Wikipedia:Simple talk

Request to rename Cathy Parkers to Cathy Parkes

Could an experienced editor please rename the article Cathy Parkers to Cathy Parkes?

The subject was an Australian representative water polo player, and her correct surname is Parkes, not Parkers.

The article title, opening sentence and infobox should be corrected accordingly.

Thank you for your assistance. TamaRock (talk) 05:06, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Courtesy link: Cathy Parkers. This source lists her name as "Parkers". Do you have reliable sources which go against this? Axolitl (talk | contribs) 05:14, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for your response.

The correct surname is Cathy Parkes, as confirmed by the following sources:

1. University of Sydney alumni website, featuring her obituary published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 31 October 2007: https://secureau.imodules.com/s/965/index.aspx?sid=965&gid=39&pgid=537
2. Water Polo Australia Hall of Fame, which also identifies her as Cathy Parkes.

These sources support correcting the article title, opening paragraph and infobox from "Cathy Parkers" to "Cathy Parkes".

Thank you for your assistance. TamaRock (talk) 05:22, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

 Done. It seems most sources support the Parkes name. Garsh (talk) 17:25, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

George Baker

Probably the quickest and easiest way to ask. What was the year of birth of the cricketer George Baker that was deleted? I don't know what the original state was of the article but there are five different George Bakers on Wikipedia, all with different birth years. I note that the original discussion was a "soft delete based on minimal participation", which means I'm sure a decently-enough fleshed out article would be fine to resubmit. Bobo. 11:12, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

@Bobo192: The article said his dates were 15 September 1895 – 15 May 1962. Hope that helps. -- Auntof6 (talk) 12:42, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

@Auntof6: Cheers. His English Wikipedia article is at George Baker (New Zealand cricketer) in that case - that's why I wasn't sure which one he was.

Of the four George Bakers on the English Wikipedia, we have George Baker (1838), George Baker (1849), George Baker (1862), and George Baker (NZ) (en) - who would be the same as George Baker (1895). One way or another I'll get to them all eventually. I think the fifth one I was including was the redirect. Bobo. 16:18, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

@BlackJack: This will come in useful when the necessity to disambiguate will be key. Bobo. 16:23, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

Multiple Images in Infobox?

Hi! I am a user on regular Wikipedia, and have wanted to make some pages I find important on here to help out. Right now I want to work the page for the 2014 Isla Vista killings. I'm not quite used to simple Wikipedia yet, and wanted to ask if there was a consensus for having multiple images in an infobox, and how they should be captioned. Thank you! I hope my question makes sense. ArkadenBoden (talk) 13:40, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

@ArkadenBoden: There's no such consensus. People usually just copy the infobox from English Wikipedia. You can do it how you want but someone else may change it. ~2026-58707-97 (talk) 22:20, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Got it! Thank you!

ArkadenBoden (talk) 12:26, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

VisualEditor auto-generated reference names

Hi, I'm Johannes from Wikimedia Germany's Technical Wishes team.

Our team has been working on a community wish to improve VisualEditor's auto-generated reference names in recent months. When re-using a reference in VisualEditor that doesn't have a name yet, VisualEditor automatically assigns a name lik <ref name=":1">. Editors on many wikis have long requested for these names to be human-readable and meaningful.

We've now implemented a mechanism for wikis to configure automatic reference names. Configuration is a multi-step process as described in mw:Help:Cite/VisualEditor reference names:

• You can create template to define how content-based names should be created (e.g. if you prefer names like <ref name="LastnameYear-1"> or <ref name="example.com-1">, your autoname template would define which citation template parameters to use for creating such names). test2wiki:Template:Autoname is a simple example of such a template.
• Many wikis probably want to extract content from citation template parameters (e.g. the year from |date=) – in that case you can create a Lua module to get even better names (see e.g. en:Module:Autoname, fr:Module:NomRefAuto or de:Modul:VisualEditorRef).
• Once you've create one (or multiple) autoname templates (and a module if you'd like that) you need to create MediaWiki:Cite-autoname-template-map.json to map which autoname template(s) to use for which citation template(s) (example). The easiest way is just using a single autoname template as a default for all citation templates.
• Even when configuring content-based reference names there will be instances where VisualEditor cannot create such a name (e.g. if it's a basic reference that doesn't use citation template) – in that case a fallback name will be created based on MediaWiki:Cite-ve-dialogbutton-reference-title and some other messages. The default fallback is usually something like <ref name="Reference-1"> in your wiki's language. You can configure these fallback names as well
• If you're done configuring everything (or if you just want to get rid of <ref name=":1"> without configuring content-based names) you can enable the improved reference names at Special:CommunityConfiguration/Cite-VisualEditor-Autonames
• See our help page for more information on technical details and examples.

