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    January 30

    Vector legacy suddenly stopped working. . .

    All of a sudden this evening, my interface looks like the new version of Vector, which I can't stand. In preferences the skin is still set to Vector legacy, and when I click preview it looks like it should, but as soon as I click any link it goes back to the new version. What happened? Is there a way to fix it? I am using Chrome on a Chromebook, if that is relevant. Thanks. blameless 02:23, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    . . . and now it is just as suddenly fixed. I withdraw my question--I guess someone was just fooling with the interface. blameless 02:25, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Withdrawing An Edit Request

    I tried contributing to an article but after so many tries the request was still not accepted so i gave as all the sources were denied and it wasn't not possible for me continue this alone. So i tried withdrawing my edit request but even after fair explanation and reasons my edit requests are being reactivated even though I don't want them to remain active or be merged into the article. Is there way for me delete/remove/withdraw my edit request as I don't want to continue working on it. 4rju9 (talk) 08:54, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    If no one has responded to you at all, you may simply edit the talk page to remove your request. 331dot (talk) 09:01, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    And if it has been responded to: reply to your original request saying that and add |answered=yes to the edit request template at the top of the section. Ultraodan (talk) 10:05, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @331dot
    @Ultraodan
    Yes it is responded saying that my sources are invalid which should not be the case as they were all from old and known books, and i tried to get more details regarding the rejection of the source but no one replied it's been so many days but no response from any of the editor regarding the issue.
    Then i tried to take my edit request back thinking that isn't no use contributing to rhe article. And i removed my edit request but each time i remove my edit request a new editor comes and revert it back. Each time i give explanation and reasons behind why i want to withdraw it. They don't reply and revert it back and my questions regarding the denial of sources is still not answered.
    What can i do in this situation. I just want to withdraw my edit request or archive it, but they keep it active
    Can you guide me on this? 4rju9 (talk) 16:18, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You should update the 'answered' parameter as Ultraodan mentioned. That will establish it as being resolved. Once other editors have responded to your request, you should no longer attempt to delete it entirely. Hope this helps! DonIago (talk) 17:18, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, so there's no way for me to remove it now or withdraw it, Right? Is it possible to move it to archive? 4rju9 (talk) 17:35, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Just asking, in Wikipedia:Edit requests there are no perticular rules about withdrawing or deleting the edit request by its original creator and the changes that are rejected from being merged into the article will have no effect on the original article or to the talk page as they don't depend on them nor they depend on that particular edit request. So can't the creator remove it from the list of active edit requests with a proper reason/explanation. 4rju9 (talk) 17:44, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @4rju9, there are no active edit requests at Talk:Gangwar (surname), they've all been tagged as answered. Schazjmd (talk) 17:54, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Schazjmd
    Yes the changes are rejected, i want to remove it, is it not possible? Can i not remove my edit request as removing it entirely will have no effect on the article or it's talk pagem 4rju9 (talk) 18:14, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @4rju9, an administrator already explained this on your talk page. Schazjmd (talk) 18:27, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As have I, on my own talk page. They seem completely stumped by the most simple explanation I've given them, and I've asked them to stop posting on my talk page as it's clearly not being taken on board. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 07:03, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    well i understand and thanks to all the editors for helping in this. i got the point that why it is prohibited to simply remove an edit request that is already answered although this rule does not make any sense in my case but if wikipedia policy does not allow it i will respect its policy.
    @Jéské Couriano Don't bother new editors who come to contribute you're just making it worse for the new comers to come and contribute to the wikpedia articles editors like you do everything except contributing to an article that can be improved or support someone who is trying his best to contribute. simply means you won't contribute nor let anyone else contribute.
    stay away from all the editors because you're not helping them in any way nor they get to learn anything from you cuz you only criticize.
    in your talk and other talk pages what all you and other editors did was pointless argument. that is why i had to come to Help Desk. 4rju9 (talk) 11:40, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    "LTA 1311"

    After posting a warning on a user's talk page, the edit filter showed my name and the aforementioned edit. There was no ID, just "LTA 1311" at the end. What does that mean? (3OpenEyes' communication receptacle) | (PS: Have a good day) (acer was here) 18:02, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Can you please post a link to either the user or the article? LTA typically refers to a long term abuse account. However I am confused by a few of your warning notices including: here and here. What pages were edited by these users and especially the second one, why did you give a final warning to them? TiggerJay (talk) 18:20, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Huh. It seems I did. I'll go ahead and revert the second one back to level 1.
    I can't seem to find a user warning template for tripping the edit filter, which had disallowed the edit but not warned the user, so I used the generic templates.
    My apologies for the lack of clarity. (3OpenEyes' communication receptacle) | (PS: Have a good day) (acer was here) 18:30, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @3OpenEyes: Users shouldn't be warned at all for edits which were stopped by an edit filter. The filter shows a warning when the edit is stopped. Your edit matched the conditions in a filter for a long-term abuser (LTA) who makes bad warnings and uses multiple accounts. The filter is non-public to prevent the abuser from seeing the conditions and work around them. You risk being blocked by somebody inspecting logs for the LTA filter so immediately stop giving warnings to users without saved edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:43, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Alright. I will make sure to remember that. Thank you, and I'm sorry for my mistakes. (3OpenEyes' communication receptacle) | (PS: Have a good day) (acer was here) 18:44, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Problem

