This is anarchive of past discussions onWikipedia:Teahouse.Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on thecurrent main page.
Hi, I had recently tried to submit a draft and it got rejected. I revised it and resubmitted and I'm curious if there's anything else I could keep in mind.
The best thing you can do in my opinion is try to find sources that are not an interview, and are not announcing anything either. Announcements don't tell any story except "Come out and hear him" (or maybe "Look what he did now"). Interviews are really justyou telling the story, and that's not what Wikipedia really cares about.
You've indicated that you want to write an article aboutyourself.
First of all, westrongly discourage editors from creating or editing articles relating to subjects they have a connection to. If you still wish to proceed, please thoroughly read everything below.
Warning against COI editing
First and foremost this is because conflict of interest editing often results in issues with theneutral point of view expected on Wikipedia, due to biases whether consciously or unconsciously. While you may notintend to be biased, the types of information you include or exclude from an article are likely to be skewed by your connection to the subject. It's also very common for conflicts of interest to result inpromotional writing such as advertisement-like articles for companies or resume-like articles for people. You may innocently intend to 'raise awareness' or 'correct misinformation' about the subject, but this isstill promotion, and promotion of any kind is not allowed on Wikipedia.
People with conflicts of interest tend to be very bad at gauging whether the thing they're writing about meetsWikipedia's notability guidelines. In order for a subject to have a Wikipedia article it needs to be 'notable,' which is a word that has a particular and slightly unintuitive meaning here on Wikipedia. There are a number of different criteria for notability depending on the subject, such asthe 'general' notability guidelines, theguidelines for notability of companies or organisations, thenotability of creative professionals etc.The vast majority of people and companies are not notable in the Wikipedia sense, and do not warrant a Wikipedia article about them. A good rule of thumb is that if a person or company is notable enough to justify a Wikipedia article, then soon enough somebody else will write it for them, and there's no need to do it yourself. So if you're here to write an article about yourself or someone or something connected to you, it's generally a good indicator that the subject does not yet meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. A special note is necessary here thatChatGPT and other AIs do not understand Wikipedia notability. It's very common for COI-writing newcomers to get themselves confused because they ask ChatGPT whether they should write an article about themselves/their company and it spits out a few trivial sources and claims that these sources constitute 'notability.' You need to thoroughly read the notability guidelines relating to the subject you want to write about and make sure you understand whether the available sources support the notability of the subject. Do not try to take shortcuts by asking an AI, it will likely be wrong.
It's very common that articles written by those connected to the subject end up being writtenbackwards. This means that you first write the article with everything you know about the subject due to your connection to it, and then try to find sources to confirm the information you've written.This is the wrong way to write a Wikipedia article. As an encyclopedia, the purpose of Wikipedia is to summarise theexisting information available about a subject inreliable, independent secondary sources. The goal is not topresent new information or tosynthesise multiple existing sources to provide new conclusions. When writing an article you mustfirst search for sources relating to the subject (appropriate sources, those meeting thegolden rule) andonly include information in the article which is written in the sources. You may well know information about the subject which is not available in any of the existing sources, but youmust not include this kind of 'original research' in your article. It is understandably frustrating to want to provide certain information and not be able to, but that is the limitation of writing for an encyclopedia, and precisely why we strongly discourage people from writing about subjects they are connected to.If the existing sources don't say it, you can't put it in an article.
You should also keep in mind that having an article about yourself, your company etc isnot always a good thing. You (or the person or company you're writing on behalf of) do not own the article, and cannot control what is in it.
If after reading all of that, you still think you can go ahead and beat the odds and create this article, then follow the steps below.
Writing a COI article
First, and most important, you need to disclose your conflict of interest. There are instructions on how to do this atWP:COI If your conflict of interest involves being paid to create this article, you should follow the instructions atWP:PAID to disclose that also.
Next, heed what I said above about not writing an article backwards. You need toforget everything you know about yourself, which is obviously the most difficult part. Search Google and elsewhere for sourcesfirst. Remember that those sources need to bereliable, independent and secondary. Avoidtrivial coverage such as listicles, especially when writing about companies as this type ofday-to-day corporate coverage is very common. The sources you use need to actually prove the subject's notability (according to the most relevant guidelines) as I discussed above, which passing/trivial coverage does not. If you use ChatGPT or another AI to find sources for you (which you shouldn't), youmust double-check the sources yourself andverify that they actually say what the AI claims they do, because source-to-text inconsistencies are extremely common when using LLMs to search for sources.
Once that's done, you can extract information from the sources and write your article. For guidance on that, followHelp:Your first article and feel free to ask any more specific questions here at the Teahouse.
Is there a way to reuse referencesfrom other pages? I am editing articles on a similar topic and I have created references tohigh quality,referencebooks that are for the general public, so I know they are correct and relevant.
TheCiting sources help page only explains how to reuse references within the same article. Can I use the ISBN to search somewhere for the book? Is there a trick to do this? Or is the only way to copy paste the same data in every article?
If there are references that you know you're likely to reuse, one stopgap is to create a file (just on your own machine) called something like WikiRefs.txt, where you paste good references separated by blank lines.
Certainly it would be nice to have a searchable list somewhere on Wikipedia, with references already formatted for use. If it was open for updates, it might be hard to keep vandals from poisoning it though. And if it couldn't be updated, it might be less useful.TooManyFingers (talk)19:19, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
Now it makes sense, thank you. And tip is good also, as you may forget where you have used a particular citation when you have many books on the same subject after the fifth article.
My suggestion is toadd this answer in a help page (or create a new one) as it seems many editors would have the same question.Jp1008 (talk)13:50, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
I agree with TooManyFingers. It's fine foryou to reuse a reference in a different article, because you have (presumably) seen the source yourself and verified it. Equally, it's fine for you to keep a list of such citations for your own use, for example on a subpage of your user page.
It is more problematic for anybody else to use your citations, because, as a general principle, nobody should add a citation to an article unless they have seen the source themselves and verified that it supports the information it is claimed to support. (SeeWP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT)ColinFine (talk)22:09, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
I was just doing some research on DJ S3RL (one of my favorite artists of all time), and I (naturally) look at the Talk Section. And find out that it's defunct!! Is there a reason why i'm not finding??? Please help. Thank you in advance.SixBlunders (talk)15:51, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
It seems part of theWikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#Revival points is finding some topics of interest.Provide clear suggestions on what participants can do, using to-do lists, tasks and cleanup listings, and perhaps linking to relevant pages elsewhere. You can use the WikiProject help template, either directly or as inspiration. You seem invigorated about the subject. Has the rave scene undergone big changes? I personally have found some what can be called tangentially related topic.[1]Lumbering in thought (talk)16:13, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
HiSixBlunders. Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors who choose what to work on. A WikiProject is a collaboration set up by such volunteers who get a common place to discuss their work in an area.Wikipedia:WikiProject Rave had no discussions or other activity in 2024 and was marked as defunct in 2025. That often happens with WikiProjects. Everybody is still free to create and edit articles about rave. Most editors probably never join WikiProjects about the topics they write about.PrimeHunter (talk)16:26, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Translating: Reuse or omit (unchecked) references?
When translating large articles from another language, should I reuse sources? I understand that ideally, you would check them all before copying them and translating the title. But I'd rather focus on the text itself as the target article is very short.
So, given thatyou will not check the source links, which is better:
a) Do not copy references from the article
b) Only copy text that does not need a reference
c) Copy references as they are from original article
If (c), how should I let future editors know that no cleanup has been done to the orignal article's references?
IMO adding material without reliable sources is a bad idea irrespectively its source. If you bring the sources at least other editors have a starting point in evaluating the new material. Without any sources it will be easily challenged and deleted.A.Cython (talk)17:36, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
You're translating, not writing the article, so it's perfectly okay to include the sourcing from the original article without checking it personally. For online sources, it's easy to declare what's happened, because they have a parameter "date accessed", which you can leave with the date in the original article. If you are able to check the source, you can update it to the date you are translating. Since you are providing a source, you're not generating unsourced information - you are merely trusting that another editor actually checked the source (and by indicating that your edits are translations you are both crediting the original author, and indicating who read the source). Realistically, many articles will be based on multiple off-line sources of which you won't have access to all of them, so you cannot physically check all the sources. You could leave out information where you can't check the source, but that would deprive the reader (who may be better resourced than you) of the benefit of the original article - it would be counterproductive. Our keystone is verifiability, not verifiedness: the source must be givenso that the reader knows where the information came from, and can check it; there is no certification that the information we give is correct and reflects the source accurately - and this is one of the reasons we do not cite ourselves.Elemimele (talk)17:52, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
You're translating, not writing the article, so it's perfectly okay to include the sourcing from the original article without checking it personally.
This is really quite bad advice. Standards for verifiability don't disappear because you're translating; your responsibility as an article creator to ensure the information you're including is sourced and verifiable still stands. If you can't verify the info because you don't have access to the sources or etc, then the job of translating the article should be left to somebody who can. The standards on non-English Wikipedias are known to be laxer than on enwiki, and it seems very ill advised indeed to suggest we should be porting pages over from those wikis without checking that the sources are any good.Athanelar (talk)18:45, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
I agree, and I think it's reasonable to conclude that THE most important qualification for translating any Wikipedia article is the ability to fully read and judge the sources behind it.TooManyFingers (talk)19:36, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
(I want to be clear that my response was only about translating a complete article from another Wikipedia over to this one. I suppose it would equally apply to being unqualified to significantly modify any parts of English Wikipedia articles for which I'm unable to fully read the sources.)TooManyFingers (talk)22:05, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
I'd disagree; to take a concrete example, if I'm translating something about organ building and it cites Sumner's "The Organ" and also Adelung's "Einfuehrung in den Orgelbau" I'm capable of reading both, I have read both, but I no longer have a copy of Sumner. I can't verify a reference to Sumner, but I do know that Sumner is a respected (though dated) source. I can assess the quality of the source, but I cannot verify the page number of the citation, nor can I be sure exactly what Sumner said (though I'd probably pick up on a major factual mess-up because of my own knowledge based on Adelung and similar). I could deal with this by quoting only Adelung, or finding another alternative, but since many English readerswill have Sumner, it's definitely unhelpful if I deprive them of a page reference that willprobably allow them to read for themselves.
I see it as being a bit like a page patroller or AfC reviewer. If articles could only be accepted by someone can understand and check every citation, then many specialist articles would never be accepted (unless the reviewer removes anything they can't check!). A reviewer should be able to assess whether the sources are reliable, and should be able to assess, at least at a spot-check level, whether the article's editor is reflecting their source material accurately. But there is an element of trust; if the reviewer has access to only 75% of the author's sources, they are in a position to accept the rest in good faith. Realistically, it is very unlikely that any translator or reviewer will have access to exactly the same range of sources as the author of a highly specialist article - even the six UK copyright libraries won't have every foreign source. We shouldn't be naive about misquoting and bad use of sources, but nor should we be parochial and assume that if we haven't seen something with our own eyes, it is unusable (a common problem at AfD!).Elemimele (talk)12:59, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Oh, yes, that's definitely a very bad idea. Sorry, I may have misunderstood the situation. I never translate anything that I don't think is well-sourced, and nor should anyone else. Translation, if you do it properly, is hard work; without adequate sources in the translated product, it's going to get rejected by an AfC reviewer or sent to AfD by a new page patroller (quite rightly!), which is a heartbreaking waste of effort. Not recommended.Elemimele (talk)18:20, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Not at all @TooManyFingers! I asked because I want to do my best. Thought experiments are useful in the siences and math and science precisely because they force analysis to find explanations, byreductio ad absurdum. In this case it has worked brilliantly (thanks!) to generate an enriching discussion on policy, criteria and Wiki common sense. I appreciat it.Jp1008 (talk)17:25, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
ThanksAthanelar. I take the responsibiliy of citations very seriously in general in my edits and I have several books on the subjects I am working on. In my previous edits improving english pages, I tackled relatively short pages, for which I used my books, serious and official websites, etc. The number of citations in other languages were few.
What generated my concern, is that I am now editing a major article of a famous church in Florence. The page in italian and even the one in spanish has a lot more information than the one in english, as well as lot more citations. Moreover, they are much better written. As a result, wanted to know how to proceed on the citation front.
(My) Takeaways of the discussion for others and/or for eventual Wiki Help page:
Translating an Article: How to Use its References
General Guidance
"Many articles will be based on multiple [books, and] you won't have access to all of them, so you [may not be able to personally] check all the sources. [..] You aretranslating, not writing the article, so it's perfectly okay to include the [important] sourcing from the original article" (Elemimele)."However, standards for verifiability don't disappear because you're translating. Your responsibility as an article creator [is] to ensure the information you're including is sourced and [adheres to Wikipedia standards]." (TooManyFingers)
Very long articles may have a lot of references. Determine which sources are the most important, so you can prioritize what to validate first. Validate those before using them into the translated article, unless it is a widely accepted fact for the topic that needs no citation.
If you cannot properly validate a source that supports avery specific fact, especially if it can be contested, do not include that fact in the translation. You can comment about it in the Talk page of the article to get help on the reference and/or fact.
Be cautious when translating / expanding an important article. If unsure on how to proceed, ask for guidance in the article´s talk page or in the Tea House.
How Validate Key References by Type
BOOKS
Prioritize books that are more general and therefore a richer source of information for the non-specialist.
Find if there is an english translation of the book and of so, use that reference.
If no translation is found, use the original reference data. Don´t forget to translate the title.
If you have validated the book reference but you cannot validate the page of the english version, do add the reference without the page data.
WEBSITES
Prioritize official websites (museums, institutions, etc.).
Check the link is still working. Find out if there is a toggle to an english version of the website.
Visit the websites of other citations to validate they can be of general interest (and the link is not broken)
Hi, I'm just looking for a bit of clarity on draft articles really. I did not create the original draft, but I've been working onDraft:Chapter One: The Crawl for about a week and feel I've got it to a pretty decent standard. I've submitted it for review twice and it's been declined both times, with the reason given being that there's not sufficient content to warrant it's own article". The draft has twenty referenced sources and, in my opinion, at lot more information that some other articles on similar topics. I'm just wondering why it is still being declined - is it the reviewer's subjective opinion, or is there criteria that the draft is somehow still not meeting? Also, I'm curious as to why I need to submit an article to someone else for approval in the first place, I've created several articles before without having to do this. Is there anything stopping me from simply moving it to the main article space? Not suggesting I would do that, but it would be helpful to understand the process more clearly to see what I'm doing wrong. Any advice would be appreciated.OrangeOctopus1996 (talk)18:01, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Screw that, I've promoted it. It was rejected twice for having insufficient content, but two of the four aired episodes from this season already have full separate articles, and this draft already has more content than both of them. Merging it into the season summary would create an article large enough to need to be split anyway. If the AFC nominators don't like it they can take it to AFD. SeeChapter One: The Crawl.Ivanvector (Talk/Edits)18:12, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your support! I was so confused about what I was doing wrong because, as you say, it had a lot more content/references that other articles I've seen.OrangeOctopus1996 (talk)18:35, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
They're not saying you didn't do enough work, they're saying this is not a big enough topic to get its own article. They already said which article your good work should be part of, so go ahead with copy-pasting from the draft into that other article.TooManyFingers (talk)18:12, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi I have joined Wikipedia a few months ago and I have made over 150 edits but lately I have got bored is their any good way to help me stay an active editor and not get bored. Thank you for your time.Very high frequency (talk)13:11, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
HelloVery high frequency. I am only motivated to work on articles that interest me. If I recall something that was important from my childhood, or come upon a fascinating bit of history, I decide to see if Wikipedia has an article about that. Oftentimes I find a stub article, or one with a "need more references" tag, so I start to look through reference books, or do an Internet search for reliable websites, and gather information to improve the little Wiki article that needs some TLC. The next thing I know I've spent a couple hours improving an article I hadn't known existed earlier in the day. Others may not find this a logical game plan, but its been working for me for nearly 20 years. Best wishes on your future Wikipedia adventures.Karenthewriter (talk)13:40, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
What interests you outside Wikipedia? Your home town? Sports? Wildlife? Art? Work on articles about that.
People don't get kicked off of Wikipedia for not doing anything. The only people who aren't allowed back on Wikipedia are the ones who have shown a pattern of serious bad actions.TooManyFingers (talk)17:50, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Another way that you can find things that might interest you is to subscribe to suggestions from SuggestBot. You can run it to get a one-time list of suggestions, or there are different ways that you can subscribe and have it periodically drop a new list of suggestions on your talk page. For instructions, seeUser:SuggestBot. Cheers.Ivanvector (Talk/Edits)18:31, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi, I was wondering if there was on the reliable sources guideline that if an excessive amount of primary sources can be allow for an article to be deleted. I saw that theTar pit (DC Comics) article has only two sources that (I believe) are not published by anyone relevant inWarner Bros, all the other sources are mostly books fromDC Comics. I believe that this article might not meet notability guidelines, but I want to make sure if it does.rave (talk)21:38, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Excessive primary sources might be messy or unnecessary, but by themselves they're not a reason to do anything drastic.
If there's a real problem in what you're describing, it might be that there are too few reliable secondary sources for notability, or ones that aren't top quality. I don't know because I haven't looked. But concentrate on those; finding one or two more might be all that's needed.TooManyFingers (talk)21:51, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
@RaveCrowny Definitely don't get rid of the article just like that; if one more decent source would be enough for its notability, people should get a fair chance at finding that.TooManyFingers (talk)22:02, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
I saw the article, most of the other sources that could possibly used are mostly just talking about his appearance in "The Arrow". Other than that, theMovieWeb source does not mention Tar Pit at all (I tried to use his fictional nickname and his (fictional) real name and nothing came up. Not mentioning that the source is covering the movie about the comic.), theIGN source is a list and Tar Pit is only a mention,The Birth, Movies Death source is a facts article about the character, and theNerdist source covers an episode that has Tar Pit as a major character in the episode. This article might not be notable for the sources currently used, and the excessive use of primary sources to justify the notability made me raise an eyebrow.rave (talk)22:15, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
I briefly found some sources that aren’t used on the article thatmight help the article have more sources thatcould be reliable. The sources I found that have a section or predominantly focused on Tar Pit areCBR (has a section on Tar Pit) andBustle (goes slightly in-depth about Tar Pit as a character and his own actor). I wont leave out the possibility that there might be more sources.rave (talk)22:52, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Edits question
I made a change on a school's page to update the OFSTED inspection (UK Government regulator) and used the OFSTED report as a reference but it was declined. Any ideas why?Lululennon (talk)22:21, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi, that was me. OnDowdales School, you added information about an inspection but didn't include a source. OnWalney School, you took the existing reference named Ofsted_2016 and changed the URL to the main Ofsted search page, using this to reference the most recent inspection and the new MAT for the school. You need to cite a source which includes the information you want to add. I linked to some resources on your Talk page when I reverted these, butreferencing for beginners is also helpful.Tacyarg (talk)22:30, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
HiLululennon, and welcome to the Teahouse. The reversion washere, so a courtesy ping toTacyarg in case they have anything to add. Your addition doesn't have an inline citation to support it. There are instructions atWP:CITE andWP:INLINE if you are confused on how to cite sources. In source editor, you would just add <ref>(URL here)</ref> to the end of the content you added, and in visual you would press the 'cite button' and add in the URL.45dogs (they/them)(talk page)22:30, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
I've added the inspection to the Dowdales article, with a reference, so you can look at the text of the article and see what sort of formatting you need to use in future.Tacyarg (talk)22:37, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello! I have just withdrawn Draft:Abu Hasan Muhammed Jahangir from AfC after an admin note. I am the subject and have fully disclosed my COI on the talk page since October (no paid editing).
I will no longer edit the draft myself. Could one or more experienced neutral editors please take a look, make any needed improvements, and resubmit/move to mainspace if it meets guidelines?
The strongest notability hook is the subject’s leadership role in securing Port Alberni (British Columbia) as the **only non-host-city Team Base Camp** for the 2026 FIFA World Cup — covered in Times Colonist, CHEK News, Alberni Valley News, etc.
The really big issue is the lack of reliable secondary sources with significant coverage of the article subject. Not quotes from him, not interviews, not a speech he gave, not a bio blurb in a connected group, not a passing mention or name drop - but significant coverage ABOUT Jahangir (ie, you). Even if the tone is fixed and the autobiography issue is addressed, the lack of even a single really good source really hurts the chances of this being accepted. Even with one found, generally you need three such good sources to get a draft accepted.Ravensfire (talk)18:33, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
The word 'notability' can be confusing on Wikipedia, as it doesn't necessarily mean you have done something remarkable, but rather it means that other secondary sources have alreadytaken note of you. In order for you to be 'notable' here there needs to be reliable, independent, secondary sources completely unrelated to and uninvolved with you who've written about you in some level of depth.Athanelar (talk)22:03, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Thank you both for the earlier feedback. Since then, several new independent sources have appeared that cover my role as co-lead of the Port Alberni 2026 FIFA World Cup team-base-camp bid (the only non-host-city candidate on Vancouver Island).
These join the earlier sources already in the draft, showing 11 months of reliable, independent secondary coverage. I believe this now meets GNG.
Would any neutral editor be willing to take a fresh look at Draft:Abu Hasan Muhammed Jahangir, incorporate/verify these sources, trim any remaining promotional tone, and move it to mainspace (or resubmit to AfC) if acceptable? Happy to answer questions.
No, those aren't the complete requirements.WP:NPERSON has GNG as an option, but also has some other special requirements that if met would warrant an article. I'm not sure why Jameslwoodward said on commons thatWP:EN rules prohibit people writing articles about themselves;WP:AUTOBIO says that it is strongly discouraged, but not prohibited.Abujahangir, Please just go through the AFC process. Word count is a rough approximate to significant coverage, but it isn't an exact comparison.45dogs (they/them)(talk page)04:53, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for the question,TooManyFingers—yes, these are in-depth profiles (400–600 words each) about my background and leadership in the World Cup bid, including my past work in Bangladesh's textile industry and how it informed the committee's strategy. They're from independent Bangladeshi outlets, adding an international angle to the Canadian coverage.
