Help desk
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January 25

Deactivated account error - I'm still here!

Why am I suddenly being told my page doesn't exist? It's EXISTED for MANY YEARS! Of course, I do NOT know whatinthebloody hell this is all about. I would think, considering that I have donated in the past, that my account would NOT be arbitrarily deactivated with no clear explanation (donations were under my name, John Hjort). Bilsebub (talk) 04:36, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

@Bilsebub can you be more specific about which page you are talking about? It looks like you’ve had that account since 2011 and first edited in 2012 and during that time have edited multiple pages but only created one page which was your user page which has alway been blank. There is no history indicating that it was deleted. Perhaps you have also used another account beside this one? But generally as long as you were not a disruptive user who has blocked, it is very unlikely anyone would delete your user page, and there is no indication that was ever done. TiggerJay (talk) 06:45, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

The only thing that I can think of is that perhaps you never noticed that your user page was blank and just now noticed the warning, but your account itself is clearly still intact and working, and no indication of being deactivated. TiggerJay (talk) 06:47, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

It's optional for users to create a user page. Your user account works fine without it. If an account doesn't exist like User:User986 then it displays a message at top which isn't shown when the account exists like User:User985. I see you created a blank user page User:Bilsebub after posting here. See Wikipedia:User pages for what you can use it for. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:00, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

You didn't accidentally mix up your user page here with your your talk page here, did you? That would be an easy mistake to make, especially if you've not been in the habit of visiting both and thinking of them as separate places. I accidentally go to the wrong one sometimes. Musiconeologist (talk) 10:04, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Bilsebub, you asked a a similar question back in 2017 and got a similar answer. The Wikimedia Foundation that accepts your monetary donations (thank you for them) has no way to connect your real world identity and financial institutions with your Wikipedia username as a content volunteer. If they could make that connection, it would be unethical. Content is completely separate from money. Elon Musk has repeatedly offered US $1 billion to influence our content and our answer is always NO. Cullen328 (talk) 10:09, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Error in signature

I tried “Koshuri ^(グ)” but it says Invalid raw signature. Check HTML tags, Can anyone fix it for me? Koshuri Sultan (talk) 11:31, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

"@Koshuri Sultan: You were missing a quotation mark after the second bold;. I fixed it above. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:54, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you!!! Koshuri ^(グ) 14:59, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Koshuri Sultan, I use Wikipedia with the dark mode gadget enabled, and your signature is nearly invisible on my device. I can barely make out the "Koshuri" (and even that only because it is bolded or semibolded), and whatever follows is totally invisible. Do you think you could do me and other dark mode readers a favour and recolour your sig to comply with MOS:CONTRAST? Folly Mox (talk) 18:19, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

It's not that legible in whatever the opposite of dark mode is called either. So, yes please , check the requirements of MOS:CONTRAST. Bazza 7 (talk) 19:27, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Using the "sfn template" in citation work

I'm working on the Saccidananda Ashoram article, and in the process discovered that all the previous citations were made with something called the sfn template {{sfn}}. I never heard of this method of doing citations before a couple of days ago. It seems that in order to add any new citations in this article, I'm going to have to follow suit and use the sfn template for them, rather than the normal way I'd do it in the Visual editor ...

... and I did try with the sfn template, but didn't succeed. Here's what happened. I used the template to add what should have become citation #4 because it came after three previous citations. But no, it became an alternative #1, not a repeated #1:

[1][2][3][1]

Interestingly, this misnumbering is exactly what happened when I tried to add a new citation the normal way in the Visual editor. What's going on?

