Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2016 December 1

= December 1 =

Referencing errors on Barnsdall Main Street Well Site
Reference help requested.

After several tries, I still haven't found the cause of the error message. It keeps recurring in the same place. Bruin2 (talk) 02:10, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Bruin2 (talk) 02:10, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It's been fixed with this edit. Eagleash (talk) 04:02, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

How to fight Vandalism
Hello guys, I am a new user to Wikipedia, just made my account two months before. I was going through the facts related to vandalism on Wikipedia and I need to know more about it and to fight against it. What tools can be used by a new user to detect vandalism and how to use those tools properly. Expecting a reply at the earliest. Jayabilla (talk) 04:23, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You can start by patrolling recent changes at Special:RecentChanges or using Lupin's anti vandal tool. There is also a gadget called Twinkle that aids in reverting vandalism and provides many useful related functions. You can read through Vandalism for more information.--My Chemistry romantic (talk) 05:53, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Updation Required in Maharaja Agrasen University link
Dear Sir/Mam,

There are numerious of changes required to be made in Maharaja Agrasen Page:

1. Vice-Chancellor Changed from Prof.(Dr.)S.P. Bansal to Prof. Rakesh Kumar Gupta 2.Students	1500 Undergraduates	1250 Postgraduates	250 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sunaina.sh39 (talk • contribs) 05:58, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Done by OP. —teb728 t c 10:46, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Referencing errors on Townville Elementary School shooting
Reference help requested.

Hello! On an article called the "Townville Elementary School shooting", I made a few edits. One of the citations I made contains a YouTube URL but when I save my edits, the only problem the citation has, involves the URL and I recently got an email about it. When I copied and pasted the URL into the citation, it had a dot after the "u" of "Tube" so it looked like this: youtu.be. But when I tried to save my edits, it wouldn't let me so I got rid of the dot (so it says "youtube") and then it let me. But the reason I keep getting messages to fix my URL, is because I changed it. But if I change it back to its original form (youtu.be), it won't even let me save my edits altogether. The URL currently contains what I changed it to (youtube), but also says I need to fix it. The reference link itself obviously does not work because of this.

Thanks, Depthburg (talk) 06:06, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * - hello. I have fixed it for you. I found the youtube video and just re-posted the link in there. --Jennica ✿ / talk 07:16, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Depthburg (talk • contribs) 07:30, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

User deleted proposed deletion notice from talk page
Does this matter? I have posted a proposed deletion notice to a user's page, and they deleted it saying "[needless blah deleted]". I have since posted another proposed deletion on their talk page for another article. I'm not sure if it matters that they deleted it though? --Jennica ✿ / talk 07:14, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This is fine; see WP:OWNTALK: Although archiving is preferred, users may freely remove comments from their own talk pages. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:32, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Duplicate articles
I ran across nearly duplicate articles here and here that, I think, arose from a name change. I put a message on 's talk page but thought that it would be best to get this resolved before the two pages diverge. I don't know if it would be best to merge or just delete one of the articles. Leschnei (talk) 13:10, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out, Leschnei. The two were created by the same author by copy-paste, so there was no need to keep both; I deleted the least developed one.  My preference would have been to merge them, but consensus says this is a waste of time when only one author has written the text.&mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 13:33, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Is there any issue with attribution to be addressed, or am I right in thinking it's OK being the same author? Eagleash (talk) 13:52, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Eagleash, there is no attribution problem when an author copies his own work. Another editor added tags, but these don't contain any of that editor's creative work, and are intended to be deleted eventually anyway.  However, I also found quite a bit of copyvio, so I had to delete the remaining article and recreate it with new text, crediting the original author in my edit summary.  It's messy, but copyvios have to go.&mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 16:43, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks Anne. You've 'fettled' it! Eagleash (talk) 16:46, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Leschnei (talk) 15:29, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Repeated vandalism & personal information
I ran across while trying out STiki. There are 3 recent edits on Xenotransplantation that are all vandalism. They have been reverted, but what worries me is that one of them includes someone's full name and address. Does this editor need to be blocked? Leschnei (talk) 14:39, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * You could report him at WP:AIV but I suspect he has not been sufficiently warned as yet. The edit(s) with address details should probably be WP:REVDEL even if there a slight doubt that it may not be genuine. Eagleash (talk) 14:53, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I've hidden the two contentious revisions Jimfbleak - talk to me?  15:14, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Leschnei (talk) 15:28, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Bolding of Watchlist items
My watchlist has reverted to its old behaviour of only bolding the updated-since-last-visit items for a fraction of a second, so it's hard to tell which they are. Is this because I've misconfigured something, or is it a general problem? Maproom (talk) 23:00, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Mine is doing the same. I'd got used to the bolding (and hitting the 'all visited' button regularly). Eagleash (talk) 23:13, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The same happened to me. "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold" at Special:Preferences had somehow been disabled for me. I enabled it again and the bold works now. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Works for me too. Eagleash (talk) 23:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you, PrimeHunter. Mine had also somehow become disabled. Maproom (talk) 18:54, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

List guidelines
Where can I find the guidelines for lists within an article (not for articles that are lists)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.218.34.42 (talk) 23:12, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You might be interested in WP:EMBED, WP:LISTBIO and WP:ALUMNI. -- zzuuzz (talk) 23:25, 1 December 2016 (UTC)