I think there is possible vandalism when it describes "otherwise, when it falls off the bottom of the Recent changes page, it will disappear into the..." and then it says "Mariana Trench." I think the last part, "Mariana Trench" is vandalism and should be corrected.~2025-38426-13 (talk)05:32, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, I have recently created a new article, calledAlgiers suburban rail network. However, this article is only new on the English-language Wikipedia, as on the French-language website an article for the same topic has already existed for many years - seehere. My question is, how can I connect the two articles so that they appear as different language versions of the same article? As of now, they both say "add languages", and that they don't have any other languages. How can I fix this?Zach1055 (talk)06:02, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
No it will not,Zach1055 (andAhri Boy). Copy the title of the English article. Go to the French article. Look there for either "Ajouter des langues" or "X langues" (whereX is a number). Click on that. Specify "en" for the language. Paste the English title. (I may have forgotten some stage; but really, the process is very simple.) --Hoary (talk)06:41, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
@Hoary Thanks for the advice, but it's too late. I already went on Wikidata and fixed the problem myself - accidentally, I might add. I was trying to add the article to the Commons category, and that led me to the Wikidata category, which connected both articles without me realizing it. So the problem is fixed.Zach1055 (talk)06:49, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Fine. The recipe I provided above wasn't/isn't the best; it's merely the one that I guessed would be easiest to follow. --Hoary (talk)07:07, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
@Mooack AGoogle books search gives some hits which might be usable. I think that your best bet will be to look in newspapers (e.g. at newspapers.com) for dates around when the books were produced and might have been reviewed. I don't know which country she lived in but presumably there will be most hits locally. Presumably you know aboutthis listMike Turnbull (talk)10:03, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
thanks for checking, and for the open library link. i suppose being a writer of books for young children wasn't newsworthy.Mooack (talk)06:10, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Please note that "trying to give ... visibility" is a textbook definition ofpromotion, which is forbidden on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has little interest in what the subject of an article says or wants to say about themselves, or what their associates say about them. Wikipedia is almost exclusively interested in what people who have no connection with the subject, and who have not been prompted or fed information on behalf of the subject, have chosen to publish about the subject inreliable sources. If enough material is cited from independent sources to establishnotability, a limited amount of uncontroversial factual information may be added from non-independent sources.
So an article is possible only if you can find several sources which meetall the criteria inWP:42; and the article should be almost entirely based on what those sources say, not on what you know or what Scarry says or wants to say. Even if they are nasty about her. (I'm not saying that's the case - just that Wikipedia summarises what the sources say, without reference to what the subject would like).ColinFine (talk)16:55, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
ColinFine's explanation and advice is already very good. I'd like to add a little bit on to it: not only is it important to summarise what the sources say rather than contradicting them, it's also important to avoid adding things that the sourcesdidn't mention. It is all right to add what I might call "boring facts" such as a missing date, but not all right to tell more of the story than what is found in the sources.TooManyFingers (talk)20:51, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
right.. this reminds me of when i took an archeology class and got dinged for the storytelling (move to anthropology they said). stick to the facts, dont draw conclusions. thanks!Mooack (talk)06:22, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
no worries, i have no personal connection. Just noticed she wasnt on wikipedia when i looked her up, and yet she's been published dozens of times and had a famous husband thus famousish herself. i say giving visibility in the sense of illuminating people less seen, not because their accomplishments are less, but because of misogyny, racism, ableism etc. At any rate she seems possibly not suitable for an article from feedback thus far. thanks for the link to WP42Mooack (talk)06:30, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello,Mooack! I notice that your draft contains a number of personal details about the subject that are not only inappropriate for an encyclopaedia article (in my opinion), but are also likely to beunpublished and only known by someone closely associated with the subject: this potentially bringsWikipedia:Conflict of interest into play.
It isn't forbidden for someone to draft an article about a subject they have a direct connection to (though it does make it more difficult for them to maintain aneutral point of view): however, if youdo have such a connection, youmust disclose it, as instructed inWikipedia:Conflict of interest#How to disclose a COI. I hope this helps, and if indeed you have no such connection, I apologise for raising the matter.
As a book collector, and former bookseller and book editor, I applaud your efforts and hope you are able to find Reliable sources that demonstrate Patricia Scarry's notability. Good luck! {The poster formerly known as 897.81.230.195}~2025-31359-08 (talk)01:15, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
(This was exactly the kind of thing I was warning about when I said it's not acceptable to tell more of the story. When the already-published stories have left something out, we also must leave it out - even if it seems of vital importance.)TooManyFingers (talk)06:23, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
no worries, i have no personal connection but did draw from the biography of the subject's husband and 1950s-70s social pages, as referenced, but i get they are not reliable enough for wikipedia standards. i'll strip it down and see if someone finds good references. thanks for the support.Mooack (talk)06:48, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
How to check if you have edited an article before?
Hi! This is honestly a very small matter, but how do you check if you have edited a certain article before. I mean, sure I can scroll through the hundreds of edits I have done trying to find an article, but is there a faster way? (I’m on mobile btw)
When I looked at the search bar at my contributions page, it did not give me any option to search for a specific article, if someone could tell me how to do so, that’ll be great. Thanks!
Hey @Gråbergs Gråa Sång, thanks for telling me this. It does work pretty well for smaller articles that I’ve edited, but doesn’t really seem to work if the article I’m looking for is major (e.g. Magnus Carlsen, Kim Jong Un.) as my name gets phased out of like the top 50 they provide. Is there a way to search for my name in this system?Gileselig (talk)11:46, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
@Gileselig If you go toyour edit statistics (link at the bottom ofSpecial:Contributions) then you can move to the area which covers your edits to mainspace. There is a "More" option which reveals all your edits and can be searched or even downloaded. That's more-or-less what GGS has suggested. I've no idea how easy this is on mobile but on a PC it is straightforward.Mike Turnbull (talk)13:02, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
On mobile, where it shows the edits sorted by namespace, each namespace row shows how many edits have been done in that space. Clicking on the number itself, gets a list of what they all were.TooManyFingers (talk)21:08, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
At the top of the page history screen in desktop view is a link called "Find edits by user", which takes you tothis tool with the page field already filled in. You can use that to search the page history for your own contributions.Cordless Larry (talk)20:45, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Unreliable author used excessively on (especially Spanish, but the English version is concerned too) Wikipedia
Hello. I wanted to signal that an obscure historian namedAristides Herrera Cuntti (1952–2008), who has notably authored multiple google books works, among whichDivagaciones historicas en la web, is, despite using the unreliableInca Garcilaso de la Vega, being cited excessively on Wikipedia. Recently, his own invented concepts of "first/second/third Inca expansion" were added to Wikipedia pages (I have removed there mentions, as this idea stems from the Spanish Wikipedia article on Inca expansion). This is very scary to be honest, especially the existence of a huge wikisource page, and I expect it has something to do withHerrera Cuntti 2000s Wikipedia work. While this author probably was very helpful to Wikipedia, I doubt that something like this would be tolerated today (publishing google books works to spread original historical research on Wikipedia which contradicts the rest of scholarship). Herrera Cuntti makes Inca expansion start atManco Capac's reign, when in reality it started way later. He largely re-uses the historical narrative of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The problem: the latter is used for cultural interpretation, not for the historical events. If Wikipedia states this or that battle took place in exactly 1324 when only one, unknown, historian says so on the basis of speculation (for the date) and an unreliable chronicler wishing to push Inca expansion back in time, then that is profoundly disturbing. He was also a Wikipedia editor, which explains his influence, but this also isn't really positive, considering he most likely uses this influence to spread his works. Even though the issue isn't too important in English Wikipedia, I wanted to know how I can request this author and his works to be put on the list of unusable/unreliable sources (I forgot the exact name). Regards,~2025-38815-96 (talk)09:33, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
@Akshadev:A numerical list, or just a list? Because you can get a list by searching their contributions (by checking the box that says "Only show edits that are page creations"), but you'd have to count them yourself. Sumanuil.(talk to me)08:34, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, I am creating a Wikipedia page for one of Wikipedia's Women in Red links Alwyn Moss as part of a school project and I am having trouble finding any credible sources for her page. I would really appreciate any help.User:Roseswikiedit/Alwyn Moss.Roseswikiedit (talk)00:51, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
For interest, would this be the author ofNever Love a Feral Cat? If so, it appears to me that she has only authored that book and is otherwise unknown. It's unlikely that there are enough (or any) publishedReliable sources on which to base an article about this author: it is more likely that an article aboutthe book itself would be viable (if it has had a number of reviews) – this is not uncommon for authors. Hope this helps. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}~2025-31359-08 (talk)01:32, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Asking Google for"Never Love a Feral Cat" review brings up -- or anyway does for me, in my own search bubble -- a list of web pages that would, for any of various reasons, be of no value for an article. Such a choice of subject is going to get you nowhere,Roseswikiedit. Please find a different subject to replace this one. Be sure that you can findwhat we here call "reliable sources", independent of the subject,before making up your mind. (Independent of the subject means not by her, not by people promoting her, not by companies that might somehow make money via her, not interviews with her.) This probably feels like a giant pain; but if you get your choice of subject right before you start, you'll soon realize that the careful choice was very much worth the time and effort. --Hoary (talk)01:55, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
The title is the question. An article I submitted to articles for creation was accepted and I received another notification about it. Do articles get reviewed twice for their acceptance?Could I Do This? (talk)16:12, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, yes! The article isDeep Voodoo. I got a notification when it was accepted and another saying that it was reviewed. I thought it was already reviewed when it was accepted. I'm just curious what it means when an article "has been reviewed".Could I Do This? (talk)16:31, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Oh that message, it just means an editor has gone over and checked whether it is good enough for the main space, some articles in the main space get reviewed and placed back in a user’s sandbox or as a draft if they don’t qualify. I get those sometimes alsoMwen Sé Kéyòl Translator-a (talk)16:35, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
It's possible that the second notification was from theWP:New page patrol process. If the person who reviewed your draft is also a new page patroller, they might have both approved the draft and then marked it as patrolled at the same time.Athanelar (talk)16:35, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
No, you will get notifications for pages which you have on your watchlist, and as you created Deep Voodoo (the page I assume you are talking about) then I believe you will get notifications for it.
Hi,Could I Do This?! The answer to your question is 'sort of'. Articles on Wikipedia can go through the Articles for Creation (AfC) process, where an AfC reviewer will check for article compliance with Wikipedia policies. Very new users (<4 days & 10 edits) have to use this process, as should paid editors and those with conflicts of interest, and thus those articles are reviewed by AfC reviewers – new users tend to be the most likely editors to still be gaining familiarity with Wikipedia content policies. Any user with more experience than that technical limitation is capable of creating an article directly, but since that doesn't guarantee that a created article belongs in the encyclopedia, there's also a group (New Page Patrollers, or NPPers) that 'patrols' or reviews most new articles on Wikipedia. The two reviewing groups are separate, so an article that's gone through the AfC process whose reviewer is not an NPPer still ends up in the NPP queue. AfC reviewers who are NPP may also mark an article unreviewed if they wanat to get a second pair of eyes on it. If this seems complicated, don't worry about it; as an NPPer, I can tell you that AfC-accepted articles are considered some of the easier reviews, as we know they've already had reviewer eyes on them. Hope this helps! Happy editing,Perfect4th (talk)16:39, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
This answer makes sense to me, thank you for the level of detail you put in. So articles that go through that creation process are reviewed initially by someone on that side of things, and then New Page Patrollers review that process, if they aren't already part of the creation group. It seems like an odd redundancy if one group does the job of the other, but I'm assuming NPP does a lot more than just review accepted creations.Could I Do This? (talk)16:46, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
NPP also reviews articles that have been created directly into mainspace and haven't gone through the draft review process.Athanelar (talk)16:48, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Understood! It sounds like NPP is like an advanced group of AfC reviewers. It's still a little confusing in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like something that doesn't need to make 100% sense to me unless I was in the middle of it.Could I Do This? (talk)16:54, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
You've got the general idea. While all new page patrollers can review drafts, not all AfC reviewers are new page patrollers. NPP is an additional level of quality control (with a few more rules) that's applied to most new articles, not just those that started as drafts. You can be confident that two different reviewers have given your article their seal of approval.ClaudineChionh(she/her ·talk ·email ·global)00:35, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
I have another, probably more useful suggestion - this time about suggested edits interface.
How about an option in the suggested edits interface to show 4 at a time? 2x2. All the same info and UI, just clicking the next button 4x less often.Abc7221a (talk)07:11, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Most people who watch and reply on this page are not involved in the software, including the user interface. Suggestions for that are better at one of the sections of thevillage pump, probablyWP:VPT.ColinFine (talk)23:04, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
If you can provide a URL for the PDF file,Z-Astro3, good. (Today's featured article isJefferson Davis and you'll find PDF files cited in it.) If on the other hand it's something that somebody emailed to you and you can't describe its provenance, no. --Hoary (talk)10:25, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Also, I was wondering whether I could cite a page in another language, even though Google offers to automatically translate it.Z-Astro3 (talk)10:50, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
If a page is from a disinterested, reliable source, you're welcome to cite it, whatever language it happens to be in. (Hu Zhengyan is an example of a featured article that cites sources in Chinese.) --Hoary (talk)11:18, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Generally speaking, the medium of a source is not relevant - it can be a physical book, an e-book. a website, an audio track, a video, a PDF, or even a CD-ROM. What matters is whether it is published, and whether it isreliably published. On the whole, reliable publishers tend not to publish in the form of PDFs, but sometimes they do.ColinFine (talk)23:10, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Having a body of work to show can be important for some other things, but for Wikipedia it's of only slight help.
When you're looking for more work, someone is very likely to say they'd like to see some of your previous films. But Wikipedia doesn't watch films; Wikipedia wants to see where reliable publishers have written a lot about you. If they have not already told your story, then we don't either.TooManyFingers (talk)15:42, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Not so. No account holder isobliged to create theirUser page, and many choose not to do so. (A Talk pageis obligatory, and some people redirect their User page link to their Talk page.) TooManyFingers' dialogues on the Help Desk and Teahouse are entirely characteristic of a human. Your own account was created only today, so you may not be in a position to judge the gamut of legitimate interaction on Wikipedia and cast aspersions.
(And before you make the observation: no, I myself am not using an account. I began editing Wikipedia over 20 years ago and deliberately chose not to create one, as is also permissible.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}~2025-31359-08 (talk)18:29, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, @Prasadpaturi. That article may well bereliable, but it is notindependent, as much of the information clearly comes from Vasant.
Wikipedia has little interest in what the subject of an article says or wants to say about themselves, or what their associates say about them. Wikipedia is almost exclusively interested in what people who have no connection with the subject, and who have not been prompted or fed information on behalf of the subject, have chosen to publish about the subject inreliable sources. If enough material is cited from independent sources to establishnotability, a limited amount of uncontroversial factual information may be added from non-independent sources.ColinFine (talk)23:19, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, my article is recently declined citing that one of the platforms i cited is not a verified platform. Maybe if it can narrowed it down to the platform it would have been more helpful to edit but i am new here on Wikipedia and it is so confusingAyodele Babalola (talk)08:36, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
As well as what both Ahri Boy and Mike Turnbull already said, you have paragraphs with no citations. In a BLP everything needs to link to a citation. If I can't tell where your information comes from it cannot be in a BLP article.Ultraodan (T,C)00:29, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Source for the UK definition of the term “carpetbagger”
I'm fairly new to wikipedia (at least in terms of actual usage and how long I've had an account), and I have absolutely no Idea what I'm doing. I was going to make an article about how to solve a rubik's cube, but either I took too long (I accidentally left it as a draft for like six months) or didn't follow the rules. In any case, I got rejected. Can someone please help me either finish properly making an article on solving rubik's cubes, as well as give me some sources that I can use, or give me ideas for a different topic to make an article on, that would be great. I don't have any links or anything for the original draft, I think it was already deleted.Notsharediplol (talk)21:11, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello @Notsharediplol. Your article was rejected because it is a how-to guide rather than an article that belongs on an encyclopedia. The policyWP:NOT lists what Wikipediais and what it isnot. This can help you a lot with understanding what articles should be created.Toby(t)(c)(rw)21:58, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi there, you don't have to start writing articles right away. There are existing Rubik's-cube-related articles in need of your help, like this one:Joël van Noort.
If you don't know how to make that article better, start here:Help:Introduction.
Help fixing the incorrect citation on the page 'Information Theory'
I think there is a error on the page 'information theory'. It seems to be citing a page of 'Elements of information theory' that has nothing to do with the claim it is making. As I am new, I am worried I am misunderstanding how citations work on Wikipedia, so I haven't changed it. Could someone (ideally someone who understands information theory better than I do) take a look?
The problem citation is the first sentence - 'Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information'. It then cites 'Cover, Thomas M.; Thomas, Joy A. (2006).Elements of Information Theory (2nd ed.). Wiley-Interscience. p. 14.'
Not only is this sentence citing a page that is unrelated to this claim, but I think this claim is at either vacuously true (if 'information' here is defined as it is in information theory, as a signal that reduces entropy) or the claim is false, if 'information' is meant in the everyday sense, as implied by the link to the Wikipedia page for 'information'.Ethan (talk)23:23, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
You included links to a couple database entries and storefronts for the game, but you didn't cite any significant coverageabout the game. That means that there's no assertion of notability compared to any other video game in existence that is for sale; you only demonstrated that itexists not that it isnotable.
In fact, SunloungerFrog left a message on your talk page an entire month ago that described that you need to demonstrate that the subject is notable. You responded, askingWhy the hell does it need to be indicated, I give the information, put refrences and done. You also decided to yell at that editor[7], apparently without any attempt to read the information you were linked to about the significant of notability of Wikipedia/
So, I'll tell you why the hell it needs to be indicated: Wikipedia is a despository of independent, reliable information aboutnotable subjects, not an indiscriminate accumulation of any information that exists.
However, the problem arises with why i need to, Like what am i meant to put ''This is important because Football in T and W is important.''MyNathaniel69 (talk)18:57, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
You need to because it's a rule here on Wikipedia.
For an article to exist, the subject of the article needs to benotable, which generally means (I'm simplifying a lot) that it's been written about in-depth in other places first. If other people haven't written about it, then we can't writr about it - because what Wikipedia does is summarise other peoples' writing, essentially.
Football may be very important to the people of Tyne and Wear, but if nobody has written about 'Football in Tyne and Wear' as a subject in that sense, then we can't make an article about it.
When someone says you haven't 'indicated' or 'demonstrated' notability, we don't mean you have to say in the article "This is important because..." we mean that the sources you use as references in the article need to be what I said above - in-depth writing about the subject of your article from places outside of Wikipedia; specifically places that are reliable (so some fan-blog or youtube channel doesn't work,) and independent (so you can't source what a subject of an article says about itself)Athanelar (talk)19:25, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Maybe an easier way to see how it works:
There's no Wikipedia article about me, but there obviously is one about Wayne Rooney. If you go looking for reliable publicly-available information about him and his career, you'll find a ton of it. That's what made his Wikipedia article happen. But if you look for where I've been written about, you'll find nothing, and that's why no article about me. I'm not notable; Rooney is.
@MyNathaniel69 You asked "what am i meant to put" and you got several answers, which have blue linked words in them. You are meant to click on those links, and read, and study, the information you get.
In a nutshell, to write a good draft here, you should first find sources of information that are notable, independent, and in-depth. After you read all of the info behind the blue links that the experienced editors gave you, you'll know the Wikipedia meaning of notable, independent, and in-depth.
Next, you summarize what you find in the sources to create the basis of the article. We could ask "how do you know the information that you put into the draft?". It had to come from somewhere. That collection of "somewheres" make up the sources. The "everything you need to know" link that @Qcne gave is a great resource. Hope this helps.David10244 (talk)04:13, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
@MyNathaniel69 I would recommend readingWikipedia:Everything you need to know which outlines our main policies and guidelines in an easy to understand way. It looks like you have jumped straight into editing Wikipedia without fully understanding how everything works, which is probably a bad idea!
(edit conflict)@TooManyFingers: this is a discussion forum for editors new to Wikipedia. If the best advice you can give here isRTFM, please stop replying to every question, you'renot being helpful.
@MyNathaniel69: your pageTerritorial.io has been deleted three times, and each time the deleting administrator noted that the article doesn't indicate any reason why this is a topic important to have an encyclopedia article about. You can see what this means atcredible claim of significance, but in a nutshell: Wikipedia can't cover every topic and hasa general guideline on what indicates that a topic isnotable, and when you're adding a new article about a topic it isn't good enough to say that it exists, you have to indicate why any reader should believe that it issignificant. Your article didn't, so it was deleted.
Every time a page is deleted it leaves behind a deletion log with the administrator's comments on why they deleted it, which you can see by clicking on the red "Territorial.io" link above (it may not work on mobile, I'm not sure, I'm old enough that I still edit Wikipedia with a hamster wheel). The topic you're writing about also already has a draft article atDraft:Territorial.io, which you might be interested in helping to work on instead of trying to write an entirely separate article.
Making a new article is one of the most challenging things to do on Wikipedia, even for experienced editors. It requires a robust understanding of policies and guidelines likenotability andneutral point of view, as well as technical skills likefinding and citing sources and formatting your article in accordance with themanual of style. It's not something we recommend new editors try to do right away.
I would strongly advise that you first spend a while (at least a couple of weeks) participating in discussions here at the Teahouse and at noticeboards, asking questions, and editing already-existing articles to build the knowledge and skills I've mentioned above, and then come back to the article creation process later.
My recommendation: Since you're fairly new, you don't yet know which kinds of things you'll be doing most. Instead of installing scripts and stuff you might not even want, just start doing the things that interest you and make sense for you. At some point, you'll get frustrated with how ridiculous some task is.Then look for something that will solve your actual problem.
