Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 January 23

= January 23 =

Trying to find out how to discuss an editor that is deleting too many edits of many users
I want to report some behavior of a user that is deleting edits, even when people have gone through considerable effort to make their edits better. This person is not acting in the spirit of Wikipedia being a place where many people can contribute to knowledge on a subject. It is hard to figure out exactly how to report this confidentially to Wikipedia. I have already discussed this on the user's talk page. I don't think someone should be allowed to delete edits the way she has been doing to many users. Thank you! - InspireEdit — Preceding unsigned comment added by InspireEdit (talk • contribs) 00:31, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * (courtesy ping User:Melcous) Hello I see nothing wrong with Melcous's conduct in this instance. She has clearly explained to you why she reverted your edits (because they were promotional and broke reference formatting), and I agree that language such as "The Size2shoes duo have performed all over the world and are respected and esteemed by fellow performers ..." is problematic. What you should do next is:


 * 1) Declare any conflicts of interest you may have
 * 2) Refrain from adding promotional material to the article
 * 3) If you can phrase the edits in a sufficiently neutral way, discuss them on Talk:Size2shoes to form a consensus as to which, if any, should be included.
 * – Teratix ₵ 01:14, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

"Formatting error: invalid input when rounding"
I got this error message after I entered the elevation in meters (810) for Silvan, Diyarbakir into the InfoBox, followed by the source citation. What can I do about this? The citation is causing the error message, and placing one space between the number and the cite does not help.--Quisqualis (talk) 03:27, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello You will want to add the "elevation_footnotes" parameter to the infobox and insert the citation there. (Put 810 in "elevation_m" as normal). – Teratix ₵ 03:33, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Teratix. Apparently, I did not implement your instructions properly. I saved the bad result at Silvan, Diyarbakir, so you can see exactly what I did wrong.--Quisqualis (talk) 03:52, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I fixed it for you. – Teratix ₵ 04:10, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Teratix.--Quisqualis (talk) 07:32, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Bug when editing - closes up spaces
I experience this problem erratically but quite often. When I press enter to start a new paragraph, sometimes the preview version (and sometimes the saved version if I give up on it after fiddling around with it long enough!) doesn't leave a gap at all. Sometimes I try putting a "br", which causes it to start on a new line, but often without paragraph spacing. Sometimes I try just hitting enter to create a lot of lines of spaces, which intermittently gives the right result, too much space, or just continues showing none at all. This is rather frustrating to say the least! Has anyone else encountered this problem, and/or know if there's something I'm doing to cause it? I use a Firefox browser (latest version, whatever it currently is). Laterthanyouthink (talk) 05:42, 23 January 2019 (UTC) code to just skip one line. It's how the HTML renders, similar to how multiple spaces only appear as one. TimTempleton (talk) (cont)  06:12, 23 January 2019 (UTC) , but use two newlines for a new paragraph. See more at Help:Line-break handling. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:59, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * You have to put a space between paragraphs, or put in the
 * It's