    Hello, I'm editing the "Toca Boca" website and I'm trying to put a plain row header with the title games. I add "Games" and the header, and the "Games" section stays there, but the header, instead of staying below, it is in the WHOLE bottom of the page! What can I do? Camilolucena (talk) 22:10, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Camilolucena you are using {{Wikitable}} and that needs "|}" at the bottom, so I added that. I then reverted myself as it needs more work, for example the name column does not look right. TSventon (talk) 22:38, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Camilolucena: {{Wikitable}} is an irrelevant link but you do have to close the table with |}. It opens with {| and nearly all features with an open have a symmetric-looking close. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:44, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @PrimeHunter: I don't want to give out incorrect information in future, do you know the correct template link? TSventon (talk) 11:47, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @TSventon It's not actually a template. You can point new editors to H:TABLE and MOS:TABLE. Ultraodan (talk) 12:16, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) @TSventon: Tables and templates are different features. There was no template involved in [1] so I see no reason to give a template link. This was about table syntax. Using the wikitable class merely adds some styling with no effect on the syntax so that also seems irrelevant. You could add "See more at Help:Basic table markup" after giving the |} fix but the fix was probably all they needed. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:32, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    January 31

    About 80% of the text of the article 4-Hydroxy-1-methyl-4-(4-methylphenyl)-3-piperidyl 4-methylphenyl ketone is taken from a copyrighted journal article. The source is cited and the text is in quotes, but this still seems to constitute a copyright violation as described at Wikipedia:Copying text from other sources. I'm not sure what to do about it though. Can someone knowledgeable have a look? Marbletan (talk) 16:46, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The quoted text was added by User:DYLLMARTIN99 in 2018, and that was the only edit done by this account. It doesn't really count as vandalism, and holding a discussion on that account's talk page might not be productive. I think the only course of action that can be taken for now is removing most of the quotes and replacing them with paraphrase. Tutwakhamoe (talk) 19:11, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    IP block shows a different address

    When I’m trying to edit a page, I see a colocation web host block for 113.23.0.0/17. Since I’m actually on a residential connection (hotel Wi-Fi in Vietnam), I wanted to request an unblock, so I went to check my IP and got 58.186.*.*, which is not in the blocked range. How do I proceed here? Notpushkin (talk) 16:51, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Notpushkin: Are you using a VPN or other anonymising service, even if unwittingly? Those would cause your IP to show up differently to Wikipedia's servers (as your traffic gets routed thru their servers and thus inherits their IP), and would be likely to be blocked on discovery. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 16:55, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Nope. I did have Cloudflare WARP enabled before, but I was getting a different error, so I disabled it. (I think 113.23.0.0/17 is not a Cloudflare network, in any case) Notpushkin (talk) 17:44, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    In some countries, I've seen them route traffic differently, so while when you go to a check-my-ip sort of website, you might get one result, while going to a different website its routed through a different proxy/VPN/relay. Also sometimes there are other technical reasons which are confidential for how the system detects IP addresses to prevent abuse that are not usually show on simple IP address checking websites, but are available within other technical data. Although with that being said, clearly you were able to post here, so were you trying to edit without being logged in? TiggerJay (talk) 17:41, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I’ve checked my IP on the Wikipedia:Get_my_IP_address page, which gets the IP from the Wikipedia API directly (see Get-my-ip.js). So the IP should be the same as when I open an edit page. Maybe it’s some local ISP shenanigans? I’ve just rechecked and I can’t see the block anymore, so it’s either that or a stale cache somewhere. Notpushkin (talk) 17:52, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    February 1

    Closed captioning

    I put English captions on South Sudan Oyee! (National anthem of South Sudan) and Allahu Akbar (National anthem of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya). How long does it take for the changes to apply to all of Wikipedia? Datawikiperson (talk) 17:25, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    By "all of Wikipedia", do you mean all other languages of Wikipedia? Edits on English Wikipedia do not affect the contents on other Wikipedia projects. Tutwakhamoe (talk) 17:38, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the question is about these captions on Commons, which is where the edit adding them is. The page for the sound file itself doesn't seem to mention their existence at present, so maybe there's a missing step. (I'm not at all familiar with the process for this.) Musiconeologist (talk) 20:30, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Datawikiperson: I don't think there is supposed to be a delay but I don't know whether all Wikipedia languages will display English captions to all users. Please link a page where you are missing the captions. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    In this page: South Sudan Oyee! Datawikiperson (talk) 06:05, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    And here: List of national anthems Datawikiperson (talk) 06:08, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Is there a way to mark an image as a poor choice for a thumbnail?

