Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2025 January 1

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January 1

About cladograms on Arabic script

Hello everyone, can someone help me to figure out what is the issue I can't create a correct cladogram on Arabic script? The issue is the branches are reversed. And thanks. سنوببي (talk) 00:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Hah, that's got to be an issue related to right-to-left text handling; on a page in an RTL language such as Arabic, the Web browser will dutifully flip everything by default. So you have to engage in some template wizardry so it doesn't flip the non-text elements of the cladogram. The place you want is Tech village pump, where you are likely to find help from editors experienced with Wikipedia's esoteric syntax. Hopefully that helps. --Slowking Man (talk) 02:43, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Tom Taylor (Yorkshire cricketer)

Reference number 2 does not have the name of the year it (a medical journal) was published which is 1921. Please fix this up. I have failed. I'm sorry and that's it from me. Srbernadette (talk) 02:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I was about to fix it, but User:Citation_bot beat me too it. There was a line break (ie enter/return on the keyboard) in the middle of the title element of the cite web reference.

TiggerJay (talk) 03:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

What's my email address?

The application for newspapers.com asks for:

    "The email for your account on the partner's website"

What is the correct format in this case? Humpster (talk) 08:37, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

This is beyond the scope of the Help desk, as it involves an external website.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:40, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

@Ianmacm: I think this relates to an application to use newspapers.com via Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library at https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/applications/apply/26/ .

@Humphrey Tribble: have you tried example@example.com? If that doesn't work, Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library has a talk page. TSventon (talk) 09:20, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Language links

Is there a setting in user preferences to change the language links to appear in alphabetical order, all in same page? Now only a few language links to other Wikipedias are displayed. This started when I logged out, and I have not found yet ability to change it back. --40bus (talk) 15:09, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

@40bus: go to preferences, then to appearance and untick the compact language list option at the bottom of the list. I use Vector legacy skin, I don't know if that affects preferences. TSventon (talk) 15:44, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

I now removed the option. I had looked through that page many times and didn't see it. --40bus (talk) 18:24, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Contacting sources

I created this draft article and it was declined. (I understand why it was declined --- I mistakenly used Original Research and had a severe lack of secondary sources; also WP:42) If I requested a reliable source to write about the said information, or at least part of it, could I in turn use it for citations and references? Thanks! Therguy10 (talk) 18:47, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, no. All our sources must be published by some reliable source which exercised editorial control and judgement. So their writing an e-mail to you, or even publishing it on their blog, is generally not going to meet our need for verifiable information. --19:59, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

'Save page' button not appearing

The 'Save page' button is missing when I try to create a new page. This happens whether I create a new article directly, or create it in the Special:Mypage/ format. I'm using Chrome on an iMac, OS is Ventura 13.7.1. Same issue happens in Firefox. Whiterabbit6 (talk) 21:44, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The button actually says "publish changes", it no longer says "save". 331dot (talk) 21:45, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Various instructions within Wikipedia itself refer to using the 'Save page' button, that's why I was confused. Whiterabbit6 (talk) 21:57, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The pages which say "save" meaning "publish changes" should be updated. I fixed one here. TSventon (talk) 22:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Please feel free to BOLDLY edit those or post them here for others to correct. TiggerJay (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Antediluvian Crop Tool

Can somebody please install a working crop tool so we can crop pictures easily but leave all the meta data and attribution etc, merely adding a suffix cropped or cropped_ver1 etc? Meanwhile, can someone drop by my talk page and leave instructions. This should be much easier. I'd also like to use photoshop to fix the contrast etc., on existing photos, but I imagine that won't be allowed. Thanks Billyshiverstick (talk) 23:23, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Billyshiverstick I believe that the crop tool is at Commons:Commons:CropTool on Commons, which is a separate project, so you could ask at Commons:Commons talk:CropTool. There may be practical reasons that the tool does not currently do what you want it to do. TSventon (talk) 23:31, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Billyshiverstick, I sometimes use GIMP to fix the contrast, white balance, etc, of photos previously uploaded; nobody has expressed disapproval, and I have never feared that they would. I don't see why you shouldn't use Photoshop for the same purposes. -- Hoary (talk) 12:31, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Since some time last year, I find that I am no longer able to upload a modified version of an image to Commons. However, there's no need to crop an image, you can just arrange to display a region of it, see User:Maproom/cropping.   Maproom (talk) 08:39, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

FastStone Image Viewer is free; it has a nice crop tool and plenty of other image editing features. I've used this for uploads to Commons and Wikipedia.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:44, 3 January 2025 (UTC)