Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 October 4

= October 4 =

Need help to upload photos
I would like to upload photos of my relative, sewing machine inventor Allen B. Wilson, to the page under his name. I am not tech savvy! Would someone please help? Thanks! Nsnskz (talk) 00:38, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Before we get into technical details, you must understand copyright law. Sorry, The law itself sometime has ludicrous consequences, but we are obligated to comply with it. Copyright in a picture belongs to the photographer. If you are not the photographer or the heir of the photographer, you cannot upload the picture. (There are some very narrow exceptions). If you do own the copyright, you can upload the picture to our image repository at Commons, and then add it to the article. Start by hitting the "upload file" link in the left-hand column of this or any other page here at Wikipedia, and follow the instructions. If you get lost, come back here and we'll try to help.-Arch dude (talk) 02:29, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * OOPS! I now see that Allen B. Wilson died in 1888. This means that the photos are from before 1924 and if any of them was published before then, it is no longer copyrighted (it's in the "public domain") So you can upload it. -Arch dude (talk) 02:35, 4 October 2019 (UTC)


 * , based on the above, try starting here, it's were we keep public domain images. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:40, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Visual editor (still) acting weirdly
Hello. I had asked this here before but I did not receive a response. Basically, whenever I use the visual editor I can't delete text if there is a reference in that text. It sometimes will disappear on my end but won't actually do anything on Wikipedia's end. I'm using Mozilla Firefox and Windows 10. TheAwesome Hwyh  02:36, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I suspect that many people who respond to questions here regard the Visual Editor as broken, and have little knowledge of it. It's unfortunate. Maproom (talk) 06:44, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Seconded, it's got a mind of its own and needs every edit previewing carefullly. If it doesn't do what you want it's simple to switch to source editing. Eagleash (talk) 13:48, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Alright. I did use the source editor whenever I needed to but I had always used the visual editor and never had any problems with it. I suppose I'll just switch to source editor. TheAwesome  Hwyh  17:26, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, you can easily switch to source editing when using the vis ed. There's an icon / link at the top of the edit window (pencil icon with a downward arrow). Eagleash (talk) 18:49, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Alex Mapelli-Mozzi
Please fix  up  my  new  citation -  ref  number  8. It is  in  red. Thanks and  sorry  175.33.248.139 (talk) 06:38, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The citation is to a Google search which found the 1989 edition of Which School. Does that edition really confirm that the subject attended Downside 20 years earlier? Incidentally, this source says that he attended Radley. Maproom (talk) 07:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Alex's son Edoardo  was  a  student  at  Radley  (not  Alex,  he  was  at  Downside,  see  above  please)  - this  citation  is  establishing  that  the    school  -  Downside  -  is  a  boys  boarding  school  which  ALEX  (the  subject  on the  page)  attended. Please  fix  the  "red  bits"  in  citation  number   8. Thanks and  sorry  about  any  confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.33.248.139 (talk) 07:35, 4 October 2019 (UTC)


