Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 April 17

Help desk
< April 16 << Mar | April | May >> April 18 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.


April 17

edit

Derogatory publication about indian president

edit

Sir please check the page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_India It is showing porn images on this page.it is disrespectful for every indian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.189.146.225 (talk) 04:11, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any such images now, nor do any edits adding or removing them appear in the page history; probably it was caused by vandalism to a template used on the page, which has now been reverted. Eman235/talk 04:19, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Edit removed by someone

edit

Hi few days ago I have edited this page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_Askari). In Writing style section I was add this line "He emerged as a writer in the mid-1990s and has written seven books and numerous articles/essays which have been published at home and abroad" with this reference "https://cafedissensusblog.com/2019/03/31/short-story-the-virgin-whore/"

But now I see its removed by someone. Can I know why its removed?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mehedi-iu (talkcontribs) 09:31, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you click on the "View history" tab for the article you will see that the reversion was in this edit, where the edit summary explained the reason for the reversion. --David Biddulph (talk) 09:37, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Emergency Ambulance Numbers should include Country in Title

edit

I was unable to edit the TITLE of the 112 Emergency Number wiki article. As many of you know, social media is rampant with misinformation. I edited the first sentence to include the EU emergency link and added (911 in the USA) to be clear. We have so many young globetrotters that it should be clear this not the Emergency number for the USA and vice versa. Currently American social media is rampant with the misinformation to dial 112 instead of 911. It would be a minor adjustment to to the Title if someone knows how to do it. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kopesedic (talkcontribs) 15:54, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Kopesedic: The fact that some stuff written on the internet is false does not mean we should bend over to correct it. It would be wholly inappropriate to "change the title" of our article 112 (emergency telephone number) to refer to the correct US number, because the current title is a perfectly fine description of the topic of the article.
Article text is another matter. I am on the fence about whether your recent edit is wise with regards to content. I am however perfectly sure that (1) it should not include an external link in the body (use a reference instead) and (2) it should not have been marked minor (minor edits are not those that are small in size, but those that do not change the meaning of the content).
I will also note that, as the article states, some US carriers (but not all) redirect 112 calls to 911. Depending on the exact phrasing of the "disinformation" you saw on social media, it might have been true! TigraanClick here to contact me 16:32, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Is it appropriate to include complete computer code implementations in a Wikipedia page?

edit

The page on Peirce's_criterion, as at 2019-04-17, includes two complete and apparently original (unreferenced) code implementations of the criterion.

Useful as they might be, this does not seem at all usual for Wikipedia, which is not a code repository.

I have been unable to locate guidance on including full implementations in computer code in Wikipedia. Is there Wikipedia policy on this, and if so could someone please point me to it so I can advise the page authors or take action myself?

NB: Additional comment on the talk page for that article notes correctly that the criterion itself is not stated other than in the code implementations, which is a separate but obviously important omission to be addressed separately. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slrellison (talkcontribs) 15:57, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Guidance is at WP:CODE. Basically, code is OK when it serves to give out the algorithm, but pseudocode is preferred if not too clunky; however, Wikipedia is not to be used as a Github for common algorithms.
In your particular case, I do believe the code should be scrapped, but it should be replaced by something, probably pseudocode. Our article Dijkstra's algorithm is a good example for algorithm presentation via words then pseudocode. TigraanClick here to contact me 16:22, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Donell Hello there is a problem with the Wikipedia page belonging to Neil Donell as his real birthdate is May 23, 1956 - which will make him 63 on May 2019. He definitely wasn't born in 1962 as it is written. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.117.5.22 (talk) 18:47, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, IP user. Since that birthdate is not cited to a reliable source (or any source) anybody - including you - may remove it from the article if you think it is wrong (be sure to leave an Edit summary explaining why, so that somebody won't think you're vandalising the article). You can substitute the right date if you have a reliable published source for the information, but please don't replace one piece of unsourced information with another.
In fact, as the notices at the top of the article point out, Neil Donell is woefully under-sourced. Citation to some sources independent of Donell are necessary to demonstrate that he meets Wikipedia's requirements for notability, or the article is liable to get deleted. (Neither of the two sources currently cited is independent of him). --ColinFine (talk) 20:13, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PAGE WRITING

