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2024-06-08
Volume 20, Issue 8

Please stay in the top 3 segments of Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement.
 User talk:SMcCandlish/IP

Old stuff to resolve eventually

Cueless billiards

Unresolved
 – Can't get at the stuff at Ancestry; try using addl. cards.
Extended content

Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Crud fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually. I think at least some variants of bar billiards are played with hands and some bagatelle split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's bocce billiards, article I've not written yet. Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once. Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection. She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. Hand pool might be its own article eventually. Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics". Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have crud), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really. I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-) In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at CfD. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled Category:Pinball just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to Category:Darts soon.
PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted Yank Adams as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a bunch of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.? I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4½ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years. I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for. S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the Blue Book of Pool Cues too for under $200 total. Here it is for $160, plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-) DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh. Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
PayPal Plugin ist kaput. Some banks now issue credit card accounts that make use of virtual card numbers, but mine's not one of them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 19:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for trying. It was worth a shot. I signed up for a newspaperarchive.com three month trial. As far as newspaper results go it seems quite good so far, and the search interface is many orders of magnitude better than ancestry's, but it has none of the genealogical records that ancestry provides. With ancestry I could probably find census info on Yank as well as death information (as well as for Masako Katsura, which I've been working on it for a few days; she could actually be alive, though she'd be 96).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sad...

How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK. PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Jackpot. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nice find! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the main page

Unresolved
 – Katsura News added (with new TFA section) to WP:CUE; need to see if I can add anything useful to Mingaud article.
Extended content

Look at the main page --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since you don't appear to have seen this near to the time I left it, it might be a little cryptic without explanation. Masako Katsura was today's featured article on January 31, 2011.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Supah-dupah! That kicks. WP:CUE's (and your?) first TFA, yes?! And yeah I have been away a lot lately. Long story. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 01:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, my first, though I have another in the works (not billiards related). I think François Mingaud could be a candidate in the near future. I really wanted to work it up to near FA level before posting it but another user created it recently, not realizing my draft existed, and once they did realize, copied some of my content without proper copyright attribution and posted to DYK. I have done a history merge though the newer, far less developed content is what's seen in the article now. I'm going to merge the old with the new soon. Glad to see your back.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My front and sides are visible too. ;-) Anyway, glad you beat me to Mingaud. I'd been thinking of doing that one myself, but it seemed a bit daunting. I may have some tidbits for it. Lemme know when your merged version goes up, and I'll see what I have that might not already be in there. Probably not earthshaking, just a few things I found in 1800s-1910s books. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 16:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some more notes on Crystalate

Unresolved
 – New sources/material worked into article, but unanswered questions remain.
Extended content

Some more notes: they bought Royal Worcester in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.[1]; info about making records:[2]; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:[3]; "In 1880, crystalate balls made of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol began to appear. In 1926, they were made obligatory by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the London-based governing body." Amazing Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Feats. Richard B. Manchester - 1991[4]; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:[5]. Fences&Windows 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I'll have to have a look at this stuff in more detail. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 15:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've worked most of it in. Fences&Windows 16:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cool! From what I can tell, entirely different parties held the trademark in different markets. I can't find a link between Crystalate Mfg. Co. Ltd. (mostly records, though billiard balls early on) and the main billiard ball mfr. in the UK, who later came up with "Super Crystalate". I'm not sure the term was even used in the U.S. at all, despite the formulation having been originally patented there. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 21:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SAL

Unresolved
 – Not done yet, last I looked.
Extended content

No one has actually objected to the idea that it's really pointless for WP:SAL to contain any style information at all, other than in summary form and citing MOS:LIST, which is where all of WP:SAL's style advice should go, and SAL page should move back to WP:Stand-alone lists with a content guideline tag. Everyone who's commented for 7 months or so has been in favor of it. I'd say we have consensus to start doing it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take a look at the page shortly. Thanks for the nudge. SilkTork ✔Tea time 23:19, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your free 1-year HighBeam Research account is ready

Unresolved
 – Needs to be renewed
Extended content

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Thanks for helping make Wikipedia better. Enjoy your research! Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 04:47, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Unresolved
 – Needs to be renewed.
Extended content

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Thanks for helping make Wikipedia better. Enjoy your research! Cheers, Ocaasi 17:22, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yay! — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 10:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Circa

Unresolved
 – Need to file the RfC.
Extended content

This edit explains how to write "ca.", which is still discouraged at MOS:#Abbreviations, WP:YEAR, WP:SMOS#Abbreviations, and maybe MOS:DOB, and after you must have read my complaint and ordeal at WT:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Circa. Either allow "ca." or don't allow "ca.", I don't care which, but do it consistently. Art LaPella (talk) 15:41, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good WP:RFC. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:52, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's been hard to get opinions on circa in the past. Anyway, can I undo that edit, until when and if someone wants to edit the other guidelines to match? If we leave it there indefinitely, nobody will notice except me. Art LaPella (talk) 20:17, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't care; this will have to be dealt with in an RfC anyway. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 20:44, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Done (now I don't need to wonder if the RfC will ever be acted on :) ) Art LaPella (talk) 21:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You post at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright

Unresolved
 – Need to fix William A. Spinks, etc., with proper balkline stats, now that we know how to interpret them.
Extended content

That page looks like a hinterland (you go back two users in the history and you're in August). Are you familiar with WP:MCQ? By the way, did you see my response on the balkline averages?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I did a bunch of archiving yesterday. This page was HUGE. It'll get there again. I'd forgotten MCQ existed. Can you please add it to the DAB hatnote at top of and "See also" at bottom of WP:COPYRIGHT? Its conspicuous absence is precisely why I ened up at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright! Haven't seen your balkline response yet; will go look. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 21:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hee Haw

Unresolved
 – Still need to propose some standards on animal breed article naming and disambiguation.
Extended content

Yeah, we did get along on Donkeys. And probably will get along on some other stuff again later. Best way to handle WP is to take it issue by issue and then let bygones be bygones. I'm finding some interesting debates over things like the line between a subspecies, a landrace and a breed. Just almost saw someone else's GA derailed over a "breed versus species" debate that was completely bogus, we just removed the word "adapt" and life would have been fine. I'd actually be interested in seeing actual scholarly articles that discuss these differences, particularly the landrace/breed issue in general, but in livestock in particular, and particularly as applied to truly feral/landrace populations (if, in livestock, there is such a thing, people inevitably will do a bit of culling, sorting and other interference these days). I'm willing to stick to my guns on the WPEQ naming issue, but AGF in all respects. Truce? Montanabw(talk) 22:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Truce, certainly. I'm not here to pick fights, just improve the consistency for readers and editors. I don't think there will be any scholarly articles on differences between landrace and breed, because there's nothing really to write about. Landrace has clear definitions in zoology and botany, and breed not only doesn't qualify, it is only established as true in any given case by reliable sources. Basically, no one anywhere is claiming "This is the Foobabaz horse, and it is a new landrace!" That wouldn't make sense. What is happening is people naming and declaring new alleged breeds on an entirely self-interested, profit-motive basis, with no evidence anyone other than the proponent and a few other experimental breeders consider it a breed. WP is full of should-be-AfD'd articles of this sort, like the cat one I successfully prod'ed last week. Asking for a reliable source that something is a landrace rather than a breed is backwards; landrace status is the default, not a special condition. It's a bit like asking for a scholarly piece on whether pig Latin is a real language or not; no one's going to write a journal paper about that because "language" (and related terms like "dialect", "language family", "creole" in the linguistic sense, etc.) have clear definitions in linguistics, while pig Latin, an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally-managed form of communication (like an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally managed form of domesticated animal) does not qualify. :-) The "what is a breed" question, which is also not about horses any more than cats or cavies or ferrets, is going to be a separate issue to resolve from the naming issue. Looking over what we collaboratively did with donkeys – and the naming form that took, i.e. Poitou donkey not Poitou (donkey), I think I'm going to end up on your side of that one. It needs to be discussed more broadly in an RFC, because most projects use the parenthetical form, because this is what WT:AT is most readily interpretable as requiring. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 00:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I hate the drama of an RfC, particularly when we can just look at how much can be naturally disambiguated, but if you think it's an actual issue, I guess ping me when it goes up. As for landcraces, it may be true ("clear definitions") but you would be doing God's (or someone's) own good work if you were to improve landrace which has few references, fewer good ones, and is generally not a lot of help to those of us trying to sort out WTF a "landrace" is... (smiles). As for breed, that is were we disagree: At what point do we really have a "breed" as opposed to a "landrace?" Fixed traits, human-selected? At what degree, at which point? How many generations? I don't even know if there IS such a thing as a universal definition of what a "breed" is: seriously: [6] or breed or [7]. I think you and I agree that the Palomino horse can never be a "breed" because it is impossible for the color to breed true (per an earlier discussion) so we have one limit. But while I happen agree to a significant extent with your underlying premise that when Randy from Boise breeds two animals and says he has created a new breed and this is a problem, (I think it's a BIG problem in the worst cases) but if we want to get really fussy, I suppose that the aficionados of the Arabian horse who claim the breed is pure from the dawn of time are actually arguing it is a landrace, wouldn't you say? And what DO we do with the multi-generational stuff that's in limbo land? Montanabw(talk) 00:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not really certain what the answers are to any of those questions, another reason (besides your "STOP!" demands :-) that I backed away rapidly from moving any more horse articles around. But it's something that is going to have to be looked into. I agree that the Landrace article here is poor. For one thing, it needs to split Natural breed out into its own article (a natural breed is a selectively-bred formal breed the purpose of which is to refine and "lock-in" the most definitive qualities of a local landrace). This in turn isn't actually the same thing as a traditional breed, though the concepts are related. Basically, three breeding concepts are squished into one article. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 00:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Side comment: I tend to support one good overview article over three poor content forks, just thinking aloud... Montanabw(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sure; the point is that the concepts have to be separately, clearly treated, because they are not synonymous at all. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 02:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the article isn't well-sourced yet, I think that you might want to add something about that to landrace now, just to give whomever does article improvement on it later (maybe you, I think this is up your alley!) has the "ping" to do so. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Aye, it's on my to-do list. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Although I have been an evolutionary biologist for decades, I only noticed the term "landrace" within the past year or two (in reference to corn), because I work with wildland plants. But I immediately knew what it was, from context. I'm much less certain about breeds, beyond that I am emphatic that they are human constructs. Montanabw and I have discussed my horse off-wiki, and from what I can tell, breeders are selecting for specific attributes (many people claim to have seen a horse "just like him"), but afaik there is no breed "Idaho stock horse". Artificially-selected lineages can exist without anyone calling them "breeds"; I'm not sure they would even be "natural breeds", and such things are common even within established breeds (Montanabw could probably explain to us the difference between Polish and Egyptian Arabians).
The good thing about breeds wrt Wikipedia is that we can use WP:RS and WP:NOTABLE to decide what to cover. Landraces are a different issue: if no one has ever called a specific, distinctive, isolated mustang herd a landrace, is it OR for Wikipedia to do so?--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have been reluctant to use landrace much out of a concern that the concept is a bit OR, as I hadn't heard of it before wikipedia either (but I'm more a historian than an evolutionary biologist, so what do I know?): Curtis, any idea where this did come from? It's a useful concept, but I am kind of wondering where the lines are between selective breeding and a "natural" breed -- of anything. And speaking of isolated Mustang herds, we have things like Kiger Mustang, which is kind of interesting. I think that at least some of SMc's passion comes from the nuttiness seen in a lot of the dog and cat breeders these days, am I right? I mean, Chiweenies? Montanabw(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The first use of the word that I saw referred to different landraces of corn growing in different elevations and exposures in indigenous Maya areas of modern Mexico. I haven't tracked down the references for the use of the word, but the concept seems extremely useful. My sense is that landraces form as much through natural selective processes of cultivation or captivity as through human selection, so that if the "garbage wolf" hypothesis for dog domestication is true, garbage wolves would have been a landrace (or more likely several, in different areas). One could even push the definition and say that MRSA is a landrace. But I don't have enough knowledge of the reliable sources to know how all this would fit into Wikipedia.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Landraces form, primarily and quickly, through mostly natural selection, long after domestication. E.g. the St Johns water dog and Maine Coon cat are both North American landraces that postdate European arrival on the continent. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see some potential for some great research on this and a real improvement to the articles in question. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redundant sentence?

Unresolved
 – Work to integrate WP:NCFLORA and WP:NCFAUNA stuff into MOS:ORGANISMS not completed yet?
Extended content

The sentence at MOS:LIFE "General names for groups or types of organisms are not capitalized except where they contain a proper name (oak, Bryde's whales, rove beetle, Van cat)" is a bit odd, since the capitalization would (now) be exactly the same if they were the names of individual species. Can it simply be removed?