, text running on, just one return/enter, one return plus space line (i.e. another return), with or without  s and every variation I can think of - but it still seems to behave erratically, often giving differing results using preview after not even changing anything. I finally got it to work as intended by just using  at the end of the offending paragraphs plus one return - for that particular save, anyway! In the same section, previous paragraphs have no  but just the space line and it has worked fine - as it does most of the time. It seems to be an erratic problem without a discernible pattern. Oh well, I'll push on in the hope that it doesn't happen again... Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:03, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, u|TimTempleton. I have returned to the troublesome section and tried pretty much every variation of  and
 * Your  are unnecessary and I have removed them.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zip-line&diff=879781882&oldid=879779817] I noticed they were all after inline references. Maybe you have a display problem with that. Please just make two newlines. It works fine for others. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:24, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks PrimeHunter, but unfortunately I was in the middle of a huge edit session when you wrote your comment here and and did not see it, and only discovered your change in the article when I tried to save my changes and it told me that there was an edit conflict. I then (in a slight panic) reverted your edit, thinking that I could preview and then save all of my changes I'd been making, but have now found that it has lost them all and no amount of paging back gets me back to where I was where I am able to see my changes. I have now lost my restructured section, reworded and added info and all of the extra citations I'd added, so will have to start again tomorrow or whenever I next have time. I appreciate that you were trying to help but I wish you'd pinged me in that instance! I assure you that I had tried every variation of newlines and spaces - one, two, many, and only later tried with and without    s. I haven't noticed that it only happens after in-line refs but I'll play with that a bit more tomorrow and see if there's any pattern there. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 11:39, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I find edit conflicts infuriating, too. It's a good idea to make edits one section at a time to reduce the problem, but, if it happens to you again, you should copy your revised text from the edit window (where it says "your text") then at least you don't lose all your work.   Dbfirs  14:47, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I confirm the original report by Laterthanyouthink. I have been editing Wikipedia, using the Firefox 32-bit browser for Windows, for years, and know how to separate paragraphs (as explained in earlier responses). A few months ago I started to have this problem when editing, probably after a Firefox update: I type or edit a paragraph, press carriage return twice as usual, and type new text. It displays, unsaved, as expected in the editor with one blank line, but when saved or previewed the new text follows immediately after the previous paragraph, with no line break and no blank line; the edit text after save/preview has also lost the line break. I haven't tried to debug this seriously (I can't see anything wrong if I copy the text into a text editor and look at it as hex). I confirm Laterthanyouthink's report; this is definitely something wrong, not user error. I have some workarounds: 1: after a paragraph I press Enter twice or more, then  , then Enter once or twice more, followed by more text. I preview the result, and find that most line breaks have been removed, but typically there is   on a line by itself, followed by one or more blank lines (sometimes there is a blank line before the   ). I put the cursor on the last blank line, and backspace to delete all except the first blank line. When I save that it is usually OK. 2: I open the page in Google Chrome, which does not have this problem, if necessary copying the page in edit mode with my edits from Firefox. 3: I think that copying the edit page into a text editor (Notepad++), getting the blank lines right, and copying back, works. I don't remember as I rarely do this.  My conclusion is that a few versions back something happened to Firefox (32-bit for Windows, at least) that makes it malfunction in this particular interaction with Wikipedia, only. Or maybe something in my profile or setup, which would clear if I started a new profile? For the time being I simply live with it, doing extra previews and checking. I have just started looking into it, which is how I found this page. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 16:40, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, indeed, Dbfirs! I should have thought of this before, but I have just rediscovered the template and added that, having just had another clash with an unsuspecting editor trying to improve one of my changes. At the time I was very tired and fed up with trying to work around the spacing bug, and and that led to my acting too fast instead of taking a deep breath and engaging my brain. (I have been mostly editing the whole article as there are some structural changes that I wanted to make to sections.) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:02, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Pol098. I was pretty sure it wasn't just my ineptitude, so thanks for your confirmation (although sorry to hear that you've experienced it too, because it's very frustrating! Thanks very much for taking the time to explain your workarounds. I might try using Edge next time - although just at the moment, it is behaving itself and spacing as expected... Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:02, 24 January 2019 (UTC)


 * An update for you, Pol098. I have reported the bug to Mozilla (Firefox), so will see if they are able to debug and fix it. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 00:02, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It sounds like the problem is with editing and not with rendering. I have no issues with Firefox. Do you use the default editing environment for logged out users or have you enabled editing features, e.g. syntax highlighting or wikEd? If you are not sure then try editing logged out for comparison. You don't have to save. PrimeHunter(talk) 00:20, 25 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Good call PrimeHunter, thanks. Editing works properly when logged out. Logged-in I have syntax highlighting, wikEd, and other things set, and the blank line deletion happens. And the problem only manifests with Firefox. I've made a test logged in; with WikEd turned off blank lines aren't being deleted (syntax highlighting still on). Pol098 (talk) 00:51, 25 January 2019 (UTC)


 * PrimeHunter and Pol098: thanks for this idea! I have just checked and found that I did have syntax highlighting on (can't remember when - possibly even in error) and have indeed been using WikEd for quite a while now. My initial testing has shown it working fine with both or either buttons turned on or off though - but as mentioned before, it has been an erratic bug so as yet haven't been able to rule one or both out definitively. I think I'll carry on using just WikEd but not syntax highlighting for now and see if the error recurs. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:44, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Canadian Who's Who notable?
While answering a question on the Help Desk I came across Canadian Who's Who, currently only sourced to the official website. I was strongly considering nominating for deletion, but I found two sources: a local newspaper article talking about the 1910 edition and a column by Robert Fulford in The Globe and Mail (though I can't verify as it was published pre-2000) critiquing the 1998 edition. I'm not sure whether this constitutes a pass of WP:GNG/WP:NBOOK, so I wanted to ask for a second opinion before nominating. – Teratix ₵ 07:34, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Discussion now underway at Articles for deletion/Canadian Who's Who. – Teratix ₵ 01:23, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Village pump (technical) archive
How come there seems to be no link to Village pump archive on Village pump (technical)? (I can only see a link leading to Centralized discussion/Archive in the "Centralized discussion" box)--Hildeoc (talk) 13:53, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Hey . There is a link, but I could see where you may have missed it, as it's not directly written as "archive". At the bottom of the header, you should see "« Older discussions... a string of numbers". When you click Older discussions, it will take you to the whole village pump archive, and the string of numbers are the most recent archives of VPT in specific. This should be the same for all village pumps. Hope this helps. Cheers, -- SkyGazer 512 <span style="background: linear-gradient(aqua, #d580ff);">Oh no, what did I do this time? 16:19, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot!--Hildeoc (talk) 22:24, 24 January 2019 (UTC)


 * PS: Shouldn't that somehow be linked more clearly there, like on related pages?--Hildeoc (talk) 06:00, 25 January 2019 (UTC)