 * The new ref doesn't mention Mapelli-Mozzi, so has been removed. People who want more detail about Downside School can follow the link to Downside School. --David Biddulph (talk) 10:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Date formatting not working?
The Greta Thunberg article has the "Use dmy dates" template, but the citation dates seem to be coming out yyyy-mm-dd. Is there a reason for this that I'm missing? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 08:53, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The Use dmy dates template doesn't actually change anything, it's just a record of the last time that the article was scanned for date formats. - X201 (talk) 09:25, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The documentation of Template:Use dmy dates says: "Citation Style 1 and 2 (collectively cs1|2) templates automatically render dates (|date=, |access-date=, |archive-date=, etc) in the style specified by this template.", and if you look at the article you will see that the dates in the refs are specified in the wikitext as dmy but rendered as yyyy-mm-dd. The use dmy dates tag has been specified with the parameter "|cs1-dates=y" which causes it to render as ymd. If you remove the "|cs1-dates=y" the ref dates will render as dmy. --David Biddulph (talk) 09:36, 4 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Just read it, didn't know about the template change. Very little fanfare. - X201 (talk) 09:49, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The template is working correctly. It is written like this:
 * The last bit of that,, tells the templates to render dates in YYYY-MM-DD format.  See the documentation at
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 09:42, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I looked at the template, and tried removing that parameter, but it made no difference. I have often used it like that and it's always worked before... Laterthanyouthink (talk) 09:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * There you go. I removed the parameter, saved and then purged the page. - X201 (talk) 10:04, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that, . Did you have the same experience, with it not working in preview? (I didn't try saving because it didn't display correctly when I previewed it.) And what do you mean by "purged", as a matter of interest? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:18, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Purge -- John of Reading (talk) 12:27, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . Laterthanyouthink (talk) 12:46, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . Laterthanyouthink (talk) 12:46, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Need to have a page deleted by an admin
Hi, I've just published (and improved) an article from a draft in Articles for Creation, Smitha Anthony and then noticed that the title should actually be Smitha Antony. However there is already an article in mainspace for Smitha Antony! We don't need both as they are about the same person, but the one at Anthony is a bit tidier and has more detail so I'd like the Antony article to be deleted and the Anthony one re-named Antony. TIA! MurielMary (talk) 09:26, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I was not comfortable deleting the history at Antony; and they had parallel histories so I couldn't do a history merge. However, I have copied the content at Anthony to Antony and replaced Anthony with a re-direct and placed a copied template on both talk pages for attribution. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 13:50, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Creation Date of a Wikipedia Page
Where can I find the original creation date of a Wikipedia page? Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.214.27.105 (talk) 10:35, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Click on the "View history" tab at the top of the page and navigate (using the settings at the bottom of the tab if necessary), to the oldest revision. {The poster formerly knowhn as 87.81.230.195} 2.121.161.82 (talk) 12:12, 4 October 2019 (UTC)


 * At "view history" you can also click "Page statistics" near the top. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:10, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Link Alerts
I usually think that I know why editing Wikipedia behaves in the way that it does. But I am annoyed now. I keep getting messages that 4 or 5 or 8 links were made to Standing Committee on Defence (India). I assume that means that I have that page on my watchlist. Okay. I tried to unwatch it, and I don't have it watched, but I did move a sandbox to Draft:Standing Committee on Defence, which was then accepted with disambiguation. So I think that I have unwatched the sandbox (which I never explicitly watched, except that I forgot to uncheck a box on a move). Have I missed something? How do I finally turn these notices off? 13:43, 4 October 2019 (UTC) Signing a little late. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:32, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Go to Special:Preferences, then under the "Notifications" tab untick the box next to "Page link". As far as I know page notifications are entirely separate from the Watchlist, so whether a page is on your Watchlist will have no bearing on whether you receive notifications for it. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 13:51, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I've turned those notifications off.  I wasn't learning anything useful from them.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:35, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If you have a hand in the creation of an article, you automatically get alerts when people link to it. TimTempleton (talk)  (cont)  15:40, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Bombing articles with a capital B
There are about 400 articles of the form (Year) (details) bombing(s). The vast majority (such as 2015 Abha mosque bombing and 2008 Times Square bombing use a lowercase b. There are about 25 (from 1972 Aldershot Bombing to 1992 Yemen Hotel Bombings which use a capital B.  If it were just one, I'd be bold and move/lowercase it to 1992 Yemen Hotel bombings, etc. But this many seems like a big deal and so I'd like to get confirmation that it's the right thing before changing all these articles. Matchups 13:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * No,, I agree that it is *ahem* no big deal, and should be moved. There's clearly a numerical consensus for lower cases bombings, and it's not a proper noun. ——  SerialNumber  54129  14:06, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You are right to ask, as BOLD doesn't really cover a series of page moves. Lowercase is right, unless it was a title or similar. Best Wishes,  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:09, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Question about copyright violations
I'd like some help. Here is the long story short. I started a brand new article (Clutter family murders). I started it by "copying and pasting" a relevant paragraph from another Wikipedia article (the "Crime" section of In Cold Blood). As soon as I did that, I received some notification that it was a copyright violation. So, immediately, within about 5 seconds, I deleted the "offending" text. Then, some other second similar "warning" came up. So, again, I deleted the "offending" text. Immediately. Then, another user placed my brand new article into "draft space".

I have asked these questions on my Talk Page. No one is answering my questions. Most "respondents" are too busy criticizing me .. and not offering any answers at all.

