Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2018 December 11

= December 11 =

Unable to donate to Wikipedia
I tried to respond to your request for donations, however was unable make a donation. My address is; [redacted]

thank you, John Bushnell — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.229.4.209 (talk) 00:50, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You may use one of the methods listed on this page (clickable link) to make a donation to the Foundation, the entity that enables Wikipedia to operate. 331dot (talk) 00:57, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Controversial Content
I have come across an article which contains poorly referenced, discriminatory opinions, which are presented as facts. Do we have a policy for resolving articles of such a nature to remove offensive content at least untill a rewritten version with a neutral point of view can be reinstated (I don't want to take the task on of rewritting it myself)?

Note: Another user has already raised the above issue on the talk page on 2010, but there has been no resposne. 120.136.5.96 (talk) 04:25, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You are talking about Fear of children I assume. Yes well it's a tough article because apparently "pedophobia" is a term with two distinct meanings; just as "homophobia" could mean "fear of humans" or "dislike/hatred of gay people" (but for practical purposes the latter definition has crowded out the former), so "pedophobia" can mean a condition where the actual physical presence of children makes one actually anxious, but according to the article it is (now) mainly a polemic word used to describe some kind of loathsome oldthink or something. OK you have valid concerns so I'll engage there, colleagues welcome. Herostratus (talk) 07:35, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

how to correct erroneous crosslinks between different language versions ?
How do the language version links get created? Is this an automated AI process carried out by bots? Or are they entirely user-generated?

I've found a wrong interconnection and would like to correct it. How can I do that?

Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_hypothesis --> links to --> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeitshypothese but https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeitshypothese --> links to --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis (but should link back to "working hypothesis")

How is this even possible ?? I thought these links are reciprocal, meaning that if A links to B, B would automatically link back to A ? --boarders paradise (talk) 07:15, 11 December 2018 (UTC)


 * , de:Arbeitshypothese is a redirect to de:Hypothese which is correctly linked to Hypothesis. So it seems the interlanguage link at de:Arbeitshypothese is "bypassed" due to the redirect. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:25, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * [//de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arbeitshypothese&redirect=no de:Arbeitshypothese] (without following the redirect) does link back to Working hypothesis. Interlanguage links are usually made at Wikidata which can only make reciprocal links. Click "Wikidata item" under "Tools" in the left pane to see the Wikidata links. It's possible to override these with code in the articles but this has not been done here. See more at Help:Interlanguage links. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:44, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia provide wrong information
In hiwarkhed ta.telhara dist akola provide wrong information of whole village — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.193.227.128 (talk) 09:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I assume this is about Hiwarkhed. Could you please tell us which information is wrong, and, if possible, provide a reference?  Normally, discussion about content should go on the talk page of the article.   Dbfirs  09:05, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error ref no input trying to correct omissions from consecutive 40 home run seasons
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Quintuplebypass (talk • contribs) }
 * Your only change in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Major_League_Baseball_home_run_records&diff=prev&oldid=873202408] was to add, probably by clicking an icon which adds it. I have reverted your edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Use of text from doctoral thesis?
I have recently finished writing a long PhD thesis and I am wondering whether it would be advisable to reuse parts of the introduction for wikipedia (the rest of the text is likely too academic and specific to be of encyclopedic relevance). In the grand scheme of things, I consider this a good idea, but I am not sure whether this would bring up any copyright issues. Formally, my thesis is published as cc by nd nc. Do you have any thoughts on this? --Foreade (talk) 19:22, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'll only mention the copyright aspects, and not get into whether it's a good idea to put material you wrote in another publication on Wikipedia.
 * You should inform yourself the exact sequence of copyright licenses. You wrote it, so chances are, it was yours to begin with. But it's possible you had a student job at the university, and it's considered a work made in the course of your employment, or a work made for hire, in which case the university owned the copyright right from the beginning. Even if the copyright was originally yours, you might have had to transfer it to the university or to the publisher of the thesis.
 * If you still hold the copyright, you could grant a new licence, whatever Wikipedia is currently using, which would operate in parallel with the cc by nd nc license you mentioned. But if you don't hold the copyright anymore, you can't grant a new license. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:50, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Congrats for your PhD thesis. A related policy in this case would be WP:SELFPUBLISH, which states, "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications", WP:ABOUTSELF, "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves" if they comply with some conditions. If someone else uses your thesis as a source, that may be acceptable, per WP:SCHOLARSHIP. If your thesis is used, care should be exercised so as not to infringe WP:NPOV and WP:PROMO. Thinker78 (talk) 19:54, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Copyright issues aside, the first step is to defend your dissertation and get it approved, so the material and quality of scholarship is validated by a knowledgeable third party. Otherwise, it's still WP:OR - original research.  Then, it should be published, so it is accessible to others, for citing.  It can then be used as a source for information posted on Wikipedia. Generally it would be useful to contribute information to the main article or articles about your field of research. Hope this helps. TimTempleton (talk)  (cont)  23:09, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input! First, let me address the copyright issue. At my home university, theses are published as creative commons upon request of the author. While the main body of scientific work appeared in a number of scholarly articles ( (i) likely too narrow to be relevant for wikipedia and (ii) subject to conceivable copyright issues), I was specifically wondering whether the introduction with its review character might be useful. Second, my thesis is already approved and published. Overall, I am bringing this up because copying whole sections from the introduction would feel somewhat strange, even though similar arrangements already exist (for instance the topic page review in PLOS Computational Biology).
 * Lastly regarding transparency: I feel that it would be best to do such edits under my real name. Would you agree? --Foreade (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * If you want to cite the thesis, the license of the thesis (cc by nd nc) means no commercial use and no derivative works. The license applicable to material written by Wikipedia editors is stated on the panel where you compose your edit: "By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL." This is a broader license.
 * This means that the amount of material quoted from the thesis must be short enough to qualify as fair use. In theory, if you still hold copyright to the thesis, you could use as much as you want and license it however you want, but if you try to do that while also citing the published thesis, it would be too complicated to explain the license situation to readers. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:04, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Should i translate articles from finnish Wikipedia?
I am finnish Wikipedia editor and i have en-3 so should i translate articles from finnish Wikipedia i understand finnish language and it would be easy maybe to translate and i made article few minute ago you can see it here. --AkselHelp (talk) 21:28, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your interest in improving the English Wikipedia. I looked at the Nurmijärvi (lake) article you translated and since there's so little information in the article, it would be better to put that information in the Nurmijärvi article, and have a redirect instead. <b style="color:#7F007F">TimTempleton</b> <sup style="color:#800080">(talk)  <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  22:58, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Hey AkselHelp. The short answer is "definitely YES". The long answer is that Wikipedia articles may vary greatly in their quality, and so you kindof have to appraise the quality of an article before you set to work translating it. For smaller language projects, usually the major articles that the English Wikipedia is missing have to do with places in the home country/region, and people from the home country/region. So if you're looking to start, that might be a good place. You might also look at Category:Articles needing translation from Finnish Wikipedia, which has about 400 articles where editors have requested that content from the Finnish Wikipedia be added to the English article.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk  23:09, 11 December 2018 (UTC)