There is an issue, covered at Wikipedia:PLANTS#The use of botanical names as common names for plants, which may or may not be worth putting in the main MOS, namely cases where the same word is used as the scientific genus name and as the English name, when it should be de-capitalized. I think this is rare for animals, but more common for plants and fungi (although I have seen "tyrannosauruses" and similar uses of dinosaur names). Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  1. I would leave it a alone for now; let people get used to the changes. I think it's reasonable to include the "general names" thing, because it's a catch-all that includes several different kinds of examples, that various largely different groups of people are apt to capitalize. Various know-nothings want to capitalize things like "the Cats", the "Great Apes", etc., because they think "it's a Bigger Group and I like to Capitalize Big Important Stuff". There are millions more people who just like to capitalize nouns and stuff. "Orange's, $1 a Pound". Next we have people who insist on capitalizing general "types" and landraces of domestic animals ("Mountain Dogs", "Van Cat") because they're used to formal breed names being capitalized (whether to do that with breeds here is an open question, but it should not be done with types/classes of domestics, nor with landraces. Maybe the examples can be sculpted better: "the roses", "herpesviruses", "great apes", "Bryde's whale", "mountain dogs", "Van cat", "passerine birds". I'm not sure that "rove beetle" and "oak" are good examples of anything. Anyway, it's more that the species no-capitalization is a special case of the more general rule, not that the general rule is a redundant or vague version of the former. If they're merged, it should keep the general examples, and maybe specifically spell out and illustrate that it also means species and subspecies, landraces and domestic "types", as well as larger and more general groupings.
  2. I had noticed that point and was going to add it, along with some other points from both NCFLORA and NCFAUNA, soon to MOS:ORGANISMS, which I feel is nearing "go live" completion. Does that issue come up often enough to make it a MOS mainpage point? I wouldn't really object to it, and it could be had by adding an "(even if it coincides with a capitalized Genus name)" parenthetical to the "general names" bit. The pattern is just common enough in animals to have been problematic if it were liable to be problematic, as it were. I.e., I don't see a history of squabbling about it at Lynx or its talk page, and remember looking into this earlier with some other mammal, about two weeks ago, and not seeing evidence of confusion or editwarring. The WP:BIRDS people were actually studiously avoiding that problem; I remember seeing a talk page discussion at the project that agreed that such usage shouldn't be capitalized ever. PS: With Lynx, I had to go back to 2006, in the thick of the "Mad Capitalization Epidemic" to find capitalization there[8], and it wasn't even consistent, just in the lead.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:11, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Well, certainly "rove beetle" and "oak" are poor examples here, so I would support changing to some of the others you suggested above.
  2. I think the main problem we found with plants was it being unclear as to whether inexperienced editors meant the scientific name or the English name. So you would see a sentence with e.g. "Canna" in the middle and not know whether this should be corrected to "Canna" or to "canna". The plural is clear; "cannas" is always lower-case non-italicized. The singular is potentially ambiguous. Whether it's worth putting this point in the main MOS I just don't know since I don't much edit animal articles and never breed articles, which is why I asked you. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:55, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Will take a look at that later, if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
  2. Beats me. Doesn't seem too frequent an issue, but lot of MOS stuff isn't. Definitely should be in MOS:ORGANISMS, regardless.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Worked on both of those a bit at MOS. We'll see if it sticks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]



Current threads

Category:User templates about userboxes

 Done

Hi, following the discussion about Category:User templates about userboxes, I've purged N-Z. Will you do the rest soon-ish? Otherwise I'd post it at WP:CFDWM. – Fayenatic London 15:56, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Fayenatic london:: I will try to get to it soon, but I've been taking a kind of forced wikibreak for the most part (had a tooth problem, turned into jaw infection, and cost me two weeks of real-world work, so I'm focused on working extra to make up the lost income). Later this week I can probably find the time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:10, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I've identified all the miscategorized ones (about 40 of them), and have them open as a series of tabs in a window; just need to figure out what userbox categories they do belong in, and recat them. Also, there are many that do belong in the category that are listed at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Userboxes but are missing from the category. I don't have the heart to update the list with infoboxes in the category that are not in the list, since it doesn't seem like a good use of editing time, even if cleaning up confusing categories (arguably) is.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:11, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Update: Done about half of them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:34, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Update: Done about 3/4.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:47, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again. I just removed one more. Looks like we finished that task between us. – Fayenatic London 20:52, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Fayenatic london: Yay! That was a real pain (well, it was to me, because I was re-categorizing them all where they belong, and further cleaning up stuff as I went along – rather slow going).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:23, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note to self

Unresolved

Finish patching up WP:WikiProject English language with the stuff from User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language, and otherwise get the ball rolling.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:22, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of discussions regarding updates to MOS:TV

 Done

This is just a notification to a series of discussions that are taking place regarding updates to MOS:TV, given you participated in the discussion and/or expressed interest in the discussion seen here. You can find more information about the initiative and the discussions, here. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 03:40, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the note; will go take a look.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:35, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote box

By the way, what is your opinion on {{Quote box}}? Sure, no one uses it to format pull quotations. But it isn't used in the same way as {{Quote}} either. {{Quote}} is typically used when a long quotation is an integral a part of article prose and its flow. It's directly tied to text before and/or after the quote, i.e.:

"When X happened to Y, he said:

{{Quote|Lorem ipsum.}}

After having said that, Y proceeded to do Z."

{{Quote box}} Isn't used like this at all. It's used to present excerpts of relevant material that is not as directly related to statements made in article prose, but that support it, not unlike illustrations. For a very typical example, see the following FA: Thorpe affair#Revelations. Indeed, I don't think I've ever seen a {{Cquote}} in a FA, but quote boxes used in this fashion are fairly common. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:44, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Has the same problems as the template the "RfC" is at, other than the MOS:ICONS concern is reduced (I don't think that page addresses borders and background colors as such, just graphical icons and text dingbats; there probably is something in MoS somewhere about not decorating things with borders and colorizing/colourising). All the UNDUE, relevance, etc., concerns remain. Every way that {{Pull quote}} is used and misused, so are all these other decorative quote templates. WP should have a consistent block quotation style, like it has a consistent style for every other noteworthy aspect of presenting content to readers. Presenting actual excerpts is what a pull quote is for, and we virtually never do that in mainspace, so we don't need templates for it that people cannot resist using as wild emphasis of material that is not an excerpt. I've spend days in a row cleaning up abuses of the templates, and in the case of every single one of them, less than 1% are used for actual excerpts. Even for material that would be excerpted verbatim, it almost always raises NPOV concerns, which is why it's just not an encyclopedic style except under unusual circumstances (and even then, there are better approaches). As far as I'm concerned all these quote templates other than {{Quote}} should be eliminated, after we make a consistent block quotation style that is distinct enough without being ridiculous. And MoS should just ban pull quotes in mainspace. There's not a single case on WP where it's actually needed. You can get the overall effect of one by leading a section with a block quotation, then using prose to elucidate its importance. This is both more encyclopedic instead of journalistic in style, and more contextually and educationally useful, instead of being solely cute and dramatic at the likely expense of injecting emotion where it does not belong, and leaving readers confused.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:23, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Finnusertop: Looking over the Thorpe affair cases, both are problematic. The first instance highlighted (actually the second misuse of the template on the page, out of three) is completely devoid of context or contextual meaning. When someone arrives at this part of the page, their eye is practically forced to that box – THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE! READ THIS EVEN IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE! – but it's excessively rambling trivia, and over-quotation that should be removed from the article entirely, since it's already encyclopedically treated sufficiently in the main text. If it were kept, it should be quoted, inline, immediately after being mentioned in context. The template grabs attention, does not deliver, then forces the reader to wade through the entire section (which should not be titled "Revelations", a tabloid journalism hook) to even try to figure out what relevance this could have to anything. It's just a total failure. The second mentioned (third in page) is a pseudo-pullquote being inappropriately used again as a "cheap news" hook, a teaser soundbyte. "He said that? Wow, I'd better 'stay tuned' and read the rest! What juicy gossip!" It's not encyclopedic writing. That quotation belongs inline as part of the narrative of the matter. There is no rational reason to (as usual) start with facts leading up to an incident, details of the incident, and various fallout of the incident being presented as a cohesive narrative, then cut a key party's reaction out of this narrative and put it in a sidebar in a template. Especially given that the allegations are likely mostly or entirely true (according to decades of investigative journalism), it's just plain wrong to have Wikipedia side with that party in a heavy-handed manner. Even aside from the policy problem, that template will be excluded by probably most WP:REUSE of this article, thus losing the content, and it appears in a kind of random place for users of screen readers or text-only browsers. It's actually in the wrong section (placed apparently for graphical layout "I'm a designer!" reasons), and pertains not at all to the aftermath of the trial, but to the nature of the evidence presented in it and the defense's strategic reasoning, long before the judge even sent the jury to its deliberations. No experienced writer of documentary prose would ever do such a thing. It's pure marketing/PR style. Even if the material were made to appear in the main prose in context and still quote-boxed – i.e., done as an actual pull quote – we would remove it anyway, because it serves no purpose as a pull quote other than blatant bias and "steering" of the reader. It is not pithy, memorable, a key "if you remember one thing about this page, make it this" point, famous, a summarization of what is at stake in the issue, or any other reason for a pull quote in encyclopedic material. Even as a real pull quote, it would be news style writing. WP has evolved, like most media and large publications, some uses for sidebars (in our case, infoboxes, images with captions, and some navigation templates). An argument could be made that we need more them (e.g. tables of data supporting a technical article, the way newspapers and magazines often do, and which WP instead has as typically centered-in-mid-document tables), but if we did expand the formal role of sidebars (unlikely, or we would have done it years ago), it certainly would not be to draw attention to material that is trivia, or divorce direct quotations from their contexts, or (against neutrality policy) grandiosely highlight one party's view of a dispute or event.

The first quote box, higher up the page, is even worse, being totally confusing, as it introduced non sequiturs that made no sense in the article until one reached the trial section, where the names were finally explained and linked. Definitely not how to write Wikipedia. I just did an overall cleanup on the article, fixing these and several other problems. [9]  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Dersim massacre

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Dersim massacre. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hows this?

Resolved

OK, my RfC was poorly considered. I opened a new one at WP:MOS and hopefully this one is better... I envision a two-part process with maybe another RfC later with specific wording to clear up the disconnect between documentation and use... I did not realize that it is {{Quote box}}, at half a million (!) transclusions, that is the big bugbear here. We'll have to see how it goes. Herostratus (talk) 21:37, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Herostratus: That's probably the RfC we need, though it missed a huge part of the concern/dispute/debate (and I added it in): It's mostly the attention-demand sidebar and centered block usage that is problematic, though the giant quotation marks and other gimcrackery are frequently causes of debate even with the default layout. The side-lining of quotes introduces problems that inline use does not, like random placement of context-free quotations to "beautify" (in someone's mind) the layout, often further leading to including of extraneous trivia quotations just to decorate.

Anyway, I'm working on getting better stats; the advanced search stuff can be used with regular expressions to force it to tell us an exact count of pages, by namespace, where templates or HTML tags are being used. These searches are difficult to construct, and are very hard are the server, so I'm mostly working on them slowly and carefully. The transclusion counts are misleading, because the same page may transclude a template many times, and it doesn't tell us anything about usage in article in particular.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:22, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Verse translation

Hi SMcCandlish. I noticed your recent screed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: What (if anything) to do about quotations, and the quotation templates? (I'm being jocular: I'm with you almost all the way). I recently created the tangentially-related {{Verse translation}} and wonder if you have any comment on that. (I'm trusting that its essential modesty will render it inoffensive at worst.) If you think it's good enough to be worth improving, there are a handful of tweaks I have in mind, but either I'm not sufficiently confident they'd actually be improvements, or I'm not competent to implement them. Maybe after you take a peek, you'd be willing to chat about them? Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 04:10, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Phil wink: That seems very reasonable, though I'm not sure how it really differs from Template:Text and translation. I wonder if they could merge. Also wonder if they'd be any good for doing linguistic interlinear glosses; would have to pore over the parameters. We'll always need some specialized quotation templates, and there are several at Category:Quotation templates. We just don't need decorative, non-neutral ones.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:30, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the reason I created it ... was that at the time I didn't know {{Text and translation}} existed. But in retrospect, I think {{Verse translation}} has several slight advantages.
  • It has <poem>...</poem> under the hood, so <br /> is not needed in the parameter values.
  • It accepts 2 independent attributions (1 for each side) rather than just 1.
  • By default it italicizes the left text, which is appropriate for all Latinish-alphabet originals -- I expect the vast majority of cases, although this can be turned off for other character sets. (By contrast, while T&T is structurally neutral concerning which side is text and which translation, all transclusions happen to put the original on the right -- which seems backwards to me.)
Differences (which might be good, bad, or indifferent) are that VT is not really appropriate for prose, whereas T&T seems to accommodate it just fine (although not as I'd personally want... Idaean Dactyls (poem) shows that long prose texts stack rather than sit side-by-side). T&T's structure is based on <div>...</div>, whereas VT is a table. As far as merging, T&T has only 6 article transclusions, whereas I've really gone to town with VT, which now has almost 200 -- so, maybe I'm being a dick, but I'd incline to just replacing the few instances of T&T and deprecating it.
My impression of interlinear glosses are that one wants to keep parallel texts stacked directly on top of each other, which is the opposite of the goal for Verse translation. Phil wink (talk) 05:27, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Phil wink: Just 6? Yeah, that's a template that can just be replaced out of existence, after some kinks are worked out. In response to the above points, I agree <poem> is the better approach (its existence post-dates that other template), though you should probably have a switch to turn it off so that regular prose works in it. The T&T template's name is probably the one to eventually merge to, being more general. About left versus right, I agree that the traditional order in linguistics, textual criticism, historiography, etc., is the original on the left. I think that it was put on the right here because of what WP is and who our readers are and why they're here. Probably 95% of them only care about the English version. That said, I don't think their heads will asplode with a default left-right order. It would be nice if it were switchable; there is, for example, virtually no use in putting something like cuneiform on the left, which almost no one alive can read other than a handful of academics. Flexibility is king! I can see a variant of this template, with CSS-based code like that in {{block indent}}, and sans the <blockquote> element, being useful for all sorts of things: giving pseudocode and real code, showing a stylesheet next to the HTML it acts upon, giving a table of Proto-Indo-European roots on one side and English derivatives on the other, etc., etc. And the interlinear gloss thing I want (Left: line in original, interlinear morpheme-by-morphone gloss under it, next original line, next gloss, etc.; on the right, a more convention prose translation in natural language). Re: Table and div – This might be resolvable with using divs that have table display properties, so we can have the document structure benefits of divs and the more dependable formatting of tables. I have not experimented with that on WP, though. If not, the table should be marked as a layout-role table (see the MOS:ACCESS material on tables). Anyway, good work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:16, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments. For now I've implemented role="presentation" on the underlying table (best resolution? dunno -- but it was easy!). Regarding flexibility (in this case, specifically the flexibility of symmetry): if |italicsoff=y, then the template becomes symmetrical so, e.g., one could place English on the left and Cuneiform on the right. I think that the template beginning asymmetrical is justified, in order to push people to what we seem to agree is at least usually the correct use: English on the right. Regarding prose, I think that putting prose through <poem>...</poem> has no negative effect on the prose; for example, I believe it will still wrap correctly. If this is true, then I don't believe there's a need to be able to switch off "poem", even if the template were used for prose. I'm a little preoccupied right now, but sometime in the future I hope to post a sort of grab-bag of notes (e.g. possible tweaks, alternative uses, contraindications) at the template talk page... and if that ever happens, I'll be sure to ping you. Phil wink (talk) 19:27, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Phil wink: Ok, I thought you'd said that it wasn't working well for prose. <poem> might not typically be an issue, but could be if the input material contains linebreaks or other code-level spacing stuff that does not normally show up in the rendered output when the HTML parser compresses away all stray whitespace that's not hardcoded. Might do weird things with lists, too; worth testing. Agreed beginning asymmetrical should be fine, since the common use case would be (and already is) the one you developed the template for. I just hope people do not abuse it for italicizing block quotes just to italicize them, e.g. putting italicized quoted material (in English) on the one side, and notes about it on the other, as a way to over-decorate with quotations. Given the knock-down-drag-out nature of "don't you tell me I can't use decorative quotation boxes any way I want!" disputes (see Talk:Thorpe affair and the quotation templates RfC at WT:MOS), I would not be surprised if people do bad things with this in exactly that vein, so documentation that forestalls such misuses would be a good idea. MOS:QUOTE is already clear about not italicizing quotations or using quote decoration in mainspace, but people keep doing it, because the templates allow it, and it's one of various common styles on blogs to render pull quotes and other news-style "billboards" (which WP should not have, but try getting that through to all editors!).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:22, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think my prose comment you're referring to was the one about how the other template ({{Text and translation}}) worked. But your points about whitespace, etc. are well-taken. Not to discount other uses, but for me that's still a bit of a mañana issue, as today I'm still focused on the original purpose: literally Verse translation. With respect to misuse, I had thought a bit about putting additional good/bad use notes in the documentation, and perhaps I shall. But I can't get too exercised about it: it's so easy just to put '' around a quote to make it lovely, that I've gotta believe that there will be (probably literally) 10,000 articles doing that to every 1 that misuses this template for a cheap italic thrill. To use (in a way) your own words against you, you've already argued (I think rightly) that policies and guidelines are no use against a large proportion of template misuse because they are misused mimetically. Currently this template is named very specifically ("Verse translation"), used seldom, and (so far) 100% for its legitimate purpose. It strikes me that expanding its name (e.g. to "Text and translation" or even something broader... I don't know "Parallel content"?), expanding its flexibility and stated purposes (to prose, code...), and therefore expanding not just the count, but type of instances of its use -- would all inevitably lead to more (I'm guessing geometrically more) misuse. Phil wink (talk) 21:40, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Phil wink: Yeah, the fact that average editor doesn't read MoS or template docs means they just do what they want. The benefit of spelling out the dos-and-don'ts in both places is that undoing the misuses has a rationale that can be cited. :-) I'm not sure how many italic quotes there are. It would be hard to guestimate even with a insource:/regular expression here/ search for " followed by '' since there are many markup situations where that would be called for (e.g. a quote beginning with something in italics, or a quote of non-English material, or a quotation mark starting something that isn't a quote (e.g. a term of art or a words-as-words case).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:49, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but I had to roll back your ed