Augnablik (talk) 14:17, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: as far as I can see, you didn't publish your edit. Can you confirm what code you added and where? TSventon (talk) 14:43, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Right, I didn't publish my new citation because I was worried that if it misnumbered — as I assumed it would— any readers who noticed would be confused. Now that I see @Koshuri Sultan's message just below, though, I will try that and see if the citation number does change after all. Augnablik (talk) 04:01, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik It could be because you're seeing it from the visual mode, Try publishing the edit and check citation number after publishing the edit. Koshuri ^(グ) 17:29, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Okay, will do as soon as I reply to @Musiconeologist's reply just below. Augnablik (talk) 04:02, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

From a quick look at the article, I can see three instances of [1], and they all refer to page 31 of the same book—which to me seems seems correct for this footnote method. They cite the same thing and have the same number. Were you trying to cite something else? Musiconeologist (talk) 17:51, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I was trying to cite something else — that's what I was trying to say in my original message but perhaps wasn't successful in doing. Augnablik (talk) 04:03, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

An alternative hypothesis is that I didn't read carefully enough, of course, and I've a nasty feeling it's probably the right one . . . (NB that ellipsis isn't in Wikipedia style, which is "..." )
I don't use the visual editor and haven't used {{sfn}}s either, but I'm used to seeing a similar issue in the editors I do use. I think it's because the editor only knows about the section you're editing, so can't attempt to show the correct numbers in the preview. Anyway you already know not to trust it, I think! Musiconeologist (talk) 17:22, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

At the risk of stating the obvious, Help:Shortened footnotes is the documentation. If you add a shortened citation with the same content of an existing one, they will be numbered identically, like reusing a named reference. Folly Mox (talk) 18:15, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

But I was trying to add a new citation. However, I didn't publish it, as @TSventon noticed, and for the reason I noted in replying to him. Now, as soon as I finish my about-to-be-delivered meal, I will try publishing the new citation and see what happens. Augnablik (talk) 04:05, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Okay, @TSventon, @Koshuri Sultan, @Musiconeologist, and @Folly Mox, here's an update. I successfully used the sfn template — in the Visual editor, I might add, because for awhile I thought I'd have to use the Source editor, which I dread — and created a new citation that correctly published as [7]. But during my editing, it looked just as it had in my original post to this thread: [1]. That's why I had assumed there was a problem. What else would a novice editor assume, unless aware of this anomaly?

— From my experience just now trying to use sfn, I could see one major drawback with it: I'd planned to use a different citation source that had no individual author, just a website, but sfn seems to require having one. So I chose a different citation than I was going to use, just so I could see if the numbering changed when I published. I wonder what to do about adding websites with sfn. At any rate, my newly added citation with sfnoccurs at the end of paragraph 2. The complete publishing information that needs to go in the Reference List is this: Oldmeadow, Harry (2004). "Jules Monchanin, Henri Le Saux/Abhishiktananda and the Hindu-Christian Encounter." Australian Religion Studies Review, 17:2.

— Then too, a reference list seems not to be automatically created when using sfn, as I was expecting from my previous experience adding citations in Visual the usual way. I figured out that to I'd have to edit the article's existing one — manually — by using a template called reflist. It seemed a rather klutzy way to do it, but I started out, moving down the list to where my new citation should have gone, but I couldn't get a new form (new form, that is, within the reflist template) to appear. If I had tried to add the new one, I'd have overwritten the reference that was already there.

I'm tempted to agree with whoever wrote the Citation templates are evil essay, but I'll hold off for awhile to hear words of wisdom otherwise from the four of you who've responded to my original plea for help, or others who'd like to jump in. Augnablik (talk) 05:45, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

As I mentioned in my talk page discussion, just because an article uses sfn templates, all the cites don't have to be done that way (as with e.g. Abraham Lincoln). I added the full citation to the Oldmeadow journal article as a {{cite journal}}. If you were going to use that same journal article multiple times, you would place the main entry (without page numbers) among the others in the list at the end and then refer to it using multiple sfn, each with their relevant page numbers. Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:54, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

As another illustration, I have converted Mike Turnbull's full reference into a sfn plus a full reference in the references section. However, a full citation is better than an incomplete sfn. TSventon (talk) 12:28, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Per WP:REFVAR, a WP-article should pick a citation method and stick with it. If an article is done ref-tag, people shouldn't start adding sfn refs and vice versa. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:08, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Gråbergs Gråa Sång I am aware that new references should follow the existing method, but I think it is better to add complete reference details in the wrong format than to add an incomplete sfn reference that means that the reader has to guess what source the reference refers to. TSventon (talk) 14:18, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

