Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Empanadas

While I have never to my knowledge consumed had one of these comestibles, I have read the articles both here and es:Empanadas - there seems to be a lot of content relating to the legality of empanadas in the Spanish Wikipedia that we don't have. Moreover it seems there is an Internet meme "I only came to say I am selling empanadas" which does not seem documented on either Wiki, though it is used as vandalism .

Any volunteers to improve one or both articles? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:44, 28 September 2019 (UTC).

Section in the Spanish article seems to be about the legality of unlicensed sales of street food. Rmhermen (talk) 15:54, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

It looks like the situation has been resolved.[1] They passed a law in June saying that the cops needed to leave the street vendors alone. The Spanish Wikipedia article probably needs to be updated, and ours probably needs a short paragraph about the "The Great Empanada Revolt of 2019". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:31, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Apple Network Server is #1 article?

The iOS version of the Wiki mobile app has a section displaying the most read articles. According to that, the Apple Network Server is currently #1, and was #2 yesterday.

Bug in mobile version? Or is something going on on the 'net I can't find?

Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:07, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

The article has received a significant spike in traffic over the past week, but it's not clear to me why. Sam Walton (talk) 13:10, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

The spike corresponds to the iOS 13.1 release, but I can't think of any reason why this would happen; Apple already have their own captive portal checker, and some captive portals let through Wikipedia anyway. Sceptre (talk) 22:44, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

BBC Click (TV programme) segment on state interference on WP - Chinese especially

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but the current edition of Click (TV programme) has an interesting segment on this - 5 mins or so, at the top. I expect available wherever their news channel is, & maybe online. link on UK site. Johnbod (talk) 15:24, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia on TV and radio. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:27, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Here is the BBC News link. It is indeed very worrisome that a state entity makes a concerted and organized effort to control WP. This will undermine WP's independence and credibility. What is the community and Wikimedia doing about this? -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 17:33, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

At the end of Wikipedia is a black mountain

When all article titles (~ 5.9 million) are sorted alphabetically the last one in the list is 黑山 -- GreenC 03:22, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

And when they're sorted by how confusing the titles are, this one (ok, it's a redirect) takes the cake. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:48, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I mean, okay ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:35, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Missing infobox parameters

The folks that work on Amazon Alexa (which relies heavily on Wikipedia) have sent us some data on missing infobox parameters. Specifically, which prominent parameters are missing from high traffic articles. I've posted the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Infoboxes/Missing parameters. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Ryan. I looked at this, and saw the name of a BLP I have on my watchlist. Turns out they were looking for 7 different fields on that list. The requests are for Brian May, and list him as 'scientist'; it's pretty odd, because he is not a notable scientist and wouldn't qualify for a Wikipedia article if he wasn't notable for something else. Nonetheless, most of the "desired" information is present, as follows:

• "Nationality" requested - birth location is included in the infobox
• "Known for" requested - there is a long list of his Occupation(s) in the infobox
• "Fields" requested - his scientific field (astrophysics) is included in Occupation(s)
• "Death date" requested - it may come as a surprise to some people, but Brian May is not dead
• "Workplaces" requested - I don't think there is a way to answer this that would be helpful. Stadiums around the world? Recording studios around the globe?
• "Field" requested - uncertain how this is different from the request for "Fields" already described, but again it is included in Occupation(s). Interestingly, it is not a parameter in the "Infobox scientist" list of parameters.
• "Death place" requested - Brian May is still not dead.

Bottom line, even if May *was* a notable scientist, some of the "missing" data are already included under slightly different headings, others of them are just plain wrong (and I have no idea why Alexa thinks May is dead), and the list includes a parameter that isn't in the infobox template. Nothing is actually missing here; perhaps the problem is that using more than one infobox type confuses Alexa. I can't help wondering if the solution is to just remove the "infobox scientist" name and leave the parameters in place, except trying to do that would screw something or other up. Risker (talk) 05:50, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

It is also perhaps worth noting that all of the folks missing "occupation" use {{infobox writer}}, which suggests something about their careers. Likewise, a lot of "media_type"s are missing for pages with {{infobox book}}. At any rate, it looks like most of the missing death dates and death places are for living people, so there's ~50 that, as Kaldari notes, don't need much. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:10, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Actually, a question Kaldari: some scientists with "field" are noted as missing "fields" and some with "fields" are noted as missing "field". Is there anything to do there aside from tell the folks at Amazon to write a better algorithm? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:12, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@Amorymeltzer: Yeah, there's a similar issue with nationality and citizenship and birth_name and name. I'll convey the feedback to Amazon. Kaldari (talk) 15:38, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

FWIW a spot check of a half-dozen pages noted as missing a caption all have a caption in the lead infobox. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:52, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

"media_type" is actually a valid parameter for infobox book. It's used to specify whether a book is a print book or digital book. However, I don't know of any non-print ebooks notable enough to have a Wikipedia article! Kaldari (talk) 15:42, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

@Risker and Amorymeltzer: From your feedback, it looks like most of the entries in the list are false positives. I'm going to archive the current list and ask Amazon for a better one. Kaldari (talk) 16:22, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for following up with them, Kaldari. Risker (talk) 16:34, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Same. I think this is a nice thing to get from the amazons/googles/apples/bings/etc. Not that we should cater to them per se, but they might be good resources for finding gaps and such. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:36, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Grants:Project/National Film Registry

I have applied for a grant from WMF to subsidize a personal project to request digitization and upload films in the Library of Congress collection to Commons. I would appreciate your feedback and support.--- Coffeeandcrumbs 02:13, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Behaviour of an anonymous user

I'm not shure where to report this, but this page seems to be ok. For about a month IP user 31.205.59.15 is adding a word then deleting the word, then adding the same word again, and then deleting it, ... (in another article it can be a group of words). All articles are from members of the Thai Royal Family. --FredTC (talk) 06:03, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• This is common practice for some Wikipedia editors. In order to gain editor prestige or different ranks, such as to gain the ability to edit extended protected articles, some Wikipedia users add and remove words to get more edits in. This can be referred to as "edit xp grinding", as I can confirm because I know some users who have reached Veteran status just by removing and re-adding words for multiple months in a row. Kugihot ^{❯❯❯ Vanguard} 16:16, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Category of saint name pages

(Repost). Quite a few dab pages of saint names are in Category:Disambiguation pages with surname-holder lists, for example, Saint Louis and St. Jacques. While there are people whose surname is Louis, I don't think this applies to Saint Louis. I am pretty sure "Louis" was a given name; if anything, his family name was Capet. Is this something that ought to be fixed? If so, is Category:Disambiguation pages with given-name-holder lists the appropriate cat?  --Lambiam 23:43, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point here. It is not that some people have the surname "Louis" or "Jacques", but they have the surname "St. Louis" or "St. Jacques". Phil Bridger (talk) 08:15, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

You're right; I simply had not noticed that. Thanks.  --Lambiam 12:42, 14 October 2019 (UTC)