Resolved

I had to roll back your additions at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. You can't make substantive alterations to the body an RfC. For one thing, they're under my signature. As far as I'm concerned, neutral corrections that any reasonable person would avow are improvements are probably OK. (You have to be careful about that, to be sure that people are discussing and voting on a stable version, but its early in the process and it not really a voting RfC, so some slack there.)

But you introduced terms such as "mimic teasers" for non-pagewidth quotes. That's your opinion, it's not helpful to laying out the situation to the other editors. You're also being a bit prolix. It's true that it's a complicated issues with many aspects. However, the main body of the RfC was already probably about as long as possible without other editors' eye glazing over. (I deliberately omitted material on the non-full-pagewidth versions (except to not them for for editors to look at if they wanted) to avoid "TL;DR, so Oppose everything" type responses.)

I'm not saying that this isn't valuable, what I'd suggest is:

  • Only making straightforward corrections to the transclusion counts as succinctly as humanly possible as long as you can look at them at say to yourself "I an confident that all reasonable intelligent informed good-faith persons, regardless of their stand on these issues, would find this change an improvement". Use strikeouts if necessary.
  • Even then we have to find a way to put then under your signature, not sure how to do this.
  • And/or put the material in a separate section.

I'd further recommend, if I may, that you relax. It's just a website. Soon enough none of this will matter. The project has survived fine so far with the present state of affairs. Other editors are also intelligent and also have views that are reasonable. There's manifestly no one right or wrong answer to these questions. There just isn't. So relax. Herostratus (talk) 20:29, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So for instance, I put in your research on the actual correct usage of the templates. I just replaced the old bad info. We all want the work from the correct numbers. I did it all as succinctly as possible. Herostratus (talk) 21:28, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]


@Herostratus: I actually looked and didn't see a sig; must not have looked closely enough. It's not uncommon for an RfC to have no sig (see WP:RFC, where this is explicitly covered), and not having one is often advisable for matters like this that are not cut-and-dry and very simple, because it is often necessary to adjust the RfC before comments really get rolling in. I don't mind re-adding my stats research, etc. below the RfC, though I think that will not be as helpful, and it is apt to cast doubt on the RfC instead of improving it. The principal problem with the RfC is that it entirely misses the principal source of dispute: It's the sidebar and page-center "screaming for attention" usage that causes the most problems. And, yes, the stats you provided turn out to be very misleading, though this would not be apparent if you didn't know about the geeky ways to get the real page and article stats (i.e., I don't think you did anything wrong, but the end result of the stats you provided is serious negative, unintentionally).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:12, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Herostratus:: I just checked again, and you did not sign any of the material under issue, only "The basic questions of this RfC" intro (and the request to use the threaded discussion subsection, at the top of the threaded discussion subsection). I'm going to review what's happened since then, and reserve to right to restore material (minus "mimimc"), under its own subheading (signed), if it hasn't been integrated already. And you should sign your two "Reference" sections, or anyone else is also apt to interpret them as freely improvable, not asserted to be one-author content.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 
You're right. I meant to add a signature at the end (of the entire RfC) but looking back I see I neglected to. At any rate I wasn't accusing you of violating a rule or any other bad thing -- just trying to keep things neatly separated.
But I apologize. It was entirely my mistake.
You might well be right that the "sidebar" use of quotes is more problematical. It is at any rate a complication to the basic issue of full-width quotes. Since it's a sub-issue of the issue of quote templates in general, I didn't include examples because I was (and remain) concerned over the main body of the the RfC becoming too long. I see that you added them in a collapsed section and that's probably the best way so everything should be all Sir Garnet. Herostratus (talk) 12:22, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
However, you still weren't able to restrain yourself from open advocacy within the body of MY RFC. This annoys. I request you to change
While the above examples illustrate the default use of these templates, a major source of contention about them is the use of their additional parameters or variations, to remove the quotation from the overall flow of the article and treat it as a decorative sidebar, or to dominate the center of the page. A large number of uses of these templates are in such styles, which often present issues that do not occur as frequently with default-mode inline use of the templates, including trivial, redundant, unreasonably highlighted, and out-of-context quotations.
to something like this:
While the above examples illustrate the default use of these templates, they can also be used to make sidebars (as shown below. A large number of uses of these templates are such, which can present issues that do not occur with default-mode inline use of the templates.
or something along those lines.
See the difference? It's also shorter which is a virtue here. AFAIK the use less-than-page-width quotes is not "a major source of contention" since I doubt that many people are excited by this either way.
I myself haven't seen very many instances of "trivial, redundant, unreasonably highlighted, and out-of-context quotations" but maybe. Just like trivial, redundant, unreasonably highlighted, and out-of-context images or trivial, redundant, unreasonably highlighted, and out-of-context text material, they should be redacted when encountered, I guess. Maybe its true, maybe its not, so I don't like seeing presented as a flat statement of fact in the body of the RfC.
In the transclusions section, I'm not happy with
Even taken separately, the MoS-prescribed {{Quote}} and <blockquote> greatly outnumber all other options combined...
Let the reader see the numbers and decide for herself what they mean. That's what we do for articles. You could as well say "Note that almost 20% of editors use forbidden templates". So if you'd take that out it would be a kindness. Herostratus (talk) 12:51, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Herostratus: Done (mostly) and done. I've retained a neutralized mention that the sidebar usage in particular is often the locus of dispute (I was not joking when I said it accounts for about 80% of disputes about these templates, and I would know, since I spend more time doing MOS:BQ cleanup than just about anyone). Hope this is amenable. Also hope it's clear that I have not been approaching this as "your" vs. "my" RfC, but as "an" RfC. I've learned the hard way that it's best to modify, or allow modification to, RfCs (when they are still new) if respondents to them feel they're unbalanced, counterfactual, or missing the point. If one does not, what usually happens is the opening of a whole section on why the RfC is broken, or a counter-RfC proposal, and usually the entire thing derails. This one remains unbalanced to me, though neutral in your eyes, because it is approaching this as if it's a "we've never discussed this before" matter, as if all options were equal and we should just pick one on present whim, without regard to years of previous discussions and their rationales favoring avoidance of decorative quote framing. This is why I tried to balance it (in my view) with mention that the "MoS version" totally dominates mainspace despite claims to the contrary based on bare transclusion counts (people try to use that number frequently without realizing it's misleading). But, I can live with it as it stands now. I'm not intending to get into a WP:THERIGHTVERSION dispute!  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:33, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thorpe affair

Partially moved to Talk:Thorpe affair

Your recent edits on this article have been reverted. There may or may not be merit in some of your proposed changes, and I and other editors with an interest in this article will be happy to discuss them. This article has in the not-too-distant past been through various review procedures, including FAC, in which a good number of editors participated and approved its promotion. You should respect that, even though it is accepted that the article is not inviolable and is capable of improvement. You know as well as I, however, that the simple assertion of a "right to edit", when the edits are likely to be contentious, is a sure-fire route to trouble; I assume that is not what you want. The way to go about improving the article is through civil discourse on the talkpage, not through imposed changes and aggressive and contemptuous edit summaries. I am ready for that discussion whenever you care to instigate it in a proper, civil manner. Brianboulton (talk) 00:11, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Brianboulton: I copied the above to the article talk page, and responded to it there, in the matters pertaining to that article. I did want to respond to the non-content-related part of it outside that venue, though, and after some time to reflect on it (knee-jerk reactions being often poor).

I concede that I could have used more brown-nosing language in my edit summaries, but let's be clear that criticism of content and the policy and clarity problems with it is not personal criticism of another editor. If one cannot tell the difference between, e.g., "this sentence is silly and irrational" and "you, loser, are a silly and irrational person for not noticing before I did", one needs to have a stiff cup of coffee or something.  :-)

If, as you indicate, you recognize that at least some of the changes I made were for the better, then it would be far more constructive to substantively address any problems you have with any of the changes you have doubts about, and to distinguish those questions or objections clearly from what you are not objecting to or are actively supportive of, and to do so at the article talk page. It's especially unhelpful to leap in to defend the amazingly clumsy mass-revert-everything-that-didn't-have-my-permission behavior of some other editor, especially one with a long track record of following his "enemies" around page after page to battleground against them.

I did not make any kind of "I have a right to edit and you can't stop me" statement about those edits, so your message to me being a stand taken against this position looks rather thatchy. Since you bring it up, though: WP:EDITING is policy, the overriding policy of the entire project. Objections to good-faith edits have to be grounded in objectively defensible rationales based on policy or sourcing, otherwise they are just WP:IDONTLIKEIT noise. Yes, we do take care in editing them, but WP:MERCILESS still applies, and no amount of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS game-playing can trump site-wide policies and guidelines. "Being careful" is not synonymous with never editing without a discussion first (or with reverting everything one did not get to discuss and then failing to open a discussion). I never substantively change articles like that without a clear and careful rationale. The care I have is primarily for readers' needs, however, not editorial egos. And when it comes to WP:OWN behavior, I do not shy away from dealing with it, head on. I am not impressed by WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS arguments (some older FAs having guideline-compliance problems means they need to be updated; they are not magical precedents to cite against future compliance!), or attempts to game the system, e.g. using a patently false MOS:ENGVAR claim about a single punctuation mark to mass-revert all changes to an article one feels proprietary toward or (in this case, more likely) just to stick it to an opponent of one's incoherent campaign against MOS:BQ compliance at FAC.

The changes I made were in lieu of taking the article to WP:NORN or WP:FAR for serious PoV and distortion problems, steering the reader brow-beatingly to Thorpe's dismissive view that the case against him was frivolous, when the sources actually suggest that he was guilty of conspiracy. (Among many other problems at that article.)
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:14, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In the first place, you apparently don't know the difference between "brown-nosing", as you put it, and normal courtesy. I see the caption you have inserted under your image – is that hypocrisy? You certainly have a unique way of fostering the collaboration to which you pay lip service.
Secondly, I have not "recognized that at least some of the changes [you] made were for the better", merely that they might have some merit when properly argued through. That is what collaboration means. I generally assume good faith, even when disagreeing with edits, but in your case I have doubts: your recent interventions on other articles, plus the fact that you have been called out on your own talkpage for interfering with the text of an Rfc, and the intemperate brandishings, above, of those well-worn chestnuts WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:MERCILESS, WP:OWN, etc, indicate the temperament of a warrior and a bully, rather than a collaborative editor.
You say your edits were in lieu of taking the article to FAR, a threat you repeat in your edit summaries. If you had bothered to read the WP:FAR page you would have seen that the prior stage in this process is to raise issues at article talk: "In this step, concerned editors attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article." Exactly what I have requested that you do. I will deal with your nonsensical allegations about serious PoV and distortion there.
Brianboulton (talk) 10:26, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Brianboulton: I'll take the courtesy bit at face value (especially since I already conceded on this point, just in wording you didn't like). The below is largely a "where I'm coming from" exercise, not an attempt at debate, since you seem to have doubts about my good faith even while saying your assuming it. People are different, some sweeter than others. Plenty of us treat WP as a meritocracy of volunteer work toward important goals, not a social networking enterprise. We have pages like WP:SPADE for a reason. I come from the civil liberties activism community, and the free software world, and several similar collaborative but results-oriented endeavors, where the expectation is "get on with it, and do it well, or get out of the way." WP:COMPETENCE, in this corner of its implications, runs both ways. One does have to be not a raging asshole, but one also has to not have a paper-thin skin and not misinterpret no-nonsense treatment of content problems as if it were a personal insult due to self-identification with ephemeral content and with specific topics. At any rate, it's difficult to see how "a proper, civil manner" (see your first post here) aligns with "I will deal with your nonsensical allegations", which is the kind of aggressive wording you accused me of, and strongly suggests you've already made up your mind (on the basis of a personality conflict) before the discussion you demand has begun in any substance. But whatever; I'm not going to take it too personally. I've had no issue with you, other than a request not to be an enabler of SchroCat's 'WP:P&G don't apply to me, except when I like one and can use it as a cudgel' game-playing.

Second part: Difficult to respond to without seeming defensive. There's not a lot of substance there, just book-by-its-cover judging. I did not "interfere" with an RFC, I corrected serious factual problems in it (in material not signed by the original poster); he actually adopted my corrections himself in a later edit. (Notice the same "don't you touch my content" theme, though? When people complain on my talk page, it is very, very frequently in that vein – "you should have consulted WikiProject Whatever first", "why did you RM this instead of talking to me on my user talk page about it?", "you're not even an editor of this article, so why are you trying to change something in it?", and 100 other variants on this theme of vested and special personal (or good ol' boys club) exceptionalism; all about territorial control and primate dominance behaviors, not about value of content to readers). I mostly arouse the ire of PoV pushers, but sometimes incidentally also that of over-controllers of insular pages with a history of little outside input. Our policies are frequently cited nuggets because they're meaningful and important. Let's turn this around a little.