There might be some things you actuallydo want right away, and that's great. Just there's no need to load up a million things and then end up using three of them. :)TooManyFingers (talk)19:42, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
I straight up wouldn't contribute to many areas if such tools didn't exist; AfD, for instance, is so hard for me to navigate without scripts!! Takes me ages to nominate an article for deletion, list it everywhere needed, add appropriate templates, and add to deletion sorting lists manually.jolielover♥talk18:24, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Deleteeverything except for what reviewers have added. Leave yourselfnothing to work from except the references you saved. Write with no use of AI at all.TooManyFingers (talk)06:01, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
It has a lot of that, PLUS it lists "unpublished biography" as a source. I'm afraid of how little of the article might remain afterwards - I hope I turn out to be wrong about that.TooManyFingers (talk)15:45, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Similar problems seem to exist atTossy Spivakovsky (original research and unsourced pronouncements). Perhaps there was some kind of Faustian bargain: "Members of your family shall henceforth possess prodigious musical talent, but beware! for they shall never again understand what an encyclopedia is!"
Hello! I have created my first article draft titledDraft:Raja Shivaji. I would appreciate it if experienced editors could please review the draft and let me know:
if the subject meets Wikipedia’s notability guidelines,
whether the sourcing and inline citations are sufficient,
any improvements needed in wording, structure, or neutrality before submitting for AFC review. If ok then please move to mainspace
I am sorry, but your draft is nothing like a Wikipedia article.
A Wikipedia article should be a neutral summary of what several people wholly unconnected with the subject have independently chosen to publish about the subject in reliable publications, (seeGolden rule) and not much else. What you know (or anybody else knows) about the subject is not relevant except where it can be verified from a reliable published source.
Unless you can find several sources that are completely independent of the school, and reliably published, and contain significant coverage of the school, no article on it is going to be accepted.
As for helping out your mother - that's a laudable aim, and I wish you the best. But I cannot think of any way in which you contributing to Wikipedia can possibly help her out. I'm sorry.
My earnest advice to new editors is to not eventhink about trying to create an article until you have spent several weeks - at least - learning about how Wikipedia works by making improvements to existing articles. Once you have understood core policies such asverifiability,neutral point of view,reliable, independent sources, andnotability, and experienced how we handle disagreements with other editors (theBold, Revert, Discuss cycle), then you might be ready to readyour first article carefully, and try creating a draft. If you don't follow this advice but try to create an article without this preparation, you are likely to have a frustrating and disappointing experience with Wikipedia.ColinFine (talk)23:16, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, I would like to request help for editing my draft on a school. It is well done but I need help revising before submitting for becoming real page link is below
Note the point made above:"Unless you can find several sources that are completely independent of the school, and reliably published, and contain significant coverage of the school, no article on it is going to be accepted."
When you have added such sources, submit the article for review, via the process described atWP:AFC. If the reviewer deems it ready, they will publish it as an article. If not, they will give you further advice and you can try again.Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing);Talk to Andy;Andy's edits15:17, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Help ME Sandbox e publishing
Hello everyone,
I am currently working on a draft (sandbox) about the Italian swimmer Valentina Procaccini, and I would kindly like to ask for help from the community.
I have collected many reliable sources and structured the draft following the standard format for athlete biographies. Before proceeding further, I would really appreciate assistance to:
Check whether the draft is written correctly and follows Wikipedia’s style guidelines,
Verify that the sources are properly used and formatted,
Confirm that the subject meets Wikipedia’s notability criteria for athletes,
And, if possible, see whether someone could review it, correct it where needed, and—if it is ready—help with publishing it on Wikipedia, or guide me through the proper process.
Any help, suggestions, corrections, or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much for your time and support!Procant62 (talk)16:04, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Procant62 You are making multiple requests; please stop. I will shortly move your draft to Draft space(the preferred location for draft submissions, which can be accessed via theArticle Wizard) and enable you to submit it for a review.331dot (talk)16:08, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
@Lumbering in thought: Personally I like to keep things clear and simple. So "copy edit" each time, in your example. That would also guard against a series of "dittos", etc, being interspersed with other editors' edit summaries.Bazza 7 (talk)15:36, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
If I actually remember to do it, sometimes I copy my own edit summary before saving, so I can reuse it. Anything that explains what you did is always better than anything that doesn't explain.
I believe this is a wider problem on Wikipedia, not just with edit summaries; inside the articles, editors often do tricks to save typing. It's a bad idea. Save thereader's effort by typing everything out in full, except for abbreviations that areuniversally recognized and accepted, or those that are explicitly defined in the same article.TooManyFingers (talk)17:40, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
(I do admit I've put "same thing" as an edit summary when I was reasonably sure no other editing was going on. But if that one is viewed on its own, it's no help.)TooManyFingers (talk)18:53, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
An edit summary of "copyedit" is rather lazy. You don't need to use full sentences (I think that's mostly a newbie thing), but consider that while you're saving time being as terse as possible, that edit summary will be viewed numerous times over the article's remaining (future) history, as other editors look over the edit summaries to help understand how the article evolved (or perhaps more properly, devolved, as many articles are prone to do). You took the trouble to try and improve the article, don't be dismssive of the value of having a meaninful edit summary.Fabrickator (talk)16:25, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Request for guidance on improving draft notability for Elio Mondello Anza
Hello,I recently submitted a draft article about Elio Mondello Anza, an Italian-Norwegian educator and entrepreneur, but it was declined due to concerns about notability. The reviewer mentioned that the sources do not show significant coverage.I have several reliable sources including a detailed investigative article from la Repubblica (2017) and a feature in a book published by Einaudi (2020), which profile him extensively. I also have additional media mentions and participation in industry webinars.Could I please get advice on how to better present these sources or identify additional reliable sources that would demonstrate notability? Any tips on rewriting the draft to emphasize significant coverage would also be appreciated.Thank you very much for your help!Best regards,~2025-35921-94 (talk)14:16, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello. You indicated on the draft talk page that you are the subject of the draft; please don't speak about yourself in the third person, it's confusing. You should read theautobiography policy; what you are attempting is highly discouraged, though not forbidden. You should also read about howan article is not necessarily desirable.
Large parts of the draft are unsourced. That's the biggest issue. If the information is your personal knowledge, it cannot be in an article about you because it cannot beverified.331dot (talk)14:25, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, and welcome to the Teahouse.
You've indicated that you want to write an article aboutyourself.
First of all, westrongly discourage editors from creating or editing articles relating to subjects they have a connection to. If you still wish to proceed, please thoroughly read everything below.
Warning against COI editing
First and foremost this is because conflict of interest editing often results in issues with theneutral point of view expected on Wikipedia, due to biases whether consciously or unconsciously. While you may notintend to be biased, the types of information you include or exclude from an article are likely to be skewed by your connection to the subject. It's also very common for conflicts of interest to result inpromotional writing such as advertisement-like articles for companies or resume-like articles for people. You may innocently intend to 'raise awareness' or 'correct misinformation' about the subject, but this isstill promotion, and promotion of any kind is not allowed on Wikipedia.
People with conflicts of interest tend to be very bad at gauging whether the thing they're writing about meetsWikipedia's notability guidelines. In order for a subject to have a Wikipedia article it needs to be 'notable,' which is a word that has a particular and slightly unintuitive meaning here on Wikipedia. There are a number of different criteria for notability depending on the subject, such asthe 'general' notability guidelines, theguidelines for notability of companies or organisations, thenotability of creative professionals etc.The vast majority of people and companies are not notable in the Wikipedia sense, and do not warrant a Wikipedia article about them. A good rule of thumb is that if a person or company is notable enough to justify a Wikipedia article, then soon enough somebody else will write it for them, and there's no need to do it yourself. So if you're here to write an article about yourself or someone or something connected to you, it's generally a good indicator that the subject does not yet meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. A special note is necessary here thatChatGPT and other AIs do not understand Wikipedia notability. It's very common for COI-writing newcomers to get themselves confused because they ask ChatGPT whether they should write an article about themselves/their company and it spits out a few trivial sources and claims that these sources constitute 'notability.' You need to thoroughly read the notability guidelines relating to the subject you want to write about and make sure you understand whether the available sources support the notability of the subject. Do not try to take shortcuts by asking an AI, it will likely be wrong.
It's very common that articles written by those connected to the subject end up being writtenbackwards. This means that you first write the article with everything you know about the subject due to your connection to it, and then try to find sources to confirm the information you've written.This is the wrong way to write a Wikipedia article. As an encyclopedia, the purpose of Wikipedia is to summarise theexisting information available about a subject inreliable, independent secondary sources. The goal is not topresent new information or tosynthesise multiple existing sources to provide new conclusions. When writing an article you mustfirst search for sources relating to the subject (appropriate sources, those meeting thegolden rule) andonly include information in the article which is written in the sources. You may well know information about the subject which is not available in any of the existing sources, but youmust not include this kind of 'original research' in your article. It is understandably frustrating to want to provide certain information and not be able to, but that is the limitation of writing for an encyclopedia, and precisely why we strongly discourage people from writing about subjects they are connected to.If the existing sources don't say it, you can't put it in an article.
You should also keep in mind that having an article about yourself, your company etc isnot always a good thing. You (or the person or company you're writing on behalf of) do not own the article, and cannot control what is in it.
If after reading all of that, you still think you can go ahead and beat the odds and create this article, then follow the steps below.
Writing a COI article
First, and most important, you need to disclose your conflict of interest. There are instructions on how to do this atWP:COI If your conflict of interest involves being paid to create this article, you should follow the instructions atWP:PAID to disclose that also.
Next, heed what I said above about not writing an article backwards. You need toforget everything you know about yourself, which is obviously the most difficult part. Search Google and elsewhere for sourcesfirst. Remember that those sources need to bereliable, independent and secondary. Avoidtrivial coverage such as listicles, especially when writing about companies as this type ofday-to-day corporate coverage is very common. The sources you use need to actually prove the subject's notability (according to the most relevant guidelines) as I discussed above, which passing/trivial coverage does not. If you use ChatGPT or another AI to find sources for you (which you shouldn't), youmust double-check the sources yourself andverify that they actually say what the AI claims they do, because source-to-text inconsistencies are extremely common when using LLMs to search for sources.
Once that's done, you can extract information from the sources and write your article. For guidance on that, followHelp:Your first article and feel free to ask any more specific questions here at the Teahouse.
I am trying to add to improve references but after pressing "Publish changes" I see in large red letters "Your edit includes new external links. To protect the wiki against automated spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following hCaptcha:" Fair enough, but unfortunately there is no visible Captcha to deal with. I have to press "Publish changes" a second time before the Captcha appears but I am not told to do so. This looks like bad UX.~2025-31381-67 (talk)01:49, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
@~2025-31381-67: I think hCaptcha is new and maybe you have found a teething issue. On thetask board I foundT409713 - could that be your issue? If not, can you give all the details you can - browser, VisualEditor or regular wikitext editor, desktop or mobile etc - and hopefully someone will try to reproduce and submit a bug report to get it fixed.Commander Keane (talk)02:17, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi, I noticed there are not exceptions in some safety measures for .gov websites
It looks like .gov websites are grouped together in at least one wikipedia system that detects it being potentially dangerous to link to an external site. I don't know if any .gov websites could be dangerous, maybe there are some obscure city websites run in certain states that do not have full protection, but maybe there should be a range of definitive website prefixes and domains that should be taken off certain cautionary lists.Abc7221a (talk)02:54, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
I don't mean I tried to do a technical analysis, and I don't even really know how to do anything beyond a few extremly basic level things with programming. I'm just thinking maybe there is a new system, especially now that I have read a few of the above comments here, or maybe some older system also that deals with URLs that is not optimized.Abc7221a (talk)05:13, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Not "what did you find out", but HOW did you find out? What are the step-by-step instructions for getting Wikipedia to do the wrong thing?TooManyFingers (talk)06:42, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Actually, rethinking, I also added the Wayback machine archive.org link for the same usda.gov pdf in the same edit, since the document was from 2013 and I don't know if it will be removed or subject to link rot. The page was already saved there multiple times, so I added an archive link of it from 2018, the first year it was archived at that URL.Abc7221a (talk)05:24, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
It doesn't look like anything actually malfunctions for me, I was just bringing it up since I was only linking a .gov website. Maybe it is irrelevant.Abc7221a (talk)06:34, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
To my knowledge, the only other things that could have blocked you from adding the link would be it being on the spam blacklist (which neither usda.gov nor web archive are part of AFAIK), or tripping an edit filter, which you haven't. That leads me to conclude its an issue with the Hcaptcha, which wouldn't be all too surprising to have happen, as it was messing up just a month ago (T408975).45dogs (they/them)(talk page)06:42, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
No, it did not block me at all, but the challenge was displayed and the reason stated being that I was adding an external link.Abc7221a (talk)06:46, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Yes, as well as a mild concern that maybe a database or some other thing dealing with URLs in Wikipedia is not optimized.Abc7221a (talk)07:04, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
@Abc7221a: All external links require aCAPTCHA when unregistered or new users add them. It's an anti-spam measure and not an indication that the website is "potentially dangerous" (the term you used which confused us). Your account becameautoconfirmed three hours before your first post here so you shouldn't be getting CAPTCHAs now.PrimeHunter (talk)10:30, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi, I'm working on anarticle which has several interviews in Japanese as sources, and am wondering what is the convention for brief quotes from a foreign-language source. For example, if the author of a work describes a character as "deeply tragic", I'd prefer to put that in quotes rather than in Wikipedia's voice.
I checkedWikipedia:NONENG, and it says the original text is "usually" included with the translated text. However, for very short quotes, this would obviously break up the flow of the article, so I'm not sure what would be the best way to do that, or if it's required.
It isn't always necessary to use direct quotations; in some cases you can just write that he said it was deeply tragic.
Direct quotes are really only needed when the speaker's exact words were surprising or there's some other important reason to emphasize that this was exactly their words.TooManyFingers (talk)05:55, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
To add on this. You know if it is a good quote (from any source) to add if found and discussed insecondary sources; something that historian think it was important. If the quote is only found in primary sources then it is better to simply describe what they said.A.Cython (talk)05:59, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi, thank you two for the advice. That makes sense, I'll just keep things as is for now since the specific phrasing isn't really that important.Crestfalling (talk)17:49, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
For goodness' sake, do not use a bilingual dictionary for translation if you do not speak the language. Don't quote the original, and don't write what he said by using your dictionary for translation; that is a very risky move. Ask for assistance from someone who does speak the language. You can get an idea of what is being said by the author using automatic translation just as deep background, but automatic translation is unreliable and makes mistakes, and unless you speak the language, you won't know when that happens. TryWP:WikiProject Japan and ask for help there.Mathglot (talk)06:39, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Crestfalling, I am in strong agreement withMathglot here. Unless you speak Japanese very well, do not add your dictionary sourced translations from Japanese to the English Wikipedia, even two words. There may be connotations and multiple meanings and cultural factors and context related issues that you do not understand that may have major impacts on the best translation of even a brief phrase.Cullen328 (talk)07:58, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Alright, thank you very much for the advice. Right now, I typically first machine translate the source using Google Translate to see if the content has any chance of being relevant. If that's the case, I put it into DeepL and try to extract broad or factual details (e.g. if the author mentions he was influenced by a certain work). If in doubt, I try to use a third translation, or just leave it out entirely. I hope this is acceptable. I mentioned using a bilingual dictionary for specific phrases because I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any specific nuances unique to that phrase which would get lost in a machine translation, but I now understand that it's probably not prudent to do this when directly attributing something to a certain person. Also, appreciate the link to WP Japan, I'll try that in the future.Crestfalling (talk)18:34, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Crestfalling, thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia, and toThe Executioner and Her Way of Life in particular. Automatic translation tries to extract something sensible out of an original, even if it has a very complex syntax, or is ambiguous, poorly written, or nonsense, and tries to make it make sense. Regarding the use of multiple automatic translations to check each other, the problem is, you won't know when this fails. So you look at the reasonable-looking result in English, thinking that must be what the original says. But you don't know that, you only assume that. So at the risk of repeating myself,do not use the results of automatic translation unless you speak the language. Sorry.Mathglot (talk)21:45, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
This is always true, but it's "even more true" (if that's a thing) when the languages in question are not closely related to each other.TooManyFingers (talk)22:39, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
For uncontroversial basic details like founding date (for which you used the source here) posts by the article subject itself is acceptable, although an independent source is always desirable.Catalk to me!23:32, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
I'm pretty certain that "weekend floods" aren't a thing and that the source cited there was refering to some floods that happened over one particular weekend. I'd suggest reading all of the sources that you're planning on using more thoroughly. --D'n'B-📞 --18:23, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi. I really want to be a part of WikiProject Science but am not sure how to join. I have gotten as far as going to WikiProject Science/ Guest book and hitting "subscribe" on newsletter. Is there anything else I need to do? Thanks.Agnieszka653 (talk)01:09, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
To become a member, simply participate. Anyone who is doing WikiProject Science things is automatically a member.
Youmay, if you want to, go back to the same guest book and edit to add your username at the bottom of the page (with perhaps a little description - you'll see the things other people have written). I don't think anybody really minds whether you add yourself to that list or not.TooManyFingers (talk)01:42, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
I have been seeking other opinions on a draft I have been working on,Draft:Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature. The draft is currently awaiting review in theArticles for Creation board. However while I await for a reviewer, I thought that I should seek some guidance so i can improve it while I wait.
I believe it meets notability requirements. Because I have found plenty of independent, verifiable, and secondary sources. However, I'm still pretty green in Wikipedia, so a second opinion is needed. Besides notability concerns, any other ways the draft could be improved?
Just a question: along with being independent, verifiable, and secondary, how many of the sources would you say are what Wikipedia calls "significant coverage"?
In rough basic terms, this means: How many of those sources contain a long, involved story that's specifically about Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature?TooManyFingers (talk)01:28, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
(Note it's not necessary for the story to be aboutonly that; it's completely fine if their story is about something else, as long as a huge chunk of it is about Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature.TooManyFingers (talk)01:34, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
@TooManyFingers I would say about five focused entirely on the Intercollegiate legislature. Mostly fromThe Oklahoman. A few other sources I would say go into detail but not "significant coverage". Namely the Hutchison article and the Washington times one. Then the rest are about specific people or mentions, which I use for verifiability.Trey Wainman (talk)01:44, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
This is NOT a criticism because I haven't looked at all of The Oklahoman's items, but just a question: You're aware that anything with an interview is automatically not independent anymore, right?TooManyFingers (talk)02:04, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
No, that isn't the case. SeeWikipedia:Interviews; interviews can count towards notability, as long as the participants are independent of the subject of discussion. I can't complete the review at this time so I put it back in queue, but from what I checkedthis andthis seemed to be two sources that counted towards GNG. I would recommend looking atWP:NORG, as it gives examples of sigcov in relation to organizations and corporations.45dogs (they/them)(talk page)02:17, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
I didn't see this post before I posted my response. I'll keepWikipedia:Interviews in mind for the future. Thank you for looking over my page, if you have any suggestions on how to improve it. It would be stellar. - Thanks!Trey Wainman (talk)02:40, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Yea, the independence can be challenged. However, I think the existence of a interview with a reputable outlet can still establish notability. For the article content, I avoid using anything not collaborated by the press. For example, one of the sources contains a interview as well as a few paragraphs on the organization, I'll only use the paragraphs written by the source author and not the interviewee. I hope this is best practice? I'm not sure...Trey Wainman (talk)02:17, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Just why, Wikipedia?
This doesn't make much sense to me. I'm here working hard on trying to getmy article approved for mainspace, which has already been denied once, meanwhileTHIS article is not even a SECTION long, and its in mainspace. I'm starting to think that the people who approve these really don't give much thought when it comes to who works hard and who doesn't.
I'm not trying to criticize anyone, I'm just wondering how the AfC people decide which articles make it and the ones that don't, because it just doesn't make any sense to me.BluePixelLOLLL (talk)18:11, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello @BluePixelLOLLL. Forconfirmed users (those with account at least 4 days old with 10 edits), AfC is actually not mandatory, meaning articles can be directly created which appears to be the case for that article. As an AfC reviewer, I would not accept that article. If you wish, you can argue for its deletion atWP:AfD.Toby(t)(c)(rw)18:16, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
To be clear, neither the length of an article nor the amount of effort put into them are factors for inclusion. --D'n'B-📞 --18:17, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
The article was made in 2010 back when Wikipedia had much lower standards. Many articles are still in a state like this because, to put it bluntly, no one really cares about the subject matter.GarethBaloney (talk)18:19, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
I'm glad your article got published. For the future, it may also help to keep in mind that there are some low-quality articles on Wikipedia that shouldn't be here, so finding example articles and saying "surely my article is better than these ones" is often a losing strategy even if it's true (because they can respond "Of course! those other articles are no good, deleting them now").TooManyFingers (talk)03:27, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Why is playwright and screenwriterTom Stoppard not on "Recent deaths" on the home page?
Tom Stoppard, whose death is mentioned under "In the News" on the Wikipedia home page, is not listed under "Recent Deaths" on the Wikipedia home page. I suggested the name, but nothing happened. Far less famous people are listed.Rick Norwood (talk)20:58, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
I am currently revisingEric Sim, and I need help with the name part. Eric Sim has two names, one being his original Korean birth nameShim Hyun-seok (Korean : 심현석) , and of course,Eric Sim, which is his professional name. He also has a nickname "King of Juco." Does anyone know how the first paragraph should be written in this case? Thanks.Airuang3004 (talk)05:43, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, "심현석" is Korean for "Eric Sim", but that still doesn't include his birth name Shim Hyun-seok. My question is how would I add his original name to the beginning?Airuang3004 (talk)06:01, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Oh! I apologize, I didn't realize that because I don't read Korean.
