fill empty |native_name_lang= (or replace a malformed parameter value), that is a worthwhile accomplishment. And keep a weather eye on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes § native name parameters.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:40, 1 January 2022 (UTC)