One thing that collaboration definitely does not mean is mass-reverting all edits to get at a couple of allegedly contentious changes, and doing it again after it's pointed out why that is wrong. It also doesn't mean backing up that reverter and trying to force a good-faith editor to over-discuss everything – to pointlessly repeat all the rationales already given in edit summaries, most of which are self-evident upon reflection anyway – until the status quo is defended simply through attrition and wearing out, and seemingly for no reason other that to treat FAs as near-exempt from normal editing processes. I'm a fan of useful process, myself, but not pursuit of bureaucracy against common sense. BRD is an optional process that only works when everyone acts in good faith and reasonably; it cannot be abused to trump policy, and the attempts to promote it to a guideline last year was shot down in flames. If I seem intemperate in this article's case, it's because I (like at least five others) have been viciously and repeatedly personally attacked by SchroCat and his tagteam buddy (what was that about bullying by warriors?) for daring to question their attempts to lobby FAC to ignore guidelines any time they stamp their feet. The good faith tank is running dry (especially given that SchroCat appears to have engaged in the revert because I used this article as an example of cleanup of misuse of pull-quote templates – he really, really likes to misuse them, so monkey-wrenching my example serves his anti-MoS campaigning needs). Lots of people have temperance issues, but there's a difference between criticizing content or behavior patterns, and making ad hominem insult tirades one's go-to tactic.

It is true I spend almost no time in WP:DRAMAboards and don't memorize their rules. I would, of course, have read FAR's before using it (I never have before, only commented in FARs already running). Deciding to use a formal WP process (for once), because the current situation is characterized by filibustering and dodging, is not a "threat", it's standard operating procedure; we have noticeboards and dispute resolution avenues for a reason. As I predicted, SchroCat is unable to articulate plausible rationales or specific objections, just totally subjective handwaving about quotes and layout, and red herrings about punctuation. So, the talk-page-first requirement will be satisfied soon enough. I think FAR, or an RfC, is probably the best course of action. (I do RfCs all the time, but they aren't very good for multiple-problem pages; maybe FAR will be more flexible). Issues like this are rarely resolved in local-consensus echo chambers consisting of one person trying to gain consensus with a handful of "old timers" at an article they don't think should be changed in any way ("this already passed FAC"); it usually requires external input from the uninvolved. The other course of action is to tediously present a more cogent argument than the opposition, point by point, over days, even months if it comes to it. I'm skilled and patient at that, but a collective decision from FAR or RfC is less one-sided and has more impact, while using less time and energy, and defusing the circular tendency of the debate-it-out method.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:12, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Noted. Brianboulton (talk) 14:03, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Eritrea

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Eritrea. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Diacritics

Unresolved
 – An anti-diacritics pseudo-guideline is a problem and needs an RfC.

Greetings. I was referring to conventions like "All North American hockey pages should have player names without diacritics.". Cédric HATES TPP. 23:26, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Cedric tsan cantonais: Wow, thanks for drawing that to my attention. Don't know how that one slipped past the radar. That is actually a bogus WP:LOCALCONSENSUS "guideline" and needs to be fixed! My point still stands, though, that "any" covers both this any any new proposal someone might come up with. :-) Anyway, I'm not sure how to deal with the "screw the MoS, we're going to ban diacritics in hockey" crap, other than probably an RfC hosted at WP:VPPOL.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:30, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For your information, I'm using "any and all" on the template so both our grounds can be covered. Cédric HATES TPP. 05:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Fortunately, the universe did not implode.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:30, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Miniature Australian Shepherd

Disregard
 – I'm the one who wrote that RfC.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Miniature Australian Shepherd. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A heads up

Resolved

You made a post at the CFDs for yesterday but it was in the wrong section. (People from Marshall Arkansas, instead of Obese cats) I took the liberty of moving it[10]. Hope you don't mind....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 13:08, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@WilliamJE: Thanks! Eyestrain must've been getting to me. Or maybe a non-obese cat in lap distracted me. I don't think anyone from Marshall (where?) did. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:34, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Eritrea's geographical naming". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by 3 September 2016.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 03:38, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Request for mediation rejected

The request for formal mediation concerning Eritrea's geographical naming, to which you were listed as a party, has been declined. To read an explanation by the Mediation Committee for the rejection of this request, see the mediation request page, which will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time. Please direct questions relating to this request to the Chairman of the Committee, or to the mailing list. For more information on forms of dispute resolution, other than formal mediation, that are available, see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.

For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan (TALK) 03:39, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(Delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.)

Uh, okay. I just went to dinner and came back and all this happened? Ha ha.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:42, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for August 27

 Fixed

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Please comment on Talk:SIG MCX

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:SIG MCX. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Archiving tip

I appreciate the heads up. I'm aware of that, I'm just the kind of guy who wants to not only save, but quickly access everything, so I've been reluctant to do that. However, I do believe it's about time for it. I get the impression you tried to load my talk page on a slower device and by the time it was done loading, were ready to say something about it. If that's not a cue, I don't know what is. :) MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 13:14, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@MjolnirPants: It was getting a bit slow to load (Chrome, on a Mac, but one from 2010); didn't break anything. I'm also often slow to archive my own page, so don't feel bad. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:27, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Drama in films and television

Hi - I saw your proposal and responded on moving Drama (film and television). I've also been talking to User:Rwood128 about similar issues on the Drama talk page. Once I'd responded, I thought I really ought to wade through all of the old discussions and some edit histories on the subject. That gave me a clearer sense of how it's developed, so I thought I'd try to do something more substantial to sort it all out with some decent sources. As well as theatre material, I've got quite a number of film studies books on genre kicking around, so I've scanned through what I could find there. There isn't much. So, I thought I'd take a look on Google books. It was similarly slight.

From what I've read on my books on film genre, and from following the development of discussions on the various talk pages, it seems to me that the present state of affairs has developed from some initial assumptions (unsourced) and misunderstandings, which I wasn't aware of when I started talking to User:Rwood128. I'm going to leave a note with him/her too, along the same lines. The basic gist of all this is: "drama" isn't a genre used much in film studies, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. What is used, however, are the various 'sub-genres' that are more familiar: historical drama, comedy-drama, melodrama, etc. For example, Steve Neale in Genre and Hollywood explains that what came to be known as the "women's film", and what film studies tends to call "melodrama", Hollywood tended to call "drama" (they called thrillers or action movies 'melodramas'). Looking through the article, much of the lede has just been imported from the drama article and supplemented with a dictionary definition. Most of the content of the article are generalised statements about cinema with the adjective "dramatic" added on. I don't think anyone would seriously call E.T. or Blade Runner examples of "drama" as a film genre. Most of the examples suffer from the same problems--they are, biopics or epics or whatever, rather than belonging to a film genre called "drama". The index for Neale's book, for example, does give references to "dramas" but in each case they are treated under the long list of sub-s that he gives: costume drama, domestic drama, home front drama, social drama, etc.

So, if I remove all the material that comes from the umbrella term Drama and the unsourced material, all we're left with are the links to the various sub-genres. After I've left a note at User:Rwood128's page, and unless you have any objections, I'm going to be bold and remove the unsourced material and turn it into, in effect, a disambig page pointing readers to the specific genres they might be interested in. From what I can tell from my research, that would bring us closest to reflecting it's use in film. There's already an article at radio drama, so that presents no problems. Rather than just doing it, then, I thought I'd explain first here. Oh, and what I meant to say too: all of which means, I think, that the rename wouldn't be necessary, so I'll remove the proposal, if that's ok?  • DP •  {huh?} 15:40, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

D'oh. I just realised you didn't propose it. Sorry...  • DP •  {huh?} 16:58, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. Something needs to be done about the current content-fork, in one way or another. PS: I would call Blade Runner a drama, though it is also sci-fi, and an action film, and a cops-and-bad-guys story, and a Dickian metaphysical piece, and several other things all at once. ET, not so much. More of a melodrama combined with a morality play.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:24, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My RFA

Just a point of information, it may be instructive for you to read the first of my RFAs to establish why the second was so successful, having more than addressed the criticism levelled at me then. If you really are interested, you can see it here. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:39, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@The Rambling Man: Will do.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:21, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean, and trimmed my bit at the case page. FWIW, I agree with something you said in some "evidence" someone posted [11]. The more I think about this, the more I think I'm just reacting negatively to a general "admins can be hostile because we gave them badges" attitude, and it's not really about you in particular (especially since, as you pointed out in that diff, your cantankerousness is lower than that of some other admins who seem to never receive any serious flak for it).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:49, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers. It won't mean much, I see how this ends and it ain't pretty (for me). But that's what eleven years (and nine of them as sysop) means, you upset a lot of people who think mediocrity makes for a good encyclopedia. Or that Wikipedia is a good alternative for Facebook or Twitter. I look forward to the solution of the Catch 22 Arbcom are now placed in, it should test their mettle and comprehension skills a little more than normal. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:40, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@The Rambling Man: I actually agree with most of that. On the up-side, a lot of the Arbs seem more concerned about drama in general at ITN, DYK, and other features that some characterize as activities approaches as "badge-collecting", not with you in particular.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:03, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's just a smokescreen. The reason it's taking so long to move to the next phase is that they haven't quite worked out how to phrase me being scuttled. Either way they're doomed. I collect no badges, I gave that up a decade ago. After all, when you have about 350 featured or good articles or lists or topics or DYKs or ITNs, it's pointless worrying about it, especially if you don't engage in the children's games like WikiCup. One final note, I thought that you'd actually agreed with me way back when you notified me of Arbcom's arcane machinations and I suggested that most of us were blissfully unaware of them. Yet you seem to suggest now that all admins should be intimately familiar with all the detritus that pours from Arbcom's funnel. Perhaps I misinterpreted your posts. Some of us admins are just here to improve Wikipedia, not to frequent the drama boards and expend our energy in the Wikipedia namespace. How many edits have you made in the mainspace in the last few months, as a percentage? Not being confrontational, but just a question. We seem to have top-loaded with process-mongers and arbitrators and lost out on contributors and article creators. Terrifying when taken its inevitable conclusion. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes - Issue 18

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 18, June–July 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi, Samwalton9, UY Scuti, and Sadads

  • New donations - Edinburgh University Press, American Psychological Association, Nomos (a German-language database), and more!
  • Spotlight: GLAM and Wikidata
  • TWL attends and presents at International Federation of Library Associations conference, meets with Association of Research Libraries
  • OCLC wins grant to train librarians on Wikimedia contribution

Read the full newsletter

The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on Quote Boxes.

 Done
 – Asked WP:ANRFC that this "anti-RfC" should be speedily closed as disruptive of the actual RfC.

Hello SMcCandlish! This is just a message to let you know that I have recently initiated a 'support/opposition' section at the RfC discussing the issues surrounding the use of "quote boxes" (here). As you previously expressed a view on this issue over at the MoS talk page several days ago, you may wish to reiterate your opinion in a 'support/oppose' format. Best, Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:53, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"mass, anti-discussion smear" and other over-exaggerations

You may not like it, but don't delete it. Feel free to ask the original poster, EEng if he will remove it, or if he minds if you remove it, but don't unilaterally decide what you want on the talk page. – Gavin (talk) 13:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon? EEng 14:14, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • It appears Mr mcandlish doesn't like your post, which he keeps trying to remove. It's your call if you wish you remove it, not his. – Gavin (talk) 14:21, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly not. It's a serious comment on attitudes toward what the reader's experience should be. I point out that the bit in quotes re "tedious to write" was added by someone else, though I absolutely endorse it as the perfect final touch. EEng 14:51, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Quite right too. – Gavin (talk) 15:45, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@SchroCat: See WP:REFACTOR, WP:OWN, and WP:TALK. Anyone is empowered to remove disruptive posts and other edits. Changing people's posts is discouraged. Removing patently uncivil ones is not. This isn't about EEng's smear-box in particular, really, but the entire WP:FACTION-looking mass invasion of WT:MOS with advocates of decorative quote boxes, not to participate in the RfC and address the issues raised in it, and discuss adjusting the default quote template, but rather to forum-shop, seemingly canvass (I see two canvassing notices posted already), and otherwise disrupt the RfC. Abusing the talk page as billboard to uncivilly straw-man the opposing side is just a small piece of this mess, though one you should not have edit-warred to restore. I think AN should be aware of this entire situation, which is clearly abnormal and unconstructive. You reverting to uphold a "principle" you and your buddy Cassianto ignore any time you feel like deleting posts you don't like, cannot be taken as any kind of serious position. (I'll be sure to remind you of your reverts and this conversation next time I see you do it, or backing up him doing it.) It's just part of your clumsily-revert-SMcCandlish-when-he-makes-me-mad pattern.

