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December 2

Is the US National Weather Service a primary source?

The National Weather Service is by no means unreliable but WP:PRIMARYSOURCE states that primary sources should be avoided in many cases. Obviously, the tornadoes themselves aren't writing editorials about how great they are, but almost every other source for US severe weather knowledge is going off of what the NWS reports. Should the NWS be considered a primary or secondary source for their reporting on severe weather events? (Also, if they aren't, there are a lot (probably thousands) of articles that heavily directly cite them... so retroactively implementing primary source considerations might be a bit of a pain.) Departure– (talk) 00:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Personally I will disagree with classifying weather reports by government agencies as primary sources. Even assuming that they are, based on Policy 1 ("Primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them.") and 3 ("A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge.") of WP:PRIMARY, it seems that presentation of these weather data would be acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Tutwakhamoe (talk) 04:41, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Are they the ones conducting the raw research and publishing it? Then yes, those are primary sources for their findings. A secondary source is one that reviews primary research/findings and uses them to produce interpretation/analysis. It's totally fine to use primary sources to fill in basic details. But if an article is predominantly based on sourcing like this without any proper analysis of its historical significance? Then we've encountered the Wikipedia:Existence ≠ Notability problem and there's probably no justification to have an individual article for it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Like other US federal agencies, the raw data and the algorithms to process it are PD. If you don't like the "primary" source, you can verify by creating the maps yourself, easier than you think. And if you don't trust the data or the algorithms either... Didn't the feds create the Florida hurricane? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:09, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Press template not displaying all

The "This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:" template at Talk:Asian News International has 2 items in the wiki-text, 31 and 32, that don't show up in the saved template, and I can't figure out why. Help? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:18, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Gråbergs Gråa Sång That is a feature, Template:Press says Up to 30 sources can be added to the template. I have split the last two press items into a second press template. TSventon (talk) 12:52, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Live and learn. Thanks! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång and TSventon: Hopefully this comment Special:Diff/1261110990 will help you or another editor to avoid such surprises next time. CiaPan (talk) 08:38, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
@CiaPan Thanks for trying, it can't hurt. Noting that the one at Talk:Donna Strickland is currently at 26 items. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:42, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: I have added a warning there, too: Special:Diff/1261333384. CiaPan (talk) 15:21, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: I have tried a simple query: insource:accessdate20 to the search machine and found another three pages with twenty (or possibly more) press mention notes: Special:Search/insource:accessdate20. Added relevant comments to them, too. --CiaPan (talk) 07:11, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
@CiaPan Not an overwhelming problem then, which makes sense. Never heard of Gattaca, but I've added to the others. Out of curiosity, I checked Talk:Donald Trump (it's "hidden" under "Page history"), counted 23 itmes there. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:30, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: Hah, intuition counts sometimes more than technical abilities. Good catch! Apparently, I missed that one in my search because it doesn't use the accessdateNN parameters at all, and I chose this specific one instead of authorNN or dateNN to avoid zillions of hits on citation templates. --CiaPan (talk) 07:44, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

my edits get autoreverted automatically - all edits dissapear

thie issue first happened on Nov 27; i edited a few articles since then and the issue is persistent: anytime i make an edit (grammar, add references etc) i see the changes in preview and they are visible but as soon as i publish it, any changes disappear. the log says that the autorevert is manual which i have to click to undo. this never happened before. i never missclicked abything, my profile does not have any bans or warnings... if anyone has any idea on whats up - do let me know, thank you!

attaching a few articles where you can view the logs for more:

Space011 (talk) 13:22, 2 December 2024 (UTC) (formatted by CiaPan (talk) 13:46, 2 December 2024 (UTC))

@Space011 Looking at your edit-history, [1], for some reason, you have reverted yourself manually a few times, starting November 26. You didn't before that. How/why this happens, I assume unintentionally, I can't say. Maybe someone else has a guess. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:47, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
no clue as well, thanks for reading though:) Space011 (talk) 19:56, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
@Space011: The edit history of articles indicate your own actions tagged as Manual revert. This may happen e.g. when you step back through the viewing history in your browser – when you switch to some view which resulted for example from a Preview action, the browser may have to fetch the old temporary version of the page somewhere in the editing process. Then the browser should warn you it needs to resubmit the editing form to obtain that temporary version. If you accept it, you may inadvertently commit an edit and (re)store some old, possibly original, version of the page. Of course, I'm just guessing, but... do you sometimes use the browser's 'back' button after editing an article? --CiaPan (talk) 13:57, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
no i dont use the back button before i publish... i just click publish. thanks for clarifying though Space011 (talk) 19:56, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Articles not corresponding with each other - conflicting information on all four.

I am currently looking at four different articles, none of which correspond with the others. Information in those four articles is not the same, and I am trying to work out what to do with them.