Let me know if you have any questions or if there's something we can help you with if you're interested in configuring improved VisualEditor reference names! Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:48, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

Attribution

Hi, So I came across @Bobo192 who's copying articles from Enwiki, pasting them and simplifying them but hasn't attributed the content on the talkpage,

I've tried explaining at https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Davey2010#Copying the best I can but they're not getting it and I don't know how else to explain it?, I didn't know if anyone could explain any better?, Thanks –Davey2010^Talk 01:45, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

You do know you can edit articles yourself? If the content of an article upsets you, just edit it based on your own knowledge of the subject. Bobo. 01:56, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

The issue is that your edits are in violation of the CC-BY-SA license. When copying the articles, you need an edit summary like "Copying from en:Example from English Wikipedia, which is licensed en:CC-BY-SA 4.0. See that page's history for attribution." Axolitl (talk | contribs) 03:21, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

My original intention was to add text which explained the context of the statistics - which is not present on en.wiki. To do that for 100-odd teams is tiring. I'm more than happy to do so in time - but it's hard to write 100 articles of prose in one day. I'll save that edit summary for the future. Bobo. 05:14, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

I don't think that's a good way to go about it. Technically, every time you copy without attribution, you are violating copyright law. While it probably won't ever be enforced, it's not a great idea. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 05:19, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

You can't copyright statistics. They're numbers. That's how numbers work. Bobo. 05:20, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

If all that's necessary is that edit summary, then fair enough. I've got the best part of 60 articles still to complete. Bobo. 05:28, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

I'm copying and pasting that exact edit summary, is that okay? (Replacing "en:example" with the actual article title itself). Is that right? Bobo. 05:41, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Should be fine. You can use some discretion, but all that is really necessary is that if you are copyrighting original content from enwiki, you should provide a link to the page, a link to w:CC-BY-SA-4.0, and instructions to check history for attribution. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 05:51, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Check my edit summary on List of Botswana Twenty20 International cricketers to see if I've done it right. Bobo. 05:53, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Seems alright, except that the license isn't wikilinked. Axolitl (talk | contribs) 05:58, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Many thanks @Axolitl for explaining it to them it's much appreciated, Thanks –Davey2010^Talk 12:47, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Now that I understand the problem I can work towards doing the right thing. Bobo. 12:51, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Cat:Clothing controversies likely needs a closer look

Hello, just wanrted to point out that Category:Clothing controversies likely needs a closer look; we might need ot split the category up, into multiple (sub?) categries:

• There are things like bikini, and perhaps cameltoe, or Trousers as women's lcothing which caused a controversy/protest when they were first made public
• We do have the rather unrelated entry of cross-dressing
• We do have two aricle (exploitation behind clothes, sweatshop) which likely point out the problems behind clothing production
• There are two articles: Guidance patrol and Girls of Engelshab protests... that are more politically inclined

In short, we do have articles for about 2-4 thematic categories, but we do ont have enough articles to form these categories. I removed another, nude rereation, as in my opinion it is not really a clothingg controversy. Ideas/Help welcome Eptalon (talk) 21:52, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

Review request for Nikhil Goel draft

Hello,

I have prepared a draft article about Nikhil Goel in my user sandbox:

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AdvertoutAjith/sandbox

I am a paid contributor through Advertout Digital working on behalf of Nikhil Goel, and I have disclosed this relationship.

I would like an independent editor to review the draft before it is moved into the main article space.

Could someone please check the draft for:

• notability
• neutrality
• reliability of the references
• Simple English writing style
• whether it is suitable to be moved to the main encyclopedia

I will make any changes recommended by independent editors before moving the article.

Thank you. AdvertoutAjith (talk) 13:01, 10 November 2026 (UTC)

Hello AdvertoutAjith, where did you disclose your paid editing here? NDG (talk) 13:09, 10 November 2026 (UTC)

Hello NDG,

I have now added the paid editing disclosure to my user page here:

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AdvertoutAjith

I am affiliated with Advertout Digital and am contributing on behalf of Nikhil Goel.

Please let me know if any additional disclosure is needed.

Thank you. AdvertoutAjith (talk) 17:04, 12 November 2026 (UTC)

You've got a draft on en wiki, my suggestion would be to focus on that and only if that is accepted, create a simplified version here. Ravensfire (talk) 18:14, 12 November 2026 (UTC)

Military unit vs military organization

When it comes to putting, say, a squad, brigade, regiment, corps, etc into a category, it seems like they are separated into either Category:Military units (see Fireteam, Squad, and Section) or Category:Military organizations (see Battalion, Platoon, Regiment, and Squadron). Should we add both categories to every military unit page, or should they only have one of the two categories? ~2026-59740-74 (talk) 17:41, 11 November 2026 (UTC)

Are you also considering how civilian entities like police would be categorized? Barbara (talk) 20:19, 12 November 2026 (UTC)

November 2026 Wikimedia Café: the Newcomer homepage & Home experience

The Wikimedia Foundation's Contributor teams are migrating the Newcomer homepage to a new experience called Home. This page will evolve with users, introducing them to new personalized opportunities based on their interests, and helping them develop into experienced contributors.

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A quote which I hope will inspire your attendance or at least good wishes, from Grace Hopper: "The most important thing I've accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, 'Do you think we can do this?' I say, 'Try it.' And I back 'em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir 'em up at intervals so they don't forget to take chances."

This month's schedule:

• Session A: 21 November at 16:00 UTC (timestamp converter), at a time friendly to the Americas, Africa, and Europe
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To subscribe or unsubscribe for Café notices on your talk page please go here.

༄ᨒ𖠰 Pine (✉) 23:56, 11 November 2026 (UTC)