edit

Where can i get the option of "write page" when i use wikipedia in mobile? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AaliShan Ayub (talkcontribs) 20:00, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, AaliShan Ayub. I'm not sure what you mean by "write page". I'm guessing that you mean "create a new encyclopaedia article". If that is what you mean, please understand that while anybody is welcome to edit Wikipedia, writing a new article which gets accepted is one of the hardest tasks in editing Wikipedia, and I always advise people to spend at least a few weeks working on improvements to existing articles and learning how Wikipedia works, before they try it. The guide to creating a new article is at Your first article. I'm afraid I have hardly ever edited on a mobile, so I can't give you advice specifically on that; but I know that othe users do so successfully. --ColinFine (talk) 20:21, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicated content

edit

Both List of Masters of the Universe characters and List of She-Ra: Princess of Power and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power characters contain a section about the Evil Horde, with pretty much identical content. What would be the best place to discuss this? Both pages are listed in several WikiProjects, but I'm not sure which of them to raise the issue at. Many of them seem pretty much inactive. Or should I just go ahead and split off the section about the Evil Horde into a separate article myself? JIP | Talk 20:34, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mass grammar corrections

edit

A few days ago, I commented on the the WikiProject College Basketball page that the NCAA (the National Collegiate Athletic Association) should be preceded by An, not A. I didn't receive much response there (although it doesn't look like anyone is against it), and I was wondering what the best way to go about changing the 835 articles or so to use the correct form would be. I don't know enough about bots to know if one is feasible; alternatively, is there anything against me creating a secondary account and using WP:AWB/WP:JWB for mass corrections (especially in the case I look into correcting other, similar mistakes)? LittlePuppers (talk) 22:09, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, why would you use a secondary account for that? Using your current one should be fine. Eman235/talk 12:19, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eman235: Yeah, I think that would work too, but I'm pretty sure I've seen a few places (not sure where now) that recommend creating a secondary account if you're planning on making large amounts of AWB-type edits (and doing so might make everything a bit easier for me to keep track of). LittlePuppers (talk) 16:24, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
While far from an AWB expert, I would've guessed that "large amounts" means tens of thousands or at least many thousands not 835. I don't see the need for a secondary account for this modest task. I'd say go for it, but remember that you are responsible for your edits so take care, don't just let it run automatically. For example, I just did a quick glance and see a number of cases where "A NCAA" exists, but in a filename. Correcting the filename could create problems. I presume you meant to only make changes in the article space, but if you accidentally modified filenames could be an issue.--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:02, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Sphilbrick: It's not a huge number, but I'm also considering getting into AWB further - a cursory search shows that there are a lot of other similar issues elsewhere - there are a few hundred each occurrences of "a NFL," "an one(-)," "a MBA," and numerous others used a few dozen or couple hundred times; "an historic" occurs nearly 8,000 times (upper 50,000s for a), but it looks like both are widely used in that case and it may be acceptable (words beginning with h have a bit more variation in pronunciation), and that's not something I'd change without a bit of prior discussion. LittlePuppers (talk)
Yeah, those are bigger numbers. FYI, on occasion I search for "a retired" or "an former", but I do those searches manually, partly because there is usually only a couple dozen each time but also because there are a couple people whose last name is "An" so there are some false positives. I thought about whether there could be false positive with "an NCAA" and nothing came to mind but just be aware of the possibility.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:31, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I'll make sure to manually check all of them for false positives and other problems. Thanks for the feedback. Assuming I don't run into anything else, I'll see what I can do tonight. LittlePuppers (talk) 00:59, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]