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    Assistance for new editors unable to post here

    The help desk is frequently semi-protected, meaning the help desk pages cannot be edited by unregistered users (IP addresses), as well as accounts that are not confirmed or autoconfirmed (accounts that are at least 4 days old with at least 10 edits on English Wikipedia).

    However, you can still get direct assistance on your talk page. Just use this link to ask for help; a volunteer will visit you there shortly!

    There are currently 2 user(s) asking for help via the {{Help me}} template:

    User talk:2A01:799:94D:5B00:2808:8D5D:AC65:3A9D
    Talk:Gabrielle Lurie

    How to apply CSS styling for dark mode users only?

    I am writing Wikipedia scripts, and I’m struggling to find a clean, simple way to apply specific CSS rules only for users viewing the page in dark mode—whether as a result of their Wikipedia appearance preference being explicitly set to "Dark", or because their OS is in dark mode while their appearance preference is set to "Automatic".

    The only working "solution" I’ve managed to implement so far is this: 

    @media screen and (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    html.skin-theme-clientpref-os {
        /* Styles defined here will apply only to dark mode users. */
    }
}

html.skin-theme-clientpref-night {
    /* Styles defined here will also apply only to dark mode users. */
    /* These must be EXACTLY the same styles as above, leading to messy duplication! */
}

    As you can see, this is not a practical solution, as it forces me to duplicate every single dark-mode-only CSS rule for two distinct scenarios:

    1. The user’s OS is set to dark mode, and their Wikipedia appearance preference is set to "Automatic";
    2. The user’s Wikipedia appearance preference is explicitly set to "Dark".

    Since the same CSS rules should apply in both cases, manually duplicating them across separate selectors is highly inefficient, especially given the large number of dark-mode-only rules.

    I couldn’t find a simple solution, such as a common "dark-mode" class that applies to the <html> or <body> element for all dark mode users (and only for them).

    Any help would be greatly appreciated! :) Guycn2 (talk) 17:22, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Not a direct answer to your question sadly, but the folks at WP:Village pump (technical) will probably be your best shot at answering it. – Sparkle and Fade (talk • contributions) 13:56, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Cursor

    When in edit mode on my Wikipedia Sandbox A/C, the curser arrow of my computer changes to what resembles a Roman one and will not move. Clicking again, turns the so-called Roman one into what resembles a Roman ten, and a final click turns the screen into hourglass. The problem does not exist when in a view mode on Sandbox or on my User and Talk page accounts in whatever mode. I operate a Dell pc acquired in 2024. Thanks! Pendright (talk) 05:04, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Pendright, I've given your message a title. By "what resembles a Roman one", "what resembles a Roman ten", and "turns the screen into hourglass", do you perhaps mean "what resembles ⟨ꟾ⟩", "what resembles ⟨⨉⟩", and "turns the cursor into an hourglass icon" respectively? Which browser are you using, and what happens when you use an alternative browser? -- Hoary (talk) 05:38, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Hoary: Thank you and yes. I use Google Chrome and have not tried another browser. Pendright (talk) 06:56, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Seems like a error ralated to cursor or browser issue. Maybe you can try out thise troubleshoots:
    • Try Another Browser – Use Firefox, Chrome, or Edge to see if issue persists.
    • Disable Browser Extensions – Turn off all extensions; re-enable one by one.
    • Switch Wikipedia Editor – Use Source Editor instead of VisualEditor (or vice versa)..
    • Reset Mouse Settings – Control Panel → Mouse → Pointers → set to Windows Default.
    • Check Input Methods – Remove any unusual language keyboards or IMEs. finally, see if issue still appears in Safe Mode.
    IHitmanI (talk) 08:14, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Pendright: It sounds like a script is using all browser resources so the browser cannot do other things. Does "my Wikipedia Sandbox A/C" mean User:Pendright/sandbox? (Yes) Does it work if you click safemode? No, three attempts-the first 30 seconds or so look promising, after this reverts to hourglass) sing Some features are disabled there. Does it work if you log out? (No) Does "User and Talk page accounts" just mean your user page and talk page? (Yes, One account, two pages-no other A/Cs) "accounts" normally means user accounts. (One account, my error) Some users have multiple accounts.(Answered above) Do you mean the problem is not in the Pendright account? (The problem is in Pendright's Sandbox when its' in edit mode) PrimeHunter (talk) 09:46, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @PrimeHunter: Responses above - thank you -Pendright (talk) 05:55, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Pendright: Try to bypass your cache with Ctrl+F5 on the edit window. I wonder whether something specific in the wikitext causes it, or maybe the total size. Does it work to edit the lead section here or the Scholar section here? If the first tool at WP:HILITE is enabled at another page like Example then try to disable it there. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:34, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    For biographies of living persons, is it allowed to use a link to a court case to update the marital status of a subject? I am asking particularly for this article, Elizabeth Koch (publisher). 🌊PacificDepthstalk|contrib 06:36, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes but there are conditions:
    1. Use a source that is reliable, that is it is a second source as well as from a reputable medium.
    2. Particularly in court cases, use source only if court order has been finalized not if it ongoing and have no known result.
    3. Do not cite source from a unreliable source or if it is more of leak or unreliable news forum.
    4. You cite it properly, with exact dates and clear indication of the source.
    5. If the document includes sensitive personal details irrelevant to the encyclopedic purpose, avoid using it or redact appropriately.
    altogether please keep in mind-
    It is conditionally allowed to use a court case to update marital status on Wikipedia, if and only if the case is final, reliable, publicly available, and directly confirms the status change. IHitmanI (talk) 08:09, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As far as i can see your source, I strongly suggest further notice:
    UniCourt is only a raw docket aggregator. Per WP:PRIMARY and WP:RS, it isn’t considered a reliable secondary source. Please replace or supplement it with an independent source (e.g., court’s own docket, reputable news coverage, law‑review article). Thanks! IHitmanI (talk) 14:10, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:BLPPRIMARY, part of the "Biographies of living persons" policy, is clear that court cases are not valid sources for details about living persons. DMacks (talk) 16:42, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Are LLM-generated drafts eligible for MFD?