I have createdShim Hyun-seok as a redirect toEric Sim. Redirects are cheap, if an article has two or more plausible names that our readers might search for, then the important thing is to have redirects for the alternative names. as long as one name has the article and the others are redirects then our readers will end up at the right page, and I wouldn't fret greatly as to which name gets the article and which is a redirect.ϢereSpielChequers10:53, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
translating a page into georgian
im fairly new to editing and making pages in wikipedia, and i saw the page for alkynes in the georgian version of wikipedia and it immediately gave me depression seeing it be so small, so im curious. can i just translate the page 1:1 into georgian myself, and use the exact same sources?Jerryfunklebottom (talk)18:26, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
@TooManyFingers TheNarendra Modi article is already very broad, so it can only summarise major relationships. This topic has substantial independent coverage in reliable sources, including detailed reporting and academic analysis, which makes it too large to fit as a small section in Modi’s biography.Saifyalakmar (talk)08:58, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
I think you’d have to request a move. Unfortunately I’m unaware of how to do that, a more senior editor will reply hopefully and inform you. Have a great rest of your day 😃Mwen Sé Kéyòl Translator-a (talk)10:21, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Need neutral uninvolved eyes to ensure I understand everything I did wrong
Not here to re-litigate. Just want to make sure I know all my wrongs to apologise for in future appeals. I am currently topic blocked and my past disputed and disliked edits includes this[8] and this[9]. In my list of wrongs, I lazily used a LLM in ANI thread when cautiously pondering how to best answer off-topic and politically triggering questions without escalating tensions.[10] That backfired as it wasn't transparent. I did however answer a same repeated question later without LLM to show how I would have answered it regardless if it aggravates.[11] I am aware of my bludgeoning or repeating myself on talk (asking for clarification repeatedly)[12][13], and repeatedly disagreeing that my proposed edits weren't original research or violated any policies etc)[[14]]. I also didn't follow DRN rules, but accidentally, when I eeported someone to ANI for reverting edits that most weren't even being disputed.[15]. But I know it's my responsibility to read all the DRN rules. But personally, I feel an indefinite block seems overly harsh for all this. As I had good intent, only broke DRN rules unintentionally, my edits were well sourced direct from mainly experts inThe Conversation andMax Planck encyclopaedia of International Law, was willing to avoid edit warring and wanted DRN to resolve. I figured a warning would have sufficed if it's at least not of bad intent but rookie mistakes. Tho in hindsight, I think a topic block was more beneficial to me as it not only helps me cool off but gave me time to properly reflect and create essays to personally help me or others avoid very same mistakes above.[16][17] I only intend to cover my bases, so I know what to apologise for entirely in any future appeals. Please only neutral uninvolved parties to explain if I missed any.JaredMcKenzie (talk)16:41, 29 November 2025 (UTC)
I don't know for sure, but I guess that the reason that nobody has answered you so far is that nobody is prepared to wae through the wall of text to even work out what you are asking, let alone dig into the diffs you link to and try and understand what is going on.
Basically, this is not an appropriate question for the Teahouse. I'm not sure where is - perhapsWP:AN, though it doesn't seem to fit in any of the heading at the top.
@ColinFine Ok, I will make it very simple. An editor, who voted for me to be blocked, made allegations that these edits here are pov pushing / against policy.[18] I genuinely do not see it. If anything, these edits were made to improve Wikipedia and give readers a complete picture. I still genuinely believe that to be the case tho it's possible I may be wrong about these accusations made at me. If they violate policy, I want to understand as I am sincerely unaware.JaredMcKenzie (talk)21:50, 29 November 2025 (UTC)
I saw some of what happened.
You seem to still be convinced that making someone unhappy was the problem, and it never was. Smoothing things over with someone who you had a fight with is not the point at all. (It's a nice thing to do, and if you can you should, but it's not the main thing.)
There is no magic planned apology that can cover for what happened, because it's necessary to listen to each individual and react to them in real time. But I think the biggest positive step you can probably take is to admit "The edits I wanted to make on that topic were basically all wrong, I don't know the topic nearly as well as I used to think I did, and if someone disagrees with me about the topic I will start by assuming I'm probably wrong again."
Thank you for your opinion but I didn't come here to discuss the subject. Just want to cover my bases but don't think content policy is one of them. Also I do remember you. You also said my sources were unreliable. But a different Teahouse host contradicted you and said it was a reliable source.[19] Regardless, my edits were only mirroring a subject expert with a degree in international law - I don't claim to be an expert but I believe they are. If anything, I am probably closer to being guilty of plagiarism as I maybe too closely mirrored what they were saying.JaredMcKenzie (talk)22:08, 29 November 2025 (UTC)
Content policy is not the point. It was not basically a policy matter. It was not basically a problem of relating to people. It was you being flat-out wrong about the facts. You refusing to see that you were flat-out wrong about the facts was exactly what went wrong.TooManyFingers (talk)23:15, 29 November 2025 (UTC)
Ok, if the issue that lead to my block is about me being flat out wrong on facts then even tho I disagree - I believe it's for the community to decide. Not me as I am only just one editor here and it's the community overall that bears that larger responsibility in the end. I understand the best I could really have done in my past dispute - is tell others thatMax Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law is a good source and the info they present is all true. But if hypothetically a RFC or the community consensus do not agree later, then I assure you I have zero intentions in arguing further, as that would be against community consensus.JaredMcKenzie (talk)23:30, 29 November 2025 (UTC)
@TooManyFingers They didn't. DRN[20] never reached that final stage. I had primarily criticised a section for being full of original research that is also likely wrong, and needed to either be deleted entirely, or needed to show the sourced info from experts saying the exact opposite to them. I should mention after my topic block - that problematic section has now been completely removed by (others) without my input who also recognise it's unacceptable original research.[21] Also I noticed the editors who disputed me before, have not challenged this. So the article hasalready resolved itself without needing my input when more experienced editors had arrived to edit it. And I am 100 percent happy with the article's current revision (that is far better than the flawed version I fought against) and do not want to change the article any further, as I support and fully agree with it now.JaredMcKenzie (talk)01:43, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
You say you're not here to re-litigate then, rather than a simple explanation, you rehash what happened (with links!) Then demand to hear only from people who didn't comment before. Honestly, your Teahouse query isn't getting off to a very good start.
You didn't just use AI but you used in an ANI thread?!
You weren't indefinitely blocked so why are you explaining - I thought you didn't want to rehash?
Your response toTooManyFingers was rude suggesting that you haven't reflected long enough.
What future appeals? Are you planning to do something to get ANI'd and topic blocked again?
AsTooManyFingers pointed, apologies don't matter. Learn the rules and stay out of trouble.
My intent was not to "push a pov", or to be rude to others. I have at least reflected on what to do if I believe Wikipedia is wrong yet the community opposes me. My reflection[22] is simply if the community decides I am wrong, it's not my responsibility to try to fix Wikipedia further. But please note I never actually got the chance to reach this final stage on DRN. I was frequently accused of not being here to build an encyclopaedia (WP: NOTHERE) but I assure that was never my case. After my topic block, I have abided to it, and contributed constructively such as improving articles, and the creation of 2 new articles[23][24] to demonstrate that I am both capable of building an encyclopaedia, and my intent to do so. However if my question to know what to apologise for in future appeals, isn't welcome on Teahouse, then I can take a hint and will leave it here. Thanks for your time.JaredMcKenzie (talk)23:42, 29 November 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a place like any other with policies and procedure and a culture. Think of it like a company or a social group. You don't know the all the unspoken rules and other people have been there longer than you. For you to go to ANI this early, doesn't reflect well. To get topic banned is even more grave. But you're still talking about how unfair it was. If people just thought you said the wrong thing, you probably would have just gotten told off but you got topic banned. So my advice would be to set aside what you know, or think you know, and actually figure out how things work. Also, no one's surveilling you. You don't need to prove to anyone you know how to be constructive. Your record will eventually prove that.MmeMaigret (talk)00:23, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
But to answer your implied question - if you want to know what to do in future appeals (since you seem determined to go to ANI again), go to the ANI noticeboard, read the page or the archives, see what (if any) apologies were received well.MmeMaigret (talk)00:26, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
@Mmemaigret I am not an experienced editor like you. I used LLM for a crash course to reduce the high learning curve on Wiki policies, but unfortunately it did not fill me in about not going to ANI too early. So thank you for telling me that unwritten rule. I will remember that. But here on this thread, I only rehashed things that I admit fully that I did wrong and am not disputing it. I am just requesting if there were additional things I have to apologise for. The key reason that prompted me to ask is that I have noticed other editors, who cast ugly aspersions and edit war, yet only get blocked for a few weeks after warning. I never got a clear warning and personally always felt my first time topic block was maybe too harsh. And as you say indef blocks are typically only for the most grave crimes but I just don't think I reached that level, and feel a warning instead would had been more proportionate. So maybe I missed something. I just needed to be sure before submitting my appeal in future. I already created a draft appeal letter for future.[25] But nonetheless if Teahouse do not want to deal with this albeit intensive question, I will respect it.JaredMcKenzie (talk)01:00, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
Something to note; ban appeals are generally made at theadmin's noticeboard, rather than ANI, so looking through the archives of that page is likely to be better. There a couple of ban appeals on that page currently.45dogs (they/them)(talk page)01:02, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
I'm sorry to have to contradict you, but pushing a POV wasexactly your intent, though I think to a person who's in the process of doing that it doesn't feel to them like that's what they're doing. Pushing a POV probably often feels like trying to bring truth to a description or debate that has been based on serious mistakes until the POV-pusher came along. (That's more or less how it felt to me when I did it.)TooManyFingers (talk)02:00, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
@TooManyFingers Unfortunately that is where I cannot agree. It was explicitly called as POV pushing with these edits -[26][27][28] but I genuinely don't see it. I merely added in sourced info from a RS and if they are pushing a pov, then it means legal experts and scholars are pushing pov, as I only cite them faithfully. I believe neutrality is proportional to what reliable sources says on the matter and they all emphasise this in their articles. But I guess we can agree to disagree.JaredMcKenzie (talk)02:09, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
No, we cannot agree to disagree. It was called POV pushing because that's exactly what it was. You saying you "genuinely don't see it" is exactly why your topic ban needs to continue; your genuine not-seeing is a fault you currently have. I'm sorry for putting it so bluntly, but there it is.TooManyFingers (talk)08:14, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
Editing restrictions on Wikipedia are preventative, not punitive. I.e., we block or ban people to prevent them from continuing to disrupt the encyclopedia, not to punish them for wrongdoing. If ever you're sanctioned in some way and want to apologise or appeal, then ultimately the goal therefore is not to demonstrate some kind of moral contrition, but rather to demonstrate that you aren't going to repeat the (perceived) disruptive behaviour. The best way to do that is first and foremost to demonstrate to the community(/the admin who sanctioned you) that you clearly understand what you did, why it was detrimental to Wikipedia, and what you plan to do instead going forward. For example, if someone were sanctioned for repeated edit warring, their apology/appeal would probably look something like "I understand that by repeatedly re-inserting disputed content into this article without seeking consensus on the talk page, I was engaged in an edit war and contraveningWP:ONUS. By doing so, I understand that I compromised the collaborative nature of Wikipedia and allowed my ego to dictate my editing decisions rather than my desire tobuild an encyclopedia. In the future, I'll seekdispute resolution orthird opinions in the case of content disputes and refrain from repeated reversions of article content."
That's what we want out of an 'apology' or appeal; an understanding of what led to the edit restriction, and why it should be lifted.Athanelar (talk)08:12, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
What was difficult for me to process is how some editors would describe my edits as pov pushing or disinformation. But sources I primarily relied on are theMax Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law and a subject expert from a community-recognised RS perWP:THECONVERSATION. And because of their reputation, I didn't ever doubt their credibility so I added their expertise in. So the reactions to my edits was unexpected for me. I did try to work things out on DRN but my topic ban happened before the process was finished. I am merely trying to understand how to avoid same situation but I do believe I was following what high quality sources said in my key edits.[29][30] And I can't apologise for relying on sources that seem reliable. I can however commit to handling disputes more calmly and stepping back earlier when it becomes clear I cannot reach an agreement with them.[31]JaredMcKenzie (talk)09:47, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
POV pushing doesn't necessarily mean your information is incorrect, it can just mean giving undue or unencyclopedic focus to certain information that aligns with the viewpoint you're trying to promote. Saying "but my sources are reliable" isn't an answer to an allegation of POV pushing. SeeWP:CIVILPOV for example.Athanelar (talk)11:49, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
@Athanelar I was only trying to be a good editor when I see errors. There is important context that hasn't been mentioned. I noticed a large section of the article making problematic claims that were the exact opposite of what relevant subject matter experts are saying. They didn't cite any reliable sources and much of it seems to be Original research. (WP:SYNTH). That's inconsistent with standard Wikipedia policies. I already knew there was no legal experts making that bold assertion and instead there was multiple prominent scholars saying the opposite. Yet the article didn't include any of their viewpoints and that imbalance struck me as not neutral, and I raised this on DRN.[32]What would you or anyone had done in this situation? Ignore the original research or the fact that many legal experts are saying the opposite? My understanding is if a bold section is unsourced and mostly original research and contradicts established scholarship without backing then it needs to be minimally corrected by adding scholars that contradicts it, or be removed entirely. After my topic block, another editor deleted that entire problematic section and nobody challenged.[33] So underlying issue has been dealt with and the article no longer conflicts with what many reliable sources say.JaredMcKenzie (talk)17:10, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
@JaredMcKenzie As an innocent bystander, I have to note that you have mentioned the Max Planck Encyclopedia a bunch of times here and at DRN, or ANI, or wherever the other threads were.
Repeating the same points over and over again does not help. It's not that othersdon't understand what you are saying -- if that were the case, thenmaybe repeating yourself would seem to help (but it doesn't).
It looks to me like other editors do understand what you are saying, but they disagree. And then you repeat yourself.
You start to go down an introspective path with "What was difficult for me to process is ..." Unfortunately, you go right back to arguing and re-litigating in the next sentence: "But sources I primarily relied on...".
@David10244 I understand a scholarly consensus is the position of multiple RS thatisn't contradicted by other expert sources and Max Planck seems to meet that standard. Myintrospection was only there to improve my understanding of how to best deal if I ever come across similar issues in other parts of wiki and not repeat past mistakes. After a month here, my understanding has evolved to go find scholarly consensus, understand not every editor will accept these experts so don't continuously argue with them, esp if my own tone is unproductive, but instead calmly reach out to the wider community and have them ultimately decide what's best. That seems the most sustainable path for similar situations in the future.JaredMcKenzie (talk)11:53, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
In other words, you're immune from being mistaken about any particular thing, and if anyone points out that you might be mistaken about something, you will just ignore them and go talk to someone else instead.TooManyFingers (talk)04:54, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Or, to place it in a more suitable context, that message can just be read as "Despite what anybody says, I'm still right about the thing that got me into this situation".TooManyFingers (talk)05:03, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
@TooManyFingers Yeah, pretty much. But honestly, he asked how he could apologise in the future. He was told at least twice that apologising wouldn't achieve anything but if he really wanted to see what works/doesn't work, to peruse the ANI noticeboard or, better yet, the admin's noticeboard.At that point, his original query was addressed.MmeMaigret (talk)08:34, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Indeed.WP:AN would be the best place to look at ban appeals, whether its CBANs or TBANs (and I believe IBANs as well are also appealed there). Ban appeals aren't within the purview of ANI, though I'm not entirely sure why. ANI is better if you are looking for ban proposals.WP:AE can also cover ban appeals.45dogs (they/them)(talk page)08:53, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
His original query having thus been addressed, he continued proposing ways to circumvent or nullify the main points of the responses he had received here, and (to some extent) the ban itself. These two messages were part of an attempt I made to shut those proposals down; to say stop twisting the meaning of the answers you got. If that was the wrong thing for me to try, I didn't know that and I'm sorry.TooManyFingers (talk)16:59, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
@TooManyFingers If any future appeal requires me to admit I am wrong for generally adding that Taiwan never declared legal / formal independence as a separate state and citing many experts who explain this. I cannot do that and believe this is not something I should apologise or ever be forced to admit was wrong, if I genuinely do not believe it. My main issue to my understanding, has been explaining this to people who do not wish to be convinced. And am working to improve on how to handle similar situations. And when I say I will let the community decide on any of my edits. I meant only meant if a formal RFC says ie - my cited experts are wrong on this, I will accept that decision and will not further argue against it, even if I don't agree with it. I hope this clarifies my earlier comments above.JaredMcKenzie (talk)10:18, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, this is my first time creating a Wikipedia page; seeDraft:Michel Goguikian. I have added references wherever I thought them necessary but the article was declined for some missing ones.
I've got the following section:
Michel Goguikian was born in Lebanon into a diplomatic family. His father, Ambassador Jean Goguikian, Lebanon’s first ambassador of Armenian origin[2], held several diplomatic posts, including at the United Nations where he participated, among others, in the first International Symposium on Industrial Development held in Athena in 1967[3][4]. Michel was raised in an environment shaped by international affairs and later earned degrees in economics and finance in the United States. He eventually became a naturalized citizen of Venezuela and Spain.
I've added reference links for the "first ambassador or Armenian origin" and the United Nations sentence.
Do I also need to add reference links for the degrees in economics this person obtained? These are proving quite hard to find.
How do you know he has a degree, if not from a source? Do you know this person, or work for them?
SeeWP:LIBRARY for places where you can find, or get help finding, sources. You may also get help at your local public library (or your school or college library, if you are a student). Remember that paper sources, as well as those found online, can be used.Help:Find sources also has some good tips.Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing);Talk to Andy;Andy's edits15:51, 26 November 2025 (UTC)
@MBG2025 What does "Michel was raised in an environment shaped by international affairs" really mean? You might want to remove that. (It probably applies to every human on Earth.) Unless it means something like "his parents were ambassadors", etc., which of course, if something like that is what you mean, and you want to saythat in the article, it needs to be sourced.David10244 (talk)07:19, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
I see that you've quickly resubmitted this draft, after making one or two tiny changes to it. I can make an absolute guarantee that in the form it is today (30 November), it will fail. The sources are not the right kind, and you have not done anything about that.
If this draft was a broken-down car that you needed to fix, then what you've done is like just wiping the windows. You haven't fixedanything.TooManyFingers (talk)07:48, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments.
could you explain more what you mean by “The sources are not the right kind”?
I used sources very similar to other biographies accepted on Wikipedia. I’m very new here and have read the documentation but am still missing much.
Could you maybe recommend tutorials or other pages to be able to improve my understanding of what is acceptable?
My name is Bill E Gates JR. Im an American politician I am currently a declared candidate for Governor of Minnesota im trying to see how i can get my wikipedia page made. You have me listed as filed papers over declared in Minnesota 2026 Governors race.~2025-38000-16 (talk)14:46, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia is a volunteer-run project. There is no service to create articles for people. (There isrequested articles, but in all honesty, most requests remain there forever).
If you want there to be a Wikipedia article about you (which willnot be "your page" - seeWP:OWN) you're going to need to make it yourself, or get a friend or associate to make it. Whichever of those you choose, they will at least have aconflict of interest, and possibly be apaid editor, which they must declare; and the formidable challenge for new editors of writing an article is even harder with a conflict of interest.
Basically, Wikipedia is not for telling the world about yourself, whoever you are. I suggest you readWP:BOSS andWP:YESPROMO.
One more point: it is likely, now you have posted here, that you will be approached by people offering to create an article for pay. Most such offers are scams: seeWP:SCAM.ColinFine (talk)15:38, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Doing a quick google search returns only your website or results for other people. It is very unlikely you are notable enough for a wikipedia article. I wish you luck in your run for governormgjertson (talk) (contribs)18:19, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Musical artist new article declined
Hello, I hope you are doing well. I’m reaching out for some guidance regarding my draft article aboutRea Nuhu. I have made significant revisions to the draft, especially in terms of formatting the references properly, improving the structure, and ensuring that all sources are reliable and clearly cited.
However, the draft has been declined again, and I would greatly appreciate your help in understanding what specific improvements might still be needed. I want to make sure I’m following Wikipedia’s guidelines correctly, especially regarding notability and sourcing.
If you have the time, could you please take a look at the updated version of my draft and let me know if there’s anything I should adjust or strengthen? Your mentorship has been very helpful to me so far, and I would be grateful for any direction you can offer.
Let's look at why this was declined on 11 November,Negra.perlog. I quote:This submission's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article—that is, they do not show significant coverage.... Since that time, the draft has been slightly improved, but -- as far as I can see -- not a single reference has been added. Do sources exist that providesignificant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject inpublished, reliable, secondary sources that areindependent of the subject? If they do, use them and cite them. If they don't, no article can be created. --Hoary (talk)23:48, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
@Negra.perlog I'm only saying something that Hoary already said, but in simpler words.
None of your sources have written a long article about the history of Rea Nuhu. Interviewing them and making announcements about them are just little things that don't count.TooManyFingers (talk)00:30, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello — thank you for taking the time to review my draft and for the feedback.
I understand the concern raised about “significant coverage”. I respectfully disagree with the conclusion that the sources I provided are only passing mentions. My draft is supported by multiple independent, published, secondary sources that give substantive coverage of Rea Nuhu’s career, including feature articles, interviews, festival coverage and reviews that focus specifically on her work and public impact.
To make this explicit and avoid any misunderstanding, I have done the following and can paste full citations on request:
• Collected national and regional press articles that profile Rea Nuhu (feature-length pieces or multi-paragraph profiles, not just event listings).
• Added in-depth interviews and feature segments published by independent media outlets (print and online).
• Included coverage of Rea’s festival appearances and releases in reputable music/entertainment outlets that discuss her songs, reception, and career—again, not only short announcements.
• Marked which sources are independent secondary sources (i.e., not self-published, not social media, and not press releases).
A few clarifications about Wikipedia’s notability guidance that I relied on: significant coverage can be established by multiple independent sources that together provide sustained attention and context about the subject (not necessarily a single long article). If any of the individual sources I submitted are considered borderline, taken together they demonstrate the subject’s coverage and impact.
To Wikipedia, the only impact that counts is their impact on independent publishers wanting to produce stories. Having the subject sitting there makes the publisher non-independent.TooManyFingers (talk)18:45, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
Taking several inadequate sources and imagining that they ought to count for one good one is (a) not valid reasoning and (b) deliberately and systematically rejected by Wikipedia.TooManyFingers (talk)19:01, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
I have declared that I have a conflict of interest with the person in question. Since I manage the artist, I need to elevate her image and reputation in Albania. I’m being very honest, which is why I need someone’s help.Negra.perlog (talk)00:10, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
How do I create articles without going through the AfC process from a mobile device?
