Help desk
< November 6	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 8 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

November 7

Is this a legitimate use of a second account? Also, is it considered a "bot"?

I want to use RSS to monitor several Wikipedia pages for changes. I know that I can get an RSS feed for any particular page's changes, but if possible I would prefer to get the changes for multiple pages at once (less work on my end, and also I'd be hitting Wikipedia's server less often). It occurred to me that the watchlist might support this, and I found that it does. However, my watchlist (intentionally) has a lot of entries, all of which I want to retain, but I do not want to get RSS notifications for all of them. So, I thought perhaps I could set up a second watchlist, but apparently this is not possible. The page saying so does give a workaround, though: It suggests setting up a subpage on your user page listing the pages you want to monitor, and periodically checking that page's "Related changes" link; voila, (something like) a second watchlist.

I would like to avoid that route, though, for a couple reasons: First, while a real watchlist is private, the subpage workaround is public. Second, it's not clear to me that you actually can get an RSS feed via this method. So, I thought maybe instead I could just create a second account, and use its watchlist as the one I want to monitor via RSS. Obviously I can do this, in a technical sense, but I wanted to make sure it wouldn't be violating any policy. So, I looked up policies about having multiple accounts. Unfortunately, while I don't see anything clearly indicating that this intended usage of mine is against policy, I also do not see anything clearly indicating that it is not against policy. So there's my first question: Is this a legitimate use of a second account or not?

I also thought that (assuming my plan described above would be considered to be a legitimate use of a second account) I might have to jump through some hoops for having a bot account. I discovered that (at least generally speaking) you do need to do that in order to legitimately use a bot account. However, I also noticed that everything I've seen regarding bot accounts has explicitly defined them as automated processes that edit pages. I have no intention of using the second account to edit anything (with the exception of its watchlist, which I would edit manually, not automatically). So, there's my second question: Am I correct in thinking that this second account would not be considered to be a "bot", for the purposes of the hoops that bot accounts need to jump through?

Thanks in advance. Rwv37 (talk) 06:31, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if there's a way to have two watchlists. I don't know of one, but maybe someone does. Maproom (talk) 10:02, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WP:VALIDALT has a subsection that says An editor might use an alternative account to carry out maintenance tasks which seems pretty close to what you want to do. The key, it seems to me, is to use the template {{User alternative account}} to clearly mark the multiple accounts as being linked and, of course, never using the combination for the bad stuff listed at WP:SOCK. Mike Turnbull (talk) 10:40, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's also possible to have a (non-editing) sock for anti-impersonation purposes, or a sock with no userrights save for the most basic (autoconfirmed, extendedconfirmed) if your main account has advanced privileges (i.e. administrator or checkuser) and you don't want to risk it getting compromised by using a public terminal. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 11:04, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That account wouldn't be considered a bot. The reason bots are heavily regulated and require approval is that they can break a lot of stuff if they malfunction. Putting pages on the watchlist and getting the RSS feed for it can't break anything. Also, as you said, there won't be any editing (the watchlist doesn't count). Rummskartoffel 14:16, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Article - Censorship of Images in the Soviet Union

Good morning

I've been trying to edit an article, but my edits are being removed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union

There is a lot of extraneous information that doesn't belong here. For example, under 'Censorship of Historical Photographs, the entire first section first section, 'The Water Commissar' makes no mention of the editing of any photographs. It simply provides a summary of information that can be found in the main article about the person in question. Under the next section, 'Lenin's Speech', which does indeed talk about how Trotsky and others were removed from photographs, there is a further extraneous section, which has nothing to do with the editing of photographs but merely summarises information that can be found by following the link to the article about Trotsky. The whole point of having links to other articles is to prevent duplication of information that does not deal with the matter in hand. As I say, I have tried to remove the unnecessary paragraphs, but the edits have been reversed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ferrabosco (talk • contribs) 09:55, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Ferrabosco: If your changes to an article get reverted, you should discuss them with the editor who made the revert, on the article talk page (Talk:Censorship of images in the Soviet Union) or on their user talk page. Rummskartoffel 14:29, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that you are identical to the IP, I noticed that you removed a source with as titel: The Commissar Vanishes: Yezhov airbrushed out of a picture with Stalin. Okay, that section needs improvement, but the info was there. The Banner talk 19:05, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that much of the article is not about the actual topic, but rather it consists largely of little sketches of people who fell afoul of Stalin. The Commissar Vanishes is the title of a book about the topic. Trotsky's book The Stalin School of Falsification may also be useful. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 19:38, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Antisemitism in talk pages, and other questions on discrimination in Wikipedia

There are three IPs in a Nazi history-related talk page that are being open antisemites ([1]). I am not aware of what the policies are on removing harassment and banning the people involved (one of them have already been blocked). How does one report users and IPs for harassment and discrimination? Can hate speech and other discriminatory language be removed at-will, or are they allowed to gunk up talk pages? This isn't the first time I've seen such unhelpful language similar to this, and would like to know how to handle future cases. Thanks! Mewnst (talk) 18:57, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Derogatory comments about other editors may be removed by any editor. Vexations (talk) 19:11, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mewnst you might wish to read WP:NPA which discusses personal attacks and what to do about them. The is also an interesting essay at WP:Civil POV pushing. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:23, 8 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Generate citations in source mode

The automatic citation generation tool, where one can input an identifier or url to get a citation, works really nicely, and is a great improvement over manual editing or even importing from Zotero. But I can only find it as a toolbar button in the visual editor. So when editing, I switch back and forth between the source editor and the visual one, just for this purpose. Am I missing something? Is there no way to load the tool from the source editor? trespassers william (talk) 19:40, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In source mode you can fill in just the URL and then click on the magnifier icon to complete the citation. Vexations (talk) 20:03, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, you need to click "Cite" in the toolbar at the top, select one of the Templates (e.g. cite web), and then you can insert the URL into the URL field and click the magnifying glass icon to the right of that. Other templates have the same option for different identifiers. It will autofill parameters using the same system as the VisualEditor. the wub "?!" 21:52, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant! I also have been doing what trespassers william does. The short label "Cite" does not do credit to what come next: is there some way to make this more apparent for people like us? Bazza (talk) 10:17, 8 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Danny lost: Another possibility is to navigate to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and activate the WP:Citation expander. This gadget works in the source editor and is especially good at generating full citations from journals with doi. It also works on books and web URL, although sometimes not as comprehensively. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:14, 8 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Episode Table template formatting

Hi, I want to join cells for writers in episodes that follow each other so I can make it easier to read. There's also a conflict with this template and the info box which make the episode box way lower than it needs to be. Can anyone help me? Shexantidote (talk) 19:59, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Answered at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Episode Table template formatting. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:08, 8 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Archived.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Contesting data removed because "close to subject":

All the biographical information removed by editor was derived from “Local Man to Speak in Oxford” by Melanie Smith, published in “The Decatur Daily,” January 1, 1983, pp. 5 & 6. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JP1701 (talk • contribs) 21:06, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If this is something involving an article, please discuss it on that article's talk page. RudolfRed (talk) 21:32, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]