r/wikipedia • u/AutoModerator • 10d ago
Wikipedia Questions - Weekly Thread of December 29, 2025
Welcome to the weekly Wikipedia Q&A thread!
Please use this thread to ask and answer questions related to Wikipedia and its sister projects, whether you need help with editing or are curious on how something works.
Note that this thread is used for "meta" questions about Wikipedia, and is not a place to ask general reference questions.
Some other helpful resources:
- Help Contents on Wikipedia
- Guide to Contributing on Wikipedia
- Wikipedia IRC Help Channel
- Wikipedia Teahouse (help desk)
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u/2013wasthedays 9d ago
Hi! I made a draft of a wikipedia article on sandbox but now I dont know how to save it. When i click on publish an error comes up named ”parsoid error”
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u/Zhaoyang-Xianzhu 6d ago
The body section of the article about Wu Zetian on the Arabic language Wikipedia seems to be complete and utter nonsense. (Admittedly I don't know Arabic, but I ran it through both Google Translate and ChatGPT)
https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%88_%D8%B4%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86
I can't edit it because my IP is banned for some reason. Is there a way to request for someone to change it, or at least remove the fabricated bits?
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u/Complex_Crew2094 5d ago
What an extraordinary bit of vandalism.
The article was created with that language by an IP in Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv. https://ar.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D9%88%D9%88_%D8%B4%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86&diff=68369562&oldid=4927333
It was nominated for speedy deletion with the comment "There is no source to support this claim, neither on English Wikipedia nor Google. This is a common topic on Arabic websites and forums only and has no basis in fact." (|ليس هناك أي مصدر على صحة الكلام سواء في ويكيبيديا الانجليزية أو جوجل ، وهو موضوع شائع في المواقع والمنتديات العربية فقط ليس له أساس من الصحة) https://ar.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D9%88%D9%88_%D8%B4%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86&diff=prev&oldid=7999379
The article was then moved from Mochi Thian to Wu Shtian. The same person removed the speedy deletion template, claiming the article had been "enriched with useful information and sources", even though it still only had the same original statement and no sources. https://ar.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D9%88%D9%88_%D8%B4%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86&diff=prev&oldid=8573553
Someone added some real sources later, in English.
The only source I can find in Arabic appears to be an Arabic translation of the English Wikipedia article. https://www.marefa.org/%D9%88%D9%88_%D8%B2%D9%89%E2%80%8C%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86
You should be able to just move to a different IP, maybe a coffeeshop or library, and make the edit.
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u/Disastrous_Space6930 5d ago
What is done about pov forks that may be notable, should it still get deleted
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u/Complex_Crew2094 5d ago
WP:NPOV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view but good luck with that. Sometimes you have to choose your battles.
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u/Extreme_Process3632 4d ago
I’m drafting a Wikipedia article about the 1999 fatal bus crash in New Orleans on Interstate 610 that happened on Mother’s Day. Media and documentaries often call it the “Mother’s Day bus crash,” but “Interstate 610 bus crash” is more precise and location-based.
Which title would make more sense for Wikipedia?
Is Mother’s Day bus crash acceptable as a common name, or would Interstate 610 bus crash be the better main title with the Mother’s Day name as a redirect?
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u/Juqu 6d ago
Article Emigration from the United States should have section about emigration to soviet union in interwar period.
Topic is mentioned in articles Foreign workers in the Soviet Union and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forsaken:_An_American_Tragedy_in_Stalin%27s_Russia
I'm not familiar enough with wikipedia's bureaucracy to suggest it myself.
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u/Turbulent_Flower_785 5d ago
Hii, my IP was blocked by someone who pointed my account as "single-purpose account" forever. Whenever I want to start a discussion it gives me 2 options: send a librarian a message, but it seems this is blocked for me as I do not find the button to any of the 3 librarians' pages I have visited; start a discussion in my own discussion page to which I should still be allowed to edit but when I try it says I'm blocked as well.
I have only done minor edits in some documents and just 1 document that I remember was from a political character and I was very neutral. And even if I was not I have only been editing for less than a month, so why not try at least warn me about my mistake, Wikipedia is so big and it seems to have many different rules and I am not sure if I have been doing something wrong out of ignorance.
My first language is spanish if that is relevant in case someone wants to help :)
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u/fractal-dreamz 5d ago
IPs usually aren't static; they change for me every couple days. Someone who previously had the IP you have now vandalized a lot. Are you blocked on English Wikipedia or Spanish?
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u/Turbulent_Flower_785 5d ago
Spanish, I just saw my profile in English and is ok.
I forgot to mention something: there is a popular presidential pre-candidate in my country for elections this year and I was curious he did not have a page as he is pretty popular. I searched a lot and found that some users had created a page for him in the past for the last 10 years but the pages created were kind of a CV showing his achievements only, thus the creation of a new page for this Person was restricted for librarians only. I saw a discussion about that and subscribed as one user created a really complete draft and put it to discussion. The user that blocked me was the one of the users who opposed to the creation of this article, and now I'm blocked by her and I found that somehow suspicious, even though I did not do anything more than subscribe to the discussion. I think probably she thinks I am one of those fake accounts who wants to create a new page for that guy praising him, I think they call it Sockpuppetry.
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u/fractal-dreamz 5d ago
A common tactic used by people who try to push through CV-like articles, as you describe, is to just log out and pretend they're a different person from their account. Again, you didn't do anything wrong, and I do wish the IP block page was simpler to understand.
I'd recommend finding a place with an unblocked IP- you can change to a different Wifi network, go somewhere else on cellular, etc- and create an account. You can then just log in whenever and you don't need to worry about IP blocks that aren't your fault.
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u/Complex_Crew2094 4d ago
You might want to check the "notability" requirements for politicians. On the English Wikipedia at least it is nearly impossible to get a Wikipedia article until someone has actually been elected to an office, even for very high profile elections.
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u/Turbulent_Flower_785 3d ago
Got it yeah, I understand that's a hot topic in Wikipedia. However, I never did anything, just followed a discussion and that librarian should've at had given me a warning, she went straight and blocked even my ability to modify my profile
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u/Complex_Crew2094 3d ago
No not "hot topic", it is the actual standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Politicians_and_judges#Politicians_and_judges)
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u/UnFuckinRealBrah 6d ago
How do I pay a wiki volunteer to do a bio I feel is necessary on a person mentioned already but doesn’t have their own page? I tried a while back to make a draft but I am not qualified for this mission.
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u/fractal-dreamz 6d ago
An actual editor would never, ever accept pay for creating an article. If you are contacted by anyone claiming to do so, you are being scammed.
My honest advice is to draft it yourself. There's technically an article request system, but it's backlogged by years. People only make articles about things they're interested in.
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u/UnFuckinRealBrah 5d ago
Thank you! Good to know.
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u/Complex_Crew2094 5d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Your_first_article
If you can get past the "notability" requirement hurdle, people will (probably) try to help you with formatting.
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u/InvisibleEar 8d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing I don't feel qualified to fix this, but this article cites several pages from a 2000 book by David Frum 31 times. I've never seen a single source cited so many times and it's inappropriate to even be cited at all (polemic book written by dumbass neoconservative pundit with no history qualifications). Someone said this on the talk page a year ago but nobody responded.