Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Is there an automated tool that can scan an article's links and mark those necessary as dead?

Per title, thank you Darkwarriorblake (talk) 17:33, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I think you're looking for https://iabot.wmcloud.org/index.php?page=runbotsingle RoySmith (talk) 17:38, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

That's it, thank you Darkwarriorblake (talk) 17:44, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Presentation of the results of the 2nd phase of the ‘Hub Discovery’ research

We would like to invite you to the presentation meeting of the results of the Hub Discovery research, corresponding to phase 2 (survey to community members), on September 20th at 6 PM UTC (find here the time zone corresponding to your country). To participate, you need to register at the following Zoom link.

The presentation will be given by Guido Gamba, external consultant hired by Wikimedistas de Uruguay, and will be simultaneously interpreted into Spanish, English and Portuguese. The presentation will be recorded and later uploaded to the Meta page where we have documented all the aspects related to the research.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to anyone you feel would like to join in the conversation.

Best regards, Paula (WDU) (talk) 20:34, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@Paula (WDU), do you have a link to a Meta page with more information? There is no Zoom link in this message. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:30, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Greetings, @WhatamIdoing. Thank you for this message. I didn't realise the links were missing when I posted my message. Regards, --Paula (WDU) (talk) 14:09, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the links! WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

RfC on listing Bypass Paywalls Clean in Wikipedia:Find your source

There is a request for comment on listing Bypass Paywalls Clean (a browser extension that circumvents paywalls on news websites) in Wikipedia:Find your source § Newspaper articles. If you are interested, please participate at Wikipedia talk:Find your source § RfC: Bypass Paywalls Clean. — Newslinger talk 06:09, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Discussion about appropriateness of running a CentralNotice banner for Wiki Loves Onam

 You are invited to join the discussion at meta:CentralNotice/Request/Wiki Loves Onam 2024. Sdkb ^talk 18:55, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

2 000 000

The Russian Wikipedia now has 2,000,000 articles. Congratulate us) n:ru:Русская Википедия: теперь 2 000 000 статей, w:ru:Википедия:Форум/Новости#Есть_2_миллиона!, w:ru:Участник:Lesless/Пресс-релиз 2 000 000. Lesless (talk) 08:56, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

🎉 Remsense ‥ 论 09:09, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Great! Cremastra (talk) 22:57, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

That's very naive to think that many would congratulate us

~Fleur~ 14:46, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Congrats! _WADroughtOfVowels^P 17:57, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Links to Wikidata

Hi there. I see many new articles in the English Wikipedia which are not then properly linked to the corresponding Wikidata item. It's a pity, because there's relevant data in that other project, but also because that's they way to get links to other editions of Wikipedia and to other projects within Wikimedia. Would it be possible to get a list of pages in this Wikipedia with no links to Wikidata? Thanks in advance, Alavense (talk) 11:06, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Be aware that there is significant resistance to linking Wikidata in the English version of Wikipedia. Check the archives here and at the other village pumps for the discussions about that (there have been many). Blueboar (talk) 11:26, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, not for this type of linking, which is adding a link to an enwiki article on Wikidata, not the other way around. These can be found at Category:Articles without Wikidata item, currently 157 items. Fram (talk) 11:36, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Ah… yes… true. Linking to WP at Wikidata is fine. Sorry if I misunderstood the intent. Blueboar (talk) 12:24, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear, but that's what I was looking for. Thanks, Blueboar and Fram. Kind regards, Alavense (talk) 13:31, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Links are eventually auto-created. Consequently, one big problem is that Wikidata will have separate items for the same subject, as it auto-created an item for the English Wikipedia, without knowing that Wikidata already had an item for that subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I know, WhatamIdoing. That's why I like to link them myself and I also merge some items on Wikidata when needed. Thanks, Alavense (talk) 06:44, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Removal of user draft tag

The other day, I tagged a user's userspace draft using {{user draft}}. This was undone. Does anybody know if there is any policy or guideline on that? Not looking to start a thing, but since tagging puts drafts into maintenance-relevant categories, I thought I'd ask. Paradoctor (talk) 23:04, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't have an answer to the question posed, but I'd probably remove that template from a draft I was working on in my userspace if someone else had placed it there. It takes up two thirds of the screen on mobile and would be a pain to scroll past every time I wanted to preview. Folly Mox (talk) 23:37, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Suggest you contact the user in question and simply ASK why the tag was removed. Don’t be accusatory about it… just state that you were trying to be helpful when you added the tag, and that you are curious as to why they felt it wasn’t helpful. Blueboar (talk) 23:52, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

You're the one being accusatory here. All I did was to ask if there is relevant policy. I neither expressed nor implied a judgment about the user's action.

And thank you for Wikipediansplaining talk pages to me. Noobs like me really need that. Paradoctor (talk) 08:58, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

It was a suggestion with advice, not intended to be accusatory. My apologies if that wasn’t clear. Blueboar (talk) 12:43, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

It's a quick edit to the template for a parameter to compactify, preserving the main important feature which is categorization and tagging (as well as to alert wayward readers). I agree that the tool list is a bit much to have on userspace. [Edit: it's already coded, but very confusingly and undocumented: you have to set |help=no to remove the cruft. Oddly, if you set |newuser= or |help= to any flag, you remove the first instruction but not the second. Should run AWB to deprecate the newuser and noob parameters, and then document help.] SamuelRiv (talk) 08:30, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

undocumented Actually... template:user draft § Minimalist output ;) Paradoctor (talk) 09:22, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:User pages#Removal of comments, notices, and warnings which says it is OK to remove. The next section also states: "one should avoid substantially editing another's user and user talk pages". So best not to unexpectedly edit other people's sandboxes. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:39, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

"Removal of comments, notices, and warnings" is talking about talk pages, not userspace drafts. And a tag is not a substantial edit. 🤷 Paradoctor (talk) 13:36, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the guidance quoted can be equally applied to all subpages in userspace, not just usertalk pages. I also question the value of adding userspace drafts to :Category:Userspace drafts frommonth year (the only maintenance category added by the template; not sure why this matters enough to keep track of), but if it's that important then the category could always be added manually instead of through template transclusion.

