Wikipedia talk:Help desk/Archive 13

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Archive 10 Archive 11 Archive 12 Archive 13 Archive 14

Semi-protected edit request on 22 October 2018

Hello, I submitted a draft for a review. It has been reviewed, but no message or comment was left. What is the next step? Thank you Sobkova (talk) 17:51, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello @Sobkova:: Your draft was created, but you yourself removed the request for review: here. When you did that, it removed the article from the reviewing queue, so no one can find it. I have returned the AFC template. When you are ready for review, click the blue button that says "Submit your draft for review". I hope that helps. --Jayron32 18:13, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you so much for answering me. I am a little confused. It showed that the draft was already reviewed a month ago. Anyway, I would like to resubmit for review but I do not see the blue SUBMIT FOR REVIEW button anywhere. Thank you again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sobkova (talk • contribs) 10:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

@Sobkova: AH! I see the issue. There are three versions of the article you created: one at Draft:W.T. Taylor (which was the original version), one at Draft:W.T.Taylor (no space between W.T. and Taylor) and one at Draft talk:W.T.Taylor. All three seem to be largely identical, but only the first one has the correct header to submit for review. If you would like, I can delete the other two so that we don't get confused again... --Jayron32 12:31, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, please that would be great. Thank you!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sobkova (talk • contribs) 14:44, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

  • @Jayron32: Pinging Jayron...just in case. Eagleash (talk) 15:02, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
    @Sobkova:: The duplicates have been deleted, if you have any questions or need further help, let us know! --Jayron32 15:08, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Okay, I submitted for review again. Can you see it it shows as such anywhere? Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sobkova (talk • contribs) 18:36, 23 October 2018 (UTC) (Post moved for sake of chronology) Eagleash (talk) 18:57, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
@Sobkova: The review notice at the bottom of the page shows that it has submitted correctly. Reviews are backlogged, please be patient. Please remember to sign your posts on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~). Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 18:57, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
The draft has now been deleted as a copyright violation. --David Biddulph (talk) 08:18, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

My partners page and edits I have made continuously are being reverted

I am Garry William Flitcrofts long term girlfriend of some 7 years. Over the last three I have tried in vain to edit the information in his page. The text in his personal life still reverts back to his being married to Karen They separated over 11 years ago. He had another relationship previously to ours with a Sarah Lancashire, with whom he lived. And then subsequently myself and we have lived together with my child and in the full knowledge of his children and ex wife for 6/7 years. It is incredible hurtful embarrassing and inaccurate to have this information not only on his page but that it constantly gets checked back on numerous attempts to correct the information myself I don not have an article I reference that proves we are together I can only suggest u check the electrol register and see that he lives with me I wasn’t even trying to publish details linking me or mentioning me Merely clarifying that HE IS NO LONGER MARRIED TO HER 4nn0n (talk) 10:28, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

  • Hi - I have found a source saying that the couple are now divorced, and have added that to the article. Thanks, Black Kite (talk) 10:45, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
4nn0n, you have a WP:Conflict of interest, so it would be better if you suggest edits on the talk page of the article. Your earlier edits were reverted because they were not supported by WP:Reliable sources. The old information has now been clarified and referenced. Sorry it took a long time for this to happen. Dbfirs 10:50, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 October 2018

In the biography of GEORGE SEWELL (actor)there is a question mark concerning his date of marriage. This is clarified in the website FREEBMD, which states:-GEORGE D.J. SEWELL married HELEN L. SAINTRAND in Westminster in the first quarter of 1961. 82.42.253.231 (talk) 17:54, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@82.42.253.231: If you want, you can just add the sources and the information to the article yourself. If you are not confident to do so, use the article talk page Talk:George Sewell, to make the request so that others can see it. Please include the URL of the source in your request so that others may find it. --Jayron32 17:57, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 October 2018

I took valuable time to edit your article on Walter Bosshard, Swiss photographer, then logged into my account only to find you keep rejecting my password. This is very frustrating, since I refuse to change my password--have too many already, and went through several tests to prove I'm not a robot when I tried to create a new account. What to do? Thanks, PC. 2602:306:CF09:D460:115C:72D5:A14:1311 (talk) 04:15, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I've copied your question to the help desk. Dbfirs 08:21, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

LM5 page - Little Mix - Semi-protected edit request on 31 October 2018

In the Tracklisting section, for the writers of Monster In Me, please change Anna Jones to Anya Jones. For the writers of the song More Than Words, please change Ayna Jones to Anya Jones. Under the song Forget You Not please change Jones to Anya Jones. Thank you. Readitandweep21 (talk)

@Readitandweep21: Hello, please make this request at the talkpage of the article concerned. Please note that after the first mention it is conventional to use the surname only. Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 12:16, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Note: Has been made at article TP. Eagleash (talk) 12:18, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi - have added to the talk section - can you please help with what I should do / what may happen next? Thanks.

Semi-protected edit request on 31 October 2018

In the Tracklisting section of the article, under the song Monster In Me, please change Anna Jones to Anya Jones. In the song More Than Words please change Ayna Jones to Anya Jones. In the song Forget You Not please change Jones to Anya Jones. Thank you. Readitandweep21 (talk) 11:51, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

  • Note: See dup thread below. Eagleash (talk) 12:20, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 October 2018

Ojongmax22 (talk) 07:27, 31 October 2018 (UTC)i want to ad up a school name and i have been aving issues doing that so please i need help
 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Help desk. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. Please take this up at WP:HELPDESK. —KuyaBriBriTalk 13:30, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

contradition

Oscar James Dunn (1826 – November 22, 1871) was one of three African Americans who served as a Republican Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana during the era of Reconstruction. In 1868, Dunn became the first elected black lieutenant governor of a U.S. state.

You state that a Virginia Govenor was the first black elected govenor, 1990. Yet you state Louisiana elected black lieutenant govenor , I suppose Lt and Govenor make the difference

Well, yes. Although various US States (and other entities) may differ in the details, in general a Lieutenant Governor is the seniormost assistant, second-in-command or formal backup to a Governor (or other more senior position), much like a Vice-President and President.
Both Louisiana and Virginia's State Governments have the post of Governor as their highest state office (see List of Governors of Louisiana and List of Governors of Virginia), and Lieutenant Governors as second-highest (see Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana and Lieutenant Governor of Virginia).
There is therefore no contradiction in saying that Virginia was the first to elect a black Governor, despite there having been a previous elected black Lieutenant Governor in Louisiana. {The poster formerly known as 87,81.230.195} 2.218.14.42 (talk) 14:43, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 November 2018

How can I make this page go live? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:William_Thomas_Miles Historator2018 (talk) 20:13, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Help desk. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. Will answer on user talk page. —KuyaBriBriTalk 20:22, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 November 2018

173.73.78.46 (talk) 23:10, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Fix my edit and reference, I can't do it.

Thanks, Sadie

What edit and reference would that be? This request is the only edit this IP has made. MarnetteD|Talk 23:12, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 November 2018

Chettbohanglesextrodinare (talk) 14:52, 2 November 2018 (UTC)


ANA KASPARIAN SPOKE POORLY ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE AND WOMEN I WOULD LOVE THAT TO BE PUT IN HER ARTICLE BECAUSE THE PERSON WHO EDITED THE ARTICLE ATTEMPTED TO POLISH A TURD AND WE ALL KNOW YOU CAN'T POLISH A TURD. PUT THE TRUTH INSTEAD OF YOUR LEFT WING BIAS. TAKE YOUR MOUTH OFF THE LEFT WING BALLS AND DO THE RIGHT THING

THE RIGHT HONORABLE CHETT BOHANGLES ESQ.

I expect that no one is going to respond to your request because it was rude and abusive. If you want to get help, I would suggest using a more collaborative tone. --Jayron32 14:54, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes. Engage manners and go to the talk page of the article concerned. here, which may be more useful. Britmax (talk) 14:58, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 November 2018

Hi, I cannot get access to my clients Wikipedia page. His name is Andrew Plante and appears under the “List of origamists” Wikipedia page. When you click on his name it says the page is protected but I would like to be granted access to it. Thank you. 168.245.150.214 (talk) 23:00, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello, there seem to be several problems here. The only reason Plante appeared on the list of origamists is because you added it... creating a redlink to a non-existent page. Lists such as that are for persons who are already the subject of a Wikipedia article I.e. deemed notable in the Wikipedia sense. The entries have already been correctly reverted and should not be reinstated. It seems a draft has been created at Draft:Andrew Plante but this has been nominated for speedy deletion as it falls a long way short of being accepted into the encyclopedia, for multiple reasons.
Further, you refer to 'your client'. If you are wishing to create a page for someone with whom you have any sort of connection you are advised not to attempt this and to read WP:COI and WP:PAID and make the necessary declarations. Also, do not attempt an autobiography.
If a page were to be created for 'your client', this would be done by editors without a connection to him and would have to demonstrate notability based upon what had been written about him in independent reliable sources and would not be in any way promotional. Strictly speaking, neither he, nor any person with a close connection to him, would be able to edit the page. Eagleash (talk) 00:38, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 November 2018

Can you fix the Article about the associated events for super bowl LIII please. 68.103.78.155 (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC) 68.103.78.155 (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

If you have specific fixes you would like to see made, please leave a comment at Talk:Super Bowl LIII explaining exactly what needs to be changed. --Jayron32 16:20, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
I have also reverted your previous good-faith edit covering minor details of an only loosely-related event. The article should primarily focus on significant information about the main topic. But please feel free to suggest this or other possible improvements on the article's talkpage as noted above. GermanJoe (talk) 16:31, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 November 2018

I am the lead English Editor at Careem and would like edit some of the thing on the Careem page - correcting factual errors such as number of countries for example.

As an employee of the company, what is the best way to go about doing this? Is there a set procedure?

