Help desk
< October 28	<< Sep \| October \| Nov >>	October 30 >

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 29

Primary Colours (Eddy Current Suppression Ring album)

Hi, I was hoping someone could fix the invisible character in title parameter error being displayed for the Washington Post reference in Primary Colours (Eddy Current Suppression Ring album). Thanks. Everymorning (talk) 03:49, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done - Hello @Everymorning:, I fixed it. Using the source editor, I removed the problematic text string including the invisible character and simply retyped it anew. The CS1 message gives the position of the character (and you have to tab twice on this specific position to move the cursor). GermanJoe (talk) 04:01, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

United States State government attribution templates

Why are Template:Ghost Towns of California and Template:Ghost Towns of Northern California in Category:United States State government attribution templates? I don't see that they are published by the CA state govt. (It's not even clear to me why these two template exist in the first place) Thanks.--76.14.35.61 (talk) 04:44, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The presence of the templates can be justified by their use in about 25 articles, simplifying the process of creating a citation to those books. As to categories, the more general Category:Attribution templates doesn't seem to apply as that is intended for public domain sources. I've added the templates as only the third and fourth members of Category:Book citation templates, unless anyone has a better idea: Noyster (talk), 13:58, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you --76.14.35.61 (talk) 02:33, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted Content Page

A page i was recently editing has been deleted. Can you please explain why that is and how to get it back.Please get back to me as soon as possible.AmberNG01 (talk) 04:53, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anila Ali. It explains that the article was deleted because of a lack of Wikipedia:Notability (people). CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 05:21, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Moortown, Leeds

Reference 7 is from a PDF document and I have tried but got it wrong ] Please leave in the quote which I have painfully tried to add - and fix up the red stuff if you can. Thanks so much 101.182.180.24 (talk) 06:11, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The error message says "|first1= missing |last1= in Authors list (help)"; the word "help" is in blue to indicate that it is a wikilink, in this case to Help:CS1 errors#first missing last. Please tell us which part of that section of the help page you don't understand. --David Biddulph (talk) 06:26, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help David. I have never done a citation before which is a PDF document. I admit I found it hard to work out what went where on the template - or even if the template for journal which I used is the right one. I have found it VERY hard to read and understand the wikilink page. There was NO jounalist listed in the article (only the Leeds City Council) which is why I left it blank. What do I do? I know that you get angry and I try not to use PDFs but .... please help if you can. I am always learning and I will make mistakes. Thanks 101.182.180.24 (talk) 06:33, 29 October 2016 (UTC) Sorry again.[reply]

To find out about that template, read Template:Cite journal which tells you when the template should be used, and what the various parameters are. The box in the top right-hand corner of that page lists alternative templates which you might consider using, and each of them has a page which tells you the same sort of information. --David Biddulph (talk) 06:48, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again. I am out of my depth - I do not even know what a pipe line is. I willhave to leave the page as it is with the mistake in reference number 7. 101.182.180.24 (talk) 07:40, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the ref as it did not support the text. --David Biddulph (talk) 08:19, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Display Title

I just wrote a page on the play e-baby. I have used the displaytitle template to produce the small "e" at the start of the name and the italicisation, but the infobox is trying to force a title with a capital "E", and the conflict produces a warning. Any ideas on how to remove it, other than by removing the infobox (my fall-back solution)? Thanks. EdChem (talk) 10:40, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed with |italic title=no. Nanonic (talk) 10:58, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Nanonic. :) EdChem (talk) 11:07, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And as an explanation - the infobox is taking the DISPLAYTITLE field and then automatically italicizing it as part of it's code. But it can't since it's already italicized in the manually set DISPLAYTITLE field. So because it can't italicize something that's already italicized, it threw the error. Setting the infobox to not try to italicize it cleared the error and it shows in the infobox as italicized because it's just showing the DISPLAYTITLE. This explanation isn't necessarily intended to make your head hurt, but it just might. Also, I note from the instructions at the top of Template:DISPLAYTITLE that the correct format should be {{DISPLAYTITLE:blah}} and not {{DISPLAYTITLE|blah}}, might want to give that second look. Nanonic (talk) 11:09, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The recommendation in Template:DISPLAYTITLE is to use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''e-baby''|noerror}}. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:27, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation, Nanonic. I figured it was a conflict between the infobox and displaytitle templates. I have also adjusted to using the colon instead of the pipe, I was going from memory and figured I had it correct when it worked. :) David Biddulph, thanks for that piece of information. I prefer the solution of the italic title = no parameter in the infobox so there is no error, rather than suppressing the error - it seems more elegant to me - but I'll try to bear the alternative in mind in case I need it. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 13:16, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Citation issue

