Help desk
< December 18	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	December 20 >

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.

December 19

Referencing errors on Drug policy of Canada

Reference help requested.

Thanks, I don't know where the problem is so please fix it for me Peter K Burian (talk) 02:04, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed by removing the line feed contained within the quote= parameter, as the error message indicated. General Ization ^Talk 02:35, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Each of the error messages is relatively clear.

The first says:

"line feed character in |quote= ..."

The second says:

"Unknown parameter |access date= ignored (|access-date= suggested) ..."

--David Biddulph (talk) 02:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rumson, New Jersey

Hello

I have posted for my very good friends there accomplishments on wikipedia for Rumson, N.J. and for Michelle Thoren Bondv "Citation Needed" keeps getting posted?? When the State Dept link on Wikipedia clearly identifies she is the current Assistant Secty of State for Consular Affairs as well as her Ambassadorship. The U.S. Dept of State page attached to her name identifies this so why does "Citation Needed" keep being posted? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Countess buxhovedens (talk • contribs) 03:21, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a section heading to your message. You also didn't provide a link to the article in question, which I guess might be Rumson, New Jersey? You presumably didn't read the edit summary on the first reversion of your edits. It said "remove individuals from list of notables, who need both a Wikipedia article **AND** independent reliable and verifiable sources establishing connection here, as specified by WP:NLIST". You haven't provided a citation at all, and please remember that the citation needs to show the connection with the place which is the subject of the article. --David Biddulph (talk) 03:43, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You should include scientific books to read — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.139.168.130 (talk) 09:41, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

USS Mahopac ATA 196

On your page you say the USS Mahopac ATA 196 was named after a hamlet in New York. If you check into this, I am sure you will discover that the ship was named after Mahopac Indians in New York, not a city, village or whatever. Ships in that class were named after Indian tribes.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Itsfun001 (talk • contribs) 13:22, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and no. That article is mostly a cut and paste copy of a DANFS article. This, I think, is where the geographic source for Mahopac's name derives. The US Navy seems to have a tradition for giving its tugboats names that refer to American indigenous peoples – either a tribal name or an individual's name or a word – but when I've looked at DANFS articles, they almost always identify the namesake as a geographic location whose name, in turn, is derived from indigenous peoples. Without an explicit reliable source that states unequivocally that USS Mahopac (ATA-196) is named for a Mahopac tribe, the Mahopac article should stand as written.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:21, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note that in this case "As written" is at this point the article has been edited to exclude either naming reason. At this point, I think it should stay like that until we can get better sources.Naraht (talk) 15:34, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I had removed that tidbit in the meantime, as it was disputed and not in the given source (dang edit conflicts). Please feel free to revert me, if there is a better/different solution. GermanJoe (talk) 15:40, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think that I would be inclined to use the DANFS mention of the lake (Lake Mahopac does exist if one is to believe Google earth) in the infobox |Ship namesake= parameter.

I think that Editor GermanJoe is mistaken in the edit summary to the deletion of the namesake text: "contradicts usual naming convention (tribes and Indian terms) for this class". This may not be true. Consider these: USS Navigator (ATA-203), USS Stallion (ATA-193), USS Reindeer (ATA-189), among others. These are from the Sotoyomo-class fleet tug article.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:05, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Following my own standard advice, I'll open a small thread at Talk:USS Mahopac (ATA-196) to search for a good solution. Please add further suggestions and comments there. GermanJoe (talk) 16:26, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The 💡 character

Why does clicking 💡 make a link to the idea article, not the hot air balloon article? 208.95.51.72 (talk) 13:22, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be a redirect based on the interpretation of the symbol as a light bulb. In my opinion, either is an exceedingly silly redirect, but surprisingly, the page seems to get an average of two hits per day. TimothyJosephWood 13:27, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The symbol looks more like a lightbulb to me than a hot air balloon. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:32, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We may need to open an WP:RfC on this, and possibly involve ArbCom. TimothyJosephWood 13:40, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's an emoji named "electric light bulb".[1] It's associated with idea at for example [2] and [3] so the redirect makes sense. Note the image and caption at Idea#Relationship between ideas and copyrights. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:17, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What's the emoji for suspiciously eyeing someone who ruins everyone's fun? TimothyJosephWood 15:39, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

😣 U+1F623 PERSEVERING FACE looks close enough. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 16:44, 19 December 2016 (UTC) [reply]

Seriously, this should redirect to one of the Unicode pages, no? Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 16:44, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Probably. Even $ redirects to Dollar sign and not Dollar. If anything, it should have redirected to Electric light, which is still not as good as actually linking to literally anything about Unicode, but definitely not as much of a stretch as linking to Idea.

A lot of times it is tought to guess. For example, 🍡Naraht (talk) 17:05, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, who is actually searching for that an average of twice daily? TimothyJosephWood 17:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Google and Baidu's crawlers, checking to confirm it hasn't changed since it was last crawled, generally. It's rare to find anything that doesn't get a couple of hits per day. ‑ Iridescent 17:51, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at the very least I have redirected the character to Electric light, since that is literally what it is, rather than something it may or may not be representative of, probably mostly in animation, and probably only in specific cultures. TimothyJosephWood 17:56, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Maltings Theatre and Cinema

We are now known as The Maltings, Berwick-upon-Tweed and I'd like to change the main tile of our wiki entry to reflect this but am really stuck. Please help! — Preceding unsigned comment added by MaltingsTD15 (talk • contribs) 14:40, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hey MaltingsTD15. I can certainly move the article, since this appears to be correct. But just to clarify, is the comma actually part of the official name? Or maybe should the article be titled simply The Maltings Berwick-upon-Tweed? TimothyJosephWood 14:55, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Estiahwiki

What happened to estiahwiki?? the whole site is down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.227.53.28 (talk) 15:47, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This was already explained elsewhere, but this is Wikipedia, and we really don't have anything to do with Estiahwiki. TimothyJosephWood 16:29, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Non-English speaking editor making tons of articles

I've come across an editor who is making countless album articles for Japanese artists. I've reached out to try to help them.. but they haven't replied [despite continuing to edit] and I was just curious if there's anything that can be done? It seems like they're either translating the articles from Japanese.. it's just sort of broken English. Example, regarding a single song: " It is charted for three weeks and totally sold 37,140 copies."

I have tried to fix as many articles as I can but sometimes it's hard to tell what they're trying to convey [most likely a language translation error]. I don't know if it this is considered to be disruptive? Also, are foreign language track names supposed to be bold? see: Futari no Negai ? --Jennica✿ / ^talk 19:40, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd wait to give them a chance to reply before doing anything hasty, as you only brought it to their attention less than a day ago. If their editing becomes seriously disruptive, in the sense that it will take a huge amount of time to clean up and they're proving unwilling to fix it themselves, you could consider requesting a WP:CIR block at WP:ANI but that's very much a last resort. (Incidentally, this comment you've made to them is very misleading; there's absolutely no obligation, or even expectation, to use citation templates in Wikipedia articles at any level, up to and including WP:FA—see Actuary for an example of a FA with a totally non-standard referencing scheme. Citations can be in virtually any style you like, provided the style is consistent within each article and you don't change an existing style without consensus.) ‑ Iridescent 20:01, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actuary looks fine. I guess it's just me who dislikes seeing bare links in the reflist. I was only trying to suggest it to them. It's neater, that's all. That's not what I was asking about anyways. Thanks for answering about the block. --Jennica✿ / ^talk 20:23, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]