Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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

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Will the Met Office logo ever have its copyright expire?[edit]

File:Met Office.svg

The Met Office logo is currently protected by Crown copyright in the United Kingdom, but may not be copyrightable in the United States because it does not meet original standards. The version currently uploaded locally on English Wikipedia is the 2009 version. There may be differences in color matching between this version and the 1987 version. Therefore, the copyright protection period of logos uploaded in different periods will also be recalculated. -Fumikas Sagisavas (talk) 04:09, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't get an answer here, you might want to try asking at commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright. —⁠andrybak (talk) 12:53, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do you make your username a color or font?[edit]

I see everyone doing it and I want to try. Amoxicillin on a Boat (talk) 15:28, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Amoxicillin on a Boat I suspect you are referring to user "signatures" in discussions posts. If so, see Wikipedia:Signatures for all about that. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:33, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I think I got it ~~~ Amoxicillin on a Boat (talk) 16:11, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think I got it now Xeno User : Amoxicillin on a Boat 18:19, 15 April 2024 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amoxicillin on a Boat (talk • contribs) [reply]

Should this be reported to the Administrator's Noticeboard?[edit]

User behavior should be discussed at WP:ANI. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:49, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Dalton Tan (talk · contribs) has described misinformation several times in railway-related articles, and it has escalated even if it is warned. Even if I have been warned many times, I don't seem to understand it, so should I report it to the Administrators' noticeboard? --H.K.pauw (talk) 09:55, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User behavior issues should be posted to WP:ANI. I'd suggest copying this over. It may help to provide WP:DIFFs of misbehavior in your comment. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You would need to give a couple of examples of edits that you believe are a problem and explain why they are a problem in a way that people without inside knowledge can understand. Be brief. Johnuniq (talk) 10:18, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

information

According to Talk page, it is the next page that is making the misrepresentation.

Toyoko Line (23:25, 21 February 2024)
Tokaido Main Line (01:20, 24 March 2024?)
San'yo Shinkansen (23:17, 18 March 2024)
Odoriko (10:33, 23 March 2024 ∼ 10:37, 23 March 2024)
Hankyu Kobe Main Line (13:32, 7 April 2024)

Dalton Tan has listed misinformation in these articles and has been warned four times, but it continues to escalate. --H.K.pauw (talk) 00:00, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please do. Their persistence and lack of communication are clearly disruptive – I think a block might be in order. Be sure to provide diffs! XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 20:16, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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.

What redirects here tool?[edit]

Is there a function that I can add to the Tools menu that will generate a list of redirects to the current page? I.e. similar to "What links here" but for redirects. I'd like to be able to check for valid anchor points. Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 15:53, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Praemonitus, if you add User:GhostInTheMachine/SortWhatLinksHere to your .js, it will sort redirects first in the "what links here" results. (I find it works if I click "what links here" and then click "500") Schazjmd (talk) 16:03, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If that user script isn't exactly what you are looking for, there's also WP:US/L and WP:US/R. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:45, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the suggestions. Praemonitus (talk) 21:36, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Praemonitus, why not use Special:WhatLinksHere and then un-tick the boxes for transclusion and regular links? That will leave you with a list of redirects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:13, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page subscriptions[edit]

Is there (or can there be) a bot to remove archived or stale talk page subscription from Special:TopicSubscriptions, or maybe there's a way to condense the page manually? I have not been able to find any documentation on this issue. - FlightTime (open channel) 20:53, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@FlightTime, you have to manually click the red "Unsubscribe" item for each entry that you want to remove.

