Help desk
< September 22	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 24 >

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.

September 23

Mass editing multiple articles at once

Hi,

I'd like to add one category to multiple articles at once. Is this possible?

Specifically, I'd like to add the category {{Category:Members of the 22nd Knesset (2019–)}} to the Blue & White and Likud members listed in this template: {{Template:Current MKs}}. Thanks for any help. David O. Johnson (talk) 01:18, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@David O. Johnson: AFAIK this would require a user script. Technical it would still be separated edits, meaning that a separate token is required for each. That significantly increases the amount of time required to do that, since there is a Limit on the max number of requests. Victor Schmidt mobil (talk) 05:17, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply. I'll look into it. David O. Johnson (talk) 05:23, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@David O. Johnson: Have a look at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. The people there will use WP:AWB. Poveglia (talk) 05:49, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

how do you delete a page?

I wrote an entry about a historically important leader in the public television and radio community, Samuel C.O. Holt, and afterwords sent a link to him to ask for fact-checking.

He replied with a claim that it was an invasion of his privacy, and demanded that the page be deleted -- even though all the text was based on publicly available information as listed in my citations.

I have never heard of this problem. What should we do?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Heritager (talk • contribs)

He has no say in what is here if it is covered by reliable sources, unless it isn't neutral or attacks the subject. Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 11:00, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Heritager In addition, it is not necessary to fact check with the subject, as Wikipedia only summarizes what independent reliable sources state about a subject. It does appear that some copyright violations were posted, which may have angered Mr. Colt(and would be within his rights to request their removal). 331dot (talk) 11:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Heritager: If you were still the only contributor and wanted to respect his wish then you could have added {{db-g7}} to request deletion as the author. Now it would need another deletion process at Wikipedia:Deletion policy. The request of the subject may be factored in per WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE, but if the article satisfies Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons then it's not required to do anything. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:14, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it was nice gesture to reach out to him, but there's no real reason to delete the article. It looks pretty good actually. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:14, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How to customize signature?

So a few weeks ago, I requested the undeletion of my commons.js page, but unfortunately am not sure how to make a custom signature... How I would do it is have the font stay the same, but change the text color to orange, and add a link to my contributions. James-the-Charizard (talk) 18:52, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Visit Special:Preferences. Scroll down a bit. Poveglia (talk) 18:54, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@James-the-Charizard: Check out WP:CUSTOMSIG for hints and tips RudolfRed (talk) 19:01, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

RudolfRed, Poveglia I tried in the special preferences, but I couldn’t get it to work... This is what I typed in the signature box:

[[User:James-the-Charizard|James the Charizard]]^{[[User talk:James-the-Charizard|talk to me!]][[special:Contributions/James-the-Charizard|contribs]]} James-the-Charizard (talk) 19:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You should check the checkbox "Treat the above as wiki markup." and then add something like [[User:James-the-Charizard|James-the-Charizard]] [[User talk:James-the-Charizard|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/James-the-Charizard|contribs]]

Making it orange would just be ugly. Poveglia talk contribs 19:18, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Poveglia It worked. Thanks for the help! ^^ James-the-Charizard (talk to me!) (contribs) 19:23, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll mark this as resolved, if you have any further questions feel free to remove that tag or start a new section. Poveglia (talk) 19:25, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Inaccurate birthdate for actress CRYSTAL R. FOX

I AM Crystal R Fox & wikipedia has my birthdate as October 14, 1965 & MY actual birthdate is January 1, 1964 (New Years' Day) Can you please correct this? 2601:C1:4102:BF19:C03D:697D:F388:369A (talk) 21:02, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OK. One sec. Poveglia (talk) 21:05, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We cannot just take your word for either your birthdate, or even that you are you. Is your birthdate documented in a publicly available reliable source? 331dot (talk) 21:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

AGF & Google. Poveglia (talk) 21:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Poveglia Please see WP:REALNAME; as Ronald Reagan said, "trust, but verify". 331dot (talk) 21:20, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And if you can find a RS using Google, all the better, but we still cannot just take an IP address's word as a source. 331dot (talk) 21:21, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