I've already written the AN request (not about you in particular; that would surely be over infobox battlegrounding, which hopefully ARCA will pour cold water on before that escalates any further). But I'm tired and should not invoke "process" in an off-the-cuff manner, and someone whose judgement I trust e-mailed me discouraging noticeboard action on this particular thing, so I'll sleep on it. I'm not so prideful I can't back down from a promise of AN/ANI/whatever action just because I stated one, if there are doubts it would deal with the matter effectively.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:08, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • OWN??? PMSL! In my entire Wiki career I have left 29 comments on that page; you are getting up to 2,000 and taking the unilateral decision to delete other people's comments: who do you think is displaying signs of ownership here? – Gavin (talk) 15:45, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We do not OWN our posts here, and others may change or remove them under particular circumstances, as you well know, since you do it as you please, then feign outrage if anyone does it with anything you agree with. I didn't touch your material, so how often you edit there is irrelevant. The fact that this is about appropriateness but you think this is about editcounts and page control – a very frequent and sorely mistaken "you aren't a regular editor of this page so you have no right to change it" theme of yours that you're now hypocritically trying to reverse (which seems to be your go-to tactic for everything) says a whole lot. So does the fact that you evidently feel proprietary about others' content and will editwar to retain it if it's on "your side", without any actual rationale for doing so, and regardless of the rationales for the changes (another recurrent SchroCat theme).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:46, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @EEng: I thought I knew you better as an editor than that. How can you possibly think it is reasonable to mischaracterize in this way the views of everyone who has concerns about the excessive and undue promotional effect of these templates for whatever viewpoint is put in them? It's no different from referring to anyone who puts an infobox in an article as an "idiot" "non-reader" and "vandal". I really had faith you knew better than to pursue this "try to win by demonizing anyone who disagrees" angle. Oh well; the fact that you're totally unrepentant about it actually supports my view that this is disruptive, not accidental, and should be administrative;y shut down.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:08, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For those playing along at home, we're talking about my insertion of an image here [12]. You do know me better than that, you're reading way too much into this, and I wasn't demonizing anybody. Of course I support concerns about excessive and undue promotional use of quotes, but I oppose those who think things like (as was stated two posts above my insertion) "Stylistically such isolated quotations are a train wreck. If there's no way to integrate such a quotation into the article text, it probably doesn't belong there" i.e. that there's no place for quotes which draw the reader in and spark interest, consistent with many people's belief that any time the reader says to himself, "Wow! This article is a pleasure to read!", then something's wrong. EEng 21:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The image has nothing to do with it. The straw man psychological projection of a crazy/stupid viewpoint onto everyone who doesn't agree with you about decorative quote boxes is the issue. But thanks for vividly highlighting exactly why these quote templates are PoV problems. "Draw[ing] the reader in and spark[ing] interest" in one particular party's viewpoint is a blatant policy violation. There are other ways to attract reader interest that do not favor particular viewpoints. But doing so at the sub-article content level is not a WP goal anyway, per WP:NOT#MAGAZINE. Grabbing reader eyeballs for as long as possible, much less precisely steering them, is not our job; providing information they actually want, arranging it logically, and backing it up with reliable sources, is our job. This is not an advertisng-funded site, and we have no incentive at all to keep people here longer than they need to be here to get what they came for (much of what WP:NOT is about, especially WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE is grounded in this fact). Life is short, and WP is not escapist entertainment in text form, it's a a particular kind of information source.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There are plenty of situations in which an interesting quote illuminates, gives depth to, or brings to life the adjacent text -- even well into the article. There's a great example (though a bit long) at Oscar_Wilde#Imprisonment. Of course these should not be used in ways that promote a particular POV, just as article text should not promote a particular POV. But that's an orthogonal issue. EEng 23:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that imagery like "brings life to" is apt here, and it implies that (to steal SchroCat's own anti-infobox campaigning stump out from under him) all the hard work of other editors on the article is just "dead" material unless you, in your infinite wisdom, force a USA Today-style decorative sidebar on it. All of the "redundant eyesore marring a beautiful article" arguments that you guys bring against infoboxes (which actually serve a demonstrable utility function) actually apply, without reservation of any kind, to quote boxes, which are not utilitiarian in any way, and only exist to "steer" readers into accepting as "the take-away message" what you personally want to brow-beat them with. This is absolutely not encyclopedic writing, and it's why all the comments in the "anti-RfC" poll over there, aside from supports that are pure WP:AADD noise, are opposes. There's nothing even faintly tangential about the fact that quote boxes unduly draw attention to particular quoted material; that's the very crux of the matter. Taking material out of its context does not "give depth" to material, it robs the material of depth and makes it confusing and sound-bitey. It's a cheap-ass PR, marketing, and tabloid journalism trick, a form of tacky teaser.

The really unfortunate thing about all of this is that the misguided attempt to sail the longship around the RfC and dodge the issues raised in it, with a "voting invasion" that is doomed before it starts, is that it's probably going to derail also the discussion of more subtly adjusting the default block quote style, which would obviate almost all of this dispute, site-wide. So, good job creating another gory style battlefield; you can now go make up heroic poems about yourselves.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:47, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Chill. I'm not part of your RfC war. EEng 23:56, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm done. It's just severely frustrating to finally begin to get some maybe-traction on adjusting the default quote template enough to stop people abusing pull-quote templates because they don't think the default style is distinct enough, only to have the very people who don't think it's distinct enough derail everything. It seems more important to them to "make a stand" for "real FA editors" against "the rabble", and the principal point of it seems to be nothing but denigrating other editors and their work just because they don't think giant quotation marks or huge garish boxes are the right approach. It's even more ridiculous than the "infobox wars". It's like burning the stadium down rather than compromise in the slightest way on what code of football to play today.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:23, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Look, SM, you're obviously under stress right now and I feel bad for what you seem to be going through. All I said is that sometimes, in some articles, there's a place for boxed quotes, and that a complete ban on them is wrongheaded. I have nothing to do with any of these cosmic conflicts you refer to. For God's sake snap out of it, and let's have back the levelheaded Sandy McCandlish we know and love. EEng 03:45, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@EEng: I'm not "under stress", I just take NPoV policy seriously. What you just said there is a reasonably phrased statement, nothing like the straw-man hatchet job you pulled in your sidebar at WT:MOS. As to the meat of the question: What place is there for boxed quotes? Define it with precision, please. Now justify that in reference to ENC, NOT, NPOV, NOR, etc. Now, how you are going to actually limit applications of this style to only what that supposed definable and justifiable role is, especially when we all know for a fact that the majority of uses of these quoteboxes are PoV-laden highlighting of particular viewpoints? How would you stem that tide? After all that, riddle me this: Why do you give a damn when virtually no one else on WP wants these things?

I did an experiment about a year ago. I took the first 100 articles that came up using one of the decorate quote templates, and converted every single one of them to standard {{Quote}}, citing MOS:BQ, except two which were genuine pull quotes, and in both cases there was no need for a pull quote, so I simply removed them. A total of 0 (zero) out of 100 of these changes was reverted or even questioned. The bare fact of the matter is that approximately a dozen editors are hot, hot, hot for decorative quotes and no one else is. A number of other, mostly noob, editors insert them because they have not read MOS:BQ and are just copy-catting what they saw in some other article. The vast majority of articles follows MOS:BQ. This has been proven with incontrovertible numbers at the (original, not hijacked) RfC at WT:MOS. The only conclusion that can reasonably be reached is that use of décor quotes is a bloggish/tabloid style that a tiny handful of editors are promoting and who will fight to death to keep it, when no one else wants this garbage here. It's the tail wagging the dog.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:47, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that probably few editors understand how to use quote boxes properly, and that they have a place in relatively few articles -- perhaps no more than 99 1 out of 100 (or 100 1 out of 101). Maybe that means they're not worth the trouble and should be banned, I don't know (though I doubt it). But all I said is that there is a place for them, and that many who object to them are those of the school that think that being dull and dry is a sign of article quality.

I'm actually sorry, at this point, to hear that you say you're not under stress, because at least it would explain all this: "I cannot say that Mailer was drunk the whole time he was on camera. I can only hope he was drunk." Can we stop now? EEng 13:25, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if you mean to imply that 1% of articles should have quote boxes, or are sarcastically saying 99% should. "Dry" and "dull" aren't even the same thing, in writing terms. Can you diff someone saying our articles should be dull? Can you also diff them saying quote boxes should be removed? If not, you are projecting stuff from your imagination onto other editors. It's difficult to get any clear picture of why you want quote boxes, other than a vague sense that anything that isn't "dry" or "dull" should be permitted. So, why don't we add reader opinion polls, links to gossip, embarrassing photos, and 1,000 other things that aren't dry and dull, if the need to decorate is so overwhelming? Why does it exactly have to be quote boxes, when we know that the typical use of them is WP:UNDUE? I'm sorry you seem to think I'm not approaching this rationally. I think my questions indicate I have the same concern about those in favor of quote boxes, and are the questions themselves not rational? What questions are the opposition asking? None, they're just engaging in character assassination. Ad hominem is the last refuge of someone who has no logical reason for their stance. The more I ask such questions the more the collective answer comes back that we should have quote boxes "just because". I actually said this almost word-for-word over a week ago, and the situation has worsened not improved, despite more people being asked such questions in clearer terms. That fact is very meaningful.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:04, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant 1/100 or 1/101 of course -- hadn't had my coffee yet. Here's someone saying articles should be "cold" (open the collapse box -- and don't fail to note the reactions from others in the thread that immediately follows). You may very well be right that typical uses of quote boxes are UNDUE (or tabloid- or blog-ish), and I repeat that "Maybe that means they're not worth the trouble and should be banned, I don't know (though I doubt it)." I'm sure we'll be collaborating happily again in the near future. EEng 20:24, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"Cold", "dry", and "dull" aren't the same thing. Encyclopedic writing is "cold" in being neutral and fact-cite-fact-cite, compared to "fiery" investigation and "flaming" public relations and marking prose, which may be mostly nonse with no basis, but full of emotion. It's also "dry" in being focused on neutrally presented, significant facts in a logical order, versus "juicy" in using supposition, out-of-context inflammatory quotations, "weird" but irrelevant details designed to provoke a reaction, etc. It's only "dull" if the writers suck. But the typical justification for quote boxes (other than "to highlight this because it's important" – i.e., to push an editor's particular PoV) is "to break up blocks of text". This is why we have section headings, and an encyclopedia article is meant to mostly be blocks of text; someone who hates blocks of text should not be editing here, but making YouTube videos. Anyway, I agree this will blow over, and apologize if I was overreacting.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:43, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Apology accepted, though it really isn't necessary. We all have our moments. EEng 14:54, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote boxes

Now that you're haranguing at least two Featured article writers about quote boxes I'm going to request that you disengage and find something else to do. Your use of derisive language like "people not involved in FA horse-trading", "decorative, cutesy quote framing or side-barring gimmicks", and "WOW! CHECK THIS OUT! tacky reader lure" indicate to me that you've left logic behind and are pushing an agenda. The next stop will be discretionary sanctions for you. --Laser brain (talk) 22:33, 2 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Laser brain: I concede that the "horse-trading" comment was unnecessarily provocative, though hardly an attack and probably not even uncivil, just disgruntled and expressive of consternation at "wikipolitics". It is certainly not difficult to show particular FA-focused parties backing each other up inappropriately; other admins have pointed it out before themselves, about the specific parties now announcing at least temporary departures [13] (conveniently just as ARCA starts looking like it may authorize DS for the "infobox wars").

But where are your DS threats about flat-out attack comments made at WT:FAC today? "Machinations", "regularly targeted ... by editors ... pushing a[n] ... agenda", "have opened up a new line of attack", "very small groups ... are targeting the work of a very small number [of FA editors]", etc., are all uncivil aspersions, direct accusations of conspiratorial bad faith. It's a serious claim levied en masse, with no evidence at all, against everyone with a differing viewpoint. Oh, never mind; you just repeated the attack yourself and added another: "you've left logic behind and are pushing an agenda". I note also your post at the same talk page indicating you have a very firmly pre-determined view of the entire debate and are itching to crack the heads of one side of the issue [14], despite the personal-attack evidence all pointing in the other direction.

This is what WP:INVOLVED means, and you should step away. You seem to be at least as emotionally invested in this debate as the parties you're supposedly intervening between, and unmistakably taking one side. You quite explicitly side with all three of those individuals here, and say you plan to step in at FAC to fill their impending vacancy. But one even makes it clear that the dispute in question doesn't even have much to do with his departure, and the others say nothing about it.

What I've said, that you object to, is backed by very clear logic. There is no civility issue whatsoever is characterizing an unencyclopedic, PoV-pushing, and MoS-deprecated content framing technique as decorative, cutesy, gimmicky, tacky, or functionally a lure. It has zero to do with any editor, and casts aspersions at no one, but is strictly about whether the content presentation is properly encyclopedic. It's no different from saying "ain't" doesn't belong in our articles for several similar reasons, or that we don't use giant all-caps headlines at Wikipedia for more such reasons.

I hadn't bothered going this route yet, but I can certainly source external materials indicating what decorative quotation presentation is for and why it should not be used here. [Sourcing material moved to subsection for later reuse.]

I can do this all day (and it's not even wasted sourcing, since our articles on such matters actually need work). But I guess being able to actually back up what I'm saying means I've "left logic behind" to "push an agenda"? The only thing I'm "pushing" is what any editor should: that WP:ENC, the WP:CCPOL and WP:NOT aren't a bunch of optional nonsense.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:53, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I definitely do have other things to do. I haven't touched the related WT:MOS RfC since 1 September, I think, and like Brianboulton, I completely left the Thorpe affair article and talk page alone for a long time, both after dispute started, and after the original parties said their initial piece in response to Boulton's review (in which he reinstated many of my edits despite being angry with me). I trusted the matter to resolve itself with normal discussion if I just left. I returned to find a train wreck, with predictable parties (directly canvassed in the open by SchroCat) accusing everyone who disagreed with them of being in an anti-FA conspiracy. Surely it must be wicked collusion by an MoS cabal! People not summoned by SchroCat couldn't possibly be commenting there because the article was mentioned prominently in two recent RfCs, right? "Incontheivable!" [Should I have put that in a giant quote box? Heh.] It was patent assumption of bad faith, but I don't see you or anyone else leaving {{Ds/alert}}s about that. I'm a much more convenient target. If I left Ds/alerts, despite it being the approach ArbCom demands, I'm sure I'd get accused of "disruption" or something. I left one the other day and all it did was generate more drama. This strikes me as "non-optimal" process.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:00, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Surely you are familiar with the concepts of logos and pathos. When I say you've left logic behind, I'm referring to your derisive and provocative remarks which create an unneeded appeal to emotion rather than logic. And don't insult my intelligence by claiming you don't have an agenda. You're quite right that I'm taking sides—I take the side of anyone who's here to create content and has to drop what they're doing to read your walls of text and argue about things like infoboxes and quote boxes. That includes people who are labeled as pro-infobox. Your various arguments that amount to, "Well why aren't you talking to Jimmy about his behavior?" are needless diversions from the point, a problem I see people trying to bring to your attention frequently. I'm quite well aware that I'm emotionally invested in this issue and won't be applying any sanctions personally. I will seek them at the appropriate venue. I don't intend to pursue this discussion with you any further, because you've essentially indicated that you view others' behavior as problematic and not your own, and that you are fully justified in blowing up talk pages for days on end to push your interpretations of style. You saw to it that Darkfrog was banned for the same behavior—maybe you should take a second to realize you're now cooking yourself in your own stock. --Laser brain (talk) 14:25, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Laser brain: Fair point! Appeal to emotion is actually central to the very reason that pull-quote styling doesn't belong in an encyclopedia, so it would be hypocritical for me to engage in it while opposing it. I concede that using florid language like I did can have that effect, and I shouldn't get worked up that way. And, yes, I'm clearly also wordier than you and several others prefer. Aside from that, what would you advise, though, about how to participate in these discussions? (Other than "just run away from every so-called style dispute and let the chaos of random whims reign" of course; I obviously care about stability, consistency, and not using style arguments to dodge policies – this matters.) I redacted a bunch of diffs and gripes about SchroCat and Cassianto at WT:FAC, in the interests of peace, and also quoted Schro positively.