I am semi-protected authorized and sometimes need to edit from my phone. How do I create new articles from the Wikipedia app without going through AfC?VidanaliK (talk)18:41, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Just type the name of the article you want to create into the searchbar, and when there's no results found you'll be prompted to create an article with that title.Athanelar (talk)21:00, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, today my submission was refused for a few reasons. My page was concerned with a magazine printing company distaster that ended in deaths.Its been largely 'brushed under the carpet' as ive found very little reference online or even in the local area archives. Thankfully i retained old newspapers and cuttings. I wonder if you could offer me any hints and tips, because i am determined to give this my best shot. Thank you in advance from Andy McLellandMacker62 (talk)22:27, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Some quick advice; presuming that you're the same Andy McLelland mentioned in the draft as a former employee of the company and survivor of the fire, please take a look at ourconflict of interest guidelines and make sure you appropriately disclose your connection to the subject of your article.Athanelar (talk)23:10, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
If you give precise information about the source of each clipping, so that anyone can easily look up each one of them in an archive - in other words, the exact dates and exact page numbers for everything - that may improve the assessment.TooManyFingers (talk)23:13, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
What is "my wiki?" If this is an external full-fledged wiki like a Fandom wiki, that is not in our jurisdiction. If you are requesting an article to have stronger editing protection, first keep in mind that it is notyour article, but you can propose greater protection at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection.✨ΩmegaMantis✨blather18:59, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Or, if you mean that you don't want to be an editor anymore, then just stop editing; there is no way to shut down, you just leave when you want to leave.TooManyFingers (talk)19:05, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
@~2025-39347-86 Now that I've looked, I think you might mean "How do I block my user talk page from receiving warnings?"
Hi--I haven't been able to find advice/instructions in help directories about what to do if an article appears to be misnamed. I've been doing research and was considering editing the article now titled Death Midwife, but am not inclined to bother because the article's name makes it something of a lost cause. While the name Death Midwife had been used (and litigated) in Canada, it is very rarely used currently in the US. The terms death doula or end-of-life doula are far more prevalent, as shown in a comparison of news articles' use of the terms. I pointed this out in the article's talk page, but am not sophisticated enough in the ways of Wikipedia to attempt any changes to an article title. Any guidance appreciated.Riverbend Trail (talk)00:13, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
I'm somewhat confused in parsing the move/rename directions. I submitted an "uncontroversial technical request" to propose changing the article name Death midwife to Death doula, and simply identified the issue on the article's talk page. Should I have instead followed the directions for "Requesting a single page move" with a proposed move submission on the article's talk page? I note, though, that you are seemingly not supposed to have both the uncontroversial technical request and the talk page thing going at the same time. Further complicating this, currently Death doula redirects to Death midwife and Lovelano just kindly added a redirect for End-of-Life doula to Death midwife. Meanwhile the move instructions state, "Do not create a move request to rename one or more redirects.Redirects cannot be used as current titles in requested moves."Does the bolded statement mean that one could not in any event rename Death midwife to Death doula because of the redirects?Riverbend Trail (talk)01:57, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello - Ritchy, the newbie on the block is checking in for the first time. I will read and learn and help where and when I can but for now I have a BLP article on the go supported with 68 solid sources - TV, radio, publications, the works. Sadly, the article is about little ol' me. Testing the waters. Any guidance, suggestions, comments and concerns are appreciated and carefully considered. Respectfully, RitchyRitchy Dube (talk)02:55, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
for now I have a BLP article on the go supported with 68 solid sources - TV, radio, publications, the works. Sadly, the article is about little ol' me. Oh? You seem to haveDraft:The Haven by Richard Dube (paused for some time), and no article. (And you can't have an article on the go, as you're blocked from editing articles.) What am I missing here? --Hoary (talk)06:38, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
@Hoary, you're not missing anything, other than that newbies tend to call everything "articles" and haven't yet had it drilled into their heads that wikipedians care very deeply about the distinctions between various namespaces. --asilvering (talk)01:37, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Below are links to independent sources. Each is publicly accessible via archive.org.
[snip copy of sources from draft]
I may add television, video and radio content in the future. One thing and one step at a time. I have been warned about COI, neutrality, vanity, promotional language, AI generated content, self-aggrandizement. My motive is simple - be factual by backing everything thing with independent, verifiable, and reliable sources. All these publications have independent editorial departments.
I write a line - and I provide an inline citation and reference. I just want my story to be factual and supported by what was written about me.[Added at 04:12,8 December 2025 byRitchy Dube]
Richard Ritchy Dubé AKA Redemption Ritchy (born August 3, 1960) in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada is a Canadian author, public speaker, and social justice advocate. He is best known for his 2002 memoirThe Haven[1]
Timtrent, even before the recent popularization of "AI", faking newspaper articles such as this wouldn't have been prohibitively difficult. (These days, I fear that it would be pretty easy.) Let's suppose that somebody wanting to cite the articles knows that they're genuine but fears that, available on the Internet Archive but untethered to adjacent articles, they might look bogus. Then this editor can simply skip the URL and any mention of the Internet Archive. There's no rule against citing local newspapers available not on the web but only at a handful of libraries, on paper or microfiche. --Hoary (talk)12:11, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Respectfully, there is no rule prohibiting sources on Archive.org. It is actually much preferred in many ways because the sources have permanency, thereby avoiding link-rot. Anyone, anyone at all, can confirm the authenticity of the source because they are dated, named and come from well-known publications. That's the beauty of Archives and of these sources.Ritchy Dube (talk)12:29, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
@Hoary It is not archive.org that I was considering, but the pictorial representation of the media. There is something at the back of my mind nagging at me. I don't mind being proven wrong, or working to establish a consensus about them if one is not present already. 🇵🇸🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦🇵🇸18:38, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Timtrent, rather than "assume correctness of something at the back of one's mind until either its incorrectness is proven or a consensus to its contrary is established", the principle is "AGF". (Not incontrovertibly, of course.) --Hoary (talk)21:01, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
@Hoary Ah, but AGF is a different matter. I have never queried the good faith of the editor. The back of my mind has received this information in the past. I know I have not assumed it nor have I guessed it. 🇵🇸🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦🇵🇸21:43, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
The real issue here may not be about the sources at all.
FYI, I was blocked after my first AfC submission because editors falsely accused me of promotion, COI, and lack of notability. Meanwhile I declared my COI upfront. The problem isn't the sources, it's the subject.Ritchy Dube (talk)22:20, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
@Ritchy Dube your repeated intervention is distracting here, and incorrect. If I wish to speak about the subject of the draft I will do so.
@Hoary When you put it that way, I am honestly not sure, and, since others have not joined in to discuss either my or your thoughts I think the most sensible thing is for me to suggest my comment might stand, but that it is not supported by others, thus there is no consensus for it. 🇵🇸🇺🇦 FiddleTimtrentFaddleTalk to me 🇺🇦🇵🇸23:56, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
I have now struck the comment. This is my compromise that it 'might stand' with no consensus for it. It is a record, therefore, of my thoughts.
A good rule of thumb is to cite at least one inline citation for each section of text that may be challenged or is likely to be challenged, or for direct quotations. Two or three may be preferred for more controversial material or as a way of preventing linkrot for online sources, but more than three should generally be avoided; if four or more are needed, consider bundling (merging) the citations.Ritchy Dube (talk)10:10, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Sources are valid, dated and independent. They are national and regional in scope and are from Canadian coast to Canadian coast. You can rely on their reporting.Ritchy Dube (talk)11:51, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Zaptain United, you yourself already nominated it as a GA candidate on 28 November. (SeeWikipedia:Good article nominations#Transport.) We read that "there are currently 815 nominations listed, of which 706 are waiting to be reviewed". Assessors of nominated articles are expected to go through them thoroughly, and to be articulate in describing problems, so you may have to wait months. --Hoary (talk)11:07, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
No preview image
Hello everyone,
A page I'm currently editing has no preview image when I search it up.
It's not uncommon for pages not to display an image when searching it up. I believe this may have something to do with the CC0 status of the infobox image which prevents it from appearing, but I am not that well-versed in this capacity.PhoenixCaelestis ‣Talk //Contributions13:32, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
@Scarkletteyes The logo is previewing fine for me when I hover overRobert Bosch United World College. A more serious issue is that you uploaded this logo to Commons when you clearly are not its owner and hence are not entitled to license it with acreative commons license. The fact that, as you state, you don't know who is its owner does not give you the right to upload a logo which is clearly above the threshold for CC0 use, which some text-only logos are. I suggest you ask for it to be deleted.Mike Turnbull (talk)18:30, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Those editors who repeatedly violate copyright might get blocked but we can all make mistakes, which is fine if quickly remedied. It is possible that the logo in question could be used in en:Wikipedia at low resolution, if you can meet all the provisions stated atWP:NONFREE.Mike Turnbull (talk)12:31, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello! I posted here a few weeks back asking for help with a new article,Draft:Reticulum_Network_Stack, that was flagged by a reviewer as sound too much like AI writing. I definitely didn't use AI, but fair: it was my first article, so I figured I just needed to work on my tone and make it less promotional, more objective, specifically cite notable facts and remove any editorializing. I also did a pass for weasel words/etc.
My article just came back again after a few weeks in the queue though and was rejected by thesame reviewer for being "still obviously AI written." This reviewer claims to not re-review articles so that fresh eyes can give feedback, but... I guess I'm the exception? Now, obviously I can't prove a negative, but the only evidence that's being cited here is that I usedbold in the body text.
Sorry to say, that's just how I write, especially when trying to explain technical/implementation details in the most accessible way possible, and I'm feeling a little stymied here. Is there something in the style guide I'm missing that prohibitsbold in body text?
I'm going to do one more pass to address the other non AI-related feedback left by the reviewer, to remove the boldface and add more context for new readers. To the teahouse:is there anything else that jumps out that I can improve in my article?
While I'm here:how much more context should I be giving exactly? I figure anyone looking for a page on the Reticulum network stack at least has some networking background but also might not be super familiar with cryptography.
P.S. Turns out, thereis a style rule against using bold for emphasis! Fair enough. Would have been a lot more helpful to have been linked toMOS:NOBOLD though, rather than just being confidently, incorrectly called an AI. Mayamar Edits (talk)02:02, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
@Mayamar Edits The format of the article can easily be improved but the real issue is to show that this network protocol isnotable enough to warrant its own article. A quick look suggests that the sources are mainly notindependent, as required to do that. Many are to the Reticulum Network itself or, like the VICE media article are based almost exclusively on what its developer said at interview or on Reddit (!). You need to summarise what sources meetingthe golden rules say, with very little else except to make the subject understandable for non-experts.Mike Turnbull (talk)13:03, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
I've got quite the problem, as i couldn't quite figure out how to link them and put links in, i had to run it through AI and that now makes it seem like i've done it ALL by AI.
I mean, aside from the AI issues and not knowing how to reference, I'm very curious what yourcredible claim to significance is here, nevermind your claim tonotability. This is an article not about atype of aircraft (which is already covered atBoeing 787-9) but about a single aircraft operated by an airline, and seems to contain absolutely no indication as to why this aircraft is any more notable than any of that airline's other aircraft, or any other aircraft in the world. This is rather like creating a Wikipedia article about your own car; not its model, butspecifically your car.
I have no idea what your reasoning could be for why this should have a Wikipedia article. I think the reviewer should reject this, not decline it.Athanelar (talk)13:39, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
My draft has been declined three times due to not meeting wikipedia standard. And just passing by. I have updated it on several occasion. I would like to know what I needed to do.Abiolaspace (talk)06:42, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
It is quite difficult to write an article about yourself. What you need to do to succeed in writing a Wikipedia article about yourself is to imagine that you know nothing about yourself. Imagine that you are a student in a distant country who has been told to write everything they can find about Abiola. You cannot use what you know - you can only use what the far-away public can find in the news, or in libraries.
Because this is difficult, and because people don't like doing it, it's usually better to ignore Wikipedia and live your life without it.TooManyFingers (talk)09:04, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
I think it is a good practice to write your own page because you retain control and integrity of your true lived exprience. You avoid posthumous biographies that are often rife with bias and inaccuracies.
Make sure that you back up everything you write with a reliable neutral and independent source. For example, let's assume you may be an athlete, author, advocate or scholar, share the links to multipe indepenpdent sources that report about you in that role. Let reporters do the talking for you, don't do any for yourself. Always use "according to" such and such a source when writing.Ritchy Dube (talk)12:39, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
"Retaining control" over an article about yourself is impossible on Wikipedia; that's actually specifically one of the reasons we adviseagainst writing autobiographical articles; because it's very easy to end up with asense of ownership over the article.Athanelar (talk)13:14, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Yes, of course, Athanalar, Wikipedia is open for contributions from many editors, including you and me. Having said, we can ensure that nobody, and I mean nobody, writes anything on any Wikipedia page that is not supported by independent, well-established and reliable sources like national and regional newspapers, journals, newsletters and the sort. We never own the material, we just publish what has already been published. We are in a real sense conduits of information, not creators. I will paste examples here for your perusal very shortly. We will ensure that all statements will be prefaced with the following - "according to", the "newspaper article reported", "reviewer remarked", "sources wrote", keeping it neutral. Nobody owns the information anymore - it's just there, on the public domain - for everyone to see, read, learn and enjoy.Ritchy Dube (talk)14:42, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Everyone here will be in control of the Ritchy Dube page. When other editors make valid changes to it, according to reliable sources and Wikipedia standards, you have no way of stopping them, including that you can't come along later and put it back the way you had it.TooManyFingers (talk)18:24, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Ritchy, while I understand your point, the biggest problem for many new editors writing about themselves (or their company, etc) is that they find it extremely hard to 1) forget everything they know about the subject, and write only what's in reliable sources, and 2) write neutrally. This is only natural - it's hard to forget what you know about yourself, and you're inclined to want to put a positive spin on things. Unfortunately this means that the drafts almost always get declined and eventually rejected, while the new editor becomes increasingly frustrated because from their point of view everything is neutrally written and well-sourced. Frustrated and sometimes angry new editors, plus frustrated reviewers trying to explain the problem to someone who doesn't seem to understand, is a very unhappy combination for everyone - this is one of the reasons we discourage writing about oneself. The discovery that anyoneexcept them can edit the article once it's live, adding anything with a reliable source, is also often a horrifying moment for new editors who thought that it would be theirs and they would be able to update it as and when they wished. We try to gently discourage people from embarking on such an endeavour so no one wastes their time and effort on what is very likely to be a lost cause. (Yes, some people have successfully created a COI article - but they are few and far between!)Meadowlark (talk)02:46, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Gotcha - loud and clear. Neutral all the way. I appreciate the feedback and heads up. No need for frustration here, though. Wanna see the draft, not "my draft?" Wanna work on it? Keep me honest, neutral and professional? I am open to working with and accepting feedback from others. I play well with others. I can't say that about everyone else. Yikes.
I will submit the draft to AfC.
If editors become unreasonable, biased about me and/or the subject or both, frivolous or vexatious, there are avenues available to ensure that we edit and create by the same rules. Hate has no home here.
Everything written in the article is 100% neutral. If I did not declare my COI, you would not be any the wsier about it's origins. Every little-thang comes with an inline citation linked to a reliable independent source. It's calle (CMA - Cover my A...). I have decent sources from national publications, with solid in-house editorial departments. Major regional rags also. Radio spots. TV series. Videos.
Now, if editors contribute to the article, that's fine and dandy, as long as they have a reliable source to support their valued contribution. We editors and contributors must hold ourselves to the same standards.
To avoid bias, hate, frustration, disengenuous blocks and rebuttals, we need to keep an open mind and work together for the edification, enlightenment, education and entertainment of readers.
To date, I've experienced my fair share of petty cyber-bullying, been blocked after being falsely accused of not being notable or of being promotional. None of these had any weight, credibility or validity. They, unfortunately arise from editorial bias.
I hope that you'll be one of the editors who is successful with a COI article! Mostly I just wanted to be sure you knew that even if you are an exception, there will be many other new editors who can't get to grips with our policies - so please help out with letting them know the hazards of drafting an article about themselves, if you happen to stumble upon them :)Meadowlark (talk)12:41, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
I am willing to help where and when I can. Thanx for the decency and professionalism, BTW. Always nice to hear from decent folks.
There certainly are hazards. My suggestion to newbies like me would be to not allow yourself to be bullied, scared off or intimidated by haters.
You've indicated that you want to write an article aboutyourself.
First of all, westrongly discourage editors from creating or editing articles relating to subjects they have a connection to. If you still wish to proceed, please thoroughly read everything below.
Warning against COI editing
First and foremost this is because conflict of interest editing often results in issues with theneutral point of view expected on Wikipedia, due to biases whether consciously or unconsciously. While you may notintend to be biased, the types of information you include or exclude from an article are likely to be skewed by your connection to the subject. It's also very common for conflicts of interest to result inpromotional writing such as advertisement-like articles for companies or resume-like articles for people. You may innocently intend to 'raise awareness' or 'correct misinformation' about the subject, but this isstill promotion, and promotion of any kind is not allowed on Wikipedia.
People with conflicts of interest tend to be very bad at gauging whether the thing they're writing about meetsWikipedia's notability guidelines. In order for a subject to have a Wikipedia article it needs to be 'notable,' which is a word that has a particular and slightly unintuitive meaning here on Wikipedia. There are a number of different criteria for notability depending on the subject, such asthe 'general' notability guidelines, theguidelines for notability of companies or organisations, thenotability of creative professionals etc.The vast majority of people and companies are not notable in the Wikipedia sense, and do not warrant a Wikipedia article about them. A good rule of thumb is that if a person or company is notable enough to justify a Wikipedia article, then soon enough somebody else will write it for them, and there's no need to do it yourself. So if you're here to write an article about yourself or someone or something connected to you, it's generally a good indicator that the subject does not yet meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. A special note is necessary here thatChatGPT and other AIs do not understand Wikipedia notability. It's very common for COI-writing newcomers to get themselves confused because they ask ChatGPT whether they should write an article about themselves/their company and it spits out a few trivial sources and claims that these sources constitute 'notability.' You need to thoroughly read the notability guidelines relating to the subject you want to write about and make sure you understand whether the available sources support the notability of the subject. Do not try to take shortcuts by asking an AI, it will likely be wrong.
It's very common that articles written by those connected to the subject end up being writtenbackwards. This means that you first write the article with everything you know about the subject due to your connection to it, and then try to find sources to confirm the information you've written.This is the wrong way to write a Wikipedia article. As an encyclopedia, the purpose of Wikipedia is to summarise theexisting information available about a subject inreliable, independent secondary sources. The goal is not topresent new information or tosynthesise multiple existing sources to provide new conclusions. When writing an article you mustfirst search for sources relating to the subject (appropriate sources, those meeting thegolden rule) andonly include information in the article which is written in the sources. You may well know information about the subject which is not available in any of the existing sources, but youmust not include this kind of 'original research' in your article. It is understandably frustrating to want to provide certain information and not be able to, but that is the limitation of writing for an encyclopedia, and precisely why we strongly discourage people from writing about subjects they are connected to.If the existing sources don't say it, you can't put it in an article.
You should also keep in mind that having an article about yourself, your company etc isnot always a good thing. You (or the person or company you're writing on behalf of) do not own the article, and cannot control what is in it.
If after reading all of that, you still think you can go ahead and beat the odds and create this article, then follow the steps below.
Writing a COI article
First, and most important, you need to disclose your conflict of interest. There are instructions on how to do this atWP:COI If your conflict of interest involves being paid to create this article, you should follow the instructions atWP:PAID to disclose that also.
Next, heed what I said above about not writing an article backwards. You need toforget everything you know about yourself, which is obviously the most difficult part. Search Google and elsewhere for sourcesfirst. Remember that those sources need to bereliable, independent and secondary. Avoidtrivial coverage such as listicles, especially when writing about companies as this type ofday-to-day corporate coverage is very common. The sources you use need to actually prove the subject's notability (according to the most relevant guidelines) as I discussed above, which passing/trivial coverage does not. If you use ChatGPT or another AI to find sources for you (which you shouldn't), youmust double-check the sources yourself andverify that they actually say what the AI claims they do, because source-to-text inconsistencies are extremely common when using LLMs to search for sources.
Once that's done, you can extract information from the sources and write your article. For guidance on that, followHelp:Your first article and feel free to ask any more specific questions here at the Teahouse.
Very true indeed. It is not easy to write your own draft because of editorial bias, both the creator's and reviewing editor's. We need to take a step back and let reporters do what they do, report. Weneed to rely on the sources. Be professional and objective. Mine the sources and let them do the talking.
Use "According to" then cite the source and use a snippet in quotations.
Example:
According to The Times, "Lionel was an excellent footballer in his youth" - cite source here, and insert a "quote with a bit more information from the article right here".Ritchy Dube (talk)12:48, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
How do I decline an AfC submission?
I know how to accept a submission (by moving it to mainspace and cleaning up) but how do I decline a submission for a specific reason, or add extra notes?VidanaliK (talk)18:16, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
@Tenshi Hinanawi Oh shoot. I thought you just needed to be autoconfirmed since I am able to move pages so I accepted a few AfC submissions by moving them to mainspace and cleaning up; I'm really sorry, I'll stop accepting AfC submissions now.
Citing sources in foreign languages in English pages
How should I handle foreign sources when I want to add them to an English-language page? Should I translate the title of the source, or should I leave it in the foreign language? Thank you!ScottyNolan (talk)08:53, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello,ScottyNolan. I recommend that you use citation templates, which are in a fill-in-the-blank format with optional fields for content in other languages. SeeWP:Citation templates for a list. For example, take a look at the documentation atTemplate:Cite book. It has a special optional field for a book title in a language that uses a different script than English, such as Arabic or Japanese. It has another optional field for titles in languages that share our script such as French or Italian. And so on. Please read the documentation.Cullen328 (talk)09:07, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi, @ScottyNolan. For the article2019 Alta helicopter crash, I used many Norwegian-language sources. In the templates, I wrote the original title for the "title" parameter, then provided a translation of the title for the "trans-title" parameter. An example (with the link removed to save space):{{Cite news |last=Rostad |first=Ida Louise |date=4 September 2019 |title=Helikopterulykken i Alta |trans-title=Helicopter Crash in Alta}}.ArcticSeeress (talk)21:23, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Grammar question
Has the use of "although" changed so that it means exactly the same as "but"? Here's a semi-random example, taken fromGu Jiegang:
"Gu's historical methods were indirectly influenced by western historiography and philosophy; although he described his historical arguments as an independent invention."