The articles are: List of presidents of the Assembly of Madrid, Enrique Ossorio, Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Next Madrilenian regional election. The problems are:

  • Isabel Díaz Ayuso's article lists her as the president of the Assembly of Madrid, but she doesn't appear in the list of presidents at all.

In short, I am now very confused, and trying to work out what to do with this, because those articles need updating, but I don't know where to start, or how.

Help is needed, preferably from someone with a knowledge of Spanish politics.

Thank you, Dane|Geld 15:04, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

DaneGeld, Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities might be able to help. In this case, I recommend checking es Wikipedia articles if the en articles are unclear. As far as I can see

When/How to Split a Particular List Article

Currently, the "List of Eastern Orthodox saints' article contains over 900 entries in its table and is over 315,000 bytes in size. On certain internet connections, this takes quite long to load, not to mention it may take a lot of scrolling to find a certain entry, particularly for mobile users. Furthermore, I plan to add over 2000 more applicable entries to the list in the future; obviously the article will have to be split into 2 or possibly more articles to contain these entries in a navigable and efficient manner.

My questions are, when and how should I split the article? Although the current article is quite large enough by itself, splitting into 2 now seems a useless endeavour as they will be likely be need to be splitted again considering a grand total of ~ 3000 entries is a lot to share between only 2 articles.

It may be noted that I'm currently the only major contributor to the article in the past year and when I don't edit it, no one really edits it except bots and the occasional user. Despite this lack of editing enthusiasm, the article brings a relatively substantial amount of page views, despite not many other articles linking to it.

Thanks in advance. 𝔅𝔦𝔰-𝔖𝔢𝔯𝔧𝔢𝔱𝔞? 16:21, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Take a look at List of military aid to Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War; it has quick links by letter(perhaps an interim solution). If a split is needed, alphabetically would be the best option, perhaps at the midpoint(if half are below the letter H, and half above, split there) 331dot (talk) 17:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
An alphabetical list of that size could certainly use an index. I have added it.[2] PrimeHunter (talk) 18:11, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Naming the deceased

If I make an article about a disaster that kills only one, is it appropriate to mention the name for that individual that is widely reported in media? Departure– (talk) 17:53, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Their name is probably irrelevant, unless they were well known. Shantavira|feed me 19:23, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Mysterious italics in Weiss special counsel investigation

On my screen, the title of Weiss special counsel investigation appears italicized, which seems incorrect. I tried to fix it, but I didn't see {{italic}} anywhere in the source code.

Weirdly enough, I tried using the VisualEditor, and was able to remove the italics, but when I saved the page nothing happened (my edit does not even appear in the page history). What's going on? — ypn^2 20:04, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Ypn^2, it was because of the court case infobox further down in the article. I've fixed it. Schazjmd (talk) 20:12, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Question from Ozrocka

Moved from talk page -- John of Reading (talk) 07:30, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Clinton Walker

I have corrected a page that was vandalised. The vandal editor has responded immediately saying they will revert the entry to their vandalised version of it on the basis it was not sourced properly, which it was, as the extensive references attest - how to get out this vicious circle? Ozrocka (talk) 21:15, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Are you speaking about an edit warring ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 07:46, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
@Ozrocka The place to discuss improvements to any article is the talk page for that article. Shantavira|feed me 10:10, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
@Ozrocka: Please read WP:NOTVANDAL. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:35, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject category RecentChanges

I can apply Special:RecentChangesLinked to various WikiProject categories, but it only tracks recent changes to the talk pages (since those are the pages tagged by the project banners).

Is there any way to get RecentChanges to display for the main pages corresponding to the talk pages in the category? Or a tool? Tule-hog (talk) 21:48, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

There used to be WP:XWT, which is now deprecated. Also a number of prominent topics (e.g., physics & math) for WP:1 'articles by quality' lists are deprecated (although a few are still working), as well as the replacement web tool. Tule-hog (talk) 21:56, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Differences between lists about people

When I read some lists of people. I saw we can find differences among lists.

For exemple "List of Russian artists" contain potraits of people mentionned but not the "List of Turkish actors".


Unlike the "List of Russian artists" and "List of Swedish poets". The "List of Turkish actors" don't class names by alphabetical order but by year of birth then alphabetical order.

"List of Swedish poets" and "List of Turkish actors" don't contain portraits.

Can we create common norms for lists about people to avoid these differences ? Anatole-berthe (talk) 23:27, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

That would be something outside of the scope of the helpdesk specifically, you might find it best to either bring it up over at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lists or Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists where there are editors who are talking specifically about the MOS regarding lists. TiggerJay (talk) 03:26, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for your advice ! Anatole-berthe (talk) 03:49, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
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