Regards, Matt Mattleadeditor (talk) 10:32, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

@Mattleadeditor: Hello. There is such a procedure, and thanks for asking. You first need to declare as a paid editor(click those words for more information) which is required by Wikipedia's Terms of Use. You should also read conflict of interest. You may then make an edit request on the article talk page(Click the "talk" tab at the top of the page to get there) where independent editors will see your request. 331dot (talk) 10:45, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 November 2018

How does Wikipedia get money 71.161.214.1 (talk) 18:28, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

From donations. See WP:DONATE. RudolfRed (talk) 19:12, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 November 2018

Dinrukh Mominov (01.01.1995) was born in Turkestan. He is a famous singer in Kazakhstan. DinrukhMominov (talk) 17:19, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Help desk. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. DonIago (talk) 17:47, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 November 2018

My father is Willie Basse. You have listed that he died on Oct 29, 2018. He actually died on Oct 28, 2018. Please make the edit. Thank you! -Amber Rice 2605:E000:2396:8F00:EDB3:89B6:2A6D:F6F9 (talk) 15:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

 Done. Sorry for your loss. If you have other suggestions for the article, please post at Talk:Willie Basse. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:59, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 November 2018

Karenmhaigh (talk) 14:51, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Help desk. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. Do not post copyrighted content. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:59, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 November 2018

THERE IS A PICTURE OF A GIANT PENIS ON THE SEIGE OF ZARA OFF THE MAIN PAGE OF WIKIPEDIA. Christ, fix this. AND MAKE IT EASIER TO CONTACT YOUR DUMB ASSES THIS IS RIDICULOUS. 2604:2000:DD01:4C00:ADA8:92E2:761F:A6E7 (talk) 16:16, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

 Already done – You can report that stuff to WP:AIV. CLCStudent (talk) 16:17, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Passive Voice

What's the consensus on using passive voice in articles? Is active voice better? E.g. "The record was broken by Bob in 1950, with a time of 4:00." vs. "Bob broke the record in 1950, with a time of 4:00." Herg-derg-editor (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:25, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I'd suggest it's largely contextual. Is the article or general context more about the record (in which case the passive would be more appropriate) or about Bob (in which case the active would be better). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.218.14.42 (talk) 01:06, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
    • Passive voice is appropriate in some situations, but not most. As a general writing rule, try to use active voice first, and if it feels unnatural, try passive voice. It comes down to context and editorial judgement. Popcornduff (talk) 01:41, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 December 2018

Please add the following to the section "What accent do luxury car TV ads use in Britain?"

Is GA an acronym for "Irish" (as in Gaeltacht)? 86.131.187.141 (talk) 09:37, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: Answering here. In this context "GA" stands for General American. The ISO 639-1 code for Irish is "ga". Sam Sailor 10:41, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Waiting period

How long do I need to wait to delete a sentence if I explain the reason for the deletion on the talk page and no one responds? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.27.150.168 (talk) 19:39, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

This Talk:Corporation#Delete Each Bad Point seems to be the item in question. I can tell the IP that you should not delete sourced info just because you don't like it. MarnetteD|Talk 19:48, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
In these circumstances, you should start a discussion at the talk page (as you have done). It is probably a good idea to WP:PING other involved editors so they are aware of the discussion. BTW you can't add a 'ping' to an existing post, you would have to write a new line to do so now. If you do not receive a response, bearing in mind the edits have previously been challenged, I do not think you should assume that no one objects or that there is consensus. Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 19:58, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

This doesn't really answer my question. The cites are weak and no one rejected the edits for any good reason. Assuming that no one responds to my comments, how long should I wait or what should I do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.27.150.168 (talk) 21:34, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

The talk page discussion is ongoing. The edits were reverted as consensus (which is an important part of how Wikipedia works) had not been established. Until it has been (through discussion) please do not make the changes but continue to engage in discussion. See WP:BRD and be careful not to edit war, as this can lead to the loss of editing privileges irrespective of the merits of the contributions.

Thank you for the patriarchal non-answer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.27.150.168 (talk) 22:16, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Apologies

To Britmax and 331dot for deleting their replies as collateral damage when I removed the libellous Mark Henry section Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:45, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 December 2018

Please add the following to the section "Do companies that own themselves exist?"

The Daily Telegraph of 22 December discusses the pros and cons of share buybacks [1]. Highlighted advantages include:

  • While share buybacks may be an alternative to within-firm investment, at a whole-economy level they simply amount to a reallocation of funds to better uses.
  • ... share prices rise after buybacks because investors perceive that funds that might have been badly invested are now being released.
 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Help desk. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. DonIago (talk) 16:32, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I need a little bit of help with an article and its sources.

Hi,

I'm from Germany and this my reflect my rather bad English. I have a problem with this rather small article /wiki/Hugo_Schmeisser for those who don't know he is a German gun designer and there is a certain group of people making one claim about him over and over again, some driven by political standpoints.

The Claim is, that he was working on the famous AK-47 rifle while in Russia, but this claim is not only not backed* by proven to be false by its own biography and the bis text book written on the topic.

  • But the problem is, that one not so well written book "The AK-47: Kalashnikov-series assault rifles by Gordon L. Rottman" makes this false claim and that this book has been published by Osprey a publisher with some reputation.

My Problem is now, that I was asked to give some source that clearly say "Schmeisser has not worked on the AK-47", but how am I supposed to do so? I can prove a negative claim, I can only mention the big Text Books on the Topic like Ezells "the AK-47 Story" or "AK-47: THE GRIM REAPER, 2ND EDITION" by Frank Iannamico not talking about it.

How I can I deal with this Problem? --Daniel Helmut (talk) 23:02, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

  • Note Above copied to the project page. Eagleash (talk) 23:31, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Talk pages consultation 2019

The Wikimedia Foundation has invited the various Wikimedia communities, including the English Wikipedia, to participate in a consultation on improving communication methods within the Wikimedia projects. As such, a request for comment has been created at Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019. All users are invited to express their views and to add new topics for discussion. Individual WikiProjects may also consider creating their own requests for comment; instructions are at mw:Talk pages consultation 2019/Participant group sign-up. (To keep discussion in one place, please don't reply to this comment.) Jc86035 (talk) 15:12, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Video tutorial regarding Wikipedia referencing with VisualEditor

Hi, I have received a grant from WMF to support production of a video tutorial regarding creating references with VisualEditor. I anticipate that the video will be published in March 2019. Depending on funding considerations, this tutorial might be published in both English and Spanish. If this tutorial is well received then I may produce additional tutorials in the future.

I will boldly add this Help talk page to the list of pages that will receive notifications for when drafts and finished products from this projects are ready for public review. I would greatly appreciate receiving feedback from experienced Wikipedia helpers regarding drafts so that I can make the finished products be as useful as possible for your work with helping new contributors. If you would also like to receive notifications on your user talk page then please sign up for the project newsletter.

Regards, --Pine✉ 20:18, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Video tutorial "Referencing with VisualEditor" – newsletter issue 1

 Video tutorial "Referencing with VisualEditor" – newsletter issue 1

Good news: the (lengthy!) script draft 1 is complete!

Hello, I am happy to share that script draft 1 is complete and ready for public comment.

The script (link to the Google doc) is much longer than I anticipated, at almost 21 pages!

Although I think that the 21 page script would be a very good introduction to referencing policies and workflows, I am considering dividing it into two or more smaller scripts that would be produced as separate videos. For example, one script could focus on policies and a different script could focus on how to use the citation tool. I am considering this for three reasons:

  • People may be more willing to watch shorter videos that have more specific focus.
  • Shorter videos may be easier to search for an answer for a single specific question.
  • There is a possibility that if I attempt to produce a single video from almost 21 pages of script that I might exceed the budget for this mini-project. I would like for both WMF and the community to be satisfied with the results from this mini-project, and I think that dividing the script into smaller scripts which could be produced separately would be a good way to ensure that the budget for the current grant is not exceeded. While there is a reasonable possibility that I could finish production of the entire 21 pages of script within the current grant, I think that dividing the script would be prudent. After one of the smaller scripts is fully produced within the currently available funding, remaining script could be considered for production within the current grant if there seems to be adequate remaining funds, or could be saved for possible production with a future grant.

Request for constructive criticism and comments

I would very much appreciate constructive criticism and comments regarding the script, preferably by March 10 at 11:59 PM UTC. This is a shorter time window than I would like to provide, but the planned end date for this project is March 14 and I would like to finish video production by the end of March 13 so that I have 24 hours for communications before the grant period ends. If you would like to review the script or make other comments but the end of March 10 is too soon for you, please let me know that you need more time, and I will take that into consideration as I plan for final production and consider whether to request a date extension from WMF. (Extending the finish date for the project would not involve requesting additional funding for the current grant.) I would prefer that the video be done perfectly a few days late than that the video be done on March 14 but have an important error that was not caught during a rush to the finish.

I have three specific requests for feedback:

1. Please find errors in the script. This is a great time to find problems with my work, before the script goes into production and problems become more expensive to fix. Please go to this link in Google Docs and use the Comment feature in the Google Doc.

2. Do you have comments regarding whether the script should be divided, and if so, how it should be divided? Please let me know on the project talk page.

3. How do you feel about the name for the video? Do you prefer "Referencing with VisualEditor" or "Citing sources with VisualEditor", or a third option? Again, please comment on the project talk page. However, if I divide the script then I will create new names for the smaller videos.

Closing comments

Thank you for your interest in this mini-project. I am grateful to be working on a project which I hope will help Wikipedia contributors to be more efficient and effective, and indirectly help to improve Wikipedia's quality by teaching contributors how to identify and to cite reliable sources. I believe that the finished video will be good, and I hope that the community and novice contributors will find the video to be very useful.

Yours in service,

--Pine✉ 07:55, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Video tutorial "Referencing with VisualEditor" – newsletter issue 2 short version

 Video tutorial "Referencing with VisualEditor" – newsletter issue 2

Hi! The full version of this newsletter issue has a lot of information. I am sending a short version to talk pages.

The most important information to know is that draft 2 is finished, that the single long script has been divided into many smaller scripts, and that portions of the script have been prioritized for production.

Due to budget constraints, not all scripts can be produced within the scope of the current pilot grant, but the other scripts will remain available for potential future production. (This project feels somewhat like doing a vehicle repair when the mechanic starts to work on the engine, and once the mechanic gets under the engine and starts to work, they discover that accomplishing their objective requires twice as much time as they first had estimated.) However, nothing is lost, so do not fear. Overall, my assessment (me being User:Pine) is that this project is producing a lot of good output and is generally a valuable pilot project.

For more information, including my requests for your feedback, please see the full version of the newsletter.

Thanks very much. --Pine(✉) 23:06, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

That one Google template that everyone uses

You know that Google template that goes something like "You're probably referring to the biography that Google's search results provide. That is controlled by Google and you'll need to click on their Feedback link..."? Well, I took a look at the templates listed in the Template:Google See Also section and didn't see it listed there. What's the name of that thing?

Thanks, -†dismas†|(talk) 16:29, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Could it be {{subst:HD/GKG}}? – Þjarkur (talk) 16:36, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes! That's it! Thank you, --†dismas†|(talk) 16:43, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Talk pages consultation 2019 – phase 2

The Wikimedia Foundation has invited the various Wikimedia communities, including the English Wikipedia, to participate in a consultation on improving communication methods within the Wikimedia projects.

Phase 2 of the consultation has now begun; as such, a request for comment has been created at Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019/Phase 2. All users are invited to express their views. Individual WikiProjects, user groups and other communities may also consider creating their own requests for comment; instructions are at mw:Talk pages consultation 2019/Participant group sign-up. (To keep discussion in one place, please don't reply to this comment.) Jc86035 (talk) 14:48, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

How to move an article from Draft to main space and for review?