To me, this use of "although" is backwards; to me it conveys "One would normally expect the present event to modify the past event, but in this case it didn't" - which I don't think the writer could have intended.
I'm actually able to help here @TooManyFingers. No, this example is incorrect. A semicolon joins two phrases that could serve as standalone sentences. The usage of although would imply a comma following "invention" and further information.
This could be reworded to "Gu's historical methods were indirectly influenced by western historiography and philosophy, though he described his historical arguments as an independent invention." "Though" should be used in place of "Although" and I suspect this is what the original writer was going for.
I'm still confused, does vandalism on user talk page counted asWP:VANDAL? In there, I thoughtWP:TPV only counts for article talk page. Although, there isUser and user talk page vandalism, it only talk about User page. Does User talk page considered part of User page too, or not?EdhyRa (talk)20:06, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
If you want to meet and collaborate with other women who edit Wikipedia, there is not, as far as I can tell, a single place to do so.
You will certainly find plenty (and men who are interested in the same subject area) atWP:WikiProject Women in Red, but also in many other corners of Wikipedia.
I am a female who's been a volunteer Wikipedia editor for nearly 20 years. I work on articles that interest me, and I'm not lamenting over most editors being male, or that women's topics are not getting enough coverage. I work, at my own pace, on notable subjects I feel should have well-researched online articles. So if you're wondering where women editors are, I'm assuming they are at home, putting their time and effort into whatever Wikipedia projects seem most important to them.Karenthewriter (talk)19:17, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello. I can say that none of the awards contribute to notability, as they themselves do not have articles(likeNobel Peace Prize orAcademy Award). It reads like his resume, not a summary of what independentreliable sources with significant coverage have chosen on their own to say about him.
Thank you for the helpful feedback! I will work on replacing awards with stronger independent secondary sources that provide significant coverage, and revise the article to be more neutral and less like a resume
If you have any suggestions for which areas to focus on first, I’d really appreciate it!
The goal of my project is to learn how to correctly write a biographical article on a real public figure, using reliable independent sources and following Wikipedia’s notability guidelines. I’d like to keep working on this draft and I’m happy to revise anything needed to meet the standards.Driedmango345 (talk)17:37, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Stop using an AI to write things. The entire "Selected projects" and "Recognition" sections were AI-generated (incluuding the "Recognition" heading, which AI models seem to love but Wikipedia generally doesn't use). AIs are terrible at writing Wikipedia articles, and not good at finding sources that meet all of theWP:Golden Rule criteria. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)17:46, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
If your school has set you a project to 'learn to write a biographical article,' please tell whoever assigned you that project from all of us here at Wikipedia that it's astupid project.
Writing an article is one of the most complex and difficult tasks on Wikipedia even for experienced editors; writing biographies is doubly so, because we haveeven more restrctive rules about the biographies of living people. It takes a lot of understanding of our policies and guidelines, and a lot of experience with Wikipedia in general.
Need to move Alicia Troncoso page to Alicia Troncoso Lora
Done
Hello,
I’m looking for help with a title change on a Wikipedia article. The subject’s full name is “Alicia Troncoso Lora,” which is also how she appears on her previous French Wikipedia biography. Could someone please guide me on how to request this title change or let me know if anyone here is able to make the change?
English Wikipedia does not use full names as titles. We always use the name that the person is most commonly known by in the reliable sources. If the reliable sources usually omit "Lora" when referring to her, then we intentionally also omit it.TooManyFingers (talk)18:59, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for the clarification.
In this case, most reliable sources and platforms refer to her as“Alicia Troncoso Lora.” In Spanish naming conventions, it’s normal to use two surnames, and this is how she is commonly identified in publications and official profiles. For this reason, I believe the full name may be the one most commonly used in reliable sources.Stanley Bloom 3 (talk)19:02, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
I just looked. A few of the sources, being formal listings, use "Doctora Alicia Troncoso Lora", but all of the ordinary uses of her name, including a caption under an official-looking photo, omit it. Wikipedia (at least the English one) always uses the ordinary everyday name as the title of the article.TooManyFingers (talk)19:27, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
I'm confused. I see that the article has moved, but I also see that the person who asked this question is now indefinitely blocked for socking.TooManyFingers (talk)03:32, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi TooManyFingers, yes both things have happened. The article was moved and the checkusers found that the original creator was socking and blocked that account. It isnt unusual to have a new account do some good work in order to qualify as extended confirmed, and if they subsequently get found out as a sock account of someone who accumulates good accounts so that for example, they can get multiple votes in discussions, we don't throw away the good contributions. As it is a checkuser block, we mere mortals are not going to see the evidence of that as the checkusers have access to information about the edits that are not made public. But they have said the account is a sock ofUser:Ssmn20.ϢereSpielChequers10:24, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi, this is unrelated, but seeWP:LATINPLEASE; it would be very helpful if you changed your signature so that, alongside your Arabic-script username, there's a transliteration (or some nickname we can call you) in the Latin script, just to make it a little easier for us non-Arabic readers to be able to refer to you in discussions if necessary. It isn't mandatory, but it's much appreciated as a courtesy.
The following discussion is closed.Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Hello. I would like to request a review of the placement of Digital Information World (DIW) in the “Fake” list/websites.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_news_websites. (Disclosure: I have a connection at DIW, so I'm not editing the article.)
The current classification appears to rely on a single article (based on 404 Media website) that questioned one DIW post. 404Media article raised concerns about the quality and readability of a post on DIW, but it did not provide substantial evidence that DIW is a fake website, while an independent websitehttps://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ labels DIW “Factual Reporting: HIGH” and “Credibility Rating: HIGH” (source link: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/digital-information-world-bias-and-credibility/). While, 404Media is known for “occasional sensational and clickbait-type stories”, as per https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/404-media-bias/.
Labeling the entire website as “fake” based on a single claim and/or assumptions risks giving more weight to the claim than the source itself provides.
Wikipedia’s content policies generally distinguish isolated quality issues from broader patterns. When only a single readability claim is tied to one article, categorizing a publication as fully fake may exceed what the available sources support. High-impact labels should reflect the scale and nature of what independent sources demonstrate, not editorial inference. This relates to WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE, which caution against generalizing a site-wide characterization from limited evidence.
The use of AI-assisted tools, or the presence of errors in an article, does not by itself prove systematic plagiarism or that a website is fake. Wikipedia should rely on patterns supported by multiple authentic, independent sources before assigning labels.
The current placement raises questions under WP:V, WP:RS, WP:UNDUE, and WP:SYNTH. A classification that extends beyond what sources explicitly state may also fall into WP:NOR territory if it represents editorial interpretation rather than documented evidence.
Request
I request that experienced editors review the sourcing and assess whether DIW’s inclusion under the Fake category accurately reflects what reliable sources verify about the publication. If there are additional independent sources establishing a broader pattern, it would be helpful to cite them. If not, adjusting the placement could bring the entry closer to policy.
If there is already a discussion on the Talk page, there does not need to be one here at the Teahouse. A very cursory glance at the website's so-called articles make it pretty obvious to anyone that all they do is either generate pure trash AI slop or copy / plagiarize wholesale from legitimate websites. Find another employer.qcne(talk)11:45, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
So, you mean a website can be fake just based on an editor's assumptions?
I’d appreciate it if we keep this discussion constructive instead of "Find another employer." stamp in every message. This kind of feel funny though. lol...N2225Lba2 (talk)12:50, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed.Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Help requested for draft review (COI employee)
Hello, I’m seeking assistance from uninvolved editors. I have created a neutral draft about the Victorian Automotive Chamber of Commerce (VACC) using independent secondary sources. I have a declared conflict of interest because I am employed by VACC and provide secretariat support to the Commercial Vehicle Industry Association of Australia (CVIAA).
I am asking for neutral review and improvements before any AfC submission, so that it is evaluated independently and not submitted directly by me.
Thank you for the feedback. A References section has now been added using independent sources (news, government publications and regulator material). If you have time, a further neutral review would be appreciated.Truqmaps (talk)01:24, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
@Truqmaps: You get feedback by submitting the draft. That being said, I don't see any sources that meet the very strict standard inWP:NCORP, and two of them lead to error pages. Did you use AI to create the draft?Helpful Raccoon (talk)01:36, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
I am seeking some input on my draft,Draft:Oklahoma Intercollegiate Legislature. It's likely that I have notability established. I had asked a question yesterday, and the conclusion seemed to be that Wikipedia General notability guidelines was satisfied. I'm awaiting a review on the draft, I don't mean to solicit anyone to review it. I just want some feedback on it so I can continue improving it while I wait for a review.
I think I have the article written in a neutral and encyclopedic tone. I think the clarity of my writing can also be improved, I just don't know how to make it sound better. If you have a few moments, please take a peek and leave some feedback. I posted this question earlier at the helpdesk atAfC. If it's easier feel free to leave any comments on the articles talk page or on my user talk page...
Hi! Please don't post the same question in multiple places. And the review on the draft is how you get a second opinion; there's no alternate process.SomeoneDreaming (talk)21:46, 8 December 2025 (UTC)
Articles for Creation is a failed process that should be abolished. This piece should have been published straight to Wikipedia rather than left to fester in the AfC cul de sac because there aren't enough volunteers to make an easy call like this for "up to 6 weeks."Carrite (talk)17:18, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Unregistered editors are only blocked from pages where vandalism is frequent, or where conflict between editors is high (for example, countries with long-standing real-life conflicts attract tendentious editing and anger from both sides). You're welcome to make good changes (providing proper sources of course) on all the articles that don't have a special block on them.
When you make a change, look over the preview carefully to see that it really did what you intended, before you hit the blue button. If you do publish a change and then decide it was no good, you can undo it; go to the bottom of the article, find "Last edited on ...", click the button, look near the top to find your recent edit, and click the "Undo" button next to it. A confirmation page will come up, showing you how the article will be changed back.TooManyFingers (talk)17:57, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Redlinks
I've been seeing red linked users. When I click, it doesn't say anything like "this user got blocked due to sockpuppeting" or something. What is this? Starry~~(Starlet147)02:11, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Redlinks just mean the page doesn't exist; if the user doesn't have a userpage, it will show as a redlink. The same thing happens when you link an article that doesn't exist.Sockpuppetry is when an editor abuses multiple accounts. Users without userpages will have their block status displayed on their userpage.45dogs (they/them)(talk page)(contributions)02:51, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
I'm one of the red-linked ones you mentioned. It's just because I haven't put anything there.
Our football team has recently updated its club crest to a new modern one. How do I update the crest on Wikipedia?Nahnuk (talk)12:50, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
@Nahnuk If you link the WP-article you're talking about and a link to the crest, you might get lucky and somebody will do it for you. Anyway: go toWP:FUW. Chose Upload a non-free file > This is a copyrighted, non-free work, but I believe it is Fair Use. > This is a logo of an organization, company, brand, etc. Then you can add it to the article, or ask for help again. And, you know, links.Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk)14:42, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
I see that you have now inserted the crest into the article.
However, you have made the following claims, with legal force:
The logo is your own work
You own the copyright in the logo, and so have the legal power to assign it and grant licences
You have granted a licence that will allow anybody, anywhere, for any purpose, to copy and change the logo provided they comply with some conditions (principally, attributing its source).
Unless these claims are all true, the only way you can use this image on Wikipedia is by uploading it as a non-free file to Wikipedia (not to Commons) in the way @Gråbergs Gråa Sång has already explained.
Also, I observe that the articleHarland & Wolff Welders F.C. has no sources with significant coverage, and therefore does not establish that the team meets Wikipedia's criteria fornotability. I have tagged it for this, and for problably being non-notable. It is likely to get deleted unless somebody can find some substantial, independent, reliable sources (seeWP:42)ColinFine (talk)15:07, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi yes all content is mines. So free to be added without copyright infringement. Reference the material added I am part of the social media team at Harland and Wolff welders football club. All information added is accurate and can be verified by football club.Nahnuk (talk)15:13, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
We have been set up to modernise the welders content as most of it was outdated and not accurate. The badge was changed in August 2025 and all the content that was innacurate or outdated has been removed by me.Nahnuk (talk)15:15, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
@Nahnuk, to be clear, when you uploaded the logo to Commons, you are saying thatanyone - including your competitors, rivals, detractors, etc - can use it foranything - including to taunt or mock you, in ads, or even as their own logo - as long as they credit you. Are you quite sure that's what the club wants to do?Meadowlark (talk)05:18, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Finding this all very overwhelming. People taunt rival teams on socials all the time. I’m not sure I can stop that anyway.Nahnuk (talk)09:05, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
HelloNahnuk, are you sure that you can freely license the image, and also are you sure that you want that option?
Creative commons license: (You must have the right to license the image, not just permission to use it for this option.) Anybody can use the image for any purpose, including commercial activities. It is unrelated to trademarks and patents.
Fair use: The image can only be used on English Wikipedia and only on articles directly related to the topic.
Hello again, @Nahnuk. I'm afraid that yes, editing Wikipedia is complicated at first.
It is even more so if you start with a misconception, that I think you have: that this is like social media. It is not.
There is no such thing as "your club's Wikipedia page". There is currently an article calledHarland & Wolff Welders F.C. which is Wikipedia's articleabout your club. It does not belong to you or your club, and it is not not yours to update, though you are welcome to makeedit requests concerning it. It is absolutely not a place for you or your club to tell the world about the club: that is calledpromotion, and is forbidden in Wikipedia.
A Wikipedia article should be a neutral summary of what several people wholly unconnected with the subject have independently chosen to publish about the subject in reliable publications, (seeGolden rule) and not much else. What you know (or anybody else knows) about the subject is not relevant except where it can be verified from a reliable published source. Unless there are such sources there can be no article, and as I said before, the article is likely to be deleted unless somebody comes up with some sources which meet all the criteria inWP:42.
The only possible thing that it is worth spending any effort on in regard to that article at present is looking for and citing such sources.Any other activity on it is likely to be wasted effort.ColinFine (talk)22:27, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
What about factual things like the club badge which has changed? The old Wikipedia article had the old badge which is no longer used by the football team? Surely that’s a factual update?Nahnuk (talk)22:42, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello everyone,we are a small group of university students working on a draft article about Shawn Merriman (also known as the “Ponzi Fraudster”) as part of an Economics course at our university.
Our draft was declined with the comment that “sources are critical in an article like this that describes crimes committed by a living person” and that some claims may not be sufficiently backed by reliable sources. We completely understand the importance of this policy, especially when dealing with biographies of living persons.
However, we are a bit unsure about which specific sources are considered inadequate, since several of the references we used come directly from official government websites or publicly available legal and regulatory documents.
We would be very grateful if someone could take a quick look at our draft and help us understand:
Which sources might not meet Wikipedia’s reliability standards,
Which parts of the article might require stronger citations,
Whether there are specific aspects we should revise or focus on to make the article suitable for resubmission.
We really care about improving this draft because we find the case meaningful from an economic and educational standpoint, and we believe it would be valuable for Wikipedia readers to have an article about it.
I am disappointed to say that your draft has been generated/partially written by a large language model like ChatGPT. You have at least two hallucinated/fake references and LLM-generated prose which is inappropriate for Wikipedia
Whit all due respect I do not agree with what you are accusing us of doing about Ai,there is maybe a small percentage just because English it’s not our mother language so sometimes we let it check if there are any errors but I can assure that all the information we’re searched and processed by us . I saw that you’re right about the fact that there are some links that do not work so I will now check it to see what’s wrong.Anyway thank you for your time,we really appreciate it.I’ll tag my colleagues so you can see that this account belongs to only one of us.
Hello everyone, I’m @Ulivo30, another member of the university’s small team.
We are glad that you all are spending time on our cause because it means this is a relevant topic to write about. But we won’t hide that reading about this accuse is actually making us feeling unmotivated. We are of course open to discuss all the doubt that you have about the use of generative AI but we won’t stand in front of direct accuse (especially without any direct cited reference).
After this introduction we would like to share some important point with you. As @LiucAnna.1 said, we do actually used AI but just to check for mistakes (grammatical, spelling and structural). Instead of denigrating our operate I think this shows how much we worked to create a page that worthy to stay on Wikipedia and the importance that this project has for us (and not only for the final grade).
The last point we were confused about is that if we had actually used AI, would have been rejected with that justification. Instead it will be rejected for "Use of AI generative tools".
Regarding sources: we worked on that as soon as we received the critics. We fixed them and we are sure similar mistakes won’t happen again.
Would you be able, when you have time, to relook at our article and let us know the areas that we need to fix please?
I hope this helps provide clarity regarding our work.
References 8, 17 and 19 (as numbered at the time of submission) are not found, and are not in the Internet Archive. These all need to be fixed. Reference 20 is currently offline, and cannot be checked.
@Ahri Boy: No; The Teahouse is "for friendly help with using and editing Wikipedia". It says so, right at the top of this page. That includes non-article pages; and issues encountered by readers who do not edit.Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing);Talk to Andy;Andy's edits13:42, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Zaptain United,Japan Air Lines Flight 813 starts "The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline." Nominating such an article would be a waste of people's time. In your opinion, does the topic demonstrably meetWP:GNG? If it doesn't obviously do so, improve the article until the topic does obviously do so. If/when it does obviously meetWP:GNG, then persuadeOnel5969 (who added the notability template) that the notability template is no longer needed. --Hoary (talk)07:47, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Do you think this source is reliable to use for the article?
How do I make a bot proposal and where do I put it for approval?
@Monkeysmashingkeyboards and I, along with a few others, were discussing creating a bot to help with certainWP:AFC drafts. I was reading throughHelp:Creating a bot and the diagram says I should make a bot proposal and it can either be failed or accepted. Where do we place this proposal, and are there guidelines for writing one?guninvalid (talk)23:30, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
It depends on how your browser handles cookies. Temporary accounts are tracked using cookies, so if your browser has some kind of tracking protection which deletes your cookies regularly, that's why.
a quick Google search says almost certainly not. Places and institutions need (in depth) news articles, books or studies written about them to be considered notable.Osa Akwamarynowa (talk)07:51, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello, I am requesting the assistance of a neutral editor to review and potentially submit a draft article forBrittany Porter, an American singer, songwriter, and performer known professionally asBrook Lynn.
She has received significant international coverage inSouth China Morning Post,The Independent,Daily Mail,Yahoo News,MSN,Times of India,Economic Times,CNBC Indonesia, and additional outlets. A neutral draft has been prepared with proper structure and references.
Hi there, I would like to inquire what the best-practice in Wikipedia is for historical articles that use a capital city name that is no longer used. On the one hand, the archaic name is historically accurate since it was actually used at some point, on the other, since it is archaic, it could be entirely unknown to readers. I was reading through the article for Bloody Sunday, and in the "CONSEQUENCES" heading: Revel, Vilna, Kovno, Tiflis. Do you - random teahouse reader - know these city names? Will the average reader?Apraxilalia (talk)23:07, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Vilna sounds familiar, but I would not be able to point it out on a map haha. Is it the old name forVilnius? (nlwiki says "Wilna" is the German name for Vilnius) Linking it using the redirect will allow curious users to see what the article means.
Kovno already redirects to Kaunas afaik. (useful, so ppl don' t end up atKovno Governorate) Tivlis surprised me, but already has a redirect too.
Don' t take my word for it, but I recall you are right to use historical names, and to disambiguate using the links. (You could also disambiguate just by stating it in the text, but I tend to think linking is prettier.)
Yep, sounds good. I've added in the contemporary names in parentheses, and made sure they link to the corresponding city articles anyway. It is scary actually shaping this platform after years of lurking! Thank you for the prompt reply.Apraxilalia (talk)23:33, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Happy to give input. You posted yours right under my question, so I saw it after I reloaded the page. Welcome to Wikipedia! Happy editing,Slomo666 (talk)23:42, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
The precedent is likely to be Gdansk/Danzig where there was a huge debate early in the history on English Wikipedia and complex timeline as to which historical times each name is appropriate for. I was at the Wikimania in Gdansk where both Polish and German Wikipedians found it hilarious that this had been one of our biggest debates. As Slomo666 says you can resolve a lot of this with redirects, I'd also add that you can redirect to a section using #. In the classic editor you want [[Article name#Section heading]] . Not sure how to do that in visual editor.ϢereSpielChequers11:40, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
You can do the same on the visual editor.Morgane Polanski#Career for instance links to the career section of that article.
You can readH:WIKILINK (and linked pages) for more about linking to sections. (Both about linking, piping to sections on other articles and linking to sections of the same article)
Hi, not sure if I should be asking this here or anywhere, but Did Wikipedia used to have some sort of agreemnt with Google or something?
More context:
I rember that back in the good ol' days before the accursed AI Overview, if you searched for something that had an article, Google would show a Knowledge Card with the first paragraph and Infobox of that article. Did Wikipedia agree to/collaborate on this or did Google just decide to do this one day?
