Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 October 22

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

October 22

Sports

I am looking for player rosters for the Hollywood Bears Pacific Coast Professional Football League. 1940-1942, 1945 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:647:4700:fe8d:f0ce:20d8:d92a:5e46 (talk) 01:50, 22 October 2016‎

The Help Desk is for questions about editing Wikipedia. Try asking at the Reference Desk (Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment) Rojomoke (talk) 04:22, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Templates and links

Quick question. If I create a simple template:

[[(((1|}}}|text]]

and call it like this:

{{newtemplate
|some page name
}}

It will not work, because it is the same as creating a link:

[[some page name
|text]]

is there a way to trim the unnecessary line break taken by the template? --84.229.78.129 (talk) 07:15, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

The {{trim}} template removes leading and trailing white space, so [[{{trim|{{{1|}}}}}|text]] should work. I've tested this at User:John of Reading/X3. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:42, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! --84.229.78.129 (talk) 08:42, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Strange, possibly invalid citations

The article about the shooting of Trayvon Martin contains the following citation:

{{cite news|author=Nelson, Steven |url=http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/26/jesse-jackson-says-trayvon-martin-murdered-and-martyred/ |title=Jesse Jackson says Trayvon Martin 'murdered and martyred{{'-}} |work=The Daily Caller |date=March 26, 2012 |accessdate=June 30, 2013}}

Notice the {{'-}} part in the title. Is this valid? If so, what does this mean? Is this documented somewhere? Many thanks. StrokeOfMidnight (talk) 03:26, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@StrokeOfMidnight: {{'-}} transcludes Template:'-, which if I understand the documentation correctly gives the decimal code for an apostrophe, which prevents two apostrophes from coming together, which would be interpreted as wikicode for italics. —teb728 t c 04:38, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

The template is for kerning. It adjusts the spacing between the single quote mark that ends the source's title and the double quote marks that wrap the title in the rendered citation. Without kerning, the title in the rendered citation looks like this:

"Jesse Jackson says Trayvon Martin 'murdered and martyred'"

Use of this template in cs1|2 citations is discouraged because the template introduces inappropriate css and html markup into the citation's metadata. And, use of this template is not necessary because cs1|2 provides kering for quote marks in all title-holding parameters.

{{cite news|author=Nelson, Steven |url=http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/26/jesse-jackson-says-trayvon-martin-murdered-and-martyred/ |title=Jesse Jackson says Trayvon Martin 'murdered and martyred' |work=The Daily Caller |date=March 26, 2012 |accessdate=June 30, 2013}}

Nelson, Steven (March 26, 2012). "Jesse Jackson says Trayvon Martin 'murdered and martyred'". The Daily Caller. Retrieved June 30, 2013.

Remove these templates from cs1|2 citation templates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:05, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Querying

Is there away to find, say, all articles that contain both Category:X and Category:Y? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:29, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Anna Frodesiak: Yes, see Wikipedia:PetScan. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:45, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

John of Reading, thank you so much! I expect that each year in Reading there is a festival to honour you. And if there isn't one, there should be one. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:12, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Purge this

When I go to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as spam and similar pages, which I frequently do, I get a [message] inviting me to purge the cache. Since the only option is "Yes", this is incredibly annoying. Is there a way to either disable this feature or have a "No" option? Jimfbleak (talk) 05:41, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: The "Purge" gadget manages to purge a page without asking for confirmation. You can enable this at Special:Preferences, "Gadgets" tab, "Appearance" section, and then you'll find a "Purge" link at the top right underneath the usual "More > Move". I read somewhere that the new behaviour is a deliberate change by the developers to make it more difficult to misuse server resources. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:52, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

John of Reading, I actually have a purge script (and button) installed, it's just that I would like to either have a choice, or for the purge to be automatic so it doesn't waste my time asking, thanks anyway Jimfbleak (talk) 06:23, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jimfbleak: Please add the following to your common.js

/* When action=purge is reached, automatically purge the page and then redirect to the actual page.  */
mw.loader.load('//meta.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Glaisher/autoPurge.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

- NQ (talk) 12:09, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

NQ, many thanks, i thought there must be a way round this, I'll do as you say—and remember to clear the cache afterwards (: Jimfbleak (talk) 12:18, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

