Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 September 20

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September 20

In 1964 I flew with KLM from Amsterdam to Sydney, how long would the flight have been and how many stops?

Flight Amsterdam/Sydney 1964 103.254.135.162 (talk) 05:03, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The help desk is for questions about using Wikipedia. General knowledge questions can be asked at the Reference Desk WP:RDM RudolfRed (talk) 05:17, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Or use ChatGPT. Wouterhagens (talk) 08:16, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

ChatGPT is not a reliable source. Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:28, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

You are right, but for such a question by an anonymous user, ChatGPT gives a good enough answer, in my opinion, to warrant further investigation into more reliable details if the user wishes. Wouterhagens (talk) 18:04, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

ChatGPT and the Ref Desks are of about equal reliability, so the OP needn't really worry where he posts. SerialNumber54129 18:15, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Writing sections when sites to cite aren't available

This is bout writing the history section of a local church in my area. But the history is not available to cite it from a softcopy like a pdf or a website. Whats the best way to write that section? Is there any inline comments to be made so other editors know whats going on, or are there any tags to add too, to that section like unreferenced VihirLak007 (talk) 10:10, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Anything you write in an article must be verifiable from a published source, but that source does not have to be online. Hard copy sources are fine, as long as they are published, so (for example) a reader could obtain a copy through a major library.

The important parts of a citation are the bibliographic information: author, title, date, publisher, name of publication etc; even if the resource is available online, a link is usually a convenience for a reader, not a necessary part of the citation.

You can use templates such as {{cite book}} to format the citation: see Referencing for beginners. ColinFine (talk) 10:41, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@VihirLak007: If a book has been published by a "serious" publisher, even a small one, it will generally have an ISBN. So ensure you provide that in the citation. If the book doesn't have one, usually the book has been "self-published" or published by a "vanity press" and almost certainly is not acceptable as a source for Wikipedia articles, according to the project's standards for verifiablity. If this is the case the church itself is probably not something that qualifies for an article. Not every church on Earth meets these standards. If you have a personal connection to the church, you should not be writing an article about it, and if you do it will generally be deleted: please read the plain and simple COI guide. If you have other questions, please feel free to ask them here or on my talk page. Thank you and hope your day is going well. --Slowking Man (talk) 20:08, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

How to improve wiki page I created before Publishing?

 Courtesy link: Draft:Charlie Gray

Hi, can someone please check the page I created under name, Charlie gray? I edited it and I need someone to read it before I publish it. What can I do for the page to be accepted? I already deleted half of it. DialaSharief (talk) 15:18, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The best way to get feedback is to submit it, instead of asking for a pre-review review. 331dot (talk) 15:26, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

It was rejected and then I reedited it. I don't know how many submissions I'm allowed to make. DialaSharief (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

You can resubmit it as often as you like, within reason. But if you resubmit it whout citing any references that attest to his notability, you will be wasting everyone's time. You will need reliable independent (not based on what he or his employers have said) published sources with extensive discussion of him. Maproom (talk) 15:42, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, the usual guidelines of WP:COI and WP:BOSS need to be noted here. If you have some sort of stake in creating this article, it would need to be declared.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 16:01, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I've written and edited random pages. I read about this photographer, Charlie Gray from different sources and I liked his work in the Queen's Gambit series. He's one of the best photographers and I find it weird that no one has written anything about his work so I decided to create one. DialaSharief (talk) 16:18, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@DialaSharief: Please see my comment at Draft talk:Charlie Gray. -Arch dude (talk) 17:11, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Search help

Is there a pet scan or search query string that could help me find a list of Wikipedia articles or even userpages that have links to youtube music videos on them? The reason I ask is because I would like to find more pages similar to this one: User talk:MjolnirPants#Music. Thanks. Huggums^{537_voted! (sign🖋️|📞talk)} 15:24, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@Huggums537: Could you use PetScan? An external tool, lets you search by links, templates, categories etc, and is more versatile than the in-house search.Go to Templates & links > Links to > All of these pages, and enter your link. SerialNumber54129 15:36, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129, I tried it using both youtube.com and https://www.youtube.com/ formats, but neither yielded any results. I guess I'm doing the search wrong, or the pet scan doesn't allow searching for links from external sites. Huggums^{537_voted! (sign🖋️|📞talk)} 16:10, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, I got 294 links for "youtube.com", "Youtube.com" and "YouTube.com" (note upper/lower cases), and also under "list" at the top right, checking multiple namespaces. But to be honest, it still doesn't seem like a lot. Only <300 articles out of the millions we've got?! I think we must both be doing something wrong, to be honest. Sorry not to be more helpful. SerialNumber54129 16:22, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Primefac, sorry to bother you, but if you're around...? SerialNumber54129 16:23, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I get 232,000 from insource:"youtube.com" in ns0, and Template:YouTube claims 66,000 transclusions. Unsure of the degree of overlap. Folly Mox (talk) 17:46, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh right the question is about YouTube music videos specifically. I guess the numbers directly above are meaningless for that application 🫠 Folly Mox (talk) 17:48, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Special:LinkSearch. I am not sure any sort of search would be useful in finding specifically "links to music videos" because YouTube does not classify videos by their URL. The best you might be able to manage is a regex insource: search containing "youtube.com" and "music video" or similar. Primefac (talk) 00:31, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

:mw:Help:CirrusSearch § Regular expression searches warns strongly against bare regex searches, and recommends filtering (hastemplate:YouTube or hastemplate:"Cite AV media" might be helpful here), or just switching to string literals, which should be fine for this use case. Folly Mox (talk) 15:07, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

@Huggums537: There is unfortunately no way to, simply from looking through Wikipedia, 100% reliably distinguish links to "YT music videos" from "YT not-music videos", since a YT URL is just a randomly-generated lookup value (the thing after v=) and tells nothing about what the URL points to. You can try to guess by looking at various stuff like the title of the page containing the link. But you're going to need to write a bit of code (or find someone willing to do it for you) to do this processing.