My questions:


 * Question 1: I did not know it was a copyright violation.  And, as soon as I was told that it was, I removed it immediately ... within a few seconds .  Isn't that the appropriate thing to do?  What was I supposed to do?  What should I have done?


 * Question 2: Also, I simply did a "copy-and-paste" from the In Cold Blood article. Why is it a copyright violation when I do it?  But, right now, sitting as text in the In Cold Blood article, it is not a copyright violation?  If the material is already in an article ... shouldn't I -- and we all -- assume that it is not a copyright violation?  And if it is indeed a copyright violation, why is it in there now, undisturbed?  Very confusing.  Please advise.  Thanks.

Please help. Thanks.

I'd like answers to these specific questions ... rather than a "lambasting", which most are inclined (and interested) to do (on my Talk Page).

If this is not the place to get answers to these specific questions, what is the appropriate venue?

Thanks.

Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:04, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * For Q2: Wikipedia articles are covered by copyright, but with a permissive license that allows you to copy only if you attribute it. See WP:CWW.  For Q1, removing it is one way to fix it.  The other way to fix it is to provide the missing attribution, per WP:RIA RudolfRed (talk) 16:16, 4 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Question 2 is asking why the offending material is RIGHT NOW not a copyright violation?  As to Question 1 ... I deleted the "offending material" in about 3 seconds after I was notified.  And people on my Talk Page are all freaked out about it, after I deleted it.  So, what was I supposed to do?    Thanks.     Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:22, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Without digging into it, it appears that the Crime section in n_Cold_Blood is just normal Wikipedia article. Why would it be a copyright violation?  You violated the copyright when you copied it into a new article without attribution. I don't see anyone freaking out on your talk page.  It is a discussion about why you cannot copy from one Wikipedia article into another without attribution.  RudolfRed (talk) 16:45, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * This looks to be a case of reverse copyvio - the source which is supposedly the origin of the copyrighted material claims to be an excerpt from "Wickedpedia", but the actual source and content is pretty obviously lifted from here (has Wikipedia links intact and such, even one inline reference that's obviously using Wikipedia source code). It seems more likely that the author of that work pulled from In Cold Blood, and  inadvertently copied that same material from one article to another, and then someone caught it in Earwig's tool without checking the origin. Attribution can be fixed by a template, this didn't need to be revdeleted. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, all. You've been very helpful. Now, another question. Just so I understand correctly. If I want to create a brand new article (called Clutter family murders ... I can copy-and-paste verbatim the paragraph/section called "Crime" from the In Cold Blood article, as long as I "attribute it" properly ... am I correct?   Thanks.  Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:27, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:04, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