I can't be definite on an answer, but I can say that we do receive complaints about Google showing a search result with incorrect information and a link to a Wikipedia article. Our standard response is to tell the complainer something like "we have no influence over Google's search results, Google does whatever they choose to do, so please contact Google to resolve your concern." ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)07:38, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
@Mxwllhe Slightly off--topic but if you putWP:GOOGLE into the Wikipedia search bar you'll see several pages that describe interactions between Wikipedia and Google. Google has in the past given substantial sums of money to Wikipedia and currently pays to use the"Enterprise" version of the API.Mike Turnbull (talk)10:56, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
@Mxwllhe: I still get theKnowledge Graph (Google) on many searches. Many but far from all knowledge graphs include a text excerpt from a linked Wikipedia article. Our license allows reuse when the article is linked. Google's "infobox" fields are NOT from Wikipedia. Our stock answer to complaints isTemplate:HD/GKG. As far as I know Google did it on their own.PrimeHunter (talk)15:25, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
filmfare awards by aamir khan not updated
filmfare awards by aamir khan are shown as 9 currently but the fact is he received 10th filmfare award as best film producer for laapata ladies, so it is not updated yet, when it will be updated~2025-39941-85 (talk)15:27, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I hope my follow-ups won’t cause any issues for my account. I published a draft that hasn’t been reviewed yet. I wanted to kindly ask someone to check it, and if it’s approved, please proceed with transferring it
As the notice at the top of your draft says.Review waiting,please be patient. This may take 8 weeks or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order.Athanelar (talk)23:25, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
Your draft can only be reviewed by an approved AFC reviewer, which I am not. All you can do is be patient and wait for a reviewer to get to your draft, I'm afraid.Athanelar (talk)21:04, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Your article has already been submitted for review. An AFC reviewer will look at it eventually; as the notice at the top of your draft says, the current estimated maximum wait is 7 weeks.
I changed the picture of the infobox in the articleMadghacen inthis edit, but a user changed it to another inthis edit with the summary: close-up images lack spatial context.Can you explain to me what exactly is a spatial context and how is it relevant to the infobox in the article? thanks. - -Cipher Nox (talk)14:34, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I think the other editor (@M.Bitton) meant that an image from farther away allowed the reader to see the area and context of the site. However if you'd like to add the image later in the article feel free.Chorchapu (talk |edits)14:42, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for your reply.
Is there a policy or a guideline for that? because the picture he added I barely can see the temple, while the previous picture in the infobox was almost the same and largely different from his. - -Cipher Nox (talk)14:45, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Based on what I see, and quoting the Manual of Style:'It is common for an article's lead or infobox to carry a representative image—such as of a person or place, a book or album cover—to give readers visual confirmation that they've arrived at the right page.' So a close-up shot of the temple is actually the most accurate visual for the topic. - -Cipher Nox (talk)14:58, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I think your image is better; but often these choices are a matter of personal preference. If you feel strongly about it, follow the process described atWP:DR, starting with opening a discussion on the article's talk page, to see what others think.Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing);Talk to Andy;Andy's edits14:59, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Thanks.
I don't want to engage in a dispute or problems, I just wanted to know what's wrong with my edit, but since it's a personal preference I will let the other user choose the picture, maybe he does have an idea that I don't know about or my understanding is below the topic.
I also agree that @Cipher Nox‘s image is far better, in the other one I could barely see anything except grass, I couldn’t tell whether the structure was wooden, brown stone or made of mud. Yes that image does show the scale of the site but I prefer a closeup image which actually shows what it is and the detail.Mwen Sé Kéyòl Translator-a (talk)15:22, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
@Chorchapu: you're right (that's what I meant). I don't understand why the OP started a discussion here instead of reaching out to me. In any case, I have now replaced the image with one that addresses both issues.M.Bitton (talk)16:03, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I came here to understand the guideline about spatial context, not to dispute the edit. The Teahouse seemed like the right place for a policy question. Thanks for updating the image. - -Cipher Nox (talk)16:08, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed.Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Social media doesn't have paid fact checkers who approve every post, and anyone can say basically anything on there.
Exceptions are for boring basic facts, like if a well-known person says "It's my 45th birthday today" and if that seems to check out, we'll take it. But important material for actually telling a story - no.TooManyFingers (talk)19:06, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Social media sites are cited as credible source on other wikis (like Conservapedia), but not here. SeeWP:SOCIALMEDIA for a list of exceptions or conditions in which such sources may be used. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)23:50, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed.Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Links to other articles
Hi
I am reviewing the American Dream article and want to add some links to other articles for the terms George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, as well as Yuki Native Americans. I attempted to makes the edits on my own, but because the article is protected I cannot. How can I go about making these edits?
As you have no doubt seen, your draft has been nominated for speedy deletion as unambiguous advertising.
Promotion of any kind is forbidden anywhere on Wikipedia.
A Wikipedia article should be a neutral summary of what several people wholly unconnected with the subject have independently chosen to publish about the subject in reliable publications, (seeGolden rule) and not much else. What you know (or anybody else knows) about the subject is not relevant except where it can be verified from a reliable published source. And what the subject itself says or wants to say is of very little relevance
My earnest advice to new editors is to not eventhink about trying to create an article until you have spent several weeks - at least - learning about how Wikipedia works by making improvements to existing articles. Once you have understood core policies such asverifiability,neutral point of view,reliable, independent sources, andnotability, and experienced how we handle disagreements with other editors (theBold, Revert, Discuss cycle), then you might be ready to readyour first article carefully, and try creating a draft. If you don't follow this advice but try to create an article without this preparation, you are likely to have a frustrating and disappointing experience with Wikipedia.ColinFine (talk)17:06, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
this page is an article onlist of songs (not discography) which as far as i know shouldn't contain an infobox. Yes you should first make a separate 'Zubeen Garg discography' article first considering it passesnotability guidelines.Dagoofybloke (🥀)16:40, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
yes that page seems to be written more like a discography page rather than a list of songs. I will open a request move in its talk page and will move accordingly after a consensus.Dagoofybloke (🥀)17:08, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Independent reliable sources are required to establish notability. We needreliable sources, independent or not, for verifying facts. In this case, we already have an article onJapan Air Lines Flight 813, so the notability of the incident is already established. Citing an additional reliable source, even if it's a primary source, is fine. An NTSB report is already heavily cited in that article, but it isn't the same report as far as I can tell, from looking at both. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)04:05, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
You mean the sources already cited inJapan Air Lines Flight 813? I think so, since coverage seems to span about 20 years. The blog, I'd say not, and neither would the NTSB report linked in it, but I think notability is already there, and other sources can be used to flesh out details if needed. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)19:10, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Looking for guidance on draft review due to conflict of interest (Vincent Tremeau)
Hi everyone,I’m looking for some advice on how to proceed with a draft article I've written about humanitarian photographer Vincent Tremeau, whose work has been featured in National Geographic, CNN, La Repubblica, and other international media.I’ve previously been blocked for promotional editing (which I now fully understand), and I’ve since disclosed that I have a conflict of interest, I’ve collaborated professionally on Vincent’s exhibitions and communication projects, so I will not publish or submit the article myself.My goal is to get help from a neutral, uninvolved editor who could review the draft and, if it meets Wikipedia’s standards, consider submitting it.Could someone please guide me on the best next steps? Should I post a request somewhere specific, or is there a forum where editors take on such tasks?Thanks so much for your time and for helping new contributors like me do things the right way!S Blogs at Humanity (talk)09:51, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi @S Blogs at Humanity. Having read the discussion on your user page I am willing to take a punt. Please create a draft by followingWikipedia:Article wizard but do not submit it for review. Let me know when you have created the draft page and I will take a look to see if it's suitable. Feel free to ping me on my User Talk Page or here.qcne(talk)09:55, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi @Qcne, thank you for offering to review the draft. I've now created the page atDraft:Vincent Tremeau. All citations have been properly formatted, and the content is written in neutral tone. I'm not submitting it myself due to conflict of interest, per Wikipedia's guidelines.
The date of birth and Early life and education section is uncited. In a biography of a living person, every biographic statement needs an in-line citation. If no source exists for the information, please remove the statement.
Your sources are majority photo-credits, which does not give significant coverage.
The best sources are the PBS and Spiegel. These sources meet ourWikipedia:Golden rule, however we'd usually be looking for three or more strong sources that meet those criteria before considering for acceptance.
I would suggest condensing the draft down to focus on theOne Day, I Will exhibition, and finding more independent reviews of this in mainstream reliable publications, That might get you over the threshold where we can say that Vincent potentially meet sour criteria for inclusion.
Hi @S Blogs at Humanity. I think this is very borderline, as most of the sources are still just photographic credits. A reviewer will review the draft soon, since you've submitted it for review.qcne(talk)18:23, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi Qcne, and thank you again for taking the time to review this draft.
You mentioned that the article is still “borderline” because many sources are photo credits. I want to make sure I revise it in the correct direction.
Would you be willing to clarify which specific sources or sections you feel should be removed or replaced so that the draft relies entirely on significant, independent coverage? The draft currently emphasizes PBS NewsHour, Der Spiegel, National Geographic, BBC News, and Mainichi Shimbun, but I’m happy to adjust or reduce anything that still appears problematic.
Thank you for the clarification. Yes, there are additional sources that can meet the Golden Rule. In addition to PBS NewsHour, Der Spiegel, and National Geographic, the subject has been covered in the following independent and reliable publications:
• Mainichi Shimbun – independent reporting on the UN Pavilion exhibition at World Expo Osaka:
I hope that these constitute multiple sources that directly discuss the subject or his work in detail, satisfying the requirements for significant coverage in reliable, independent sources.
I can revise the draft to highlight these stronger sources more clearly if needed. Please let me know which specific sections you recommend adjusting to ensure full compliance with the Golden Rule. Thank you again for your time and guidance.S Blogs at Humanity (talk)19:09, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I now see that the article was declined due to the reasons you both mentioned, which I understand. I would be very very grateful for your detailed assistance to fix this issue. Do these sources mentioned above meet the criteria for a re-submission? Looking much forward to your answer and thank you again for your patience and support!S Blogs at Humanity (talk)19:17, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Further to what qcne said, this is a fairly common problem when writing an article about a certain kind of person: someone whose career output is considerable and well-documented, but who hasn't been thesubject of much work by others.
Wikipedia's article requirements force us to look for material on "the subject as a subject" (hoping that made sense), and I think that's probably why you got a suggestion to focus on a particular show - I think they saw that reliable sources had been leaning toward treating that show as a subject.TooManyFingers (talk)18:46, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Thank you both for the clarification. That makes perfect sense. I see now that the distinction Wikipedia draws is between coverage of the subject’s work and coverage of the subject as a subject.
I also understand the suggestion about possibly focusing on *One Day, I Will*, since that project receives the strongest independent attention. For now I am trying to strengthen the biography draft in line with policy, but I am open to preparing a dedicated article on the project as well if that is more appropriate. I just need more of your professional advice to not make a mistake and to make this flow good, fitting perfectly with the guidelines.
I've tried to translate pages for English Wikipedia, but I noticed this is not allowed if a user doesn't have a certain number of edits. I first tried to translate this Serbian-language article:Jelena Marjanović. Because I wasn't able to, I just created a new page on the English Wikipedia, but the two appear to not be linked:Jelena Marjanović. Can anyone help me navigate this? Is there a way to retroactively link the two? Is all translation of pages into English restricted?Icedshakenespresso (talk)05:28, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Only EC editors? What prevents anyone familiar with another language and the policies here from translating any article they want? I did this once, and I thought I did a good job (the effort was more "rewrite in English" rather than simply "translate from German"), and I would have done the same job regardless of whether I had reached EC status. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)07:33, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Please be aware that English Wikipedia has one of the strictest policies for article subjects in terms ofReferences andnotability.
If an article in another Wikipedia has references that English Wikipedia deems adequate (which means that nearly all of them meet all the requirements ingolden rule), then translating the article into English would be a worthwhile strategy.
If it does not have that level of sourcing, then translating it would be equivalent to writing an articlebackwards, and mostly a waste of time and effort. In this case, amuch better approach would be to write a new article in English, starting (as writing an article should always do) by finding sources that do meet the golden rule.ColinFine (talk)16:54, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I use my own references and never do a word-for-word translation, but I find the content translation tool's layout to be useful, especially for beginner editors.Icedshakenespresso (talk)19:41, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
In my case when translatingPaul Trappen from German, "manual translation" meant first starting with the machine translation, then using my limited understanding of German combined with using Google Translate to understand the article on the German Wikipedia, and write a somewhat improved version in English, which was my first saved edit in draft space,not mainspace. I checked all the sources that I could translate, and then made revisions, cutting out unsourced claims, adding another source and more citations, and making sure everything was verifiable. Normal wiki editing. After I was satisfied, I moved it to mainspace.
This was a lot of work, not just a regurgitation of a machine translation. For some sentences I kept the machine translation, but you'll find significant differences in prose and sentence organization between the English version and a machine-translated German version.
One trick I do with Google Translate (especially when translatinginto a language I don't know) is to run the translation back and forth between two languages to see how the meaning changes on each iteration. If the meaning remains unchanged (even if the words may change) then I know the translation is stable. You can't do this with a one-way machine translation. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)19:05, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Okay, thank you. I don't rely on machine translations whatsoever, I'm just curious about the best method for creating translated articles on English Wikipedia. I find the content translation tool to be useful because I can see and interact with the original article, but my account has too little experience to publish directly using that tool. I am a native English speaker, if that matters.Icedshakenespresso (talk)19:44, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Climate Impacts Portal in the style of the Current Events Portal?
Hi,
I'm a new editor. I think it would be valuable for there to be an article that lists the impacts of climate change around the world. Something similar to the current events project but just for climate-related impacts. It would list the impacts from typhoons and hurricanes as well as fires and floods.
I imagine one page where a reader could see how climate change is impacting the world right now. This wouldn't be a place for renewable energy news or climate policy current events, it would just focus on impacts.
Perhaps there are better structures for this idea? Being new, I'm unsure how to proceed. Thank you for any advice or guidance.
Yes, there would have to be a standard developed to avoid advocacy. Many "natural disasters" have attribution studies that can say a specific typhoon or flood was x% more likely to happen because of climate change.UserDani (talk)19:56, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
does proprietary content taint the free license of an image when it is not the primary subject?
copyright question here — does the presence of any, even minimal non-free content in a software screenshot entirely taint the free nature of an image, particularly when the actualsubject is freely licensed?
i ask this because most screenshots on wikipedia of proprietary software are reduced in resolution. though in a certain article, i came across this screenshot (File:Magisk_26.4_screenshot.png) which, though magisk is free and open source, is visibly depicted as running on one ui, which is proprietary. the navigation bar and status bar of one ui are visible, and i would like to know if this is still qualified as free or becomes nonfree from the presence of copyrighted OS components.
When I figured out that I need to type into the Wikipedia search box on the main page
precisely "WP:MPH", that worked, though even the slightest variation from that didn't work for me. I needed that abbreviation exactly, two letters, colon, three letters. But I've now bookmarked the page, so is well (knock wood). Thank you.Rick Norwood (talk)20:07, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Arrogant elitist editors beware
Did you know that it’s a proven fact that people that think they are smarter than everyone else, as you people do, become closed minded and petty. How dare anyone question these smart people instead of just excepting the fact that they are smarter and should be believed. Thank God that Tesla, Einstein, and many others didn’t think this way. If they had our world would be a much different place. By acting this way you are writing your own obituary. Many people you don’t agree with are just as smart as you. Wake-up before your site is gone. I will not be donating until you change your ways.~2025-39596-79 (talk)16:09, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
If you want to change things for the better, hurling vague, non-specific insults around is a very poor way to do it. For decades, critics have been predicting Wikipedia's demise, and yet it still remains a top ten website worldwide because billions of people find it useful and interesting. I agree withCarrite. English Wikipedia is created and run by unpaid volunteers. We do not care in the slightest whether or not you to donate money to theWikimedia Foundation, which is a separate organization that is rolling in cash.Cullen328 (talk)18:36, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
I know very little about Tesla's personal life. I do know that Einstein was a great conversationalist, but he had no patience for people spouting vacuous nonsense.Cullen328 (talk)18:39, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
I wonder which out of the more than 100,000 different people who edit Wikipedia each month the OP was thinking? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195}~2025-31359-08 (talk)05:03, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Does my academic profile meet Wikipedia’s notability criteria (WP:NPROF)?
Hello,
I would like some guidance on whether my academic profile is likely to meet Wikipedia’s notability criteria for a biography, before I consider preparing a draft for Articles for Creation.
In general terms, my background includes:
Over 60 peer-reviewed publications
Around 2700 citations and an h-index in the mid 20s
Several competitive international research fellowships
Editorial board memberships for multiple scientific journals
Experience organising international scientific symposia
Research appointments in multiple countries
Scientific work that has been covered by independent news or science outlets
I am aware of the conflict-of-interest considerations around writing about oneself, so I want to make sure I follow the correct procedures. I would appreciate advice on whether this level of academic activity is typically considered notable under WP:NPROF or related guidelines.
Our criteria are listed atWP:NACADEMIC. I would think you probably fall under the categoryWP:TOOSOON, but a lot will depend on the nature and extent of "covered by independent news or science outlets"; for example, do they cover you, or just your work? Do they simply rehash press releases?Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing);Talk to Andy;Andy's edits11:51, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Also, I and many other Wikipedians highlyreccomend against writing about yourself. If you do, you will have to declare a Conflict of Interest when submitting to AfC and look atWP:NPOV after every sentence to make sure you are only presenting objective facts about yourself, and not in a particularly positive light.
Sorry for the open ended title was just here inquiring about science and got some really helpful and friendly responses. Was wondering if there are similar group to Wikipedia:WikiProject Science but for art? I am sure there are I just would like to know what some of these communities are titled so I may be able to start editing pages? I have an art history minor and I am interested in the Art Deco and Art Nouveau periods for context in addition to architecture and Islamic art. Thank you!Agnieszka653 (talk)20:20, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Glad to hear it,Agnieszka653. Well, one idea: Some energetic lover of comics might consider going through the articleHere and clearing it of blather contributed by "Artificial Intelligence".Here certainly merits a good article created by intelligent humans (and of course rigorously based on reliable sources written and published by intelligent humans). --Hoary (talk)22:47, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Thanks so much for the link--I also make art. It's really frustrating what AI is doing to the creative fields (and Wikipedia) thank you again.Agnieszka653 (talk)00:59, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello and welcome. If you are associated with the company you are editing about, that must be disclosed, seeWP:PAID andWP:COI.
In terms ofDraft:CambriLearn, you are just telling about the activities and offerings of the company. This does not establish that the company isa notable company as Wikipedia defines one. That requires significant coverage in independentreliable sources, coverage that goes into detail about the company and what makes it important/significant/influential as a company as the source sees it, not as the company itself sees it. The vast majority of companies on Earth actually do not merit Wikipedia articles.331dot (talk)10:58, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Making a new article is one of the most challenging things to do on Wikipedia, even for experienced editors. It requires a robust understanding of policies and guidelines likenotability andneutral point of view, as well as technical skills likefinding and citing sources and formatting your article in accordance with themanual of style. It's not something we recommend new editors try to do right away.
I would strongly advise that you first spend a while (at least a couple of weeks) participating in discussions here at the Teahouse and at noticeboards, asking questions, and editing already-existing articles to build the knowledge and skills I've mentioned above, and then come back to the article creation process later.
@Sherry180 Promotional is not a style. Promotional means letting customers or investors know what you offer. Anything intended to inform customers or investors needs to be completely cut out of the article, no matter what way it's worded. Good Wikipedia articles about companies are history, with no view to the future other than to say they're still in business.TooManyFingers (talk)18:35, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Well, it's also kind of a style.
"Example Inc is a software company which develops payroll software for commercial applications" vs "Example Inc is a software company which develops a robust suite of payroll software to enhance the reliability and efficiency of commercial payroll operations"
Both communicate the same information to the reader, and both 'let customers or investors know' what the company offers, but one is obviously promotional and the other is encyclopedic.Athanelar (talk)18:40, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Promotional writing often does have a distinctive style. But if you change the style, it's still promotion.
I would prefer if promotional writing alwaysdid "look promotional", because it would be easier to spot, but well-disguised promotion still needs to be removed.TooManyFingers (talk)19:19, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Right, but the point is that just as promotional writing doesn't always look promotional, an article that isn't 'unambiguous promotion' can still be written in a promotional tone which makes it unfit for the encyclopedia; that's exactly whyWP:CSD#G11 permits speedy deletion of 'unambiguous advertising or promotion,' whereas a merely promotionaltone will simply get your draft declined.
I think what you're talking about is the stuff covered underWP:YESPROMO; i.e., people who say "my article isn't promotional! I'm just trying to raise awareness/clear up misinformation/etc"Athanelar (talk)19:23, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
So for interest sake, if I were to write about the history of art instead of a specific company, would it still be seen as promotional? Or is the topic I chose just a bad topic that can easily be flagged as promotional?Sherry180 (talk)10:49, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
It's hard to write about a company and not be promotional, especially as a user new to Wikipedia who may not yet understand what is being looked for.331dot (talk)10:55, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
You said "the history of art", and there's a big clue there. Writing thehistory of a company, leaving out everything that wouldn't belong in a history textbook, is something that people connected with a company often have a tough time doing. They tend to include, and greatly overemphasize, a lot of things that wouldn't interest the author of a textbook on general history - and they leave out or minimize the things thatwould interest that author.
A few examples:
Historians don't care about the qualifications of the people who run an organization, unless they're very surprising ones.
Historians don't care about the curriculum of a school (unless it's a highly abnormal curriculum), and they wouldn't think to mention accreditation unless the school was illegal.
Historians don't mention a school's authorized examination centres, again unless there's something highly unusual about the situation.
It's certainly no coincidence that these items, of no concern to a historian,are likely to be of concern to prospective students. In other words, most of this article is promotion.TooManyFingers (talk)00:46, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
@Sherry180 What has been published about this school in independent, reliable sources? What makes this school different than any other similar school? Wikipedia is not a directory of everything that exists, and it's not meant to be a place to look up businesses or schools. Harvard and Howard are notable universities. Many schools are great places to learn, but might not merit an encyclopedia article.David10244 (talk)01:13, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
At what point can I delete something on my talk page?
If no one has added a comment on a particular discussion on my talk page, and the discussion seems to have finished, how long should I wait before deleting it in accordance withWP:BLANKING?VidanaliK (talk)00:39, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
If it was part of a stressful conflict, it might be to your advantage to keep it longer than normal, to minimize yells of "How dare you delete that!!". If it wasn't that kind of thing, then you thinking "I guess we're done with that" is good enough.TooManyFingers (talk)01:01, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Right, my question was if I needed to archive/delete the entire talk page, or just a discussion. I wasn't even thinking about individual sentences.VidanaliK (talk)01:26, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Yes, you can selectively archive or get rid of discussions. You don't need to get rid of the entire talk page. Sorry for being unclear. If you would like to selectively archive discussions, using a manual tool would be better.45dogs (they/them)(talk page)(contributions)01:30, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
What's your editorial credo or philosophy here on Wikipedia?