 * What other pages in particular? All of the village pumps do the same thing. :-) To me, "older discussions" seems clear enough, but we might could have "archive" in parentheses there.-- SkyGazer 512 <span style="background: linear-gradient(aqua, #d580ff);">Oh no, what did I do this time? 15:55, 25 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Done.--Hildeoc (talk) 23:23, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Mahvash biography was fully untrue. Since I am her daughter and I can prove the truth. That was rediculous and something should be done.
Editing a false contet in Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maman2014352 (talk • contribs) 15:43, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Editing a false contet in Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maman2014352 (talk • contribs) 15:46, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello, how can we help you? Do you have published sources that support the changes you want to make? ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 15:50, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There is no point in edit warring over dates when there is a WP:Reliable source to support the earlier date of birth. If that source got it wrong, then you need to find a better source that gets it right.  Your argument is with the authors of the references cited, though it would be good to check that they really say what is claimed.  Does anyone have access to those books?  What connection do you have with user:O oranus and user:Mamanus?  <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  17:05, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Edit with more ease.
Hello I am fan of cricket please tell me how can I edit cricket scores and how can I create new pages about Cricket Also tell that what these operations mean such as |  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bilal190023 (talk • contribs)
 * In Wikitext invokes a template. A pipe, like | inserted into a link causes the display text to be different than the name of the link.  So for example, easter egg displays as easter egg, which if you click on it goes to the page Example. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 16:04, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello,, and welcome to the Teahouse. It's great that you want to come and help us improve Wikipedia, and you have an interest in particular articles. Since there is a lot to learn, I would advise you not to rush in and try to create articles (which is hard) before you have learnt the basics. I suggest you take The Wikipedia Adventure; and that you go to WP:WikiProject cricket and team up with some more experienced editors who want to work on cricket-related articles. --ColinFine (talk) 16:45, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

How does a 'draft' article get published?
Hello, I have drafted a Wikipedia page/article called "Sacred Attention Therapy". How do I go about getting the page/article published on Wikipedia? --RobMeagherSAT (talk) 17:47, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If you feel your draft is ready for review, you can add (including the curly brackets) at the top of the draft. —teb728 t c 19:16, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, I noticed that you posted questions on pages in your user space that nobody is apt to look at. The place to post questions on how to use Wikipedia is here at the Help desk or at the WP:Teahouse. —teb728 t c 19:24, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

How do I change the name of my wikipedia page?
Hello -- we've recently undergone rebranding and want to change the name of the wiki page to reflect the changes. How do I change the page title?

This is the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KRFC

We want the page title to change to: KRFC 88.9 FM Radio Fort Collins — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leannkerin (talk • contribs) 20:36, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If you'd like to request a move, please discuss it at Talk:KRFC. Click the "New Section" link at the top, and create a section explaining why it should be moved. However, please also note that you may have a conflict of interest (based on the "we've recently undergone rebranding" it seems like you represent the company) so please make sure that there is agreement for the move. --DannyS712 (talk) 21:09, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, please note that radio station articles are almost always done by call letters, with the exception being a suffix of -AM, -FM or -LP if appropriate.Naraht (talk) 14:51, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
 * If you represent this station(since you use "we" above), you must comply with the conflict of interest policy and the paid editing policy(the latter is a Wikipedia Terms of Use requirement). Note that you must be the only one using your account. 331dot (talk) 15:00, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Problem with my User Page
This is my User Page: User:Joseph A. Spadaro. There is a navy rectangle with my name. Underneath that, there is another navy rectangle; it says "ABC XYZ". In between the letter "C" and the letter "X", there should be more writing. Why is that writing not coming out in white color? I suspect that it is coming out in blue color, and it is "invisible" because the blue text/letters are against a blue background. But, I am not sure. Can someone look at it and let me know what I am doing wrong? By the way, the text that is "in between" the letter "C" and the letter "X" is a link. Namely, this: My Sandbox. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:20, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It looks fine to me, Can see the link. RhinosF1 (talk) 21:39, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * They are different shades of blue. Color must be declared inside a wikilink to override the automatic link color: . PrimeHunter (talk) 21:46, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Perfect! Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:20, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Is there a way to make a User Box appear larger?
Is there a way to make a User Box appear larger? Is there some computer code that will accomplish that? I have this code:.

It produces this User Box:.

I'd like it to be larger. I tried "computer codes" like and similar. But I could not get anything to work. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:42, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I playing around with the parameters, but I don't see any way to make the box longer, to balance making other elements larger, so I ended up with a result like:


 * Best I can do, unfortunately.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:11, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Help:Cite errors/Cite error ref no input
— Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎ 24.117.133.203 (talk • contribs) 2019-01-23T20:50:31 (UTC)
 * Hello, IP user. Your edit to Beatriz Sheridan added an empty reference (the pair of tags &lt;ref>&lt;/ref> with nothing between them), which is an error. I have removed them. (It would have helped if you had told us which article you were talking about, so I didn't have to go hunting). --ColinFine (talk) 23:59, 23 January 2019 (UTC)