@TSventon Quite agree! [1] But I have been in discussions like Talk:Jill_Ovens#WP:CITESTYLE which IMO should not have been that hard. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:27, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

... and today's featured article Telephone (song) has both sfn and ref-tags. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:26, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Usually FA people deals with that, I think. But FA =/= perfect. Spot checking the 2 first sources under "Cited sources", they are books, used for one page. That they are not in ref-tag style doesn't help anyone, it's just messy. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:33, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

That particular article only has 24 sfn tags, out of over 200 references, so I guess that its "established style" is actually ref--tags. I doubt that many readers care. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:39, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Not readers, no, but you know how we Wikipedians can be. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:43, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Mike and all other kind respondents: wow, my original question seems to have stirred up quite a debate. Every time I'd start to reply to you and TSventon five or six messages above, a new message arrived and I'd have to delete the one I'd started or it would be out of sequence to what I was replying to!

When you all come to a conclusion, please let me know. 😂 Augnablik (talk) 15:02, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: I think this is largely resolved as you have made your edit and it has been fixed.

Next time you need to ask about a particular edit I suggest publishing it and reverting it if necessary as that helpers can then respond to your actual problem rather than having to guess what the problem is.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using citation templates and manual references, otherwise there would be a consensus for one or the other. I prefer using templates as they prompt me to add the required information without having to memorise a citation format, the author of Wikipedia:Citation templates are evil evidently doesn't. TSventon (talk) 14:18, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

@TSventon: Or didn't prefer, in fact—the essay is by Spinningspark, an administrator who I was sad to discover yesterday died in 2023. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:58, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Actually, @TSventon, I did not “make my edit” — you and @Michael D. Turnbull, did! 🙂

Actually, you did, it just wasn't complete because you had the sfn but not the rest of the information. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:55, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

😗 Augnablik (talk) 16:35, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

I was hoping the two of you and @Gråbergs Gråa Sång would resolve your differences about whether editors should or should not be free to use whatever citation format they prefer, so I’d know what advice to follow before going on to ask exactly how to use the reflist template to add a new citation to an existing reference list, as this same situation may come up again for me.

I just don’t see those steps in the reflist documentation that I read. I tried and tried to figure it out on my own but couldn’t. Neither could I figure how to add the citation my usual way instead of reflist — that is, in a case where an existing reference list has been created with reflist. Augnablik (talk) 14:55, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik If you look at the documentation for {{sfn}}, or {{harvard citation}} (the less-used citation methods), you'll see that they both need the template {{reflist}} to be included in the article somewhere and that's where their output will appear to the reader. You can't add citations instead of reflist: if you accidentally miss the reflist template off the end of an article, the Wiki software will dump all the citations at the very end. You can experiment in your sandbox to see how this all works. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:44, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Aha. I thought I'd seen a reference list automatically created in an article I'd been working on in my sandbox after I, rather than someone else, entered all the citations. I must have been thinking of what happened when I added citations to a previously created article in which a reference list had been set up.

I do at least understand — from many years of word processing — the concept of creating a reference list at a certain place in the document. Now I just need to understand how to do it in Wikipedia, in both the Visual editor and the Source editor. I'm sure it will be easier in the Visual editor ... but as my mentor proclaimed recently, "Some editors get very wedded to their favourite style but serious editors have to be able to recognise all the varieties and use them as appropriate." ☺️ Augnablik (talk) 16:51, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: Gråbergs Gråa Sång and I agree that editors should follow existing reference convention in an article, explained in WP:REFVAR. I think the simplest advice for what to do if you don't know how to follow the existing convention is ask here.

I will try to explain how to use visual editor to add a citation template to a references section on your talk page. TSventon (talk) 16:01, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

@TSventon (talk) 16:01, 27 January 2025 (UTC):

"I think the simplest advice for what to do if you don't know how to follow the existing convention is ask here" — I did.