I received a "copyright violation warning". How can I look at that warning? It seems to be deleted / inaccessible.
I created an article. It was called Clutter family murders. (Someone later moved it into "draft space", here: Draft:Clutter family murders). As soon as I created the article, I received some type of "copyright warning". And that warning said something like: "This material is a copyright violation. It appears to be copied directly from SUCH-AND-SUCH WEBSITE." The name of the website was nothing that I had ever seen before, and it did not say "Wikipedia". How can I take a look at that "copyright violation warning", so that I can see what website they were talking about? The warning itself, it seems, was deleted or is inaccessible at this point. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:33, 4 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello,, copying text from one Wikipedia article to another is allowed; however, you must give attribution to the editors who created the text. You do that by writing an edit summary something like "Adding text copied from Abraham Lincoln" or whatever article you copied from. Please read Copying within Wikipedia for complete details. If you do not attribute the source, then you are violating the copyright of those who wrote the source, since our license requires attribution. I will look into the warning you received. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  16:45, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The revisions of your draft which contained the copyright-violating material were deleted and are now only visible to administrators, which is our policy. The notice regarding the violation was posted on an older revision of the page and was removed when the process was completed, but you can see the notice in the draft's history here. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:46, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The copyvio detector reported that material was copied from this website. It is possible that this website violated Wikipedia's copyright. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  16:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed, see my comment in the thread above. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:57, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Very helpful. I have another question. My guess -- but, I have no idea -- is that this "copyright violation" was picked up by some computer bot or some-such. Right? I can't imagine that a human user "spotted" the violation within one second of me doing the "copy-and-paste". Was this done by a computer or by some bot? (As I suspect.) Or by a human? Let's say that I "attributed" the material correctly, with an appropriate edit summary. Does the "bot" actually read the edit summaries ... and would the bot then "know" that this is not a copyright violation? (To me, I can't imagine that that is the case.) So -- even if I attributed everything perfectly correctly (in an appropriate edit summary) -- wouldn't the bot still claim this to be a violation? The bot doesn't read edit summaries? Or is this all done by a human? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:36, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I believe there is a bot but I'm not familiar with its operation or what triggers it to run on any particular page. Probably a reviewer looking at the new pages feed saw your article and checked it themselves using a reviewing tool, I don't use the feed myself so I don't know what tools are available from it. The tool I use is Earwig's Copyvio Detector, which only looks at external sources so wouldn't know if you copied from another Wikipedia article, it would only see that it matched the external site. I believe that tool does have a "whitelist" of sites that are known to be Wikipedia mirrors or otherwise free to use, but it is updated manually. The tool is supposed to be used as a starting point to investigate potential copyright infringement, not assumed to be 100% accurate, but we're all volunteers here and a 75.4% match is a pretty high confidence result. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:42, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:04, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Making redirect of popular article name
I'm preparing a proposal to rename climate change into climate variability and change, and a second proposal to possibly rename global warming to climate change. Currently our article about climate change deals with the general concept in past, current and future, which I believe doesn't comply with WP:PRIMARY. There are thousands of redirects climate change, most of which should be redirects to an article about the ongoing climate change, but about 15% of them are actually correct. If my first renaming proposal succeeds, 15% of them will be incorrect. I was wondering how to go about correcting these redirects. Doing this manually will take a tremendous amount of time. Are there any tools that can help with this process? Would it be helpful to temporarily have climate change be a disambiguation page? I know that if you add a link to a disambiguation page, you get a notification on your talk page, and I was wondering if something similar happens for already existing articles. Femke Nijsse (talk) 17:06, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * There are only 25 redirects to climate change so I'm guessing you're talking about incoming links. There are ~5.000 articles that link to climate change, so what I'd do is this: Make an API search query like this one:, export it to Excel, read the matching text snippets and mark in a new column if it is about global warming or climate variability, then take the list of articles that need to be changed and use WP:JWB to rapidly update the links. If you make a list of keywords that make an article more likely to be about either topic (like "Kyoto" vs. "Phanerozoic"), you could speed up your categorization. – Thjarkur (talk) 19:44, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * That's such a great tool. Thanks for the help! I will delve into the links and maybe come back if I have any more questions :). Femke Nijsse (talk) 19:53, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Insource regex is slow and may time out on searches which don't limit the pages first. User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js on Climate change produces [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?profile=all&search=linksto%3A%22Climate%20change%22%20insource%3A%22Climate%20change%22%20insource%3A%2F%5C%5B%5C%5B%3A%3F%5BCc%5Dlimate%20change%5B%5C%5D%5C%7C%23%5D%2F&ns0=1 Source links]. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:32, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you ! I'm part of the WikiProject working on the name change proposal with Femke. There is a lot in that url that I don't understand. I won't ask ya'll to retype something that already exists, but do you know of any plain English explanations, on wiki or off, that can help me understand "API search", "insource regex", and the parameters used in the url, in the context presented here? Thanks much for any pointers NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 16:40, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
 * H:INSOURCE, mw:Help:CirrusSearch, mw:API:Search, Regular expression, AutoWikiBrowser/Regular expression. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:27, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If you just use Special:WhatLinksHere/Climate change you get both pages with links in the text and pages with template such as Template:Global warming (it contains a link to climate change). Since you're only interested in finding the articles that have links in the text and not from transcluded templates, you use "insource:" to only search the article's wikitext. Regex is a way to find patterns of text, so you can match,  ,   at the same time. The API search is a way to access search results from outside of Wikipedia (used to access them programmatically), but you don't need that since WP:AWB has a search function (WP:JWB does not). – Thjarkur (talk) 17:34, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Help with my article
Hello. I got my article published. Thank you very much for that! I have got two questions for you. 1( I have been notified with a message with inappropriate external links. I went through my article again, and couldn't find anything inappropriate about the links. I have attached the links for the publications, so people who are interested in reading, those can access it easily. Every website is a valid one. How can I get the message removed? 2) I am trying to add information to the info box on my article about Karaikudi S. Subramanian, but it won't display when I publish the changes. Can you please help me?Mathuriga1 (talk) 17:23, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * For the external links, it looks like you tried to include an external link within the body of your article. That's against our external links guideline which says that external links should only be placed in their own section at the end of an article, so another editor removed it. Links in the main part of an article should only be "wikilinks", internal links to other Wikipedia articles.
 * For the infobox, I can't tell which info you're adding that won't display, but each infobox only supports certain parameters. If you click on this link to infobox musician you'll see a documentation page that shows what information you can add. If you want to add something to the box that the template doesn't support, it won't work. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:35, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