List-defined references

Does anyone know if there is a policy on the order in which the list should be ordered? Alphabetical by ref name, alphabetical by author, or doesn't it matter? Jimfbleak (talk) 06:16, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

No policy, do as you prefer. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:23, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• Hello Jimfbleak, echoing what Dodger67 mentioned, as per List-defined references: "Reference lists may be ordered in any manner (e.g. alphabetical by reference name)...Another overhead of this approach is that the list at the end of the article must be organised so that they can be found easily by an editor—most likely arranged alphabetically in the edit window by refname as this is most likely to retain source integrity and usefulness, even if the sections of the text are changed." Hope that helps. Lourdes 11:19, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Roger (Dodger67), Lourdes, thanks, it's for an FAC, so I'll follow Lourdes suggestion Jimfbleak (talk) 06:23, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Raine Spencer, Countess Spencer

References number 2 is incorrectly done. I did not do this citation. Please repair if possible. 101.182.180.24 (talk) 06:13, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

 Fixed with this edit. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:55, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Please, please, please, learn to read error messages. The error message said: "External link in |title= (help)". The word "help" was in blue to indicate that it was a wikilink, in this case to Help:CS1 errors#param has ext link. Is there anything unclear in that help message? --David Biddulph (talk) 10:06, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Adding the illustrator's name to a book citation

The {{cite book}} template does not seem to have a field specifically for "illustrator", is there a generally accepted way to add an illustrator's name. I have a case where this is essential because the article specifically discusses the illustrations in the book. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:54, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

According to the template documentation, you should use the others parameter with a value like "Illustrated by John Smith." —teb728 t c 08:11, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I somehow missed that when I skimmed through the page. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:16, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Essays on Wikipedians growing weary?

I have been in the (Finnish) Wikipedia for many years and as an administrator there for over four years. It has been a meaningful hobby, but now I'm feeling a bit tired and weary. In the autumn of my wiki-career, I should say. I would like to read some user essays that deal with my sentiments, but I cannot find them easily among numerous uncategorised essays here. Does anyone have a particularly good essay in mind that they could recommend? --Pxos (talk) 13:30, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Pxos: This one Wikipedia:Leave gracefully Is not exactly on point if I understand your situation, but I link it because it includes several items in the see also section, plus another essay linked in the main text, each of those items also has some additional links in see also sections that may be the type of thing you're looking for.

Note in particular the template at the end of Wikipedia:It's not the End of the World Which contained some possibly relevant articles. If nothing else, and you do manage to find some relevant articles perhaps you could expand that template with a specific section on how to deal with feeling a bit tired and weary. I know I could use one once in a while.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:20, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Pxos: visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention. There are essays linked from the project page. You can also start a discussion on the project talk page about how you feel. I can tell you that in my experience the Finnish and English Wikipedias are quite different in nature. If you want to, you can try out new things here and see if things start to look exciting again. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:01, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

dab help

I'm trying to sort out a dab issue. (It arose at OTRS ticket:2016100510004536, but that email only observes that the correct name of the hotel is Hotel Sorrento)

We have an article about a hotel:

• Sorrento Hotel

And an article about a film

• Hotel Sorrento

However, per the official site, It appears that the name of the hotel is "Hotel Sorrento" not "Sorrento Hotel".

Obviously, I cannot simply move "Sorrento Hotel" to "Hotel Sorrento". My next thought was a parenthetical disambiguation but "Hotel Sorrento (hotel)" seems awkward.