 – Danski454 (talk) 06:26, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

hi,

I had published an article a few days back which has been nominated for speedy deletion and deleted after that. Then I edited a new article which is still showing in Drafts name: The Rug Republic. I want this draft to move into the main space and want to send this for review. However, I am unable to find any option to do so. Please help me out. Amalik.1705 (talk) 04:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Amalik.1705. This is not the Help desk, it's the talk page for the Help desk, intended for discussing the operation of the Help Desk. But I can answer you question anyway.
I assume you refer to Draft:The Rug Republic. It is blatantly promotion, and does nothing to establish that its subject is notable. It cites no references at all. If it is reviewed it will certainly be rejected, and if it is moved to main space it's likely to be deleted.
If you are here to improve Wikipedia, you should find a task that's much easier than trying to create a new article on a non-notable topic. If your purpose is to promote The Rug Republic, you should be aware that Wikipedia is not to be used for promotion; and instead use a site such as Facebook where promotion is permitted. Maproom (talk) 06:25, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Maproom, I am finding my references so that I can add them to the article. If this the problem because of that I am unable to publish my article, I'll edit them first and then send it for review. But, the issue I am facing is; the article is showing in draft and I don't have any option to move it to main space or to send it for review. I want you to help me out with this. Amalik.1705 (talk) 09:23, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

@Amlik.1705: Your post has again been copied to the correct place; see the link at the top of this thread. There is a big red notice at the top of the page about not asking questions here. Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 10:12, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
misplaced Q. copied to project page

How do u add pictures to the article? Sripriya401 (talk) 04:50, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

removing a warning box at the top of the page

hi. I am the Communications Manager at the Buck Institute and would like to find out how i can have the warning box removed at the top of our CEO's page. I believe i submitted a disclosure statement here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Chloecaviness Please let me know if there is something else i need to do.

Thank you! Chloe — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chloecaviness (talk • contribs) 17:52, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Eric_M._Verdin#removing_a_warning_box_at_the_top_of_the_page ~ ToBeFree (talk) 18:08, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
Chloecaviness – assuming this is about Eric M. Verdin, something else you might want to do is to establish that he is notable in Wikipedia's sense, by adding citations of reliable independent sources that discuss him. Of the sources currently cited in the article, the first three report what he said, and the others are all works which he wrote or co-wrote, so none are independent. Maproom (talk) 08:15, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

SineBot

SineBot has not been working for a couple of days. Just a heads up. Can anyone do anything about this? (Maybe I should put this on the main page, but not really very important/needs attention). Best wishes, Willbb234 (talk) 21:49, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe for now using the edit history and using the template Template:Unsigned if we see a question without a signature? — Preceding unsigned comment added by OkayKenji (talk • contribs)
Or contact SineBot's maintainer, User:slakr (sorry if I pinged you) OkayKenji (talk page) 22:26, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
User:Anomie/unsignedhelper is quite helpful for this. Eman235/talk 09:29, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
That script doesn't seem to work for me. I wonder whether that is connected with the malfunction of the edit conflict process, see WP:HD#Edit conflict with myself each time I make a change, wtf?? --David Biddulph (talk) 11:51, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Test comment to see if SineBot works or not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OkayKenji (talk • contribs) 14:43, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Update SineBot works. Yay! OkayKenji (talk page) 15:00, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Qualification met - Media articles links

I’m certain that given the vast media publications about me from national network news agencies, WV news agencies and numerous newspapers, trade associations and other reputable media outlets, I qualify under the guidelines you mentioned. How do I best send you links to those articles? CCIBBInventor (talk) 10:56, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

CCIBBInventor Please comment on the main discussion page only; this page is for discussing the operation of the Help Desk. 331dot (talk) 10:57, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Understood. So sorry for the error. CCIBBInventor (talk) 10:59, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing

Hello, I have recently created the page of Tarık Biberovic however whenever I try to add my sources it says “error edit not saved”. How do I fix this? Furthermore, how do I add his page to his name of Fenerbahçe Basketball roster? Thank you Wiki Facts fixer (talk) 14:55, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@Wiki Facts fixer: Your question has been copied to the correct page Eagleash (talk) 15:01, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Account help

Can you help me tell me how can I delete my wiki account there no since of me having one when I don't use that much thanks Jpimpact (talk) 07:01, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Jpimpact: Hello, your question is on the wrong page (see notice at the top). However, replying here as it is not a complicated issue. An account cannot be deleted. Just stop using it. There is a possibility of a courtesy 'vanishing'. See WP:RTV for more information. Eagleash (talk) 09:17, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Note copied to the project page: any subsequent posts should be made there. Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 09:18, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

If WP:VE described the visual editor, what page describes the source editor

I am thinking about starting Wikipedia:Source editor (related: Wikipedia:Source editing, Wikipedia:Classic editor, all red) but first I want to make sure that there aren't any good redirect target, and figured Help Deskers would be a good place to ask, since I am sure you often provide various links like this to new editors? Of course, to some degree, all 'old' pages refer by default to the source/classic editing, but as we slowly move towards the new style of Visual editor (can't happen soon enough if you ask me...), we will need a page describing ye old dinosaur, won't we? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:35, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Help:Editing talks about the two editing options, and Help:Wikitext has much of the info needed by those using the source editor. --David Biddulph (talk) 06:43, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Can we delete articles on Wikipedia

Can we delete articles on Wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flykites (talk • contribs) 14:55, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Flykites please post to the main Help Desk page in the future (this page is for discussing the operation of the help desk only) but see WP:DELETE for information on how and why pages are deleted. Only admins can actually carry out a deletion. 331dot (talk) 15:37, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Spanish-speaking editor needs help

Do any of the help desk regulars know enough Spanish to assist Special:Contributions/2601:201:4300:DD00:1D90:135A:4F67:EF76? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:45, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

How do I know a request to create a Wikipedia page by an editor is fake and if so how to report them? Joseph.vettukattil (talk) 16:31, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

@Joseph.vettukattil: Hello, this is the talk page for discussing ways to improve the help desk. I will copy your enquiry to the correct location. Eagleash (talk) 16:52, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Franz Liszt

Hello, my name is Jeremiah, and I have recently made an edit to the Franz Liszt, and Paganini article. The edit that I made on the Franz Liszt page got taken down because it was not helpful, the edit was to fix the grammar, why they remove it?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeremiah J Parker (talk • contribs)

Hello Jeremiah J Parker. This page is for discussing the operation of the Help Desk, and is not the Help Desk itself. Please post your question to the main Help Desk page. 331dot (talk) 19:10, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
You have made five recent and misguided edits to Franz Liszt, all of which have been reverted. It's not clear which of these you're referring to. Maproom (talk) 21:04, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

New archiving solution likely needed

Tonight scsbot, the bot I run which archives the Reference and Help desks (and a few other pages), stopped working. The antique HTTP infrastructure it uses is incompatible with security updates being imposed by Wikimedia. I doubt I will be able to fix it; I certainly won't be able to fix it tonight. So Help Desk archiving (and automatic date header adding) will be on hold until either (a) I find the energy to update my infrastructure or (b) we switch to an entirely new archiving scheme. (There are numbers of other Wikipedia archivers, and I assume that most/all of them use proper, updated infrastructures that are and will stay compatible with Wikimedia's requirements.)

Sorry to blindside y'all with this, but I was blindsided by this tonight. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:49, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

"Never mind." (See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk for details.) —Steve Summit (talk) 15:47, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Box on top of box

For the last several days I've noticed that, for me, the [Skip to TOC • Skip to bottom] box is hovering over the [About Wikipedia . . . etc.] box, obscuring the last quarter of the latter's top line and, therefore, several links. I don't begin to know how to amend this. Anyone? If it's relevant, I'm using a 15"/38cm desktop monitor and running Windows 10. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.211.222 (talk) 15:06, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm seeing that as well. The issue has been raised at Template talk:Skip to bottom. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:44, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Fundraising questions

Is there a specific fundraising push right now? We are getting a lot of questions related to fundraising, both here and at the Teahouse. 331dot (talk) 10:34, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Not sure but Wikipedia's Twitter says "Our annual major fundraiser has started! Here's one place your donations go: the development of a 'page...". see tweet. OkayKenji (talk page) 05:09, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
Yeah now they are saying, "We kicked off our annual major fundraiser this week! Here's one place your donations go..." see tweet. OkayKenji (talk page) 06:42, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
When I look at Wikipedia logged out (Chrome incognito) I get a fundraising banner. (I'm in the UK) Danski454 (talk) 00:07, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
Danski454 You need to log in to avoid seeing the donation request banners. 331dot (talk) 13:23, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
I know, I was looking to see if there were fundraising banners. Danski454 (talk) 19:37, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
It's even worse on a phone, where the fundraising "banner" takes up the whole screen. I can see why people are getting frustrated, especially when the millions of dollars being donated don't seem to do anything to improve the clunky software.--Shantavira|feed me 11:10, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Need someone to fix 3 quick word links to additional page information that one has been corrected... The other two words just dropped. Sorry brain dead please just fix for me. I am using an Android cell phone.

Send me information for future reference please Aetonwiki (talk) 08:20, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

@Aetonwiki: Please note this is a talk page for discussions about the help desk. Questions should be posted at the help desk itself. Your edits have been undone as they added only a non-existent template and some text without any meaning. Eagleash (talk) 12:37, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Dead letter office (proposal)" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:Dead letter office (proposal). Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. TigraanClick here to contact me 09:49, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

ALL CAPS postings.

Is there any way that when a new question is added to the help desk is done that it can be tested for the ratio between capital letters and lower case letters? I would expect that a non-shouting posting would be no more than half capital letters (probably more like 10%) and that something be done to reject or otherwise ask them to resubmit non-shouting?Naraht (talk) 16:58, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Whether it's possible or not, is it necessary? I don't think we get so much traffic on the Help Desk (or the Teahouse and Ref Desks) that we need an automatic system to do this for us. Individual editors are surely capable of making their own judgements and gently remonstrating with the shouters if necessary.
I myself tend to address the query and as an addendum mention that 'using all caps is widely perceived as shouting and rude, so they're more likely to get good responses if they don't', or words to a similar effect. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.162.227 (talk) 02:08, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Fatal exception of type DBQueryError

Whenever I try to edit certain AfDs, or even the help desk page itself, I get:

[Xou4TwpAIH4AAyqSm8cAAAAU] 2020-04-06 23:16:32: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError"

Anyone know what's happening? — MarkH21talk 23:23, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

See WP:VPT#Error on all non-talk pages at the present time WT:VPT#Error on all non-talk pages at the present time. --David Biddulph (talk) 23:25, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. For anyone else passing by, it's WT:VPT#Error on all non-talk pages at the present time (WP talk page not WP page). — MarkH21talk 23:26, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm not seeing that discussion you are linking to, but I am having the same error. I was trying to move a page but was unable to. BOZ (talk) 23:28, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh, just now noticed that you updated the link, thanks! BOZ (talk) 23:29, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Published info

Can i upload a new news company info? Narailnews24 (talk) 04:43, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