    I came across this link to an article in a Facebook comment, and it seems to me that the included thumbnail image is suboptimal, to say the least. Surely, this photo of Dr. Tomoko Ohta belongs in the article, but I don't think it does a very good job of representing the article. Neither of the two images in the article are actually very well suited to the job, so I would think it would be better to have no thumbnail at all. (In the Facebook context, such an article would have the Wikipedia logo as its "thumbnail".) It seems that the page preview does not use either image, but only because neither is in the first section of the article.

    A link to the "Junk DNA" article, as it appears in a Facebook comment, including a seemingly inappropriate thumbnail image.

    It seems like there should be some way to mark images as being poor representations of the articles they appear in, so such images will not be used in that way (on Wikipedia or on other sites). Obviously, Facebook can do whatever they want, but I imagine they'd find such a notation useful, as the links appearing on their own site would look a lot better. Does something like that exist?

    - Dπ (talk) 22:12, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The function that you described seem too niche, and I highly doubt such function exist. A better solution might be to add another image explaining Junk DNA in some place before the image of Dr. Ohta. If no suitable image exist, editors with relevant profession can also create a simple visualization or graph and upload it to Wikimedia Commons to be used for this article, assuming that they are willing to go through the effort. Tutwakhamoe (talk) 23:02, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    File:Gene with introns and exons.jpg (according to its caption in Commons) shows areas of Junk DNA, though they are not labelled as such; a caption would be needed to identify them for the reader. -- Verbarson  talkedits 20:02, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I made my best attempt at putting a more-relevant image higher up in this article. Please feel free to edit the caption or image but we can see if this works for this specific instance. Jessamyn (my talk page) 21:24, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We do have mw:Extension:PageImages installed (see also WP:EIS#Class), so you can specify that it's an "image you want to exclude". TBH, I don't know what happens if you do that for every image on a page, nor whether any of this works on Facebook. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:21, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    February 2

    ChatGPT responses

    What is the proper course of action to take if you are bringing an issue up with an user about their edits and you suspect that they are using ChatGPT (or similar) to write their responses to you? (Not on ENWP. Just posting this here because it's the most likely place to get a response) Trade (talk) 00:05, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    "Not on ENWP": so, Trade, you're asking about how to behave on some unspecified website (but one that isn't en:WP)? When posting your question, you were shown a template that reads "This page is only for questions about using Wikipedia". In this context, this is shorthand for "This page is only for questions about using English-language (and not 'Simple English') Wikipedia". -- Hoary (talk) 02:26, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm certain we already have our answer. 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 13:57, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Trade: Swot up on that website's dispute resolution processes. You coming here to ask is like going into a pizza parlour to lodge a formal complaint about a car dealership down the road. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 07:01, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Previously, I wrote to request the coding for an inter-language link, i.e. to produce a broken link in an English article to a page that does not exist on the English server, but does exist in a foreign language Wikipedia server, which provides a superscript link to that foreign language article's page. Thank you for the help you all previously gave me. I now need to also know the coding for Inter-language links for the Italian and Spanish servers, and a URL to the help pages for those aforementioned inter-language links on those two language servers (Italian and Spanish). Can you assist me? Thanks in advance for your efforts. SMargan (talk) 03:20, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    SMargan I have checked and believe that is not possible. I will give links as urls as requested.
    TSventon (talk) 03:45, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you once again! You guys have been a great help. ... especially the page with a list of the other language's "Inter-language Link" articles. ;) SMargan (talk) 06:05, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    coauthors parameter

    What happened to the "coauthors" parameter in "cite book"? what parameter to use to add a coauthors now? Thanks VihirLak007hmu!/duh. 17:03, 2 February 2025 (UTC

    @VihirLak007: See the {{cite book}} documentation. For multiple authors, use first1= and last1=, then first2= and last2= and so on. -Arch dude (talk) 17:14, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    To answer the first question, |coauthors= was deprecated over a decade ago, and support removed for the parameter in 2017. Folly Mox (talk) 17:59, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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