    I found one that has both an apparent COI and very AI-like phrasing in draftspace, but I don't know if NDRAFT wins here. Departure– (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    It would help to be specific and name the draft. However, anything that looks like a lot of WP:LLM has gone into it probably isn't suitable.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:13, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If it's a draft, which is the problem? The namespace is meant for exactly that, for articles that are not yet ready. An AI-generated article may work as a starting point, to avoid the "blank page syndrome". Although nothing remains of the AI text, I started El Eternauta: tercera parte that way. Cambalachero (talk) 19:34, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Help fixing criticism section default parameter

    Could someone skilled with templates help me out at Template:Criticism section? It currently substitutes {{subst:CURRENTMONTH}} when it should be substituting {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}}. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 21:06, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Thebiguglyalien: I guess you refer to inserting the template with VisualEditor. It's controlled by templatedata in the doc subpage. I have changed it to {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}}.[1]PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Charts recreation

    If an article, such as International recognition of Kosovo, uses embedded graphs using the currently-disabled Charts extension, is it appropriate to go through the effort of creating an SVG recreation in something like Gnuplot and using it as a temporary replacement while the graph is not visible?

    I am well aware that graphs will be re-enabled once the better Graphs extension goes gold, so I wonder if creating replacements will either cause people to favor the much more involved and tedious process of editing the SVG graph even well after software graphs are re-enabled, and/or if the eventual release of the improved Graphs extension will cause a large surplus on Commons of unused and outdated graphs that have served their purpose as a replacement and now only serve to benefit wikis that do not or still can not use software graphs. Are these risks well-founded or simply paranoia? All things considered, should I continue to try to create interim vector replacements for graphs on articles? Or is it established that I should simply wait for all this to pass? — rae5e <talk> 12:49, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Preserving Flickr to W.M. images

    I saved a few images from my Flickr account to Wayback Machine. For instance, there is a page from a 1996 newsletter (long defunct) that was probably mailed out to under 100 people. It likely doesn't exist anywhere else. It's critical for a WP article's reference. I would like to know how substantial these saves are to Wayback. What about if I close my Flickr account in five years? Will the images still be there on Wayback. If not, what are the alternatives? There could be copyright issues with Commons. Also, I only wrote a few articles on WP. But how important is it to state the source of a link in reference. It seems to be a good idea, though not necessary. Examples: "Chronicling America" (for newspapers) and "Wikimedia C–." Thanks. JimPercy (talk) 15:52, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Hello, @JimPercy. I'm not an expert, but I think the whole point of the Wayback machine is that even if a whole site is defunct, if it has been crawled, it will be there.
    However, I'm dubious that a newsletter which was mailed out to 100 people is a reliable source, so I am concerned that you say it is critical for an article's reference.
    A citation should give important bibliographic information like title, author, date, publisher, page, publication (or website). A URL is in most cases a convenience for the reader, not an essential part of the citation. ColinFine (talk) 21:15, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, so the images are crawled, hence, preserved regardless. That's good to know. This newsletter with the interview went out to a city of 10,000 people. I was just guessing at the 100 figure. I agree it's not the best source to back up some minor (not major) details, but still better than none. JimPercy (talk) 21:41, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Jim Sautner and his emotional support buffalo

