Wikipedia talk:Reference desk

message: Why doesn't Dave Bristol's biography list that he was also a teacher at Murphy, North Carolina, doesn't list his wife or if he had any children, is he is still alive? 2600:6C55:600:6B6A:6500:AF33:4D9C:3C19 (talk) 16:18, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: This page is for discussing improvements to the Reference Desk; the correct place to discuss improvements to the article on Dave Bristol is on the associated talk page, here. Broadly speaking, articles are incomplete because YOU haven't fixed them. We are all volunteers here and the only reason anything gets done is that someone just like YOU decided to improve things. See here for steps on getting started. Matt Deres (talk) 16:50, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

text: Oh, and as for whether he's still alive, this site does not provide a death date, so I assume he's still alive, but that kind of material may be less well maintained than the statistics. This shows he was still alive in 2020. Matt Deres (talk) 16:54, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:   Dave Bristol  

message: I believe that user IP 172.56.186.104 who has started asking convoluted questions on the Humanities desk, is banned user Futurist110. This is from the style of his questions, and from the fact he randomly left a question on my user talk page, just like Futurist110 used to do. Could someone look into this? Xuxl (talk) 12:44, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:SPI has instructions on how to initiate an investigation, though there seems to be a substantial backlog. Matt Deres (talk) 22:15, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Are there any admins who are notably familiar with the user in question? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:48, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Banned user showing up again 

message: Hi, the text of this reference (no. 37 of the Fabrizio De André page) isn't completely understandable (e.g.: "Ãˆ durata poco piÃ¹ di un'ora la..."): https://www.repubblica.it/online/musica/de_andre/fune/fune.html. JacktheBrown (talk) 16:03, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: See Mojibake.  Nothing we can do here. —Tamfang (talk) 20:06, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: It is also not a problem. Given that the article is from 1999, it is quite wonderful that it is still accessible online (dead links are all too common in references in WP), and with a little effort the weird characters can be translated back into the accented letters that they represent. In any case, the reference includes the date of publication, which should be sufficient to dig out the article in the print edition of La Repubblica in some library or archive. --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:24, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text 

message: "There is a biennial international Genovese Pesto al Mortaio competition, in which 100 finalists use traditional mortars and pestles as well as the above ingredients, which 30 local and international judges then assess." This sentence is without reference; do I add the citation needed template or do I take the drastic solution of deleting it? JacktheBrown (talk) 14:20, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears that this article mentions all of the facts in that sentence. You could use it as a source. Deor (talk) 15:15, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Pesto]]