No one is more aware than me how many people want to pillory me and all other MoS regulars. (Actually, I think I can specifically enumerate those who do, and why.) I'm not complaining that particular other parties aren't being punished (I think the whole ArbCom punishment regime is detrimental when not applied strictly to reader-facing content PoV-war behavior like "my ethnicity versus yours" and "crystal healing is real science" crap). The complaint is that "down with MoS" rants full of gross incivility almost never receive any "please don't do that" response from admins, but any slight line-crossing from an MoS regular will, like we're being held to higher standards than anyone else. The administrative response to style disputes is to side against anyone seeking guideline compliance about 80 to 90% of the time. The regular editors of no other guidelines on the system have to live with a whole array of Damoclean swords over their heads like that. No one gives a damn if we feel stressed out and attacked. We're those "twattish MoS nutters", remember.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:36, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from that, what would you advise, though, about how to participate in these discussions?: Don't think for a minute I don't care about the MoS. I spent years working as a technical writer, teaching college English comp, and helping doctoral students edit their theses. I've used and even written manuals of style. To me it was something to have in mind as I authored content or graded student papers. I've also brought MoS compliance issues to writers' attention thousands of times. Usually there is no fuss, but sometimes there is. I suppose I've learned to pick my battles over time and I've also learned that the world is more "shades of grey" than it is black and white. I don't have to be right all the time and I don't lose sleep if something is contrary to a MoS entry—especially when the author has a thought-out response to why they diverted. My job as an FAC coordinator here is to assess consensus for promotion, but I also personally look at each candidate before I consider promoting it. If it's not in compliance with the MoS, I'm going to look to see if a reviewer caught it. If not, I'll make a comment myself and see if it was an oversight or if the author has a rationale. It's somewhere between there and creating pages of discussion and frustration that you and I have a disconnect. Maybe you can help me out there, maybe not. --Laser brain (talk) 17:30, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Laser brain: Thanks, that helps a lot. I'm not sure yet how to address the matter you highlight since it arises from everyone frustratedly/frustratingly discussing. This would continue indefinitely even if I keeled over dead this very hour. I am trying to come up with ways to approach the matter differently, e.g. turning to external style guide sources to "back up" what MoS says, as long as the sourcing can be used more productively and isn't wasted research time. It doesn't seem to help moods, though it does tend to resolve a dispute in a particular direction (and has even led to MoS changes, e.g. MOS:JR). I just have to figure out a way to approach this more effectively (in the "how to make friends and influence people" sense); I come from two professional backgrounds – civil liberties activism and standards-compliant coding – which color my approach too much. Or maybe I'm just an asshole (people who think so seem unaware how much my approach has changed since ca. 2012, or how deeply troubled I was about the "bird caps" fiasco, and how hard I've worked to prevent a repeat of it over other matters). I could try obsequious wording, but this is actually one of the things that infuriated people about the indeffed MoS editor you mentioned (along with the 7 years of "source the MoS itself" campaigning); it comes across as patronizing and insincere if one is too polite in making a point.

Anyone is going to be "frustrated" if, as a native or at least fluent speaker, they deeply feel they know the one true way to use the language, even if they know intellectually this isn't really true (variant: as a professional in X, they have conviction there is only one proper way to write something about X, even if no one does it that way except in topical journals). If they feel really strongly about it, they'll demonize, and drum up support from other people irritated about some different and unrelated style peccadillo, using "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" reasoning, when there should be no enemy-think at all [cf. injection of the "MoS people chased away productive bird editors over capitalisation" myth into the FAC discussion]. It's rooted in topical territory control, not reader needs.

I don't have an easy answer for the overall "MoS turmoil" problem other than to keep angling for consistency [disputes mostly arise where we lack it], discouraging "because I wanna" exceptions that don't have a legit IAR basis [breeds more demands for exceptions], pointing out when people are using their personal frustration/desire as an excuse to attack people and foment anti-MoS cabals [like the anti-diacritics "wikiproject" that got MfDed as a NOTHERE / GREATWRONGS canvassing farm]. I try to remind people that we have MoS and other guidelines not as documentation for what the world should do or most commonly does [most printed, edited material, by orders of magnitude, is daily news writing in a much less formal style]. It's simply a set of internal, reader-oriented game rules so we're all playing the same game instead of standing on the field fighting about what game to play. The particular rules often don't matter much; just agreeing to something so we can get on with it is the point.

The MoS regulars have loved that the FAC regulars include MoS compliance in the FA criteria; we just wished this was adhered to more firmly because of the "this FA doesn't comply so none of my articles have to, either" pattern, which is growing. (CITEVAR is another issue, too; it was created to reduce fights over cite formatting, but has PoV-forked from the rationale of ENGVAR and DATEVAR to instead enable OWN-ish claims down to the one-character level. I see that FAC gets plenty of "don't you dare touch my cites" debate, stemming from the same territorial instincts as "give me this style variance or else".)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:00, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sourcing on pull-quote styling

This can be re-used to improve articles like Pull quote.

As just one example, here's several statements from a magazine's [see WP:NOT#MAGAZINE] house style guide [15]:

  • "Quotes are used to emphasize excerpts of text." ["Emphasis" is anti-NPoV, especially with a quotation, i.e. with presentation of one person/organization's own viewpoint.]
  • "we need to provide [our readers] with some focus anchors to fix their attention to the most important parts of our articles." ["Steering" readers and trying to make them accept the editor's view of what is important is directly against NOR policy.]
  • "They are used to pull a text passage out of the reader’s flow and give it a more dominant position in the post or the article." [Do I even need to comment? This is anti-encyclopedic on both counts.]
  • But this contrasts very sharply with what they say about block quotes (the kind MOS:BQ calls for): "Just like a pull quote ... block quotations ... are also set off from the main text as a distinct paragraph or block. ...[but] are usually placed within the reader’s flow." [This is exactly what MoS says to do.]

Here's a source for the fact the the style is an explicit "lure", in an definition of the pull quote style, from one of the most reputable publishers in the entire field of online copy and content presentation, SitePoint [16]:

  • "It’s a device designed to isolate and visually highlight a particularly interesting sentence within the body copy. It’s a 'lure' intended to draw skimmers into the content." [Hard to get any clearer than that this is a PoV and NOR problem.]

National Geographic Style Guide, on not misusing pull-quote style for block quotations or sidebars:

  • "pull quotes [should] be just that, material pulled [i.e., repeated] from the text and not stand-alone information." [17]

Just a few examples from a couple of minutes on Google. I haven't even delved into things like The Chicago Manual of Style on this question yet.

Arbitration Case opened

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IB question

Hi -- I have a question about the current and past infobox debates that I hope you can answer for me. Since this is such a divisive topic, perhaps I should preface this with a couple of quick points. As far as I know you and I have never interacted much, and certainly not with any rancour that I can recall, and not over infoboxes. I've removed infoboxes from some but not all articles I've worked on and have had a few discussions about those cases, but it's never become unpleasant. I've not read the Arbcom infobox case and was only vaguely aware of it; I've looked at barely any of the many links to the debates that have been provided in the most recent discussions. You can consider me mostly ignorant of the history, but aware it exists.

My question is about a particular point that I see made that I'd like to hear your side of. A couple of times, people have said that certain FA writers, and FA articles in general, are being treated differently by editors who feel infoboxes are high value. (I'm trying to avoid using "pro-infobox" and "anti-infobox" as I don't think either is a fair characterization.) I feel sure you would not agree that they are being targeted in any way, but I'm curious to know how that relationship looks from your side. Are they wrong when they say that editors try to add infoboxes to their articles more often than random chance would appear to suggest? I have written dozens of FAs to which an infobox might be added, but I've only rarely seen that discussion on those talk pages. What is it that leads to these discussions happening, and why do you feel it appears to some editors that they are being singled out? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)

@Mike Christie: I'm just going to do a brain-dump that goes beyond your question, because I need to write it out to help sort it all in my own head. It's been a long day.

I have't seen FAs singled out prorammatically. At an MfD against a page written by Gerda Arendt (claimed to be the most "pro-infobox" person, or something to that effect), it's actually being alleged that she adds about an infobox per day to random articles, which is "un-targeting". Then someone else claims they're all about him and "his" articles (but that's not actually borne out by the data on the page in question).

I think the most obvious explanation of the I-box/FA connection is that everyone who is focused on "the best" articles, which includes many people who have a tendency to favor infoboxes are part of a "complete article package", if you will, is very protective of them, and very certain that there's one way, or a sharply limited number of ways, to do them well. An infobox-favoring person really into FAs is naturally going to want to make sure FAs have them, and that might be an overriding concern for them. Someone opposed to infoboxes (in reality, more often opposed to infoboxes only either wikiproject WP:LOCALCONSENSUS party lines like "no I-boxes for classical music", or against them in certain general types of articles, e.g. biographies) feels the same way about FA, just that an i-box is an "eyesore" or whatever on them, and may consider them a detriment to to act against. Either group may act without discussion, knowing full well it's apt to produce dispute. This is what people are getting at about both sides being disruptive. (There are really many sides – mine is that good ones are generally helpful, especially for mobile users, but are best in long articles, and rarely useful in stubs except when the add some special feature like the original infobox, {{Taxobox}} does.) Regardless of alleged targeting, when really it's mostly just half a dozen or so people who care enough about I-boxes to argue and argue and argue about them every day, the same people show up in ever other discussion, whether they've edited the article or not. They'll make nonsensical arguments like "you haven't even editing this article!" when they haven't either. It's all about WP:WINNING. And WP:FAC, WP:GAN, etc. provide forums for them all to get together and fight regularly, giving an illusion of "targeting" (probably to everyone).

Anyway, I think "targeted" is just battlegrounding and demonizing conspiracy theory language designed to further polarize the debate. And I would not be surprised if there's someone somewhere saying that FA editors who don't like infoboxes (at all, or in particular cases) are "targeting" various FAs for infobox deletion. Most of the claims made by one side against the other are made vice versa, though it is very clear that the bulk of the civility problems are coming from opposers of the addition of i-boxes to FAs and GAs and PRed articles in which the feel they have a stake. And I know that this deletion is happening, without consensus, since I've witnessed it myself. I've also seen lots of squabbling to add one.

A serious complication, that no one ever seems to address, is that because of WP:EDITING policy, we're expected to be adding information and consensus-permissible features to articles, not removing material from them unless there's a policy rationale or an obvious common sense reason to do so. This combines with WP:CONSENSUS, which defaults to the presumption that content long present and stable has tacit consensus, but cannot possibly presume that content not present has consensus to be absent (otherwise WP would have one article, with only the first edit ever made to it). It's a necessary but non obvious fact (cf. the "discovery" of gravity) that policy presumes that an infobox can be added without a prior consensus discussion (though someone might controvert its addition leading to discussion), while one should not be removed without prior consensus, unless there's a policy based reason to do it (e.g. BLP - criminal infobox used some singer's page as vandalism) or some other obviously actionable reason (e.g. totally incorrect, like a dog beed i-box on a cat article, but often, as in that example, replacement is better than removal). I tend to feel this is never going to be aired, that ArbCom or whatever is just going to "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" without any sensitivity to the how-WP-works nuances.

There's a tense discussion happening at WT:FAC about the personalities and "camps", but I'm not sure how constructive it will ever be. It feels like being a peasant in the hall of the king, the attitude is so thick in there. (FAC people are "content writers" you see, and everyone else is not, especially not those "inexperienced" "MoS obsessives", etc., etc. Ridiculous levels of false dichotomy and territorializing, but probably cannot be helped much due to the nature of that beast; FA is actually hard work, and no one wants to chase away FA editors, even if some are being WP:JERKs about something, frequently.)

On the up side, I see increased support in all these venues for:

  • The idea that MOS:INFOBOX needs to spell out why/when to have an infobox and what kinds of things should be in it, instead of just throwing up its hands and saying "argue about it at each article".
  • Recognition that WP:ARBINFOBOX actually made matters much worse, by demanding it be argued at each article, and being punitive toward site-wide discussion of the matter if the issue at hand is particular article. (This is yet another case of ArbCom being a separation of powers failure, the wikicourt dictating what the wikilegislature/parliament is allowed to enact.)
  • DS: The ongoing WP:ARCA requests to enable WP:AC/DS in this area might, finally, actually happen, so that vicious incivility and disruptive editwarring can be dealt with swiftly (they haven't been to date because, while WP:ARBATC enables DS for MoS/AT matters generally, the perpetual argument is that infoboxes are content not style, and that MoS having a section on style relating to them doesn't make them a style matter per se, so on one's been willing to apply DS to "infobox wars" to date, that I know of).

On the down side, see thread above this; some admins seem already to want to use (or have others use) the forthcoming DS to go after only those in favor of adding infoboxes, as a general class, instead of using it to address actual disruption problems regardless of "side", and I can easily see some big drama coming out of that if it's pursued that way. I'm sure if you ask someone else you'll get a radically different answer. :-) Personally, I think this isn't really about infoboxes at all, but actually about territorial control; it exactly mirrors the "our wikiproject says you can't put an infobox on our articles" nonsense that led to ARBINFOBOX in the first place; it's not about FAs, but about whether "outsiders" have a "vote" in content development after someone stakes a claim. It's localconsensuses against the whole rest of the project. This is clear as day to me, but no one wants to address that either. I firmly predict that in a few years, the community will finally say "enough! we've told you before there are no WP:VESTED editors", a bunch of FA people and wikiproject people will quit, hands will be wrung, and other editors will fill the gaps over time. That's what's always happened in similar matters. People have quit over date formatting, citation style, capital letters, commas, you name it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:45, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the extra detail; it helps me understand your position. There's just one thing I'd like to respond to -- you say 'FAC people are "content writers" you see, and everyone else is not, especially not those "inexperienced" "MoS obsessives", etc.'. I understand that you wrote that as a parody, but I think it's inaccurate. I consider myself a "FAC person", and I don't recognize that attitude in myself or in any of the other editors I deal with regularly. I'm sure there is polarization as well as discourtesy, and no doubt some people have expressed unreasonable opinions, but personally I'd appreciate it if at a minimum you would qualify sentences like that with "some FAC people", rather than giving the group a monolithic character. I wouldn't consider myself a "MoS person", though I like the MoS, but I'd object to anyone saying "MoS people are X". Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:38, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike Christie: Certainly agreed. I was parodying, but using direct quotations of things people at WT:FAC posted only yesterday. What I posted over there myself repeatedly impresses upon the participants that the dichotomies and polarizations editors are bandying about are illusory and silly; sorry that my point in this regard wasn't clearer here. I certainly don't mean to imply that most FAC participants really hold this viewpoint. It's just that the tenor of the discussion has turned in this direction (and often far worse, e.g. "twatty MoS nutter", etc.).