  • Note: This was also posted to the project page and according to the thread there, the user is now blocked; presumably due to corporate / promotional issues. Eagleash (talk) 05:48, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Funny how Wikipedia Censors pages and not allow bad information about person/company even while it is proven. While the page has already untraceable statements (link doesn't exist) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:1C03:491A:D900:9A6:9B5B:8371:5136 (talk) 06:12, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Do you have a question about how to use or edit Wikipedia? If so, please post it at the project page (tab at the top of this page). If you have an issue with a particular article, please start a discussion at the article talk page. Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 07:14, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Ava Max

I do not like it that livelikemusic keeps changing data-sort-value="" style="background: #DDF; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="no table-no2" | TBA to TBA. It is not fair for the user. Neel.arunabh (talk) 00:37, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Neel.arunabh, you and livelikemusic have been edit-warring at Ava Max. You are both "users" and editors, and you should both discuss the issue at the article's talk page. In any case, this is not the Help Desk, it is The Help Desk's talk page, intended for discussing how the Help Desk is managed. Maproom (talk) 20:28, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
@Maproom: We did begin to talk on that user's talk page. They stopped the discussion, altogether and came here hours later. That is all I have to say on this matter here, as this place is not the appropriate place for this discussion. livelikemusic talk! 21:05, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

emails

Header added by ColinFine (talk) 20:52, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

someones using this site and people to hack my f****ing emails.think twce before giving details..need help pleeas.fUk me headaches everywhere — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.148.33.5 (talk) 03:14, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Hello, IP address. I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you are saying, but this is not the appropriate page to say it (this is for discussion about how the Wikipedia Help Desk works). Please post again, to Wikipedia:Help Desk (which is a different page from this) explaining in more detail what the problem is, and what help you are looking for. --ColinFine (talk) 20:52, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

"Resolved" tags

I see that someone has been adding {{resolved}} to sections on the Help Desk. I suspect that in some cases, the OP will consider that the issue has not been resolved to their satisfaction. Who are these tags meant to help? Is there a community consensus for their use? Maproom (talk) 22:49, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

They were added by Galendalia. I don't think there is consensus for using them. --MrClog (talk) 22:51, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
Feel free to remove them, some the user said thank you that is what they wanted, the others can easily be removed by the OP if they are not resolved. --Galendalia (talk) 22:53, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Note: Some have also been added by at least one other editor. There was a (very) brief discussion about this – must be 3 or 4 years ago now – and IIRC it was felt that it was counter-productive as it could deter other editors from adding to the discussion. Using {{fixed}} or {{done}} when fixing a simple request is probably OK. Eagleash (talk) 15:27, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Eagleash - I wasn't pinged, so I didn't know anyone responded. I only do it those I know have been resolved as the user is A) banned/blocked from the service or 2) They have said thank you, just what I needed, etc. If the discussion has not ended or I have any doubt, I don't touch it. GalendaliaChat Me Up 21:05, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

What Wikipedia doesn't care about

I've had something roiling around in my mind for a few weeks now, and I've stuck it down in an essay, User:ColinFine/What Wikipedia doesn't care about. Having got it down, I'm not sure if it's valuable, or just too BITEy. Maybe it should just stay as a personal rant and be quietly buried; or perhaps people think that it's useful, or could be made useful. Opinions, please. --ColinFine (talk) 20:56, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

@ColinFine: I put some suggested titles on the talk page - couldn't figure out a better way to show suggestions without editing your version. I agree with the sentiment but think the titles needed expansion. I also added a caveat - many people and companies want inaccuracies fixed and that's why there are edit requests. Also, you could put a link at the end of each sentence to the more detailed policy page, for further reading. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 00:41, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Can’t edit talk pages

I'm trying to edit a talk page, but it keeps giving me a message saying The topic can't be added due to an unknown error.

MikaelaArsenault (talk) 00:13, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@MikaelaArsenault: That is odd. Please start a discussion at WP:VPT, where technical issues are discussed. When you make your post there, be sure to link to the talk page you are having trouble with. RudolfRed (talk) 20:48, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Query about Indian locomotive class

Hallo I have written this line Note-Before updating the information here anybody should check out the railways current official data first in the Source link then change the data Under the list of loco sheds of some Indian locomotive class articles where there is loco shed so, that anybody who wants to update the loco shed details will do that by seeing the official data in the Source link and then suddenly today this user:Field Marshal Aryan (talk) has removed that line and telling me that this line will confuse any body who will read the articles and prevent users from editing the loco shed details. Can you tell me that this line Note-Before updating the information here anybody should check out the railways current official data first in the Source link then change the data will confuse any body who will read the articles and prevent users from editing the loco shed details. If you think that this line will confuse any body who will read the articles and prevent users from editing the loco shed details, then you should tell me asap I will remove this line from all the Indian locomotive class articles where I have written. Can you confirm me quickly.Suvadeep Saha56 (talk) 21:00, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

This is not the place to ask question, user:Suvadeep Saha56. Use the main page of the help desk instead of the talk page to ask question. Field Marshal Aryan (talk) 06:56, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Explicitly giving instruction to editors within the content of the article

Hello, this is with respect to railway locomotive articles of India. This one in particular: WDP-4. In India locomotives have their own sheds in various cities where they are maintained and come back for servicing. Basically, the shed is the home of a locomotive and is responsible for it. When any of the factory churns out a loco, they are assigned to any of the existing sheds. The data for this is available here. My friend here, user:Suvadeep Saha56 says that many people edit the shed section without checking the official data, thus adding wrong information. To prevent this, he added the following line right under the table that shows the loco sheds

Note-Before updating the information in loco shed anybody should check out the railways current official data first in the reference link 8 then change the data.

My question is, is it OK to add such an instruction which will be visible to so many readers and possibly confuse those not familiar with it? We are supposed to write articles so they can be understood by laymen too right? Can you guys (more experienced editors) tell us what to do now? --Field Marshal Aryan (talk) 09:38, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Field Marshal Aryan: See your own comment above re asking questions at the project page. And yes. advice can be left within articles, but it should be as concise as possibe and it can be 'hidden' between 'copy-out' tags (<!-- note goes here -->) so that it is only visible upon opening the source to edit. Eagleash (talk) 10:28, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Note: supplementary question and response copied to project page. Eagleash (talk) 10:30, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
@User:Eagleash, understood. Also, the above section was not added by me. It was added by user:Suvadeep Saha56 in my name without me knowing (can be verified through page edit history). Thank you for the help, I will put the the note as a comment on the original page. Field Marshal Aryan (talk) 10:39, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
@Field Marshal Aryan: OK, will need to check that out. Please see WP:PING for how to add '@ messages' correctly. Putting '@' in front of the username does not do anything. See my examples here. Eagleash (talk) 10:47, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Notwiki

Template:Notwiki has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Anarchyte (talk • work) 12:12, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

WMF Growth Team

Hi all,

I'm just duplicating a request made by @MMiller (WMF): of the WMF Growth team who is working on features to increase new editor retention.

Screenshot of suggested edits module in Czech Wikipedia

Over the last year or so, the Growth team has been piloting features in small Wikipedias meant to increase productive edits from newcomers (such as the "suggested edits module" shown here). As our features become more developed, we're planning on expanding to larger wikis, and so I created this project page on English Wikipedia, looking to gather thoughts from English Wikipedians who think about new editors. I hope some of you can check out that page and leave any of your thoughts on the talk page, so that as we think about deploying features to bigger wikis, we'll take your ideas and concerns into account.

The latest idea we're thinking about is called "structured tasks". The idea builds on our previous work of task recommendations for newcomers, but is geared toward breaking down simple editing workflows (like copyediting or adding wikilinks) into steps that are easy for newcomers to accomplish, potentially assisted by algorithms. We are asking for thoughts and opinions on the project here on the talk page. I hope to see some of you in the conversation! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 19 May 2020 (UTC)"

I've had an initial look at it, and there certainly are some appreciable positives. On top of that, Miller is very active in engaging with feedback, so it seems well worth participating. It might not be the solution but it is a solution. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:24, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Reverted edit

I was trying to add continuity to the page Gary & Mike but had it reverted by the admin Materialscientist. Said it wasn’t “constructive” - that he was triggered by the by me yelling “REAL” and my lack of citation from my “Featured Music” edit. I’m okay with the “no yelling” rule. I asked him if this would work as a citation: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3JBRUNKVE0FCaOmh8gGZUd?si=F_dbwgsNRvKS-XYuZjOxHg

And if not that, what would work better, but he never responded. Your feedback? Christengo (talk) 14:03, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Christengo This page is for discussing the operation of the Help Desk; please post to the actual Help Desk. 331dot (talk) 14:24, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

My bad. Christengo (talk) 14:27, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Our company page

I'm reaching out to you on behalf of Recruitee, with regard to our company page.

starts a thread by some IP.

It is not "your company page", it is a Wikipedia article about your company.

starts the response.

I've seen this kind of thing far too often.

As it happens, I'm pretty much the only creator of the article John Harding (photographer). I'm grateful for the miscellaneous gnomery and corrections made to it by others, but I think it would be reasonable of me to refer to it as my article about John Harding. This would in no way assert ownership. If I emailed Harding about it, I'd be about equally likely to refer to it as "the article about you" and "your article". Simply, I'd be using the genitive in the standard way: to indicate that a noun phrase (the unfortunately named "possessor") is the determiner/specifier of a nominal (the unfortunately named "possessum"). The relationship may be of possession. Routinely, it isn't: my birth, dilemma, blood pressure, headache, debt, fate, death are not among my possessions. (And neither are my good name or my success, if I have them -- but I mustn't boast.)

If articles and drafts are promotional, we needn't mince words about them. If people really seem to assume ownership of pages about themselves, their employers, etc, we can disabuse them of that notion. If people persist in their attempts to promote, we can tell them where to get off (or block them, or whatever). But let's not subject them to our misunderstandings of the genitive case. -- Hoary (talk) 09:39, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Creating an article about a person is different than creating an article about one's own company. 331dot (talk) 09:44, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I have never written to a company, or any employee, about the company's WP article. But if I did, I'd happily refer to it as either "the article about you" or "your article". Either seems fine; the latter would imply ownership no more than would the former. -- Hoary (talk) 11:40, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I have observed many examples of company representatives using that language and who clearly feel that they have special rights to any article about their company. I think it better to make this clear right away to remove any ambiguity. 331dot (talk) 11:50, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I agree with 331dot. It's important to make it clear to representatives of the company that they have less say, not more, over the article's contents than do ordinary editors. Maproom (talk) 12:32, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I'm happy to make it clear to company employees that their article can't be even slightly a PR vehicle and that they shouldn't edit it. Such necessary and commendable messages can be delivered without strange pronouncements about the genitive case. -- Hoary (talk) 12:44, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
Sorry, Hoary, but I can't agree. We need to break the promotional paradigm with which all these folks start, that it is "my profile" or "our page". It's not their page, and it's not a profile, it's an article in an encyclopedia about them. The difference is not grammatical, it is fundamental, and we cannot underline it strongly enough. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:58, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Y" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Wikipedia:Y. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 July 15#Wikipedia:Y until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Interstellarity (talk) 11:00, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

does HD use Active Editnotice?