Some of the {{sfn}} based citations on User:Jo-Jo Eumerus/Azas Plateau - Litasov et al. 2002 and Hasenaka et al. 1999 - do not seem to work. Can someone fix them? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:36, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

|ref=harv?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:43, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) fixed - NQ (talk) 11:51, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, what a silly oversight on my part though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:01, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Shana - The Wolf's Music

Darf ich nachfragen, wieso mein Film "Shana - The Wolf's Music" gelöscht wurde? Danke für die Antwort.

Mit freundlichen Grüssen Nino Jacusso, Filmautor von "Shana - The Wolf's Music" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nino Jacusso (talk • contribs) 13:02, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dies ist die englische Wikipedia; Können Sie für die deutsche Wikipedia suchen. --David Biddulph (talk) 13:11, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Editing blurbs on mobile

Hi, I'm wondering how to edit the blurbs that come up with entries when you start to type in the search bar on the mobile platform (e.g. Michael Jordan's says "American basketball player and business man"). Some of the entries I've worked on are empty, so I'd like to fill that out, and others are a bit inaccurate, but I'm stumped on how to access that line to edit. Thanks for any guidance! Innisfree987 (talk) 16:27, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Innisfree987: Those blurbs are the Wikidata description of the article, which you can access by clicking on "Wikidata item" in the tools sidebar, then editing the English description. Ppp ery 16:35, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh so it is--easy once you know where to look! Thank you Pppery! Innisfree987 (talk) 18:07, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My draft title has a typo.

Please tell me how to fix it.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SMWarrior (talk • contribs) 16:50, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In Wikipedia, a page can usually be renamed if the existing title is incorrect; this is called moving a page. A page may also be moved to another namespace without changing the base title—for example, a userspace draft may be moved to article space. Autoconfirmed rights are required for page moving but you may request a page move at Wikipedia:Requested moves if you are not yet autoconfirmed, there is a technical barrier to the move, or the retitling is expected to be controversial and you seek consensus for the name change.

For details, see Help:How to move a page. Also, please sign your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~) or clicking the signature button above the edit box which looks like this: , but do not sign in articles. Ppp ery 16:54, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am an American author published by Scribner Bantam Dell at Random House

One of my readers has requested an article about me on Wikipedia. I think it is a lot of work for her, she is not technology savvy - and would like to help her by writing it myself. I know it must be neutral and factual. I was a newspaper reporter for years. This is my website http://barbarafischkin.com

I am on linked in, with recommendations.

I once tried to do this years ago and never got to it,.

How do I begin?

Am I permitted to do this. I am logged in thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Barbarafischkin (talk • contribs) 21:13, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hey there, Barbarafischkin, and welcome to Wikipedia, I'm Skyllfully! If you were to create and edit an article about yourself, it would be considered Conflict of interest (COI) editing—which is strongly discouraged, especially if your account is used for that single purpose. I understand where you're coming from and do not want to demotivate you from editing in the future but since “it [usually] undermines public confidence in Wikipedia”^[1] it is not recommended.

Furthermore, on Wikipedia, our goal is to have biographies and not autobiographies; so if you either meet our notability requirements now or in the future, it's likely someone will create an article about you. Speaking of which, you can always request an article and request edits as long as you declare your COI.

I hope this answers your question, feel free to reply back if you have any further questions. Happy editing!

—Skyllfully ^(talk | _contribs) 21:49, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Barbarafischkin. Agree very much with Skyllfully's advice, and especially want to encourage you to, yes, please do submit an article request: the Women in Red project is about to have an editathon for biographies of women writers so there's a good chance someone will get to making an article for you soon! The best thing you can do to help that process is, when you make the request, include as many links (or other reference details, if not online) as you can to reliable secondary sources about you and your work: i.e. reviews, profiles, etc. written by people you're not affiliated with. (WP doesn't have fact-checkers, so ensures accuracy by asking that entries be based on information already fact-checked by a reliable publication.) And then yes, additionally since you have been a journalist and author, I'm sure you could contribute greatly to the encyclopedia more generally and hope you'll stay to do some editing on other topics that interest you! Welcome! Innisfree987 (talk) 23:08, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]