I am leaning toward moving the article about the film to "Hotel Sorrento (film)", which would then allow me to correct the title for the hotel. Does anyone have a better solution?--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:12, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• I guess you already know the relevant guidelines, in particular WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. So, either be bold, or ask on the articles' TP. FWIW I think your last solution (move film to leave place for hotel) sounds good but I have not looked at it in depth. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 15:20, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

I knew about primarytopic, but I didn't know enough about either the hotel or the film to have a strong opinion about which qualified as the primary topic. However, I just did a Google search and there are multiple pages with reference to the physical hotel before I find the first reference to the film, so I think I can support my suggestion based upon the guideline. I'm only holding off a bit to see if someone has a different view as making the moves and editing all the hat notes will take a bit of time and I'd hate to have to undo it all and redo it differently.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:45, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• Sphilbrick hello. I think you might be making a mistake by attempting this move. The hotel is known predominantly as "Sorrento Hotel", irrespective of how the primary source of the hotel addresses itself. Archival search throws up zero results for "Hotel Sorrento" but at least three for "Sorrento Hotel". The Seattle Government's preservation records document calls it "Sorrento Hotel". On news searches, there are significantly more search results for "Sorrento Hotel" than there are for "Hotel Sorrento".[1][2][3][4] And finally, on the Hotel's website itself, there are 200 + pages addressing itself as "Sorrento Hotel". The analogy here could be Radisson Hotels. While the website of Radisson simply addresses itself as "Radisson" (and while the company itself is called Radisson Hotels Resorts Worldwide), the Wikipedia page is titled Radisson Hotels, the predominant usage. Therefore, in my opinion, you'll need to get consensus for this before making the change. Lourdes 17:20, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

That's why I asked, to get additional input.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:47, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

However, while the statement that the hotels website itself has about 200 pages addressing itself as "Sorrento Hotel", upon inspection, the picture is a bit muddier. The first non-advertising entry in that list does use "Sorrento Hotel", but the second and third items in the list have both Hotel Sorrento and Sorrento Hotel in the title with Hotel Sorrento listed first. Quite a number of others in the list use that same structure "Hotel Sorrento - Seattle - Sorrento Hotel" Which includes both options with arguably a slight preference for the first. The picture is sufficiently unclear that I'm going to leave it as is; perhaps a regular editor of the article or someone interested in doing the research can pull together a more definitive study.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:57, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Rewriting an article in sandbox

I am doing some work on the article, Lebanon Hills Regional Park. Since I expect to mess the article up a good bit before I put it back together, I decided to work on it on a subpage of my user page, User:Leschnei/lebanon-hills. Do I need to put a template or message on the subpage to make sure that anyone searching for the real page doesn't land on the subpage instead? Leschnei (talk) 18:19, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

User space pages do not show in searches unless someone specifically searchers the user namespace. Ruslik_Zero 20:29, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Leschnei: Userspace pages are by default not indexed by external search engines but there are still ways people may get to them, for example via categories for articles so I removed it from such categories.[5] You can place a template like {{User sandbox}} or {{Userspace draft}} but it's optional. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:57, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Great, thank you both. Leschnei (talk) 21:37, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Birmingham Small Arms Company

This article's infobox contains a web address which it should not. www.bsaguns.co.uk is the address of a company anxious to propagate a non-existent link between its air rifle business and BSA.

It is impossible to edit that web address. Why?

Thanks in advance etc. Eddaido (talk) 21:54, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

They claim to be "descended" (so to speak) from the original company. Do you have some evidence that they are not? --Orange Mike | Talk 22:25, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Irrefutable

The problem is that the web address cannot be edited. Why? Thanks etc. Eddaido (talk) 22:34, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

The reason it could not be edited is that address was in WikiData (imported from it-wiki). I removed it because it appears to be about another company. I didn't find a way to leave an edit summary to that effect. —teb728 t c 22:52, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. "They" are very determined people. Eddaido (talk) 22:57, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

I get more and more worried about the amount of stuff that seems to be pulled from Wikidata. When was it decided that this would happen? We know that Wikidata has significant weaknesses (such as its limitation to one-to-one mapping giving an inability to cope with different scope of articles across different Wikipedias), and I'm worried that more Wikidata content is being pulled into the English Wikipedia, particularly as stuff seems to find its way into Wikidata from any of the other language Wikipedias without us seeing what is being changed. --David Biddulph (talk) 23:10, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Agree with David Biddulph, in fact Wikidata often does not meet en.WP's WP:RS standard as verification can be nonexistent or very difficult. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:42, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. Especially birth dates never seem to be well sourced on other wikis, and so unsourced birth dates end up on Wikidata and then sometimes on here. Joseph2302 08:11, 23 October 2016 (UTC)