A side essay that relates to all this in a background manner: I would say I expect it to just blow over, but it's been my experience otherwise. E.g., in the same forum, someone is repeating the "evil MoS people chased away birds editors" myth, and I'm sure will repeat it again in a year and in five years. What really happened is about half a dozen people ran that wikiproject aground by picking fights all over WP for a very long time, then quit in a huff when they did not get what they wanted. One of them had been loudly "quitting Wikipedia" since 2005, and two of them were constantly agitating about how worthless WP is and how they should go start their own more reliable online ornithology encyclopedia, etc. Just a whole pile of WP:NOTHERE, including what they were fighting over to begin with. (They were trying to force onto WP a specific organization's draft bird names standard, with very little real-world adoption, then apply rules from it to all other biological categories, and even updating that third-party organization's website, as they went along, on the status of WP's use of their "standard". Raised serious WP:COI, WP:SOAPBOX and other concerns.) But it's just so very much easier to say "damn those MoS nuts! they drove away some editors!" What MoS people really did is bring to a close years of trouble caused by one project with many others, compounded by attempts to PoV-fork guidelines, etc. The one productive editor out of the three who did quit during this mess explicitly stated he was retiring for a number of reasons, and had already left almost a year before the big RfC finally settled this stuff, but in the mythology, the MoS RfC drove him away.

People like to mythologize things like this in anti-MoS/AT ways because everyone has at least one thing they disagree with in MoS; if you're just really adamant about that one thing, it's easy to manufacture allies who don't care about it but have their own nit to pick, and all feel they could get their heart's desire if only MoS would just die. It's like blaming "the damned government". Very easy to do, because if you're not unhappy with the road maintenance, you're probably irritated about the tax rate, or some international policy matter, without any of these things being related in any way. People do this about MoS especially, versus other guidelines, because of the innate sense that native (and even fluent non-native) speakers have that they are masters of the language, thus any divergence from what they're used to or prefer must be an error, something substandard. It doesn't matter how much proof you have that this is not the case, the feeling is hard for some people to shake. The MOS:JR hair-pulling is a great example. Various editors were utterly convinced that it must, always, be written "X. Y. Zounds, Jr." in American English, because they were American and old enough (like me) to have learned this in grammar school. After being shown proof that the convention is increasingly abandoned in American publications and now a minority usage, and never existed elsewhere, thus something WP can dispense with, several (four, I think) continued to insist it was a hard-and-fast rule in AmEng no matter what and fought page by page to stop MOS:JR's implementation for about three months, failing to carry the day at a single RM discussion, but never giving up until the last article. We see this sort of thing all the time, and MoS people get backwards-blamed for it. There's a reason most MoS regulars quit after a few years. It's very stressful to be ganged up on over personal and unrelated peccadilloes, especially when you know that if it were not for MOS, editors would be at each other's throats all day long, page after page, fighting over every imaginable style quirk, just as society would collapse if "the damned government" disappeared.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:39, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If I may, one of the reasons things might get mythologised is because that can be easier than reading what people are saying, especially if people (like you) are saying a lot and in a rather forceful manner. I've been following this on and off for a few days, and I am wondering if you realise the impression you give with some of your posts? You clearly know the history very well, and feel strongly about this, and you often make excellent points, but sometimes people are left with their impressions rather than the detail of what you have said. My view tends to be that you need people to make decisions on MoS, but they need to be the people that are knowledgeable about the issues, but aren't the ones that get attracted to MoS in the first place. And good writers both know when to deviate from a MoS and when to let a style issue go (if they were submitting for professional publication, they would mostly just let the copyeditor do their job and various mechanisms smooth any friction - Wikipedia lets the two roles rub up against each other, with predictable consequences). i.e. you need writers, copyeditors and an overall editorial board/management, not a crowd-sourced overlapping mixture. And now I am risking saying too much... :-) Carcharoth (talk) 05:18, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Carcharoth: No doubt, on all counts. That's why I've mostly just walked away from this all for the last two days other than a couple of minor responses. As for the latter matter, yeah, I've been saying for years that the only reason we have all this drama over "style issues" (which are very often not style matters at all, but CCPOL matters filtered through a style lens) is that WP's "everyone can edit" nature gives people the false impression that "everyone can edit the MoS to get what they demand", or (more mildly) "everyone can edit the MoS well", and both are mistakes. It's a specialized niche that requires an tremendous amount of research into transcontinental linguistic norms and trends, the differences between numerous types and registers of writing, careful balancing between conflicting expectations, and even more careful balancing of all of them against what WP needs stability-wise and what readers need consistency-wise. MoS is infrastructure, not content, and self-proclaimed "content editors" are often very poor information and communications architects, even if skilled at working within the structure that's built a little for them and mostly for the audience. It's like the difference between actors and stagecraft people. Some have great skill at both, but not very often. My own shortcomings (in either role) stem from an activist background, mostly making me more argumentative than necessary. I work on it, but canvassing factions tend to push me pretty hard. I just hope whoever closes the RfC looks at the policy arguments and doesn't just count ILIKEIT votes, but my hopes are not high due to the anti-MoS bias among the admin pool. <shrug> I've bot bigger fish (interesting Linux stuff, for pay) on the line right now keeping my mind mostly off of this stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:49, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:List of European countries by average wage

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:List of European countries by average wage. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 4 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Lino

 Done
 – Commented over there.

Template:Lino has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Codename Lisa (talk) 09:32, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Linum

Template:Linum has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Codename Lisa (talk) 09:36, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Codename Lisa: One's enough, and please do them as a group nom, so we don't have to comment over and over.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:37, 5 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for September 5

 Fixed

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Quote template RfC research

Hi, SMcCandlish. I want to thank you for researching third-party stylebooks and presenting your findings to the RfC participants. Your work simplifies things for the rest of us. Kudos. Fdssdf (talk) 04:06, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Fdssdf: No prob; I do that regularly to bring interminable style disputes to a close. Unfortunately, due to construction at my place, most of my books are packed up, so I don't have access to the bulk of the works I usually turn to (I own almost every major style guide published in living memory).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:36, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New article improvement drives

Check out the following new article improvement drives and contests. North America1000 11:41, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Editing other people's posts

Do not edit other people's posts. It isn't up to you to shut down or merge someone else's RfC.

I don't know whether you've been alerted to the MoS discretionary sanctions within the last year, but in case not (and, as I understand it, the repetition is necessary for reasons I've never fathomed), here it is again. Someone is likely to take this situation with you to AE, AN/I or ArbCom. You should pull back before that happens. SarahSV (talk) 23:35, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding the English Wikipedia Manual of Style and article titles policy, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.
Template:Z33
See WP:REFACTOR and WP:KETTLE. You know full well it's perfectly acceptable and appropriate to refactor, and did so in the very discussion we're both seeking closure of. You also know that duplicate requests should be combined. This particular bit of revert-warring, which seems to be your go-to tactic, just helps demonstrate the validity of my concerns about your camp believing WP's rules (and exceptions thereto) only apply when you want them to, and are bent to serve page content over-control interests. See also the instructions at {{ds/alert}}; one is not to be left if one has already been received in the last year for the same case. Your leaving this one also constitutes self-notice; you'd do well to keep that in mind and not join in on the dismissive verbal vitriol your friends are spewing against all MoS editors, all editors who want FAs to follow guidelines, and all editors who are aren't FAC people (depending on how wide a holier-than-thou net of aspersion and denigration they're casting).

Now that I think of it: please stay off my talk page entirely unless you are leaving a procedural notice, or are here to post something constructive, collaborative, and collegial. I can't for the life of me remember when was the last time that happened, if ever.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:37, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Washo language

Disregard
 – RfC was too vague to answer.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Washo language. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Any further thoughts?

 Done

See Talk:Universum Film AG#Requested move 22 August 2016. I nudged Wbm1058 to respond to your proposal, so you ought to have the same chance. I was about to close this as No Consensus but was hoping for a final flurry of opinions. The sticking point for any logically-minded closer is that the current title, Universum Film AG, is not actually the name of the company but of a predecessor company. So if it the RM closes as 'No Consensus' the article is stuck at an obsolete name. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 16:19, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@EdJohnston: I commented again, but would suggest relisting. No one's really done a proper WP:COMMONNAME analysis, and I'm actually taking a while off, for the most part, due to too much anti-MoS drama lately making this place unpleasant and a source of stress rather than interest for me.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:30, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be a Coward

Add your defense of RFCs at Coward to your list of eloquent writings so I can quote it again in the future. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:33, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. If you mean the one about FRC and "lemmings" it's a bit specific to that discussion. But it's the sort of general point I make frequently.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:17, 11 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Han Chinese

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Han Chinese. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent mini-tutorial

Somehow, I forget quite how, I came across this - that is an excellent summary of the distinctions. I often get confused over those, and your examples were very clear. Is something like that in the general MoS/citation documentation? Oh, and while I am here, what is the best way to format a citation to a page of a document where the pages are not numbered? All the guidance I have found says not to invent your own numbering by counting the pages (which makes sense), but I am wondering if I can use the 'numbering' used by the digitised form of the book. I'll point you to an example of what I mean: the 'book' in question is catalogued here (note that is volume 2) and the digitised version is accessed through a viewer, with an example of a 'page' being here, which the viewer calls page 116, but there are no numbers on the actual book pages (to confuse things further, if you switch between single-page and double-page view, funny things happen to the URLs, and if you create and click on a single-page URL the viewer seems to relocate you one page back for some reason). Carcharoth (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Carcharoth: Thanks. I need to copy that into an essay page. As far as I know, the concepts are not clearly covered in any of those places, nor clearly enough even at Help:CS1 (which is dense and overlong as it is). The e-book matters bear some researching. I'm very curious whether particular formats (Nook, etc.) paginate consistently between viewers. For Web-accessible ones, I would think that the page numbering that appears in the Web app is good enough if it's consistent (e.g., between a PC and a smart phone) when the reader clicks the URL in the citation. I suppose one could also use |at= to provide details if the "page" has to be explained in some way. I try to rely on better-than-page-number locations when possible, e.g. specific entries in dictionaries and other works with multiple entries per page (numbered sections in manuals, etc.), but for some e-books this isn't possible – some are just continuous texts. One could probably use something like |at=in the paragraph beginning "The supersegemental chalcolithic metastasis is ..." about 40% into the document, in a pinch. I guess we do need to figure this stuff out since such sources are increasingly common.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:29, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes (about figuring out how to reference e-books), though I suspect existing (non-WP) citation styles have addressed this already (no need to re-invent the wheel). This is a slightly different case, though. It is a digitisation of an existing (physical) book that has no page numbers. If I had the book in front of me (actually, it was only published as a single copy, so it is not a 'publication' in that traditional sense of many copies being produced), the problem with page numbers would still exist. I wonder if the 'digital viewer' should be thought of as a 'via' thingy? In the same way that (technically) Google Books and archive.org digital copies of old books are just re-transmitting, and re-distributing the material (is wikisource also a 'via' sort of thing?). Carcharoth (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Carcharoth: Ah, I see. I guess I would treat it as a |via=, and same with WikiSource, which in this respect is essentially like Google Books or Project Gutenberg. I think your conundrum has come up various times with arXiv papers, that have not been paginated visibly except in later publication (behind a journal paywall and not examined). Back to the broader matter: Some want to treat WikiSource and even Gutenberg as republishers, but I think that's giving them undue editorial credit and splitting too fine a hair. Was thinking on the general unpaginated and mis-paginated e-sources matter while on the train, and came to the conclusion that for a short, unpaginated work with no subsections, one might give something like |at=in paragraph 23, and for a much longer one use the |at=in the paragraph beginning "..." trick. A straight up |pages=82–83 would work for an e-book with hard-coded meta-data pagination that is consistent between apps/platforms and no visual pagination. On the other hand, use the visual pagination in an e-book that has it, even if it doesn't match the e-book format's digital pagination, since the pagination in the visual content would match that of a paper copy; one might include a note that the pagination is that visible in the content if it conflicts with what the e-book reader says (this comes up a lot with PDFs, for one thing - I have many that include cover scans, and the PDF viewers treat that as p. 1, then other front matter as p. 2, etc., with the content's p. 1 being something like PDF p. 7).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What I just thanked you for

On ARCA you basically said everything I was trying to say in fewer words, and even got in something I forgot, about feeling sympathy for one who feels they have been wrongly accused and who wants to leave the project as a result. That kind of situation certainly does suck. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:32, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: Thanks. It's a rare day I say something in fewer words than someone else! Ha ha. Anyway, I'm honestly feeling that way again. There's a bit of a mutiny/coup in the air, with a handful of editors in a certain faction, many with admin bits, trying to exempt themselves from site-wide guidelines (or just eliminate the guidelines), and there's a good chance they'll actually succeed, to the detriment of the entire project. (See the proposals and venting at WT:FAC, and related canvassing party at WT:MOS.) Meanwhile, myself and others are being personally attacked by this crowd multiple times per day and no admin will lift a finger because of the topic of the debate and the friends this group have cultivated. This is starting to feel like a shitty, thankless job instead of an enjoyable hobby. I've certainly been more productive in other areas of my life just by taking a "max of about an hour per day" semi-wikibreak, and ignoring the project completely on some days.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:07, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

End of days

The apocalypse is upon us, Mac! I just discovered that my favorite evolutionary biologist, global domestication expert, and current dog/wolf research leader Larson has 2 cats at home: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/11/genes-turned-wildcats-kitty-cats Regards,  William Harris |talk  11:09, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@William Harris: They conveniently poop on a box, and don't demand walks! Ha ha.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:30, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, I have never experienced a cat seizing me by the right arm and dragging me out of my chair towards the door at walk time. However, if I had owned a cheetah........ Regards,  William Harris |talk  20:54, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@William Harris: If you get into Landrace and related articles (Breed, Cultivar, Breed standard, Hybrid (biology), Crossbreed, Purebred, "List of whatever breeds" articles, etc.), please keep me in the loop. I have a long-term WP:STEWARDSHIP interest in our coverage of the topic, but haven't had much time to devote to it lately due to work deadlines.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:31, 21 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I shall, Mac, and that would tie in with your earlier interest - and our joint redevelopment - of the Domestication article. The Landrace article would benefit from a review and the addition of citations from quality secondary sources, rather than from the odd few agricultural journals. Regards,  William Harris |talk  07:55, 21 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC for patroller right

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC for patroller right. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 21 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re: my topic ban

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Kindly stop slandering and making false accusations against me. I reside regularly in a country where Wikipedia is blocked, and I do not have the time and energy to jump through VPN and get into edit wars. Yes I did take a long break to recollect myself after having bad experiences with article editing, not to mention full time employment commitments, which means I only read WP articles these days. The user which I filed a complaint against in fact was being disruptive in the main China articles, which led back to FLG. So if someone was misbehaving, am I not allowed to document their behavior?