331dot Please see WP:ICANWRITEINALLCAPSTOO. Weird that you TRUSTED that the page you linked to contained the content you thought it should but did not VERIFY it. See WP:REALNAME. The IP address's words were not used as a source. Poveglia (talk) 21:22, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They offered no source, just their date and their name. 331dot (talk) 21:27, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read WP:REALNAME? And my edit dated 21:15, 23 September 2019 above? Poveglia (talk) 21:27, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia tries to reflect what reliable sources say about a subject. That may or may not be the truth. The page Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth explains that better than I can. Unfortunately I was unable to find a source that gives your correct date of birth. I did find a website who claims you were born on 1 January 1965; one year off. Poveglia (talk) 21:05, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Poveglia and 331dot: What happened just now was ridiculous. We do not need to assume that OP was or was not really the person they claim to be. Without assuming either way, we can look at their claim that the birthdate is wrong and decide that either it is correct (presenting sources that establish this, or at least pointing to the ones that should be in the article already) or that it might be wrong (which against requires sources). In either case, the simplest thing to have done would have been to ignore it. Second simplest would have been to just look for sources and say "well here's what they say." Petty bickering was absolutely unnecessary. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:02, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Preaching to the choir. Or at least that's my half. Poveglia (talk) 22:04, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ian.thomson I accept the good nature of your advice and thank you. I didn't feel that I was engaging in 'petty bickering' but if others see it that way, I will reevaluate that view of mine for the future. I was simply concerned that anyone can come here and claim to be anyone offering information, such as an impersonator. 331dot (talk) 22:17, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Ian.thomson: Good advise, but I don't agree that 331dot was doing the "Petty" stuff' - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 22:23, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

...as a neutral observer who just happened to drop in here. Poveglia (talk) 22:36, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And the "Petty" stuff continues. Poveglia More good advise WP:DROPTHESTICK. - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 22:39, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Let's go with her official tweets. https://twitter.com/Only1CrystalFox/status/421119503003828224 confirms January 1, but this one's kind of confusing https://twitter.com/Only1CrystalFox/status/441262201702477824 where she says i'm 52 in 2014 although that could be from Pam Harris and not Fox. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 22:43, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Some more references

born in 1964:

* Atlanta Journal Constitution https://www.ajc.com/entertainment/arts--theater/atlanta-actress-comes-full-circle-blues-for-alabama-sky/BpjyCSYMU8CJ44urC795cJ/ age 51 in April 21, 2015

* Rolling out magazine https://rollingout.com/2015/09/23/heres-why-crystal-fox-rocks-her-natural-hair-on-the-haves-and-the-have-nots/ age 51 in September 2015

born in 1966:

* MadameNoire magazine https://madamenoire.com/1076805/big-little-lies-crystal-fox/ age 53 in June 7, 2019

* News.com.au https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/a-gift-from-the-heavens-crystal-foxs-excitement-at-joining-big-little-lies-cast/news-story/a5c2a7f8b40cede0157d00b9560d1912 age 53 in 2019

I tend to believe the 1964 date because of AJC, but the recent ones that imply 1966 bother me. Another option is for Fox to OTRS/email from her official site her birth year. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 23:09, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The recent ones could be 1965 or 1966, and are consistent with the date that was in Wikipedia, which they could have used as a source. Peter James (talk) 11:42, 24 September 2019 (UTC) - Date now removed from Wikidata and other languages. Peter James (talk) 12:38, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note @AngusWOOF:, but while OTRS is useful for back-end verification, for reader-facing content, it's really no more useful in satisfying WP:V than trying to cite a private phone conversation. If someone sends this information to OTRS, we're just going to tell them they need to generate some public-facing source that we can cite on-wiki. GMG ^talk 12:49, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I've seen OTRS used to remove birthdates for celebs. The month and day have been multiply noted on her Twitter feed over several years, but her year is not. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 14:02, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the case that someone brings our attention to the fact that something is outsourced or poorly sourced yes, but not as it pertains to using an OTRS ticket as a public-facing source in mainspace. GMG ^talk 14:13, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well this is wrong: https://books.google.com/books?id=X7ZYsnTPIhwC&pg=PA122 as it shows a death date. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 23:29, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lloyd Pollock article is excellent ..I don't believe this is my Uncles picture displayed ..thanks Clarke Pollock

Check Lloyd Pollock's picture displayed in the City of Windsor Ontario sports hall of Fame .. thanks Clarke Pollock

It's the same photo in the Hall of Fame.[1] Clarityfiend (talk) 04:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Weird purple type

All of a sudden when I go to edit a page, a whole bunch of wording on the Edit page has been turned to purple! I don't like it and I don't want it. How can I get rid of it. I've seen a lot on Wikipedia, but this is pretty bad, and I've BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 23:44, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You probably clicked a highlighter marker button

to the left of "Advanced" in a toolbar. See WP:HILITE for other possibilities. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:02, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I will check that out. Thanks. Sometimes WP does stuff I don't know about. You are a good guy. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:32, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]