I am kind of assuming this is for personal use rather than contributing to project content, in which case I strongly recommend that if you want to get intensive in this task you download a database dump and do this work "on your own time" and computing resources. (You only need the "current revisions" dump, not the full page histories.) Doing searches (especially more complicated ones) is not free; if you tax the Wikipedia servers excessively you actually could be temporarily blocked from accessing them altogether (at the network level, something much more severe than a "block" of your login account). WP:VPT is the place to go for seeking more assistance from people with "tech" expertise. --Slowking Man (talk) 20:45, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I have a hunch I can get the results I'm looking for using the pet scan tool, but I'm puzzled as to why I'm getting "0" results when SN is getting 294 and FM is getting 232,000 so much more than nothing at all should be showing up. Also, I managed to narrow my search down considerably to roughly 57000 hits by modifying it with -archive and -sandbox and limiting it to user pages only. However, I when I used the pet scan tool during my previous work with short descriptions I remember that it also had a feature to remove redirects from search results to narrow down the search even more in the negative space box I think it was so I'm in agreement with SN that the petscan tool might be more than versatile enough to do what I'm looking for without having to resort to coding a bot and all that, but I just can't seem to make it go... Huggums^{537_voted! (sign🖋️|📞talk)} 02:21, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

How can i see the status of my article

I pblished content. but it is not really published. I cant see the status of my published article Sreedevi R Krishna (talk) 16:27, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

It is here User:Sreedevi_R_Krishna/sandbox. Please read the advice at WP:AUTO RudolfRed (talk) 16:31, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island is in the news again. I just checked the main article, a disambiguation page, and noticed that there is not even a stub for the island itself, Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania), just the eponymous former station there. Looking at the Disambiguation Talk page, I noticed that there are a few other Three Mile Islands in the US, also without articles. Is there a place I could request a few geographical stubs to be written? Thanks! 100.19.66.49 (talk) 17:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

You could make requests at Wikipedia:Requested articles, but you might want to keep your expectations low and keep in mind that your best option is probably to write the articles yourself, assuming you can find reliable sources that discuss the subjects for which you'd like articles to be created. Hope this helps! DonIago (talk) 20:30, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Citing lore and content of a game.

Hello, I was wondering if there was a specific format for citing lore inside of a game. I see how they did it in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and was wondering if that's acceptable or should I use a different format? I searched in the MOS (albeit not very deeply.) and didn't find anything. SomeoneOK (talk) 18:00, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@SomeoneOK: That's a matter of editorial judgement, and you are an editor. However, you might be able to get some worthwhile opinions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games. (This is somewhat generic advice. When you have questions about consistency among articles if a particular type, then see if there is a wikiproject that covers them and ask there. The appropriate wikiproject might be listed on your article's talk page.) -Arch dude (talk) 22:01, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Active/Inactive users

Most wikiprojects have very big lists of users, but as time passes many of them leave Wikipedia for one reason or another. Is there a bot that can help to manage those lists, keeping the active users and moving inactive users (users who have not edited in, say, the last 6 months) to another section or subpage? Cambalachero (talk) 19:34, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@Cambalachero: This has been done from time to time, for projects whose members request it. Ask at WP:BOTREQ. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:51, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

There is a simple algorithm. Every time an editor from the list edited somewhere its entry would be moved to the top of the list. Another way would be transcluding their Special:Contributions pages into a sortable table (only the last one, but include the time) and sorting that table by time column. The table could additionally contain an entry (manually inserted) "inactive since" cut-off time, formatted like a caption. If the cut-off time is managed correctly that would sort into the appropriate place. La Zy-Hart (talk) 22:39, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

bitcoin

what is bitcoin 2001:48F8:4022:13E4:0:0:0:BDA9 (talk) 21:53, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

See Bitcoin. -Arch dude (talk) 21:55, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Misinformation

The article posted on here (January 6 United States Capitol attack) about the capital incident on January 6th 2021 needs to be re-evaluated. The US Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight released documents today that show a completely different narrative than the article portrays. Here is the link to their press release on the incident (https://cha.house.gov/press-releases?id=EA54DB89-3762-408A-8D4E-5CE7CA795322). Please reach out the the author(s) and have the necessary corrections made. 136.38.45.46 (talk) 23:01, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

That's not how things work here. We don't chase down people for corrections. The article about the riot will not say what House Republicans want it to say, it will say what independent reliable sources say. You are certainly free to believe the House Republicans if you choose. If you have independent sources that summarize the contents of the documents issued by the House Republicans, please offer them on the article talk page. Be advised that editing abiut American politics has its own special rules, see your user talk page. 331dot (talk) 23:20, 20 September 2024 (UTC)