I'm a new editor here on Wikipedia, and as I learn the ropes, I'm starting with low-stakes edits on relatively low-traffic, low-importance pages.
At times I've noticed passive-voice verbs, random commas, and other choices related to punctation, grammar, syntax, style, and diction that contribute to weak writing. I'm not knocking anyone. After all, everyone is doing this for free.
That said, how are more experienced editors thinking about past editors' choices that aren't technically wrong but aren't strong either, with "strong" itself being pretty subjective? What's your editorial credo or philosophy here on Wikipedia?
I have the same reactions you do. If my change could legitimately be criticized by someone as not truly better, I try to leave it alone; otherwise I change it.TooManyFingers (talk)17:35, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
I'm sure you already know that sometimes passive really is the better way to write something. In my experience, it seems the passive most needs changing when it's being intentionally used to make it appear that someone didn't do what they did.TooManyFingers (talk)17:40, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
When it comes to passive voice, I ask myself, "Would trying to change this to active voice make it sound strange?" If the answer is yes, I usually just leave it. All that to say, I agree: "sometimes passive really is the better way to write something."Mcalchemy (talk)18:48, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Writing-style standards also vary among different fields of study, and this might be simply inertia among those working in that field or even a written guideline for them in the real world. Wikipedia editors might simply be using the style of the refs for a given article, or they might be using the style they use in their real-world context. Wikipedia does have some written standards, especially for punctuation and tone. Could you give us an example or two of what you are seeing as sub-par itself or inconsistent (especially within one article itself)? Someone might recognize why it is that way, or lend support to your thinking it could easily be made definitely better.DMacks (talk)18:04, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Good idea, though all of the examples I ran across I kind of ruined after I edited them. That said, I'll keep an eye out and will report back here. You bring up a good point that different editors can import certain conventions or "normal" choices for them from different fields and disciplines .Mcalchemy (talk)18:51, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
I think you'd probably benefit from taking a look at theWP:Manual of style. Obviously our primary focus is making sure Wikipedia contains well-sourced enyclopedic content, but we do have a manual of style and it absolutely is good and productive to make sure it's adhered to where possible.Athanelar (talk)18:44, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Good reminder. I've got the link saved in my Wikipedia notes in Notion, but admittedly, I haven't delved too deeply into the manual of style.Mcalchemy (talk)18:49, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Two of the most Wikipedia features on that are that we haven't standardised on a house standard for spelling or CE/BCE v AD/BC, instead we standardise at the article level and usually default to whichever editor set the standard for that article. Though there are exceptions, I once started an article about a place in California and obviously that was going to wind up in American English. Another is that we are neutral, So we can quote a critic dissing a film as miscast and poorly shot with a choreographer and "fight sequence consultant" who should have been swapped with each other. But we attribute that criticism to that critic rather than put it into Wikipedia's voice.ϢereSpielChequers11:54, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
@Mcalchemy Keep in mind that there are more than 7 million articles on the English Wikipedia. There aren't enougheditors to re-review them all. There are far more readers than editors, and I would venture that most readers don't know that they could notify editors of any mistakes they see (or fix mistakes themselves). And some articles are likely not read very often.David10244 (talk)02:28, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Can't get infobox for gene to populate
I am trying to get gene box on mypage that was in my sandbox, but I keep getting an error that says it has an error in retrieving wikidata. How can I get the gene box to work? (An Error has occurred retrieving Wikidata item for infobox)Schm6041 (talk)02:12, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
RuneScape this page is horribly out of date and considering there’s a YouTube documentary about it as well as recently one of the biggest polls in the games recent history just passedCheapHotBrew (talk)14:45, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I’m still learning I just feel like RuneScape should be on some kind of list to be updated or something and I don’t know how to put it thereCheapHotBrew (talk)15:01, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
@Chorchapu Wikipedia has so many articles, with many (thousands upon thousands) that probably need cleaning up. The cleanup tag is a good start, but editors work on what they want to or are interested in. Thanks for the info, and maybe someone will feel like working on it.David10244 (talk)02:56, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
I submitted a draft for a new page for myself about six months ago and never received a confirmation or any review. Can someone help me locate it?”~2025-39419-87 (talk)09:18, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
My guess is that you did not actually submit the draft, but just picked "Publish" which simply means "Save" (it was changed for legal reasons), and so the draft is simply sitting there where it's unlikely anybody noticed it.
However, please notice that writing a Wikipedia article about yourself is extremely difficult, and hardly anybody has ever been successful doing so, so Wikipediavery strongly discourages people from trying to. Seeautobiography.ColinFine (talk)11:33, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
I'm noticing a lot of confusion about that "Publish" button when it comes to draftspace. I wonder if there's a better word which clarifies "pushing this button will make your changes visible to everyone who reads the draft, but will NOT actually move the draft to mainspace." It really doesn't help that 'publish' is the word people often use for graduating a draft to mainspace.Athanelar (talk)13:44, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
@Athanelar Yes, this confusion is common. As you probably know, the button used to be labeled "Save", but some people got mad that others could see the text (if they knew where to look). I have tried to think of a better word or short phrase but I haven't succeeded...David10244 (talk)00:25, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
I don't know the real story behind the changed name of the button, and I don't know how the buttons are constructed.
Thus, knowing nothing much, I might suggest a button that contains two lines:
Hello, I have a complaint concerning that I'm trying to publish a document and page for my upcoming band but I wrote it all myself and did not use ai and all the sources truly do come from me.It has been rejected two times after fixing part of it, but I'm not rewriting the whole thingEH Records (talk)23:55, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, even if they came wrapped in a bit of tough criticism toward the band. We genuinely appreciate every piece of feedback, whether it’s glowing praise or something a little less kind, because all of it helps us grow and figure out who we are becoming as artists. We’re still in the early stages of our journey, carving out our sound and building our presence step by step. We may not be a huge name yet, and we might not have some grand, dramatic origin story or a meteoric rise to fame yet, but we’re working hard every day to create something real, meaningful, and true to who we are and be like the greats. Every comment, every listener, every moment—positive or negative—helps add another brick to the foundation we’re trying to build.
Hi 331dot, thanks for the feedback. The main reason I was hoping to create the page is that people searching for our band often look for a central, neutral source of information, and I thought Wikipedia might help provide that as give more things and information on google.
Wikipedia does not merely provide information, it summarizes what has already been written about a topic by independentreliable sources. If no or few sources write about your band, there is nothing to summarize in an article.
You would need to set aside everything that you know about your band and limit yourself to summarizing what others have said, to show how your band meets thespecial Wikipedia definition of a notable band. It is usually very difficult for people to do that. Companies/organizations trying to force the issue and create an article themselves are rarely successful; you should go on about the work of your band as if you had nevee heard of Wikipedia and allow an article to organically develop the usual way, when an independent editor takes note of coverage of the band and chooses to write about it.331dot (talk)00:27, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Hi 331dot, thanks for your explanation. I understand that Wikipedia relies on independent sources rather than firsthand knowledge. I just wanted to note that a number of people in the music community and local scene have already written about or discussed our band publicly. I’m happy to provide references or let the usual process take its course. Since they've rejected me at the moment, I can't make any new edits.
If you have sources that have written about your band, and can show that it meets at least one aspect ofWP:BAND, you may edit the draft and ask the rejecting reviewer to reconsider.
Hi 331dot, thanks for the guidance. I understand that an article isn’t automatically necessary or desirable, and I appreciate the clarification about WP:BAND. I’ll review the sources I have and consider whether the draft meets the guidelines before requesting reconsideration.EH Records (talk)00:42, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
"Still in the early stages" you say? You can't have an article if you're up-and-coming. You must have already arrived. Meet one of theWP:BAND criteria, and then you can have an article. It's that simple. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)01:38, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
@EH Records I don't think there was any criticism of the band at all! People playing real music, live, in front of other people, is far more important than it gets credit for.
Encyclopedia articles about people and about businesses (a band is both, in a special way) cover only the parts of their history that are already well known to the public. Wikipedia is a copy of what the publicalready knew. Getting the word out to the public about someone is theopposite of what we do here. (Not technically a real opposite, but I think you see what I mean.)TooManyFingers (talk)18:24, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
At what point is information outdated and/or worthy of being deleted?
I have been working on my local community's high school for a bit, and I notice that quite a lot of information is severely outdated: captions that mention increasing school enrollment year-over-year with data from 1999-2007. Is there a defined metric to remove these graphs? Or should I be changing captions, and specifying dates?
I believe this leads into my second question: is there a good reason to delete the graph in general? It could be deleted due to inaccuracy based on time; but the whole point of wikipedia is to keep the important information & the historical facts are still important.
In my view, it's best to avoid putting in content that needs annual attention and updating, especially if the information isn't really relevant to a reader unfamiliar with the subject. In some cases the historical information is highly relevant (likeHistorical rankings of presidents of the United States needs an update every 4 years or so), but a graph of school enrollment numbers? I don't see the relevance, especially if the graph correlates with the growth of the surrounding community. It would be enough to state that enrollment has steadily increased (or something to that effect) and cite the source for that graph. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)04:16, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I might even go a bit further - who actually cares about the increasing enrollment? (My answer would be "nobody who isn't already living there and hearing it firsthand".)
It says at one point a new building was required - that absolutely says enough about the enrollment already, so I would just delete the graph and the text that went with it. Things that don't really help the reader learn what's relevant are just getting in the way, even when they're true.TooManyFingers (talk)05:44, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I've lost count of the number of editors who complain about their article being deleted, insisting that it should be published on Wikipedia because the person/company/band/whatever exists and everything is true, as if mere verifiable existence is enough to qualify. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)05:28, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Why is VPN blocking me?
i know please don'tpunish me while I am questioning this, but why I am getting blocked while using VPN, companies are collecting my data and hacking me.PlutoTheCardinal (talk)04:47, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
A new user with 25 edits won't get IP block exemption, except in extreme circumstances, like the editor is located in a country with severe restrictions on accessing the English Wikipedia.
@PlutoTheCardinal: A better approach may be to start a discussion atWP:OPP about the IP address, if it's a valid corporate VPN and not an open proxy. The key word isopen proxy. We shouldn't be routinely blocking corporate secure proxies, if that's what you're using. If youare using an open proxy, then don't use it to edit Wikipedia. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)05:34, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Seeking guidance on the best approach for edit request follow-ups
Hello, Teahouse community!
I am a Conflict of Interest editor. I'm an employee at Dell Technologies and here on Wikipedia to make requests to update information related to the company. I would appreciate some guidance on the most effective way to ask for help from independent editors. My goal is to collaborate with the community in the best way possible to ensure edits are handled smoothly and efficiently.
I have specific questions about best practices for following up on my edit requests that have already been posted but have received no response after several weeks:When following up on an unanswered edit request, is it more effective to send a follow-up message addressed to all independent editors, or should I first try tagging a specific editor whom I have worked with before?
If I do tag a specific editor and they do not respond, then what is the recommended next step? Should I revert to addressing the wider community, or is there another approach you suggest?
I want to ensure my requests are seen and addressed in a timely manner while respecting the community's workflows. Any insights on which follow-up methods tend to lead to better outcomes and a more positive experience for everyone would be very helpful.
It's likely that the main problem is beyond anyone's control; there's a backlog of requests and it includes some requests that were submitted in the middle of September.TooManyFingers (talk)04:13, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
I looked at your edit request, reformatted it, and asked a question. Once that's resolved, I don't see a problem with the change you proposed.
TooManyFingers is correct, the backlog is large, and attending to conflict-of-interest requests isn't a high priority for many editors here. At least the requests have greater visibility than just the talk page by virtue of listing it on a category page due to the COI tag at the top of the request. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)06:31, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Rejected due to draft shows signs of having been generated by a large language model
Hi everyone, this is my first time writing in wiki. Hence, please do help by specifically mention which part that I need to revise and edit- seeDraft:PTTI (Pusat Tuisyen Teratak Ilmu). I revised my own draft many times, found grammatical errors but could not find the sign of using large language model as this draft was created by scratch. I have checked words to watch since I might use promotional words and changed it. Is it possible the draft got rejected two times by @Aydoh8 and @Rambleydue to the list of programmes or visuals that looks promotional? Please entertain my humble request of help to get this draft approved. Thank you in advance!Snurnas (talk)02:20, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Promotional does not mean a style. Promotional means writing for customers or investors. Wikipedia needs writing that ignores customers and helps history students instead. When customers and investors complain "There's almost nothing in this article to help me decide whether to do business with these people", you'll know it's not promotional.TooManyFingers (talk)05:20, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
AIs love to use lots of bullet points and over-use boldface text for unnecessary emphasis. There are other signs too. ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)06:22, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
A Wikipedia article should be a neutral summary of what several people wholly unconnected with the subject have independently chosen to publish about the subject in reliable publications, (seeGolden rule) and not much else. What you know (or anybody else knows) about the subject is not relevant except where it can be verified from a reliable published source.
If it says what the company says, or what the company wants people to know, it will soundpromotional.
My earnest advice to new editors is to not eventhink about trying to create an article until you have spent several weeks - at least - learning about how Wikipedia works by making improvements to existing articles. Once you have understood core policies such asverifiability,neutral point of view,reliable, independent sources, andnotability, and experienced how we handle disagreements with other editors (theBold, Revert, Discuss cycle), then you might be ready to readyour first article carefully, and try creating a draft. If you don't follow this advice but try to create an article without this preparation, you are likely to have a frustrating and disappointing experience with Wikipedia.ColinFine (talk)11:19, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
I've been goin' around rewriting articles and doin' newbie tasks for a while, and one of the articles I worked on,George Freeman (guitarist), is one I spent a fair bit of time on, so at this juncture, since even after a while has passed it doesn't look like it'd be considered a "drive-by," I'm considerin' trying forWP:GA. I know that the process and all is on the page I just linked, but with me seldom really gettin' the opportunity to speak directly with other editors about content (I don't have a mentor, most of the articles I've worked on aren't exactly popular, and every single article talk page post of mine-- includin' one on Freeman's!-- has never gotten a response) I don't really have a sense of who I might be able to see about what needs to be done on this article to get it there, havin' already compared it to other musician GAs and lookin' for more specific feedback.
To be clear I do also know that I'd be gettin' notes on the quality of the article and what to improve during a potential GA review, but I also know that there's sort of a taboo on "wasting editor time," which I wouldn't wanna cross by submittin' an article that might obviously not be ready. So, long question short: Is there a project or group I can contact to get feedback on how close an article is to GAbefore actually submitting it?
Janitor Judy, while you're waiting....His extended solo feature onBoogie Woogie Joe, recorded in late 1947, has been described by one rock music writer as "...the first scintillating guitar workout in rock history": Why not name the writer? Is a "solo feature" something other than a solo? Why on earth does this one sentence need three references?his brother Von holds down the piano chair Does "holds down the piano chair" mean something other than "plays piano"? --Hoary (talk)04:21, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
(I guess you haven't seen those older motorized piano chairs that would bounce around the bandstand if you weren't careful. I haven't either.)TooManyFingers (talk)04:45, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
I was thinking that "holds down the piano chair" implied some sort of high-tech antigravity chair that would float away if nobody was sitting on it to hold it down. And even if that's true, it doesn't take any talent to "hold down" a chair, even a bag of sand could do that, so why even mention it? Is "his brother Von" such an imbecile that holding down a chair is all he's capable of? ~Anachronist (who / me)(talk)06:39, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
(Everyone does have a personal style of course, but your true personal style is what happens when you think you're doing no style at all.)TooManyFingers (talk)07:51, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
HiDesertmistake. In preferences under "user profile", you can find a "Newcomer editor features" section. That is where you can disable the homepage. Please also use the new section button when creating discussions in the future.45dogs (they/them)(talk page)(contributions)03:08, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Guidance Needed for Drafting an Article on the Bharat International Rice Conference (BIRC)
Hello, I need assistance in understanding how to write a well-structured Wikipedia-style article about the world’s largest rice conference, BIRC (Bharat International Rice Conference), held in Delhi, India. Could someone guide me on how to begin the draft and what key sections or information should be included for proper encyclopedic formatting?
I would appreciate advice on recommended structure, notable points to cover, required references, and how to present verified information in a neutral, Wikipedia-appropriate tone. Thank you.Rohitkumar775 (talk)11:39, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
Writing an article is one of the most difficult and technically complex tasks you can undertake on Wikipedia; it's hard even for an experienced editor. You need to know about notability, verifiability, have a broad understanding of setting out articles in line with the manual of style, know generally what information should and should not go into an article, etc.Athanelar (talk)13:11, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I have over 10,000 edits and no article. There are a couple of articles where a lot of the words on the page come from me, but I've never tried writing an article because it's hard.TooManyFingers (talk)17:33, 11 December 2025 (UTC)
I respect all of your views but I talking about a draft article that will not live on Wiki main space. Okay, So I think I can start with a draft article on my space. Hope you all understand.Rohitkumar775 (talk)05:04, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Declined for Notability/BLP (Draft:Abu Hasan Muhammed Jahangir)
Hello. I am working on the draftDraft:Abu Hasan Muhammed Jahangir and it has been repeatedly declined via the Articles for Creation (AfC) process. The primary reasons for the decline seem to be lack of notability (WP:GNG) and potential WP:BLP (Biography of Living Persons) issues due to the inclusion of the Anti-Corruption Commission case (which I was advised to keep by a previous editor).
I have added what I believe are strong independent sources (national/regional news coverage of the FIFA 2026 bid and the ACC case). I am blocked from moving it to the main space. Could an experienced editor please look at the draft and advise me on these specific points?
Are the sources strong enough to pass WP:GNG, or are they too promotional/regional?
How can I make the language in the "Anti-Corruption Commission Case" section perfectly neutral to avoid future BLP violations?Abujahangir (talk)09:57, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
I think that this attempt at autobiography is marginal regarding notability. The newspaper coverage inAlberni Valley News is from a regional paper and is based on interviews, so is notindependent, as required. You may not care but once in mainspace the biography will be open to editing by anyone and might start to include well-sourced material about the alleged corruption, whichisn't likely to be something you would want.Mike Turnbull (talk)12:49, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
When a draft is declined after all possible existing sources have already been included, it's often because the subject is not notable. If that's the case, there is absolutely nothing that the draft's author can do to change it. You can't build something if there's no material to build with.TooManyFingers (talk)22:07, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
@Abujahangir Is your unsigned reply below generated by a large language model, or AI, or ChatGPT? AI will ofren use two asterisks to indicate bold formatting, which us not what we do here. And you forgot to sign.David10244 (talk)00:29, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Hello @David10244, I explained in my talk page and in the subject heading "Use of AI tools – short explanation". Please take a note from my conersation with [[User:Meadowlark]] Hope those are well explained. I am taking the guidance from [[User:Meadowlark]]. Would like add any more suggestion, I will be glad to comply. Thanks for your caution and helpAbujahangir (talk)10:44, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Thank you again, Mike Turnbull and TooManyFingers, for your candid feedback, which helped me identify the exact policy issues (BLP/Due Weight) and the perception of the sources (too regional).
I have fully implemented a major revision and resubmitted the draft for a new review.
=== Specific Actions Taken and Sourcing Clarification ===
1. **Addressing Sourcing Overlook and Regional Scope (Mike Turnbull's Point):**
I agree that the regional/interview-based sources alone are insufficient.
**Action:** To ensure the national/international significance is not overlooked, I have strategically placed **national Canadian sources (CBC Radio, Times Colonist)** and the **Bangladeshi national media sources (Daily Janakantha, Dainik Sangram, ATN News)** directly into the **Lead Section**. These are all featured, in-depth articles that cover the FIFA achievement and his career, providing strong evidence against the 'too regional' objection.
2. **Addressing WP:BLP and Due Weight:**
I acknowledged that the ACC matter was structurally dominating the draft.
**Action:** I **removed the bolded header** for the ACC matter and integrated the information neutrally into the 'Career' paragraph. This fully adheres to WP:BLP and Due Weight by preventing the allegation from overshadowing the verified career facts.
I will continue searching for further national Canadian coverage while the draft is under review. Thank you again for your time and helping me adhere to Wikipedia's standards.
Resubmitted with ACC integrated/neutralized and sources verified—volunteer to review/promote? Ping all (e.g.,@TooManyFingers:@Mike Turnbull:).
— Precedingundated comment added 03:28, 10 December 2025 (UTC)
Matthew Jukes - Wine Writer: my edits rejected as I know him
Hello,
This is my first foray into the world of Wikipedia editing so please be patient with me if I am stating the obvious at any point! I am trying to update an entry for wine writerMatthew Jukes. Full disclosure - I am also in the wine business, and I know him. He has asked me to help as he is not very tech savvy, and wondered if I could help up to update his page. I am not being paid, nor does this benefit me or my work. I am just trying to be helpful.
The changes have been rejected as it is a COI apparently because I know him. He can't ask someone he doens't know to update it without paying them - which isn't acceptable, is that right? So how can he make the changes? can I ask someone on here who is impartial to possibly update a few items? It's things like including the publication of his most recent book, a change to his current work, and some minor rewording of the existing text.
The basic reality is the changes are not his to make, because Wikipedia only collects the published information that anybody already has access to if they look for it. Personal knowledge of someone, or what they want to have said about themselves, is exactly what wedon't want. (Imagine how many faultless politicians and highly successful actors the world would suddenly have, if people wrote their own!)TooManyFingers (talk)10:42, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
First of all, the more fundamental problem is that you added a lot of information without referencing any of it. All factual information, especially on biographies of living people, needs to be referenced to areliable source. You're not allowed to simply add things you personally know, because the rest of us need to be able toverify that information, and we don't alloworiginal research. Please seeHelp:How to citeAthanelar (talk)11:13, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Moved fromWT:TH
Courtesy link: Draft:Otunba Giwa Ayodeji Adekunle Osibogun
Resolved