@Trizek (WMF), you might want to include this in the documentation at mw:Help:DiscussionTools#Topic subscriptions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting a Level 2 template[edit]

How do I request that a Level 2 caution template be added to the Twinkle notices? This is a long-standing complaint of mine about this particular message, which is copy-pasting a draft by someone else into article space. When I request the history merge to provide attribution, it tells me that I can copy a template onto the talk page of the editor who did the copy. However, the message that it puts on the user talk page of the user who did the copying is mealy-mouthed. I think that something a little stronger is in order. This is an action which, whether intentional or not, creates work for an administrator in order to provide attribution to the editor who really wrote and submitted the draft. It doesn't really say that copy-pasting is discouraged. So how do I request that a message having to do with inappropriate copying within Wikipedia be added to the Warn templates? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:29, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon: I don't see why an admin is needed to correct anything. According to WP:CWW, the template {{Copied}} can be added to the article's talk page and anyone can do that. For the other part of your question, you can post your suggestion to Wikipedia_talk:Twinkle RudolfRed (talk) 01:34, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:RudolfRed - That's interesting. Are you saying that history merge is not needed in those situations? AFC and NPP reviewers are instructed to request history merge in such situations. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon: I am not familiar with AFC/NPP so I don't know why it would be different, but WP:CWW says that either a link or list of authors is sufficient attribution, per the CC license and Wikipedia terms of use. RudolfRed (talk) 03:09, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Then what is history merge for? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:11, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Purely regarding copyright considerations, providing a list of authors is sufficient, and avoids the problem of using a link where the source page for the copied content must continue to exist to preserve attribution. In particular, when there is just one author of the source content, that is an easier approach (as alluded to in Wikipedia:History merging § When not to request a histmerge). A history merge preserves the history of individual edits even if the source page is deleted. This goes beyond what is needed to satisfy Wikipedia's licensing requirements, but can be helpful for editors, keeps all the attribution on the article history page, and doesn't require manually extracting a list of authors for the purpose of attribution. isaacl (talk) 17:02, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The replies above are technically correct but they miss the point. Copy/pasting someone else's draft to an article is pathetic. Volunteers who create content should be acknowledged in the article history and posting a template on talk as an alternative is just bullshit. Johnuniq (talk) 00:44, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the fundamental question here, though, is whether a strongly worded message is more effective than a gentler one. I doubt that it is.

By the way, about ten years ago, an editor changed the {{Uw-c&pmove}} template to say that page history is legally required. If we've been posting this message for a decade, then it's hardly surprising that some editors believe that it's actually required. @Isaacl, what you say aligns with my understanding. Perhaps you'd like to clarify the text of that message? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a suggestion at this moment, as it's hard to get nuance across in a concise warning message. Page history is the built-in MediaWiki mechanism for maintaining attribution for a given article. There isn't a built-in mechanism for providing attribution for content copied from one page to another, but of course a cut-and-paste move is unnecessary with the page move function now available. So within the context of that specific warning template, the best course is to use MediaWiki's built-in functions to maintain attribution with the page history. isaacl (talk) 04:32, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it's the best, but I don't believe that it's actually legally required. (It is required for non-legal purposes, such as Wikipedia:Who Wrote That? and edit counts.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:23, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I've already agreed. isaacl (talk) 05:52, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My point was to explain the benefits of history merges, even if there are other ways of satisfying attribution requirements. isaacl (talk) 03:58, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Concerns about Internet Archive[edit]

As I have talked about both in Wikimedia Forum and in the Internet Archive's one, Archive's Wayback Machine, being a very important resource for Wikipedia (it's where many article references come from, and where all references will always be forwarded if the original source some day disappears), can't be taken for granted, because almost all its content is hosted only in an area with great natural risks. It strikes me (negatively) that no one has replied to my post on Archive's forums. Perhaps people are more concerned with day-to-day issues, and dismiss this as long-term paranoia, but I think this is currently the most important issue regarding human knowledge's future. If Archive is eventually lost, Wikipedia and its sister projects, will be even more important than they are now, as the memory of the start of 21st century (and of other previous times), but it would be really sad to lose so much content as Archive has. If there's anyone here that shares my concern, he/she could, if has an Archive account (or wants to create one), and wanted to do it, talk about it in the thread that I opened at Archive's forum. I think that this is a very important issue, for everyone, as persons, but especially as wikipedians/wikimedians. MGeog2022 (talk) 11:36, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]