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    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]
    That definitely begins to answer my question! Thanks! There IS some way to exercise some control over which images come up as the page image.
    According to the PageImages page, the extension "provides OpenGraph protocol metadata for articles on the wiki for 3rd parties like Facebook to extract." So I wouldn't be at all surprised if using this feature had the desired effect on Facebook! Dπ (talk) 22:08, 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]
    Apart from |first1=-|last1=, you can also use |author1=, |author2= an so on.––kemel49(connect)(contri) 03:12, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    February 3

    Userbox question

    Why does User:Benzband/Userboxes/Random acts of kindness have my username in it?--Bbb23 (talk) 00:39, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    It seems to input the username of whoever opens it by default. Tutwakhamoe (talk) 00:44, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It appears that it is simply using a username form submit box. If your web browser is set to autofill such boxes, that is likely why that is happening. Since I have autofill disabled, it is simply prompting me for my username. It seems rather hack-ish and suspect to me. TiggerJay (talk) 00:45, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It's coded with "Username Here" as placeholder. Your browser rembembers that at the same site you have entered Bbb23 in an input box with "username" in the placeholder ("Enter your username" at Special:Login), so the browser suggests the remembered string. It would probably still suggest Bbb23 if you were logged out, or somebody was logged in with another name in the same browser after only entering their own username at another site like Commons. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:20, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    How to put special font & color on my username?

    I see some users decorate their username and "talk" button when discussing. I don't think they're doing that all the time, I think it is done automatically. How can I do this too? Camilasdandelions (talk) 08:44, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi @Camilasdandelions, welcome to the help desk! WP:FANCYSIG could help. There's also Wikipedia:Signature tutorial with a nice gallery at the end. Be sure to not make it too annoying or hard to navigate (see WP:SIGAPP), have fun! Justiyaya 11:12, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    THANK you!! Camilasdandelions (talk) 11:31, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Rendering support for Microsoft Edge running on Windows

    I installed two different Linear B fonts, but my browser still won't render the script.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 13:28, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @3family6 I'm running the latest MS Edge on windows 11 and I see the font perfectly rendered at the link you supplied, without installing anything beyond whatever it is that the operating system of my PC already had. Maybe you need to uninstall the ones you added and let the system go back to its default. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:44, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    ... on that page Help:Multilingual support, almost all scripts are fine in my browser, except for example Kaktovik numerals and Klingon! Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:49, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I did not install the fonts until after the Linear B wasn't rendering.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 16:12, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Numerous other fonts on that page won't load. I'm using Windows 10.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 16:13, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You probably need to take this to WP:VPT, with full details. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:15, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    copying and pasting a citation

    Help! I've edited a page and saved it, but then realised that I needed to add a citation, actually a reference that I already added elsewhere in the text (which appeared as number 5 in the list). When I go back into edit mode only two references appear in the list, both ones I created on my first edit, numbered 1 and 2. Number 1 is the one I now want to replicate elsewhere in the text but I seem unable to copy it. I'm sure in the past I could highlight the citation number, right click, copy and paste. That doesn't work now. How can I copy and paste an existing citation to use elsewhere? Stagememories (talk) 14:28, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Stagememories: You may want to use named references. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 14:29, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. I had a read but think this is beyond me. I'm not sure where to "define the named footnote"! Stagememories (talk) 14:54, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hello, @Stagememories. The first time the reference is used, add name="something"> within the <ref> tag (where something is a suitable name for this reference), so it looks like <ref name="something">...</ref>.
    Then subsequent uses of the same references look like <ref name="something"/> (that's the complete citation). ColinFine (talk) 15:20, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Stagememories If you are using the visual editor, the help about named references is at Help:Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor/4 Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:44, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Painted portraits - transfer on behalf of courthouse?

    Hello, I'm following up on this question. After speaking with the local courthouse, I'm told it can be a bit difficult to get permission to use a camera in their facility, but they told me they'd be happy to e-mail professional photos already taken of each portrait. Assuming each portrait are out of copyright, what steps do I take with Wikimedia Commons to assert I have the appropriate permission to upload these photographs taken by courthouse officials on their behalf? Do they e-mail a third party or do I forward an e-mail somewhere for approval? --Engineerchange (talk) 14:54, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The easiest is if they are willing to upload the photos themselves; but if they are not (as I guess might be the case) then the photographer must send an email as explained at donating copyright materials. You can't send this for them. ColinFine (talk) 15:22, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Engineerchange and ColinFine: I'm not sure that Colin is correct here. As I understand it, a photograph of a two-dimensional work of art that is out of copyright is not itself copyrightable, so all you have to do is show that the copyright on the paintings themselves has lapsed. You shouldn't need to prove permission to use the photos. Deor (talk) 15:27, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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