I see this note at the top of the Help Desk: "‹ The template below (Active editnotice) is being considered for deletion. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›" I am not sure how or if the HD uses this template, I did not see it when I edited the page, but I assume the notice would not appear if the template was not used somehow. So, my question: how does HD use this template and what will the impact be if the template is deleted? RudolfRed (talk) 16:22, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

@RudolfRed: The top box at the help desk comes from Wikipedia:Help desk/Header, and {{Active editnotice}} is part of the header. The only effect of the template there is to add Category:Pages with editnotices. Deleting the template and category won't upset the help desk. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:57, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Some 2020 United States Senate elections pages are not loading properly

To whom it may concern, As of today, the articles 2020 United States Senate elections, 2020 United States Senate election in Alaska, 2020 United States Senate election in Colorado, and 2020 United States Senate election in New Hampshire did not load properly and all I got is the pages in Times New Roman format. Please fix this as soon as possible. Thank you Sincerely, Jason Jason S. Goldstein (talk) 13:00, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

@Jason S. Goldstein: Please redirect your question to the help desk. - TimDWilliamson speak 14:05, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

On This Day

I’ve noticed — for some of the days in October — that some of the entries refer us to the relevant page from OnThisDay.com.

Which is fair enough.

But can we ALSO start adding the equivalent page from Britannica.com?

I also note we’ve long had entries from the BBC, the New York Times and the Canada Channel.

Is it possible to add the equivalents — if there are any — from Australia and New Zealand?

And possibly India?

I know it would add extra work, but having entries from major English language counties seems only right.

Cuddy2977 (talk) 11:50, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@Cuddy2977:This page is for discussions about the help desk. Your topic should be discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year. -Arch dude (talk) 22:56, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
Cheers! Cuddy2977 (talk) 16:46, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

I want to delete my wikiPedia account

Help me delete it, please Valtries (talk) 15:28, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Per WP:Delete account: "It is not possible to delete user accounts, as all contributions must be assigned to some identifier; either a username or an IP address. Editors seeking privacy per courtesy vanishing / right to vanish can usually have their accounts renamed and their user pages (and in exceptional cases user talk pages) deleted. It is not currently possible to merge user accounts on the English Wikipedia." ‡ Єl Cid of Valencia talk 15:40, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
If you also want to edit your userpage, please log in to your main account. You are really triggering the filter and that can be considered disruptive. Megan☺️ Talk to the monster 12:40, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Minimizing footprint of trolls.

I have been collapsing the repetitive troll-like sections on the help desk. I'm doing this under the "rule" of "don't collapse talk entries unless they are clearly disruptive." I notice that others are beginning to do the same, so I guess we have an informal consensus here. I would like to further reduce the visual signature to further starve these guys of attention. I think we can do this with a few parameters on the {{cot}} template, namely |left=true|bg=white|border=white. Here is a before-and after example:

normal cot:

Free Gondwanaland!

de-emphasized cot:

Free Gondwanaland!

If I cared enough I guess I would create a new template that did this and also pulled the "show" button in to immediately follow the title.

I think this approach should be used sparingly. We need to AGF until the situation becomes egregious.

Comments?

-Arch dude (talk) 18:45, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

  • Good points: sparingly and only against a repetitive nuisance, not a single entry. Retired electrician (talk) 20:30, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Added note: This works best if we place all additional commentary within the collapsed text, not after it. Please comment on the suitability of this technique here, and not on the help desk. Starve the trolls. -Arch dude (talk) 16:16, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

How to add template to an existing draft

How do I add info: person template to this draft https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Paul_Ekpo#/editor/0

Patrick 08068897507 (talk) 00:37, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Patrick 08068897507, there are a lot of templates that involve people. Which one are you talking about? {{Infobox person}}? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:45, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

My research showed that the subject is a politician. Do we have a template: politician? Or please help me go through this draft and review it. You may insert template that suit it 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Paul_Ekpo#/editor/0 Patrick 08068897507 (talk) 00:49, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

How to insert template

I want to start a new draft for a medical personnel Do I need to insert {{medical person}} on top to form a template? Patrick 08068897507 (talk) 01:03, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Please direct your questions to the actual Help Desk, not this talk page. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 01:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi

Hi All Wikipedia create a School's Facebook page automatically but the school have a own Facebook page I want to wikipedia connect the real Facebook page with the school's Wikipedia page and also the location of the school's distance is only 1km but in wikipedia it shows 2km.I want to please connect the real Facebook page with the school Wikipedia page.please reply ,so I will give you the Facebook page links.Thanks. Hope this is understandable . Kritish Mohapatra (talk) 11:30, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

@Kritish Mohapatra: Hello this is the talk page for the help desk. Questions should be asked at the help deak itself. I have copied your post to there. Eagleash (talk) 12:35, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Please help me Kritish Mohapatra (talk) 14:15, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Please click on WP:HD to be taken to the Help Desk. 331dot (talk) 15:52, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Articles dealing with The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints

Greetings!

I am a member of The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints and I have a suggestion/complaint about articles that use outdated, obsolete and controversial language concerning The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints. According to official statements put out by Church leaders, the use of any unofficial titles such as the Mormon Church, the Mormons, Mormonism, The Church of the Latter-day Saints and others that omit the sacred name of the Lord JESUS CHRIST is discouraged and not in keeping with the sacred nature of the Church's claims to be a Christian church. For those of us who find these unofficial monikers to be offensive, we ask that you allow such errors to be changed and open for editing. You may permit other churches, denominations, sects, cults, faiths and other belief systems to be called according to their official names but we ask you to be fair, open-minded and willing to allow us to correct the issue. The reason and the need for Church leaders to release these statements is to dispel many evil and pernicious rumors, misinformation and outright lies about The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints and to proclaim that we are indeed Christian, Christlike and followers of JESUS CHRIST and His teachings and commandments. In addition, any use of unofficial titles of the Church that omit the sacred name of JESUS CHRIST is a victory for Satan and his demons. We solemnly proclaim that it is only in, through, by and with the Lord's name that we can return to God's presence. Many denominations within Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Reformationist Protestantism also teach this godly precept and so do we. I thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. 

Respectfully, 

Greg F. Tahoeboy1970 (talk) 23:07, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Tahoeboy1970 This page is for discussing the operation of the Help Desk, not the Help Desk itself. Please post to the main Help Desk. 331dot (talk) 23:10, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Roman Army

The external links listed below are corrupted. They lead to an error page. In not sure who fixes these links, but I have informed the site as of now.


• Legions and Legionaries in the Age of Augustus • The Roman Centurion • Roman Warriors: The Myth of the Military Machine • Roman Cavalry • Protecting the Emperor: The Praetorian Guard

• The Last Legion Grymmlocke (talk) 19:08, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Grymmlocke This page is the talk page for the Help Desk, not the Help Desk itself. Please post on the main Help Desk page. 331dot (talk) 19:10, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

A templated message for a FAQ

If anyone feels like typing fewer words when someone asks for the fundraising banner to stop asking them to donate, I've created a template in my userspace, {{User:Tenryuu/donate}}, which displays:

The software cannot tell who is at the other end of an IP address. Please create an account. Go to your Preferences, navigate to the Gadgets tab, and check the "Suppress display of fundraiser banners" box. For additional concerns please contact the Wikimedia Foundation at this email address: donate@wikimedia.org.

I don't think it needs to move to templatespace, but if anyone feels otherwise, they're welcome to do so. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) (🎁 Wishlist! 🎁) 17:14, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Arrow scroller thingy

Maybe it would be helpful to add the up and down arrows on the main page like the Teahouse for easier navigation? SnazzyInfinity (chat? • what I've done) 16:29, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm meh about adding this as I always use the Home and End keys to navigate to the top or bottom respectively, but I guess it could be helpful for the less computer-savvy? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) (🎁 Wishlist! 🎁) 17:48, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
While I prefer the Home/End approach, sometimes it's more ergonomic to use those arrow buttons. The arrows on the Teahouse are conveniently located and easy to spot. I favor consistency in this regard.--Quisqualis (talk) 18:05, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Requested page protection

FYI, I have requested the help desk be given semi-protection at WP:RFPP to stop the spamming of requests to edit the Muslim leader page. RudolfRed (talk) 20:27, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Apparently my request is malformed. Can someone help fix it? RudolfRed (talk) 20:38, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
RudolfRed, it seems like John of Reading fixed it for you; the pagelink is case-sensitive, so you were asking for page protection on the redirect Wikipedia:Help Desk instead of Wikipedia:Help desk. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) (🎁 Wishlist! 🎁) 21:01, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 December 2020

2600:1702:B50:44B0:B049:3EA4:E9A1:48ED (talk) 10:40, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

I would donate to Wikipedia but I tried to put an honest to good article up and instead of helping with it your volunteers jerked it down and made me feel like I was doing something bad. So until Wiki wants to help put articles up by regular people I figure they can deal with their 1.5 % funding from the few

Not an edit request. This page is for discussing the operation of the help desk, and is not the help desk itself. Please post your question to the main help desk, WP:HD. Also, remember to log in before posting, or otherwise identify the draft involved. 331dot (talk) 10:46, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 December 2020 (2)

Habeebi (talk) 13:28, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

hii. i have a problem in an article that u wrote on present caliph of islam.Acording to the article 

Mirza masroor Ahmedis present caliph of islam ..As it is wrong ,BECAUSE i am a muslim and

According to our religion he believed that muhammed [SAW] is the prophet But he didnt believe Muhammed[SAW] is last of prophet sent by ALLAH..and IN OUR THE ONE WHO DONT believe that Muhammed[SAW] is last he is not muslim and wikipedia is presenting him as caliph os islam

While we appreciate your opinion, this matter is Google's error, and there's nothing we can do about what they decide to take from our website, even if it is portrayed in a misleading matter. Google's algorithms are so flawed that they show the caliph of the Amadiyya sect as the caliph of all of Islam. Acroterion (talk) 13:32, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Habeebi: This is the page for discussions about the operation of the help desk. Please make your edit request at the talk page of the article concerned. If you need assistance please ask at the help desk itself (where you will find earlier threads about this topic). Eagleash (talk) 13:38, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 December 2020 (3)

The contents on the following link are wrong and bogus... As Ahmadiya's are Non Muslims. The person mentioned as the current caliph is a Non Muslim and doesn't represent Islam or Muslims. Therefore, please remove this wrong information from the page given bellow: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirza_Masroor_Ahmad 39.43.117.170 (talk) 15:04, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

As above. Pahunkat (talk) 15:08, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello

Thank you, just change the place of president Boban Angelovski, Dajanco Kimevski should stand and the place of coach should be changed, now it is Natasha Mladenovska and the name of the club has been changed, now it is MRK and it competes in the first league group 2. Please put this season 2020 / 21 we finished 3 Peronovak (talk) 16:50, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Peronovak This page is for discussing the operation of the Help Desk, and is not the Help Desk itself. Please post your question to the actual Help Desk, or on the talk page of the article involved. 331dot (talk) 16:59, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Font size recently too large in Chrome

I've noticed in the past week that when I open wikipedia all of the fonts are much larger now. I can't find a easy way to put it back to the way it was. No setup or view window where I can choose. Why would it change anyway? I've been using it and making donations for many years without this ever happening before. I already tried the info email and was sent back to here. Seems weird to have to write a post in order for this to be solved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:F230:DB0:D951:4797:A818:A29 (talk) 18:58, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

This page is for discussing the operation of the Help Desk, and is not the Help Desk itself. Please post questions to the actual Help Desk. -Arch dude (talk) 19:31, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
I have not noticed any change in Chrome. Perhaps it is a setting in your browser? Have you tried ctrl-? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:32, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

A website that translate the wikipedia pages to persian

Hi, 

Do you know this page that translate the wikipedia pages to persian language? here is a page of tis website:  https://abadgar-q.com/

Do you have any information about this page? Thanks... Shabnamkalir (talk) 21:55, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

@Shabnamkalir: This is the talk page for the help desk. Your question has been transferred to the help desk itself. Eagleash (talk) 14:30, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Consolidating help venues

Regulars please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Consolidating_help_venues. AdmiralEek (talk) 23:33, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Preload

I noticed that a lot of messages posted here aren't signed, compared to the Teahouse. When considering why, I noticed that when you ask a question at the Teahouse using the "ask question" button, Wikipedia:Teahouse/Preload is used: 

{{subst:trim|1=
<!-- PLEASE ADD A SHORT SUBJECT HEADING in the separate Subject/headline field above. Then, WRITE YOUR QUESTION BELOW THIS LINE. -->






<!-- DO NOT SIGN with tildes, and DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->
}}&nbsp;~~~~

Not sure if this exact wording would be right for the help desk, but I think it could be beneficial to use something. Thoughts? Elli (talk | contribs) 02:11, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

I think it's definitely useful for newbies, but then a few of them forget to sign any comments they have after the initial post. The mood I've gotten here at the help desk is that users asking questions here tend to be more seasoned, and generally sign their own posts without any need for prompting. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 02:16, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Request for new mentors

Hi all,

After the first stage of the Growth team beta, which some of us participated as mentors (and we had more volunteers - we just had to cap it at 19), the project is looking to expand to 5% of new accounts getting a mentor. That means we need 150% more mentees - 50 mentors.

Currently we haven't formalised the pseudo-perm we're discussing, but please make sure you have some experience before joining.

Sign-up is done at Wikipedia:Growth Team features/Mentor list - it explains how to add yourself. Cheers and thanks!

p.s. if it looks like there are already 50 please consider holding back so each mentor gets a reasonable number of questions. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:50, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation, Nosebagbear. I've went ahead and added myself to the list. Isabelle 🔔 15:20, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Ghastlyman's experience of using Help Desk

 – Added section heading, removed unnecessary indentation, moved to bottom of page – ClaudineChionh (talk – contribs)

Hi. I'm a noob on Help Desk, and relatively noobish Wikipedia editor. Here's my experience:

  • To start a conversation, I enter Help Desk via link on front page of Wikipedia.
  • Lots of visual clutter which I don't bother reading because...
  • ...I see a blue button inviting me to ask a new question.
  • I click on the button and get dumped into a page with more visual clutter, but...
  • ...I see a box for the title of my entry, and a larger box for the content of my entry.
  • I fill in the boxes, and, as I go to hit the publish button, I notice some text...
  • ...Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~, it says.
  • I ignore this, because "obviously" I'm not on a talk page; I'm on an "add-message-to-Help-Desk" page.
  • When I examine my published text, I see that it has been autosigned by a bot, and the penny drops.

Hope this helps.

P.S. In case nobody has noticed (!), Wikipedia is an effing nightmare for new editors. Absolute effing nightmare! -- Ghastlyman (talk) 07:05, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

That's a fair account of how things are. It's a consequence of having no hierarchy and no-one in charge of anything. Someone who sets out to try to improve things is likely to add a bit more visual clutter, and then realise it's all too much for them to fix. Maproom (talk) 12:27, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
I believe the intent is that if you're on a page where editor comments are prioritised (including the Reference Desk or noticeboards like ANI), it'd be considered a "talk page", not just any page in the Talk namespace. It's gotten to the point where a lot of newbies don't sign their questions over at the Teahouse that code has been inserted to do it for them, but then they forget to sign any follow-up comments. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 13:41, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
The top of Wikipedia:Help desk includes:
  • Remember to sign your post by adding 4 tildes (~~~~) at the end of your post. Alternatively, you can click on the signature icon () onh the edit toolbar.
The edit notice at top of the edit page for making a help desk post includes:
Finally, please sign any statement you post here by placing ~~~~ at the end of your post.
Many users probably skip this as "visual clutter" but if we shortened it then I'm not sure we would keep the sign instruction. "Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~ " is made by MediaWiki:Edittools and displayed on all non-article edit pages. Trying to describe more precisely where to sign would be cumbersome and probably skipped by many as visual clutter. I think the main problem with signing for new users is not where to do it but that you have to do it at all in some places. Our current software requires it. There has been development of other discussion software for many years but it's unpopular. The current discussion system goes back to the early days where it was decided to use the same software for editing articles and making discussions. That has many advantages, especially for experienced editors, but can be confusing to new users when it doesn't resemble forums and other sites. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

GUAM is in Asia or is in North America

IS GUAM IN ASIA OR NORTH AMERICA 173.181.109.203 (talk) 23:40, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Your question is better suited for the Wikipedia:Reference desk. This page is for questions regarding the help desk, which fields questions related to using Wikipedia itself. clpo13(talk) 23:45, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
Neither. If you had asked "which continent is Guam in?", you may have received the answer "Oceania", as it says in the article about Guam. Bazza (talk) 11:04, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Donations

I am concerned because I was approached to make a donation which I believed was for Wikipedia and I got a thank you from Wikipedia. I want to take the donation back because I was tricked into it. That really should NOT happen that way. I’m sure I’m not the only one who enjoys Wikipedia that mistakenly got tricked. I. Would like to know why it happened … why you allowed my information to go to them. I NEVER AGREED TO THAT !!! Irene S Plush 2001:569:5247:D700:C5A8:51EE:3375:E51C (talk) 23:49, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

This is not the help desk, but a place to discuss the operation of the help desk. That said, please email donate (at) Wikipedia dot org regarding any donation issues. 331dot (talk) 23:52, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Donation banner complaints

By my count, there are currently 11 threads (out of the total 64) about the donation banner (mostly about how to dismiss it).

I do not remember such a high volume of queries last year, so I assume the banner must be particularly obnoxious. (I tried to look at the main page in a private browser window but I did not see it - maybe this is an IP geoloc thing? If someone could screenshot it it would be nice, thanks.)

Should we tell the WMF that readers think their banner sucks? I mean, if you think they ought to optimize their fundraising, it is valuable feedback, and if you think they ought to stop the exponential growth of budget, that is an argument against aggressive fundraising practices. TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 17:10, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I created a template which can be substituted, because it's get excessive indeed. {{subst:WikiDonation}} ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:14, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

New template response for Wikidonation queries

See Template:WikiDonation which I created to help respond thoughtfully and carefully to the influx of questions. You need to substitute like {{subst:WikiDonation}} so that your signature/timestamp are personalized. Feel free to boldly edit/improve the template text itself to be kinder and more expansive. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Shushugah! I'd recommend adding this to the list of automated responses at {{HD}}, maybe under Template:HD/Donation. Isabelle 🔔 17:29, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
@Isabelle Belato Good idea! I don't mind creating a redirect, but don't want to hard code HD specifically into template name because Tea House is also common location for posting. HD/TH are the two most common places I have in mind, but there may be others. I'll create a redirect/add them there in any case ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:02, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
Confirmed it's done. {{subst:HD/Donation}} works just like {{subst:WikiDonation}}. Will update the documentation to reflect either. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:04, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

New template for YFA related questions

See {{subst:HD/YFA}} which greets people at HelpDesk. Feel free to boldly edit ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:29, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

WMF excessive begging

It's never been this big an issue in all the years since I became a Wikipedian (2007). I think someone* should tell the WMF to dial it back, or else we* need to figure out a way to block the begging banner.

*An RFC is going to be too slow - is there a faster way to gain consensus? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:06, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

  • The WMF has been told quite a few times already at meta:Talk:Fundraising, but you could add your own thoughts if you so like. As I mentioned previously at WT:TH, the WMF more-or-less official position from this email exchange is that more fundraising is always good, at least up until a budget equivalent to that of the Red Cross (!). In case you did not know, the ICRC has approximately 18k employees and 16m volunteers, many operating in areas of humanitarian disaster. One might think that operating a bunch of websites, even with lots of edit-a-thons and associated fluff, would require less money.
I do not think there is anything en-wp administrators etc. can do to override the banner, and if there were, surely the WMF would just reverse it as an office action. (The thing that comes closest to mind would be a global edit notice that says "don’t donate, the WMF is evil", but even then it is only seen by editors, or a bot that adds such a thing to the lead of all articles, but I do not see that getting consensus.) TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 10:25, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
There's nothing we can do. The WMF responses on Meta wiki show they care only about money, and not how much they're annoying people (although they're probably missing the point that some people will be put off donating by the obtrusiveness of it all). And WMF have the ability to overrule any en.wiki decision on removing/reducing the banners. Joseph2302 (talk) 10:41, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
Tbh at this point I want to create a banner for my userpage that says something like, "This user hates the donation banners and thinks the WMF is just another greedy company that only cares about money" but I don't know if 1. That would be allowed (under WP:UP) and 2. I don't know how. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:09, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
I know of no policy that prohibits being critical of the Foundation or expressing dislike for the donation requests. Maybe someone else does, but I don't. 331dot (talk) 14:28, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
Cool. That only leaves one issue, I don't know how to do it. I've tried looking at other userpage banners but i haven't been able to find any. ― Blaze The WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:32, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
I am aware of one user who leaves an anti-WMF message in their edit summaries, though I can't remember who that is. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 17:00, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
I don't remember who it is either, but each of their edit summaries ends with something like, "This edit does not constitute endorsement of the Wikimedia Foundation or its policies." --Orange Mike | Talk 17:11, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
I don't remember either but I seem to recall that there was a discussion to force them to stop using that statement which did not reach a consensus to do so. 331dot (talk) 17:45, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
[2]. -Andreas JN466 01:49, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
Maybe we should just refuse to answer any donation questions, and instead ping whoever's in charge of this mess from a WMF perspective? After all, it's their mess and them annoying people, so they should respond to the people rather than us volunteers wasting our time on the WMF's crap. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:46, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
Yes we could do that, but if they don't answer then the user might be even more confused. MAybe answering their question and pinging whoever's in charge of this dumb WMF "fundraiser"? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:59, 17 December 2021 (UTC) Formerly known as Blaze The Wolf, I've simply been renamed
Mnmh. The Foundation is composed of human beings, so naturally they're going to go for any money that's on the table. More money means bigger salaries, bigger and nicer offices, more headcount under you, and so on. Company car, more trips, whatever. That's not counting more chances to get cutesy with marginal grift like big pay for projects that entail little work, excessive reimbursements, or whatever (not saying this happens, but the more extra free money floating around with probably lax oversight, the bigger temptation. Again: human beings).
Who was that editor who used to periodically pop up on Jimbo's talk page with a chart showing the exponential growth of revenue and headcount? F'get his handle, but he was summarily kicked off the project on a flimsy pretext, so... I like Jimbo and maybe he could have been a benign influence on all this. I could very well be wrong about that, but anyway he's done. He only has a regular seat on the board and is going to be kicked off that soon enough. Nobody much posts on his talk page anymore cos he's got no influence.
FWIW the Wikipedia could easily be monetized to the tune of billions of dollars. Simply selling user data would be worth a lot. Premium membership with certain perks, whatever -- lots and lots of other ways. I'm confident that the Wikipedia will be sold sooner or later. There isn't really anything anybody can do about it. Herostratus (talk) 14:45, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
Honestly, I hope somehow Wikipedia doesn't get sold, and if it does get sold they new company just leaves it alone so that it can continue doing what it has been doing in the past (Similar to when Microsoft bought Mojang or was it just Minecraft they bought?, they've mostly just left Java alone and have really been doing stuff with Bedrock. All they appear to have done with Java is having players migrate their Minecraft/Mojang accounts to a Microsoft account for "security" reasons which I have not seen the benefits of yet... besides getting a cape). ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:03, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I've temporarily added the response template to the edit notice for the help desk. It's a little clunky but worth it if it stops a few of these threads. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