    Why do we not have an article on Jim Sautner (RIP) and his emotional support buffalo Bailey D. Buffalo? [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]Polygnotus (talk) 20:19, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Hello, @Polygnotus. The answer to "Why do we not have an article on X" is usually one or both of:
    • because the subject does not meet our criteria for notability; or
    • because nobody has written it.
    Sometimes it is because
    • somebody wrote it but it was deleted, either because the subject does not meet our criteria for notability, or because it was unsalvageable, for example as promotional.
    If your research shows that Sautner is notable (by Wikipedia's definition), you are welcome to try creating an article. I see that, like me, you have not created many articles, so I recommend you read your first article and then use articles for creation. ColinFine (talk) 21:22, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The article General Intelligence Service (Syria)

    Hello ! I tried to modify the subsection "2024" in the section "history".

    It does print the next result : "The General Intelligence Service was established"

    The Wikitext is : "The [[General Intelligence Service (Syria)|General Intelligence Service]] was established".

    When I saw the Wikitext. It was a surprise because I wanted to add a link to "General Intelligence Service" and accorded to Wikitext the link is already there.

    There are maybe a mistake in the Wikitext but I'm unable to find it if this is the case. Anatole-berthe (talk) 21:33, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    @Anatole-berthe: It would have been a link to the page itself. MediaWiki displays it as bold instead of making a link. See Help:Self link. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:40, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    In this case. I understand. I deleted the link because it's unseful and unuseable.
    Thanks ! Anatole-berthe (talk) 21:59, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce

    Reference number 10 is not correctly done. Please fix, I am sure it is from a university journal. Thanks Srbernadette (talk) 03:39, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Well, Srbernadette, using Template:Cite journal requires specification of a journal, as the error message clearly says. Are you hoping that somebody here will somehow guess which journal it might be? I'm sure that I for one can't do so, as to me it's very obviously not a journal article. (Even the lengthy text within it in no way resembles the text of any normal journal article.) What I think you need is Template:Cite web. Incidentally, reference 10 was screwed up in this latest pair of edits, made by 49.185.27.169. -- Hoary (talk) 07:25, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I've fixed it, replaced the template with the one for a website. PhoenixCaelestis (Talk · Contributions) 17:44, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Vandalisim on the Crossroads, County Donegal article.

    Hello, my name is Justin. I recently wrote an article on wikipedia and titled it Crossroads (hamlet), but another user had re-named it 'Crossroads, County Donegal', but I do not want that name for the title. When I contacted the user, they were very rude to me and refused to co-operate with me and then put a pp-move vandalisim on the page and now it has completely ruined the the title. I find this inappropriate and unfair. I would like the page to be permenantly renamed to Crossroads (hamlet) and block the user that vandelised the page. Justin799 (talk) 12:15, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    You edit warred through page moves. There are policies around the proper titles of articles. There could be more than one hamlet by that name, so it needs a geographic differeniator. In any event, this is a content dispute, not vandalism, that you need to work out with the other editor. 331dot (talk) 12:21, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    See WP:PLACE as well as WP:OWN. 331dot (talk) 12:23, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry but that's not vandalism, that was actually correct practice. Names for articles should be specific, not generic. And no Wikipedia editor owns a page so what you wanted the name to be is kind of irrelevant. Simonm223 (talk) 12:21, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Justin799: The name of this article on a place in Ireland should follow the policy shown at WP:NCCS § Ireland; in this particular case, "Crossroads, County Donegal". Bazza 7 (talk) 12:30, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    There's more information at User talk:CambridgeBayWeather#Crossroads village edit.. I'd been going through the Move log looking for errors in page naming. I saw the Crossroads (hamlet) and moved it to Crossroads, County Donegal as per convention and others at Category:Towns and villages in County Donegal. I didn't leave them a message as it was just a simple mistake that I see quite often. They came to my talk page to inquire about it at and exhibiting a bit of ownership. I replied but believe that I was rude and I'm not sure why they think that. I pointed them to the guidelines and the policy I felt covered the situation and why I did what I did. Later I noticed that they had moved the page to Crossroads. (period) and somewhere had created Crossroads, (comma). After looking at all the moves, it went from draft to Crossroads (Hamlet) to Crossroads (Donegal) then Crossroads (hamlet), I felt it best to move protect it for a week to give Justin799 time to read the guideline and policy. One thing I must apologise for is when I protected the page I used WP:Twinkle and used the wrong reason from the drop down menu. It should not have been listed as "page move vandalism" and that was my error and I apologise for that. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 13:14, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I do thank you for your apology and your understanding. I'm only here a few months so I'm still learning yet but I will look at the articlrs provided and we can find resolution very soon. Thanks for the apology.
    Best regards, Justin. Justin799 (talk) 13:32, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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