I'd also say that putting an enormous maintenance message at the top of a user's draft does constitute a substantial edit, but I'm prepared to believe others feel differently. I think {{user draft}} is appropriate for stale drafts and userfied articles, but should probably be avoided for anything under reasonably active development (with the admission that, having not stalked the OP's contribs, I have no idea what the userspace draft tagged in the story is actually like). Folly Mox (talk) 15:36, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree with everything Folly Mox wrote. I would remove such a template from my userspace subpages/sandbox. Schazjmd (talk) 16:15, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Question- what is the purpose of the tag? Is there a need to place userspace drafts into maintenance categories? Blueboar (talk) 16:18, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I imagine that some editors use it as a kind of {{r with possibilities}} for the userspace. If you just go looking through user pages, you'll find a lot of test edits and non-article content (e.g., nearly all of mine). The cat would let you find promising candidates for the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

RfC about KeepLocal template

You are invited to join the discussion at Template_talk:Keep_local#RfC:_Limit_usage_of_this_template_to_files_which_are_fully_or_partly_own_work for your input. Thanks, —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 22:34, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Misuse of pages detailing energy use by countries

Academics funded by the oil industry are writing pages about the power consumption of each country. Instead of stating this power in watts which is the correct measurement of power, they are multiplying the numbers by calling one watt 8740 watt hours per year or 31.5million watt seconds (joules) per year. This inflation is done simply to make the numbers impossible to understand. For example a 3kW toaster would be described in one of these articles as either a 262 megawatt hours per year toaster or a 94.6 gigawatt seconds (giga joules or GJ) per year toaster. They use watt seconds for a country's total energy and watt hours for its electricity use so you cannot compare the two. For example the article for Germany says the total power use is 1,900 PJ. This is incorrect - it should say 1900 PJ per year. This means 1900 petajoules per year or 1900 x 10^15 watt seconds per year which is equivalent to 300GW which can easily be compared with other power levels. The electricity consumption is shown incorrectly as 508TWh and should be 508TWh per year or 508 x 10^12 watt hours per year. This equates to 58GW and now you can easily see the relationship between the whole energy use of 300GW and electricity use of 58GW. The oil industry wants to blur this distinction because they are trying to make out that all we need to consider is electricity and not worry about everything else. If 300GW and 58GW are clearly shown you can see straightaway that electricity is only a small part of the total energy use. They miss out the "per year" part of the power measurement because that further magnifies the difficulty for an ordinary viewer of understanding what the numbers mean. I would like to see this deliberate obfuscation of the power usage of each country terminated and the proper power measurement of watts used. This deliberate obfuscation goes on to my knowledge on the French Wikipedia and it is my belief it will be happening on every single language version of Wikipedia and every single article about the power usage by a country. I have not yet found any exceptions. This represents an serious abuse of Wikipedia and needs urgent attention. BrianAnalogue (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

You need to cite some specific instances of the editing behavior you're concerned about if you want other editors to share your concern. Remsense ‥ 论 23:02, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I gave as an example the article on Germany's power consumption which can simply be stated as 300GW in total with 58GW used for electricity (a GW is a normal unit for a large amount of power - it is 1000 MW or 1 million kW or 1 billion watts. The Wikipedia article does not use these simple figures - instead of saying it is 300GW it says it is 1,900 PJ which is incorrect. It should say 1900 PJ per year. Without the "per year" the number is meaningless. This is multiplying the 300GW, which is a large number, by 31.5 million times by calling 1 watt 31.5 million watt-seconds (joules) per year. Then 300GW becomes 1900 petajoules per year which is 1900 x 10^15 joules per year. This is a misuse of numbers and using the term "PJ" will be understood only by engineers who are used to using these numbers, and it is done specifically to make the numbers impossible to understand. They cannot be understood because they are inflated 31.5 million times, they are stated in watt-seconds instead of watt-seconds per year, and they are using the letters PJ that only a very few people in the world will understand. How much clearer can I make it? I had to use a calculator and my engineering knowledge to find out what these colossal numbers actually meant. I also knew that numbers like this were intended to mean "per year" even though it was not stated so as to make it impossible to understand what it means. I have found that this is being done for the power levels of every country I have looked and and I have found an example on the French Wikipedia using the exact same number. What it needs is for all articles about the power used by countries to state the power in GW only and no other units. BrianAnalogue (talk) 18:18, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

You had a response to your post at Talk:Energy_in_Germany#Description_of_various_amounts_of_energy_are_in_different_(and_incorrect)_units., you should continue that discussion. Schazjmd (talk) 19:19, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like the OP has two complaints:

• Articles such as Energy in Germany are not using the units that the OP believes are best/most familiar, and
• "Academics funded by the oil industry are writing pages".

WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:54, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Lifespan of a URL: report

Report: "Some URLs Are Immortal, Most Are Ephemeral".

Summary: most URLs have a median lifespan of 1 year.

-- GreenC 02:21, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Is this image full page width?

Hello! Can someone please view Mary Mary for me, and confirm that the lead image is absolutely massive, that it isn't just my browser glitching? -- Zanimum (talk) 22:49, 23 September 2024 (UTC)