How about an infobox with WMF financials on the main page

Now the fundraising banners are back (although less so) I wonder whether we should have a temporary infobox on the main page, summarising the WMF's latest financial statements. The statements were released last week, showing $240 million in assets (excluding the $100+ million endowment), an increase of about $50 million over the previous year. What do you think? I started a talk page section here: Talk:Main_Page#How_about_a_temporary_box_with_WMF_financial_information_this_month

People who would see this would no longer think that Wikipedia is in desperate financial trouble! --Andreas JN466 19:15, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

how to edit correctly

i am passioned by history since an early age, and i really want to help expand/improve wikipedia's history section. i don't really know how to edit and i am afraid of making mistakes, maybe someone more experienced could give me some advice? 178.197.220.222 (talk) 23:17, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

This page is for discussing the operation of the help desk, and is not the help desk itself, please post on the help desk itself. 331dot (talk) 23:19, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Address

If you provide Wikipedia's address, I will donate. I am not going to give anyone a card number on-line to donate. But I will send a check to your street address.

Linda Rioux 2604:2D80:978A:A000:2CD8:D413:D18D:75F0 (talk) 13:18, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Please see here for ways to donate. Thank you and for future reference, please ask questions at the help desk (this is its talk page - please see notice at the top of the page). Eagleash (talk) 13:47, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Donations

My people @ Wiki. I love it. I do. I can’t tell you how many times I use it. Based on this, I would make a donation or two to help out. But I have an issue with the information sometimes present here. Let me preface this with I’m a middle of the road guy politically. But having such a liberal, left wing editorial push and slant to information presented here sucks. In the past like years ago, it was great to read just the information and the FACTS that was what I wanted. Now, it’s all about who hates who, who divides who, who likes vaxxing, whatever the hell ever their pitch is. I don’t need or want someone’s political opinion on an issue. Facts. Just the facts. By allowing this type of opinion pages, you are damaging your service, reputation, and preventing people like me from supporting you. It’s sad because it has been great in the past. If you want my money (lots of my friends money) try moving to middle. Everyone is trying to divide everyone. How about we don’t do that and just publish facts and information without the slant. Thanks. 50.34.193.170 (talk) 22:00, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

This page is for discussing the operation of the help desk, and is not the help desk itself. Wikipedia summarizes what independent reliable sources say. Wikipedia does not claim to be free of bias. Any bias in sources will be reflected in Wikipedia. Sources are presented to readers so they can evaluate and judge them for themselves. If you are aware of an article where sources are not being summarized accurately, or that does not have a neutral point of view, please raise your concerns on the relevant article talk page. 331dot(talk) 22:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Hello; Wikipedia reports on what has been written in reliable sources about notable topics. Unfortunately, sources can easily show some bias one way or the other, as can individuals (you and I and probably nearly 100% of Wikipedia editors) and Wikipedia on reporting on what has been written in reliable sources may also reflect some of that bias. However the encyclopedia does try to maintain a neutral stance as far as it can. If you have issues with any specific articles please feel free to raise them at the appropriate talk pages.
For future reference please ask any questions abput using or editing Wikipedia at ehe help desk – this is its talk page – please see the notice at the top of the page. Thank you. Eagleash (talk) 22:50, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

{{Creation}} subtemplates

FYI, a template related to Help Desk {{HD/new}} sibling template {{Creation}}, has had its subtemplates nominated for deletion. {{Creation/1}} and {{Creation/2}} have been nominated for deletion -- 65.92.246.142 (talk) 03:47, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Bot to notify poster of archival on the Help Desk - do you agree with that?

The Help Desk sees quite a few questions from new editors. Many of those are unaware of the archival process and might be confused that their question disappeared when they come back a week or so later.

On the Teahouse, where (almost) all questions are from newbies, I have a bot, Muninnbot, that takes care of that - it leaves notifications pointing to the location of the archived thread (example). Here on the Help Desk, Vchimpanzee does the job manually (example) - while their notifications are higher-quality than what could be done by bot, surely that manual labor could be spared.

I would like to run Muninnbot here with a similar functionality, but I need consensus from Help Desk editors for that. (Formally, there is a trip to WP:BRFA, but if Help Desk responders gave the greenlight, this should sail smoothly.) Compared to the Teahouse, we could redesign the notification template if needed, and/or limit the notifications to be sent only to editors with more than X edits / older than Y days (to avoid spamming the old-timers). What do you say?

On the technical side, I will also need to do some light adaptations (because archival is done differently on the Help Desk and on the Teahouse), so I would rather not start working on it if there is no consensus to do it. I already proposed back all that in 2018 but got no replies; however, since then, Muninnbot has some history of running smoothly, and I now know that someone is doing a bot job by hand. TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 10:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy ping: Scs, who's maintaining the bot that currently does the archiving, Scsbot. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 11:57, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
I do not think any action from their part is required, except possibly a commitment to warn me if they change the current format of archives in the future. TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 14:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the notification. If any minor modifications on my part end up being necessary, I'll be happy to try. I can't make promises about anything major, though, as the code for scsbot is dreadfully antiquated and rather difficult to maintain — although for that reason, no format changes are likely! —scs (talk) 15:18, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
@Tigraan: If User A posts, and User B responds, and then User A acknowledges the response, and then the section is archived, I don't think user A needs notification. Does it make sense to exclude those situations from the bot notification, and is that something that could be programmed? GoingBatty (talk) 14:13, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
What could be programmed with a reasonable degree of accuracy is a check of whether user A has posted a second time in the same thread. Technical details: thread identification is done by edit summary. If you click "new section", the edit summary will always be /* [your title] */ new section and you cannot change the parts outside [your title], so it can be reliably identified as a thread creation. If you edit a section, the edit summary preloads the /* [thread title] */ part, but you can change anything in the edit summary, so it is less accurate; you can also edit the whole page in which case it does not work at all.
However, it would be between difficult and impossible to know (in automated fashion) if that second post is an actual acknowledgement of a reply, a follow-up question, a typo fix etc. If it is a follow-up question, we probably want to notify, if it is a "thank you" we do not. I do not think parsing the thread history is a reasonable approach, which is why I suggested thresholds on edit or account age, which are rough but trivial to implement (and already coded). User groups are not coded yet but could be fairly easily as well. In my opinion, a 30/500 in line with ECP (= do not notify users who are both more than 30 days old and have more than 500 edits) would make sense.
I agree that the opt-in default (required if we want to target newbies) makes it a bit spammy, even though the bot notification contains instructions to opt-out. TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 14:59, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Enabling a feedback loop

I have been tracking this group for sometime now. It seems like certain themes of questions keep reappearing more often than the others. e.g. questions on fair use of images, questions on donations.

Has this project considered:

  1. Passing this feedback to those respective sub groups in an aggregated manner so that they can update their documentation if needed. The hypothesis here is that a good number of editors are posting here at the Help Desk because that documentation is not easily accessible to them or the answer is evident to them on reading the documentation. My thinking is that this feedback loop will be quite important to refreshing those documents and improving a) coverage b) comprehensiveness and c) access.
  2. Creating a topic tag / theme based archives. E.g. an archive link for donations, an archive link for fair use, another for a different topic etc that will allow you to get all the questions relating to that theme. That way one can read all questions regarding a topic before posting the same question again.

Please feel free to pass this to any of the other projects e.g. Village Pumps etc if there might be something there. Good luck. Ktin (talk) 00:33, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Can't exactly comment on anything else, however I know a template has been created regarding donations and I've told the donation team multiple times how much of an issue the donation banners are (although they don't seem to have taken the advice). ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 00:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Here's the donation template fwiw. {{subst:WikiDonation}}. Ktin (talk) 07:32, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
Archiving is being semi-automated, and creating different archives for different "themes" would require an intense overhaul for bots. We already have search fields on the right-hand side near the top of the page that allows users to search both WP:FAQ and the help desk archives.
I believe why we get more of a certain type of question is that the help desk and Teahouse are common pages that act as funnels for users to be redirected to the appropriate resource. It makes more sense for users to ask questions here in a centralised location and have more experienced users redirect them properly, than to pepper links throughout Wikipedia and hope these users come across them. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 06:35, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Why does wikipedia ignore facts and dismiss them as opinion or not true?