printing Wikipedia pages for a genealogical project
As a member of the Order of Sons of Italy, I would like to be able to print pages from Wikipedia for a genealogical project displaying individual family member's home towns in Italy. Each time I try to print a particular page, I get an error message that something is wrong with the program and that it wants to shut down. Can we print your pages and if so, how?

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.235.113.16 (talk) 18:21, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, any page can (should be able to) be printed, using the "printable version" link in the left menu. If that is causing problems in your browser, you can try "download as PDF" instead and then try to print the downloaded file using a PDF reader. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:26, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You are welcome to print out and display pages from Wikipedia, though you ought to make it clear to your readers that they are from Wikipedia. I don't know why you have been unable to do so – Ivanvector has given some good advice. Maproom (talk) 18:33, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It's not just that "you ought to" attribute the pages: Wikipedia is copyrighted, and copying is permitted only if you adhered to the terms of our copyright CC-BY-SA license. That license permits you to copy the material and use it for any purpose whatsoever, but only if you attribute it. (Attribution is really easy: just add a link to the page.) -Arch dude (talk) 19:19, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

False Positive
Hi, I recently up dated our site with a considerable amount of material. I then pressed publish, on returning to the site all my additions had been removed. It appears that I logged in on the wrong name and password. As this was hours of work from several sources, I don't have a copy. Is there any way I can recover the material and re-post it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JCgarngad (talk • contribs) 19:40, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Which Wikipedia article is this for? RudolfRed (talk) 19:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello, . Given that you have asked this here, I am guessing that by "our site", you mean a Wikipedia article about something associated with you. Please understand that that is not your article: it is Wikipedia's article, and its contents are determined not by you, but by a consensus of Wikipedia editors, in accordance with Wikipedia's policies. We can't tell without knowing which article, but it is likely that your edit was reverted by another editor because they felt it was not concordant with Wikipedia's policies. (My guess would be that the material you added was either unsourced, or promotional, or both.
 * If my guess is right, you can recover the material you added by going to the article, picking "history", and looking at the particular revision that you created. The history should also tell you which editor reverted your edit, and what edit summary they gave. WP:COI will tell you how you can request changes to the article.
 * As for "wrong name and password": you should only ever log in to Wikipedia using your own personal account (you can use any username that is in according with WP:USERNAME). Shared accounts are forbidden, and you should not normally use multiple accounts (though there are certain specific circumstances where this is permitted). But there is no association between an article and an account: in general any account can edit any article. --ColinFine (talk) 20:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Please read the following policies and guidance notes: WP:OWN, WP:COI, and WP:PAID. --ColinFine (talk) 20:55, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I failed to find anything in this accounts history. He has only this edit, and not deleted ones (according to xtools). I've checked the edit filter and spam blacklist logs, there are no hits. The only thing I cant check is Special:Log/titleblacklist because that is admin-only. Maybe he was no logged in?. Victor Schmidt (talk) 15:02, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Possibly, . I took the comment about logging in with the wrong name and password as an indication that this user has been editing from a different account - hence my remarks about sharing accounts. --ColinFine (talk) 16:41, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Fascism
Definition of fascism is innaccurate. Racism is not "far-right" it is far-left. This kills the credibility of the entire site — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nickydafish80 (talk • contribs) 22:13, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I think this is under discussion at Village_pump_(policy) RudolfRed (talk) 22:44, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It has also been discussed to death at Talk:Fascism and by academia. If you read the discussions there, you'd see that the academic consensus is that it's far-right.  Wikipedia follows the academic consensus, not ironic propaganda by modern far-right politicians to smear centrists. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:49, 4 October 2019 (UTC)