Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 March 17

__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ = March 17 =

Donation question
I need to cancel my monthly donation. How do I contact people about that? There's nothing on the site that comes close. 49.199.64.157 (talk) 01:25, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Hello. The Wikimedia Foundation collects financial donations and Wikipedia editors have no involvement with that. This Wikimedia Foundation page explains what you need to do. Cullen328 (talk) 01:39, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Tool for links in Table?
Happy St. Patrick's Day to you, I have a few thousand table fields (various tables to do with schools in Australia) to check for/add/verify links. Are there any tools to help? Wakelamp d&#91;@-@&#93;b (talk) 01:57, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Redirection
When i go to a specific Wikipedia page, i automatically redirected to another page. How to fix and disable this? We are trying to create a page for our organization, but malicious actions by other members have caused the redirect. How to remove this? Here is my link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordium but it redirects me to other page on wikipedia. Pablozsc (talk) 05:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The redirect of Concordium to Alcott House is valid for the connected subjects concerned – what you are trying to do is to usurp the redirect page to write about a completely different 'Concordium', which amongst other things would cause technical difficulties and confusion.
 * What you should do instead is to create a Draft about your 'Concordium', and submit it for assessment via the standard Articles for creation process. When this is accepted by a reviewer, they will carry out the necessary work of avoiding confusion between the two 'Concordiums', probably but not necessarily by creating a Disambiguation page for 'Concordium' and renaming one or both articles (Perhaps to 'Concordium (Victorian organisation)' and 'Concordium (blockchain)' or something along those lines).
 * If you continue to try to manipulate and misuse Wikipedia's established procedures, successful creation of your subject's article will be made more difficult, even assuming the subject is demonstrated to be WP:Notable.
 * To make an analogy, you are trying to take a shortcut by driving the wrong way on a one-way street: you will be stopped and ticketed. Instead, follow the more circuitous but approved road system. Hope this helps. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.186.221 (talk) 06:15, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Also please assume good faith and do not accuse other editors of being malicious without providing supporting evidence. We are here to collaborate, not compete. Shantavira|feed me 09:40, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * You call it "our organization", so perhaps you need to read WP:PAID and WP:COI. When you say "we", please also bear in mind that usernames are personal and should not be shared.  Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:49, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * You should probably read WP:BOSS as well. ColinFine (talk) 10:54, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Use of data in Research Project
Dear wikipedia team,

As part of a research project, I intend to submit in August, I would like to analyse / classify buildings worldwide according to their main materials (structure/walls) and age. I wonder if you have a way to share all profiles you have on buildings in one single dataset, that we can then structure geographically and in year of construction, and if no longer exists, also year of demolition. The outcome of the work would be shared with you and your community. Best regards,

Ana Pereira Roders 2001:1C00:1522:8C00:ADB6:AD02:2E76:C7CF (talk) 07:44, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Ana: you might find Category:Buildings_and_structures a useful starting place. (We have what we call "articles", we don't call them "profiles".) Maproom (talk) 09:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you @Maproom. I will get there in few weeks with all wikipedia jargon. :) APereiraRoders (talk) 15:51, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * It's possible that Wikidata might meet your needs better, though I don't know how to query it in the way that you probably need. But if you start with D:Q41176 (building) and D:P:P186 (property: "made of") you might find something useful (though I rather doubt that many entries for individual buildings have been assigned a value for that property). ColinFine (talk) 11:00, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * @ColinFine Perhaps VPT could assist with how to do such a database query. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:04, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * And d:WD:RAQ is the place to ask for help with Wikidata queries. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:09, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you @ColinFine, @Dodger67 and @Pigsonthewing. I will check all these options. APereiraRoders (talk) 15:55, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