 – —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 05:28, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Increased amount of people asking "Why wikipedia ignores facts"

I find it rather strange how all of the sudden the HD has received an increase in the amount of people asking why "Wikipedia ignores facts". Could it be possible that this is a coordinated "raid" so to speak? (I say raid as in someone made a post somewhere like, "Everyone go to Wikipedia and start asking why they ignore facts! They'll tell us the truth soon enough") ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:32, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

We haven't had an increase, it's always been like this. WP:VP also gets a lot of it. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:34, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't believe that! Nick Moyes (talk) 14:40, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Ah alright. Probably just haven't paid enough attention to the HD then lol. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:40, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
As long as that shill money keeps coming in, who cares? --Gronk Oz (talk) 19:41, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
It's because of the obscene plague of tribalism that's infected the US, I'd argue, since most of the posts on that front are promoting/defending positions associated with the Republican Party, which has taken a sharp anti-intellectualist turn as of late. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Jéské Couriano 19:47, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Glad I stay out of politics! ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:48, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Are there any statistics on how many people are asking about, e.g., "facts" with no sources, "facts" with dubious sources, facts with possibly legitimate sources that don't meet WP:RS?? --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 01:49, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
To a one the "facts" they're claiming we're dismissing amount to right-wing talking points, i.e. "COVID was faked", "Jan 6 wasn't an insurrection", "Trump won in 2020", etc. The lot of them are provocatively-written and dropped by unregistered or new users who then proceed to never edit again. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Jéské Couriano 02:03, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
No surprise there, then. Nick Moyes (talk) 13:43, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Reply Tool: a new opt-out feature arriving soon

As Help Desk volunteers may be aware, a new Reply Tool is about to be rolled out which will facilitate quick responses to discussions. This new section has now been inserted about the Reply Tool at Help:Talk pages.

Reply Tool will be an opt-out feature which all desktop users will soon be seeing. It will not be available to mobile users. Following a successful opt-in trial in beta, its rollout on English Wikipedia was initially intended for 7th February 2022. However, after discussions at WP:VPP, that rollout has been held back a short while so that as many users as possible are made aware of this feature, and for brief explanatory notes to be provided on Help pages and for users of other help fora to be made aware. Many thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:09, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Problems with Facebook

Every now and then the Help Desk and Teahouse get questions about Facebook, and the usual answer is to tell people to go to Facebook's equivalent of a help desk. I have had little or no response to any questions I asked here. That's my experience, but I wonder how many people are not finding help by asking Facebook for help. I had a problem with a new account there a year or so ago and tried every possible way to get them to resolve the problem, including snail mail, and nothing was done. To be specific, I have several Facebook friends with more than one account and I saw nothing wrong with doing that, except they blocked me from doing anything until I followed a very specific procedure involving a cell phone which I was unable to complete. It ended with an email from Facebook saying that because I took too long to respond there would be no appeal of their decision. I can't even tell you how many ways I tried to get them to help me within the time I had. People can post the link I provided and hope for results, but I would say no one on any Help Desks here should be giving people any kind of hope that Facebook cares or will do anything. To give people some kind of hope, perhaps they should refer people to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing and hope someone there has an idea.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:42, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

You are certainly free to do this, though I don't think the RD is meant to be a Facebook help desk. We aren't responsible for poor customer service at other websites. 331dot (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
I would rarely be around to answer Help Desk questions, but I could add to what people have said.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 00:04, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee: You will appreciate that I have already replied to this post at WT:TH, but I will reiterate here for everyone's benefit that the evidence suggests the RefDesk folk also feel that dealing with Facebook issues is an issue for Facebook to deal with, not them. Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 01:14, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
And my response is there.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:49, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Dickie Rocks children are wrong on his Wikipedia

Joseph Rock Jason Rock John Rock Richard Rock Sarah Rock Peter Rock 

No Stacey Rock 2001:BB6:6B09:7000:5D7A:179B:183E:4622 (talk) 19:14, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
The Dickie Rock article does not mention any children at all. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:18, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
You're probably looking at the Google Knowledge Panel where Stacey is listed. We don't have control over that information. Pawnkingthree (talk) 19:33, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
The Wikipedia article does not name them because they would not meet WP:BLPNAME unless they were independently notable. Once again it looks like Wikipedia is getting the blame for something on an external website.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:44, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

A page about USAF unit that doesn’t exist. What to do ?

Hi. It’s regarding The page about “709th Air Refuelling Squadron “ apparently the unit never existed.. what to do about it?? Aero101977 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 20:37, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

The article (709th Air Refueling Squadron) certainly doesn't provide much evidence that it did exist - just a link to a webpage showing a squadron patch. [3] I know that proving a negative is hard, but it might help if you told us what led you to conclude it didn't? AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:49, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
I left a reply at the talk page of concerned article, Talk:709th Air Refueling Squadron#This unit never existed.. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 21:16, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Archiving

I noticed that this thread [4] was archived [5] about 5h after I made a comment. There may be good technical reasons for this, but it's not what I expect on a WP-forum page, and it seems potentially unhelpful. If there are no good technical reasons, could we tweak the archiving to give at least 24h grace after latest comment? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:46, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

The help desk archiving is done by a bot, so here's a ping to Scs (talk · contribs), the bot operator. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:31, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
The bot that archives the help desk is rather old, and it's a repurposed instance of the bot that archives the reference desks, and it implements the strategy the reference desks desired years ago when it was written, namely that threads are archived N days after they were started, without regard to when replies were or weren't posted. —scs (talk) 19:27, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
It seems to me that that could be unhelpful if there's an ongoing discussion. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:02, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Help I wanna submit info to get updated on a list

 – —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:55, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

What happened last night with all of the admin reverts?

A user (ДЕДА КАРА) apparently insulted a bunch of people? I saw the revert summaries.

Asparagusus (talk) 14:25, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

THey were rev del'd from what i Saw in my watchlist. Probably for good reason. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:26, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
It involved graphic and obscene personal attacks against another editor. Cullen328 (talk) 14:35, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
On this page too. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:14, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
This appears to be a WP:LTA case involving socking and harassment across multiple Wikipedia projects. If stuff like this appears again (and it probably will), I suggest contacting an admin asap via email or WP:AN, and simply reverting each time it's been added. No need to try and engage this person per WP:DENY. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:00, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Dyslexia is my Voice

I truly beilve my dyslexia has prevented me from successfully setting up a professional Wikipedia account to the same standard of other users.

I would like to use my Wikipedia to add as a bedded link from social platforms.

I have this amazing ability to help other's ie Movies, Radio production, festival organising, Hosting Celebrity charity events and charity fundraising.

However my abilities are very limited, setting up a Wikipedia is a stuggle.

I would please like some assistance Wikipedia if possible.

Many kind and best wishes Nick Scurr of Nicks Music Promo UK Nicholas Scurr (talk) 18:10, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Nicholas Scurr This page is for discussing the operation of the Help Desk, and is not the Help Desk itself, please post to the main Help Desk page. 331dot (talk) 19:44, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Just possibly attempted vandalism?

I may be (probably am) barking at shadows, but it seems remarkable that in less than three hour today we've had two seemingly independent requests to change the DoBs of two Southern-hemisphere sportsmen – Connor Evans and (presumably) Darryl McCormack – from two very new account holders with somewhat similar user names. Anyone want to keep a watching brief on this? (As a deliberately Account-less though long-time editor, I am not best placed.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.235.54 (talk) 19:33, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

If you suspect puppet accounts, ask on WP:SPI; but have some proof. Also, you should ask such questions on Wikipedia:Help desk, not its talkpage as you did. Best, A09090091 (talk) 19:46, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
A09090091, I do not really suspect puppet accounts and certainly have no proof; I was merely expressing an uneasiness in order to alert others to something that might become more evident in future.
I disagree with you about not using the Talk page for this. In the 15+ years I have been a regular on the Ref and Help desks, their Talk pages have to my perception been the usual venue to discuss putative misuse of the Desks themselves, in order to avoid publicly pointing the finger at possibly innocent parties, to perhaps avoid actual miscreants being alerted, and to avoid distracting ordinary Desk querants with administratively-oriented matters irrelevant to their interests.
If however you can link written policy/guidelines to the contrary, I will readily admit I am mistaken. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.235.54 (talk) 00:06, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
That's not what the talk page for the Help Desk is for: it's to discuss the operations of the Help Desk, a "meta" page, if you will. Neither here nor the main Help Desk page is the appropriate venue, though asking on the former will usually get someone to direct you to the right area. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:16, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
@IP 90.209.235.54: I'm not sure how posting anything on any Wikipedia page would help to avoid publicly pointing the finger at possibly innocent parties or to perhaps avoid actual miscreants being alerted. A talk page is no different from any other Wikipedia page in that it's publicly visible to anyone who wants to look at it. If you really want to avoid any of the things you mentioned, you should seek assistance via email. As for using a talk page to discuss things such as this, it can and has been done before by others for sure, but it might not be the best place for it depending on the details. In this case, the suspicions of sock puppetry have more to do with certain accounts than with the operation of the HD per se; so, it would've probably been better to raise such concerns at ANI or SPI than here because there's not much anyone can do about them here. -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:15, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
While they're public in the technical sense, few people not actively concerned with the smooth running of the Project are likely to look at them unless prompted: avoid publicly pointing . . . and to perhaps avoid . . . because an "innocent user" will almost certainly not, and an actual miscreant might not.
I hesitated to go to ANI or SPI (concerning which I have little to no experience) because (a) nothing obviously untoward has actually evidenced itself yet and (b) as a deliberately Account-less editor (which means that some Wikipedia email functions don't work for me) I prefer not to get that deep into administrative affairs. All I was trying to do was suggest that others be alert about something that might be becoming evident from Help desk requests, and I was careful to preface my remarks by admitting that I was probably mistaken.
In any case, I am now admonished and corrected; in future if I catch a whiff of smoke, I'll keep quiet and see if anybody else eventually has to point at flames. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.235.54 (talk) 04:31, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
Talk pages are public in every sense and sometimes users being discussed end up getting pinged or otherwise notified even if you're not the one to do so. I have no problems with IP editors and respect their choice not to register for an account; there are limitations though, one of which may be the ability to email others. Nobody is necessarily asking you to keep quite if you notice something wrong. If you've got some genuine concerns and you don't want to bring them up for discussion at one of the administrator noticeboards, you might be able to use WP:IRC to discuss them. Finally, what you've described above might be a case of WP:SOCK, but it doesn't sound like vandalism. If you strongly suspect someone of sock puppetry and you don't want to start an SPI, you can try asking a Checkuser to take a look per WP:CONTACTCU. There's an email address that you can use there that you can use even if you're not a registered account. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:27, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Merging Pages

 – Rummskartoffel 21:31, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Decision tree at WP:TRIAGE

I've had an idea for a Wikipedia decision tree to help newcomers with the most common questions and answers. I started putting it down in text form at WP:TRIAGE. Eventually it would be great to turn into a flowchart, like Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol#/media/File:NPP_flowchart.svg. I'd welcome any feedback. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 19:45, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

As Timtempleton has also posted this at the Teahouse talk page, I suggest we keep all comment in one place by only responding there, and not here. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:40, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

why en.m.wikipedia.org dont have a dark mode?

 – —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:05, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Feedback requested for Bot request proposal

Hello, Help desk volunteers, I've been thinking about how we could do better at keeping IPs informed, when they get responses to their questions here at the Help desk. Your feedback would be welcome at WP:BOTREQ#Bot to add a Talkback template at an IP talk page after they get responses at Help forums. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 05:11, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

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