— Pretty please, help me learn how to insert the following website as a source to the reference list in the Saccidanandam Ashram article, using the existing reflist template: Griffiths, Bede, O.S.B. "Shantivanam: The Forest of Peace" (first published in The Tablet, February 8, 1969). https://bedegriffithssangha.org.uk/shantivanam-the-forest-of-peace/ Bede Griffiths Sangha

— I really wasn't sure how to handle this source using the sfn template because it seems to expect a page number — but of course a website doesn't have one.

— Nor was I quite sure how to handle the source in the reflist template, because the source had been previously published elsewhere. Augnablik (talk) 17:20, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: I have added the source to the references section. The page number can be left out, as you already noticed. {{cite web}} recommends "|date=n.d." for undated websites, so I added that. I also added "|orig-date=First published 1969" also based on {{cite web}}. TSventon (talk) 18:11, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, @TSventon. I thought there must be a template for adding a website, but I didn't have it in whatever documentation I was using.

Thanks especially for the steps to add a new citation to a reflist template that you wrote out for me on my Talk page. I'll go over them extensively and try them out. If only we toddler editors could have more of this sort of thing for the complex procedures we have to learn — what the training world calls "job aids" ...! Augnablik (talk) 18:39, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik Here's how you cite a stone-tablet: [2] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:25, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I never would have thought citation templates might be so inclusive as to include stone tablets. Augnablik (talk) 04:05, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

As I began to work with your "job aid," @TSventon, I suddenly realized that the Saccidanandam article has not one references list but TWO! The lower list is the one I wanted to learn how to use.

For now, time for a time-out. Augnablik (talk) 17:56, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: I have changed the second one to Sources as having two identically named sections was unhelpful. Thank you for the ping, please can you also ping me if or when you reply on your talk page. TSventon (talk) 18:03, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

User:Page on enwiki: Content from Wikimedia

I would like my user page on enwiki to display the content of mw:User:Matutinho. I have deleted the content on my user page on enwiki. How do I do this? Thanks for help. Matutinho (talk) 18:17, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Matutinho, you need to delete the page rather than blanking it. Add {{Db-author}} and an admin should do a speedy deletion for you under WP:G7.— Preceding unsigned comment added by TSventon (talk • contribs)

I've taken the liberty of going ahead with the deletion. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 20:01, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Extremely tremendously not important: {{u1}} is more "fitting" for one's own userspace—more usefully, also easier to remember. Speaking of easier, for tagging of pages like this you may wish to give Twinkle a spin. --Slowking Man (talk) 00:09, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Slowking Man I find {{Db-author}} easier to remember as I can use it for any page I create in error, not just pages in my userspace. TSventon (talk) 14:21, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Would you check configuration of MiszaBot?

Would one of you smart people see if MiszaBot configuration looks correct on Talk:Led Zeppelin?

My edit description explains the issue: "add back archive bot ... hoping this is not a mistake, but this talk page has not been archived in 5 years or so and has over 20 topics; I found the previous archive bot configuration from 2019 but it looked very complicated - maybe that's why it was deleted? ... fingers crossed"

This is what I added to the talk page:

{{User:MiszaBot/config | algo = old(60d) | archive = Talk:Led Zeppelin/Archive %(counter)d | counter = 9 | maxarchivesize = 150K | archiveheader = {{Automatic archive navigator}} | minthreadstoarchive = 1 | minthreadsleft = 4 }}

Please correct if I made an error or I am happy to do it.

Thank you! -- Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 20:14, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Looks good to me @Markworthen Ultraodan (talk) 23:04, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! -- Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 03:03, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

Accessing the Digital Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Hey, y'all. It's been a while since I've tried to access the digital Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Does anyone remember how I can gain access to it using my Wikipedia login? Thanks. Unlimitedlead (talk) 22:29, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Just go to Wikipedia Library, scroll down to that resource, and click Access collection. Schazjmd (talk) 23:21, 25 January 2025 (UTC)