 * A fairly quick query will tell you how many building objects are in the Wikidata database. Not all such objects have articles in the English Wikipedia, and sadly, there may be building articles in the English Wikipedia that do not have Wikidata "building" objects. Another quick query will tell you how many "building" objects have the "made of" attribute: prepare to be disappointed. If you proceed with this, and you do want to share your results with us, then please do this by updating the Wikidata database, adding "building" objects and adding "made of" attributes. By the time you learn enough about Wikidata for it to be useful to you (not very long), you will also have learned enough to be able to do this. -Arch dude (talk) 15:08, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you @Arch dude. I will give it a try, and indeed if our research can help make the dataset on buildings more structured, I would gladly return back to wikipedia whatever we create. Now, for the research proposal, I was just checking and testing if the dataset could be used. Recently, I created a xls of "List of oldest continuously inhabited cities" out of the wikipedia page and is now fit for spatiotemporal analysis. Not sure it is useful for others, but if it is, I could share it via Wikidata. Will check that too. Thank you again. APereiraRoders (talk) 16:03, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I am at best a casual user of Wikidata, and I must re-learn how to do a query each time. I just took a look (browsing, not a formal query) at Taj Mahal as an example. It has a Wikidata item, with a "made from material" property of "marble". It has an "instance of" property of "mausoleum" which is a sub-sub-sub instance of "building". By past experience, it would take me maybe two hours to re-learn how to ask for all buildings (including all the sub...instances) That have a "made from material" property. However, after re-learning, I would be able to do related queries quite quickly. I suspect you will learn more quickly since you are currently messing around with databases. Ther are tutorial links on the Wikidata main page. -Arch dude (talk) 17:03, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Table coding
I'm aware that swapping  for   in a line such as   in a wikitable removes the background colour of the cell, but is there a technical difference under the hood between the two? Skimming Help:Table and MOS:DTT, I was unable to find an answer to what makes  preferable before. It'd certainly make my life easier if it turns out I could change  to simply   to maintain screen reader accessibility and make the cell background like the rest of the data in the table, without breaking anything. — AFC Vixen 🦊 10:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The difference is that baked into the HTML spec as the difference between a "th" (Table header cell) and "td" (table data cell). These are distinguished in HTML in order to express the logical and functional distinction, but also to allow them to be styled differently. Mediawiki's table system builds on this distinction. See Help:Tables. ColinFine (talk) 11:04, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the concise explanation. So,  should theoretically still do its job, even if the cell is marked as a "td" with  ? — AFC Vixen 🦊 11:09, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * @AFC Vixen: No. As @ColinFine has suggested, the underlying HTML is different. ! generates HTML's HTML_element element, which signifies to readers (whether human, assistance, or automated) that the cell is a header cell whose contents are information about the adjacent column or row; results in a cell whose contents are data. scope= is used to indicate which adjacent data cells the header cell is for (those in its row, or those in its column). Using scope= on a data cell is meaningless.
 * https://developer.mozilla.org/ has a description if you're interested. Bazza 7 (talk) 12:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay. So for now,  is the only way I can make it at least look like the rest of the data cells without breaking anything? — AFC Vixen 🦊 01:12, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
 * @AFC Vixen: Yes, although I'm not sure why you'd want to do that. Removing cues for readers about whether a cell is a header or data is a strange (and possibly unhelpful) thing to do. Bazza 7 (talk) 10:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
 * It makes little sense to me to put data, such as a sport team's name or a year, in a background colour distinct from other points of data when it's data all the same. — AFC Vixen 🦊 10:29, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

An example of what I mean. — AFC Vixen 🦊 10:40, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Cluebot not working?
Posted Cluebot here to archive the talk page. Not sure if it's working. It did work in the past. Ominae (talk) 13:23, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Cluebot took a while to work but it has now archived the page. Perhaps it had a temporary problem. Johnuniq (talk) 09:35, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Grammar questions
Re. "Paul Martin (illustrator)." Three Qs. They are (as currently written): 1. "Big retailers such as Sears [...] were getting special contracts." 2. His Gude office was first located at 935 Broadway, 1912–13[59] ... and then at 220 West 42nd (Candler Bldg. in Times Square), 1913–19. 3. This was also a more practical process, due to children's natural tendency to be active and impatient. He interacted with them from behind the camera, in order to obtain the desired facial expression.

1. The original source reads: Big retailers such as Sears, Montgomery Ward, Standard Oil, Western Auto Supply, and PEP Boys were getting special contracts. I put the ellipsis in brackets because it reads awkward w/o them, like it's a continuous sentence. 2. Is it okay to use the ellipsis to break up a long sentence? I think so, as long as it is rarely done. 3. Should the commas be deleted or not? Thanks. PS: I recently wrote the article American Junior Red Cross. The heading "Closing" is just my precision generalities based on reading many diff. sources; hence, a solid reference is not really possible. JimPercy (talk) 16:52, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * , my own personal opinions follow. 1. Seems good; though I wouldn't have bothered with the [].  2. Seems good.  3. I wouldn't abbreviate that, as doing so removes the context and feels a bit misleading. Maproom (talk) 20:50, 17 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'll remove those brackets. What is meant by "I wouldn't abbreviate that." I think including the entire sentence, "Big retailers such as Sears, Montgomery War, Standard Oil," etc., is too wordy for a reference. (The other sentences are in the article's body.) Besides, someone can always click on the link in that ref. and read the entirety. Also, Sears was by far the biggest retailer in that group back then. Thanks. JimPercy (talk) 22:01, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * If the refernce is readily available, what is the point in including the quote in the first place? ColinFine (talk) 22:04, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Because that's the exact sentence that backs up a statement made in the article. I realize it's not necessary though. JimPercy (talk) 22:36, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * IMHO, If it is worth including, then it is worth including entire, not abbreviated. ColinFine (talk) 22:52, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, I included the entire sentence, even though the "Big retailers" probably meant Sears, M. Ward, and the rest 5%. JimPercy (talk) 00:10, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

How to help new editor who isn't listening
Hi everyone, what are the right steps to prevent a new editor from making disruptive edits? After reviewing WP:DISRUPTIVE, it looks like I should go to ANI or Dispute Resolution but I'm not sure if that's too extreme. I believe that I've already given them enough pointers and it feels like they're WP:NOTGETTINGIT. I'm also not sure if I can keep reverting their edits as I think that would put me in violation of the three revert rule. Any pointers on what to do from more experienced editors? BaduFerreira (talk) 22:49, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I've prevented the editor in question from editing articles. -- Hoary (talk) 06:18, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you Hoary. BaduFerreira (talk) 12:17, 18 March 2024 (UTC)