If there was a way of getting someone's attention to this user's behavior without appealing, I would have. I spoke with the WP IRC and they recommended me to file an appeal, which got me here. You are frankly insulting me by suggesting that I am "bidding my time", when I fact don't even want to have anything to do with FLG in real life anymore, let alone online. I was only dragged back to FLG because of one user's disruptive editing, and as it demonstrated, WP admins are fare more concerned with procedure than actual content.--PCPP (talk) 15:04, 22 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@PCPP: This appears to be in reference to Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Falun Gong#Amendment request: Falun Gong. (September 2016). I didn't make any accusation, false or otherwise, and you seem unclear on what slander actually means (and should read WP:NOLEGALTHREATS very carefully if you think you do know what it means).

I simply observed the clear and indisputable fact that you were disavowing an interest in Falun Gong matters while simultaneously pursuing further Falun Gong-related disputes (which ArbCom itself also noted - the first Arb comment is that your pursuit of that dispute was a violation of the topic ban you are asking them to lift). Expressing an opinion/assessment of what this pattern looked like, I also reasoned that your request to have your Falun Gong t-ban rescinded – on pretty much no basis but a clearly counterfactual assertion that you had no interest in Falun Gong on Wikipedia any longer – should obviously not be granted. I stand by that reasoning, and the commenting Arbs unanimously agreed with it. The fact that you're on my talk page arguing with me about your Falun Gong t-ban is in fact another violation of that t-ban (yes, even if you abbreviate it "FLG"), for which you could be blocked. I strongly suggest you WP:DROPTHESTICK and find something else to occupy your time, and toward that end am marking this discussion closed so you don't violate your t-ban even further.

As a summary of average propensity, I think that "WP admins are far[...] more concerned with procedure than actual content" is accurate, though there are of course individual exceptions; similarly most cops don't care why I might be stealing food, they're still going to arrest me if they catch me doing it. Given that the admin pool in the aggregate leans toward bureaucratic enforcement regardless of the merits of the points under discussion, this is simply further reason for you to avoid bringing up Falun Gong discussions, in any form for any reason, on this site. If you're already certain your treatment will be unjust, then complaining to me about the injustice is rather like shaking your fist at your neighbor because it's cold and wet outside. Just accept the conditions you observe, "dress appropriately", and move on without making a pointless scene, please.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:17, 23 September 2016 (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.

Please comment on Talk:Elvis Presley

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Elvis Presley. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cogent argument

I just read another cogent, well thought out argument at Talk:Slut-shaming, and not surprisingly it was you again. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:17, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I do what I can. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Mel Brooks

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Mel Brooks. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man arbitration proposed decision posted

 Done
 – Commented in favor of clemency toward both sides, at the talk page.

A proposed decision has been posted in the open The Rambling Man arbitration page. Please review this decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. If you are not a party, you may opt out of further notifications regarding this case at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/The Rambling Man/Mass Message List. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:36, 2 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Christian Rudolph (disambiguation)

The article Christian Rudolph (disambiguation) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Per WP:2DABS

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Boleyn (talk) 14:33, 2 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Boleyn: Yeah, that makes sense, as long as both article actually have the mutual disambiguation hatnotes.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:31, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, thanks for responding. I've added a hatnote on the primary page, but not the other way round (see WP:NAMB). If you think I've missed something and it should have a hatnote though, let me know and I'll look at it again. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 15:55, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Boleyn: I prefer to use them on bio articles because the names are intrinsically ambiguous. Any given reader may have arrived at this page following a piped link that just read "Christian Rudolph" and might be surprised at whose bio they arrived at, but will not know whether the page they want is Christian Rudolph, Christian Rudolph (athlete), Christian Rudolph (German runner), or what. Especially in a case of two sportspeople, ambiguity remains present in the situation, for the reader, even if the string "Christian Rudolph (billiards player)" is not itself ambiguous on its own, in a contextual vacuum. Helping the reader always trumps robotically following a vague rule like NAMB that is often overapplied.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:07, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Vani Hari

 Done
 – along with a bunch of article cleanup.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Vani Hari. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Citation cleanup tool?

Thanks for the work in the citations for Vani Hari. What tool(s) are you using for that? --Ronz (talk) 16:54, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ronz: Just BBEdit. Any high-end, programmers' text editor with regular expression search-replace support will do.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Yes, I need to get some editing tools together. At least you didn't suggest vi or emacs ;) --Ronz (talk) 16:17, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I detest them both. In command-line *n*x, I just made do with nano or pico, though I'll use gedit or whatever GUI editor the OS gives me if there is one, for fancy stuff. I do most of my stuff in Mac OS X, thus BBEdit, which I've used since the Mac System 7, back in Ye Olde Tymes.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:24, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RfC for page patroller qualifications

 Done

Following up from the consensus reached here, the community will now establish the user right criteria. You may wish to participate in this discussion. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:44, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't often thank people for their votes because I'm not sure it's the prpper think to do, but even with what appears to be developing into an overwelming consensus, yours was the best and most succinct of them all to date. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:11, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#In ictu oculi

Disregard
 – Already speedily closed.

I see you were involved in a November 2015 ANI case. I invite you to the case request. --George Ho (talk) 18:23, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:James Watson

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:James Watson. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As you're more in touch with the MOS than I am...

Is the sprinkling of Chinese characters throughout articles, such as at Lu Yi (Tang dynasty), permitted? I run across these occasionally and have always wondered. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:08, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ealdgyth: That's way too much. It should be done in the lead for the subject, and is often done with words (about which we have no article), but it need not be done for proper names mentioned in passing, most especially those about which we have articles (whose own leads give them in Chinese script). The purposes of including the Chinese script are a) search (find the article via the Chinese name), and (for words) b) specificity, since our transcription to things like ma is not precise (there are something like 8 Chinese words with different tonal pronunciations that can be rendered ma in roman script). I would raise this at MoS subpage for Chinese subjects and see if the guideline needs clarification (or raise it at the main MoS talk page if too few people respond at the subpage's talk page).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:43, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I brought it up at the article's talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:38, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Festschrift

Do we need a Category:Festschrifts or Festschriften? --Orange Mike | Talk 00:04, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Orangemike: I would suggest consulting a series of (not just US, or just UK) English-language dictionaries. If the majority of them support Festschrifts as a legit plural in English, then go with that as the most natural for English-language readers; otherwise, preserve the German Festschriften.

These are the major free online English dictionaries of which I'm aware:

Dicts list
  • TheFreeDictionary.com – Farlex; has entries from The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Collins English Dictionary (UK, HarperCollins), Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary (UK, K Dictionaries Ltd / Random House), and Dictionary of Unfamiliar Words (Diagram Group), and sometimes the Farlex Trivia Dictionary. In separate tabs, also provides special dictionaries: medical, legal, acronyms, idioms, and encyclopedia and topical-dictionary entries, as applicable for specific entries.
  • Dictionary.com – has entries from The Random House Dictionary (US) database, as well as short ones from Collins English Dictionary (UK, HarperCollins), plus often other works, including an etymological dictionary and (when applicable) a slang one
  • OxfordDictionariesOnline.com – seems to be from the same casual-English database as the Compact Oxford English Dictionary and OUP's other smaller volumes; this is not the OED (US$200/yr), and is missing most of the academic information and the more obscure entries. It has both British and American English in separate sections (linked to each other), and it is worth looking at both entries – sometimes they differ markedly.
  • Dictionary.Cambridge.org – fairly comprehensive, but the parts-of-speech information is lower quality for words like as and like than in Oxford's, and it otherwise isn't always as good, though sometimes has more specific definitions. Has both British and American in different tabs.
  • YourDictionary.com – entries from The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Webster's New World College Dictionary (formerly Houghton Mifflin, now Wiley), YD's own privately developed database, and (at the end) Wiktionary.
  • Merriam-Webster.com/dictionary – based on their Collegiate Dictionary, with short entries, and missing 300,000 words and much entry-specific material from their unabridged edition (subscription-only). Principally American, but notes some British usage.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:55, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Orangemike: Was that any help?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:33, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports). Legobot (talk) 04:23, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Usercheck

Resolved
 – Updated to the new version.

Hello: if you are receiving this, you have transcluded Example (talk ·  · contribs · global contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · user creation · block user · block log · count · total · logs · summary · email | lu · rfas · rfb · arb · rfc · lta · checkuser · spi · socks confirmedsuspected | rfar · rfc · rfcu · ssp | current rights · rights log (local) · rights log (global/meta) | rights · renames · blocks · protects · deletions · rollback · admin · logs | UHx · AfD · UtHx · ), I have created a Usercheck with more content, that I plan to update with more when I come across it, as of right now Usercheck-Super has only three more things than Usercheck-full, but as mentioned, I plan to update it, the three things I mentioned are pending changes log, giving all of the revisions you have accepted or rejected, Abuse filter, which gives you the ability to examine your edits, and get many details about an edit, along with Articles created, which links to a page which gives a breakdown of all the pages you have made. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@WikiPancake: Wouldn't it make more sense to just add these to the existing Template:Usercheck-full ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)? The probable ultimately result is that WP:TFD will merge them. Anyway, I updated my transclude to use {{usercheck-super}}.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:14, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
User:Iazyges requested to have this sent to you by mass messaging. I'm a MMS sender, not the person who wrote this, so you'll have to contact lazyges himself. I have no such involvement in this. Thanks! WikiPancake ✉ 📖 08:18, 15 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Iazyges:: Pinging you then. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  13:47, 16 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish:, sorry for the late reply, due to my admitted newness to templates, and the code changes involved (taking code from other places, or else trying to make it myself.) are "complex" (at least to me) I decided to branch out and make my own, as I considered that the new additions went above and beyond just full, due to the level of insight into your abilities and past given. (Especially on edit filter and articles created), I also plan to expand it significantly, as I mentioned earlier the code changes/formatting takes a bit of work, so being able to adjust it quickly is helpful. I hope I have answered satisfactorily, if not feel free to re-ping me. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:04, 17 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Iazyges:. No big deal to me, just saying what will probably happen; one of TfD's major functions is merging redundant templates. Anyway, such development can generally be done on a template's sandbox page (e.g. Template:Usercheck-full/sandbox).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:25, 18 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Editing News #3—2016

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscribe or unsubscribe on the English Wikipedia

Did you know?

Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?

Screenshot showing a dropdown menu with options for editing the table structure

Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.

Recent changes

  • You can now set text as small or big.[18]
  • Invisible templates have been shown as a puzzle icon. Now, the name of the invisible template is displayed next to the puzzle icon.[19] A similar feature will display the first part of hidden HTML comments.[20]
  • Categories are displayed at the bottom of each page. If you click on the categories, the dialog for editing categories will open.[21]
  • At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[22]
  • The "Save" button now says "Save page" when you create a page, and "Save changes" when you change an existing page.[23] In the future, the "Save page" button will say "Publish page". This will affect both the visual and wikitext editing systems. More information is available on Meta.
  • Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[24]

Future changes

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 14 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Surrender (military)

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Surrender (military). Legobot (talk) 04:24, 17 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Joe Clark

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Joe Clark. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 21 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#DON.27T_GIVE_UP_THE_SHIP

 Done

Maybe you can bring this discussion back from the dead. Please. The existing ban on links within quotations is Exhibit A for why people dismiss MOS. EEng 02:54, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I commented. Supported your version against mine. I actually prefer mine for clarity, but the gist is close enough and I would rather see something come out of it than get "the right version" when all that's at stake between the versions is some semantic nit-picks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:14, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Question...

Resolved
 – Gave rationale at the RM.

Is this request a 'yay' or 'nay'? I was leaning more towards 'nay', but I'm not quite sure. Thanks, Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 04:51, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Going with "yea" on that one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:22, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, makes sense! Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 04:52, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Battle of France

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Battle of France. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for merging of Template:Systemic bias

 Done

Template:Systemic bias has been nominated for merging with Template:CSBArticles. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 02:51, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Commented at that page. @KATMAKROFAN: I've only seen two of your TfD nominations so far, and had to oppose both of them as a inappropriate and ill-considered. I would suggest that you observe TfD in detail for longer before wading in there. I see from your talk page that others are taking issue with your CFD and MFD listings as well, plus successfully deleting a lot of your redirects at RfD [25]. WP:XFDs require experience. You've only been here a few months, and don't seem to have absorbed enough of it yet. You'd probably do better to focus on creating and improving content rather than nominating things for removal or providing dubious navigation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:37, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Al Jaffee

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Al Jaffee. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Battle of France "OTHERCONTENT argument-to-avoid"

Technically, the FAs I listed off don't actually violate any "rule". The template documentation was unilaterally rewritten some years back, and when the same user sought to get the relevant MOS page amended to agree with his unilateral rewrite of the template documentation, there apparently was no consensus to do so, and everyone who thought there was has been gone from the project for years at this point. Descriptive guidelines that actually do a pretty shitty job of describing how Wikipedia editors write articles, and were themselves formulated by fallacious Wikipedia editors who don't write articles anymore, should not have any normative power to overrule a standing status quo. How the template is actually used should of course outweigh how some guy almost a decade ago thought it should be used. I'm posting this here because I still really don't care which way the result goes. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:45, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't buy it. This has nothing to do with one set of allegedly outdated norms clashing with a newer set of alleged norms (and I phrased that carefully). It has only to do with the reader-helpful use versus reader-unhelpful misuse of the template and its parameters, from a logical standpoint. None of those things were the outcome of the war; they're all after-effects that some scholars believe resulted in part because of the outcome of the war. These are contextual, prose subjects that require citations for the claims made, and are not "indisputable truth" infobox factoids. I've addressed this at the talk page of the template itself, since this has nothing to do with the Battle of France in particular. The argument you're presenting sounds very much like yet another salvo in the draining and false-dichotomy-based FAC holy war against MOS, AT, and CITE, another of these "however the 0.1% of editors who are FAC-focused want to do things is how all editors must do them, or else" stances. Well, I have about as much patience for that as I have for gouging my own eyes out, so I decline to entertain any more conversation along those lines, since I've put up with months of it already, against my better judgement, and every second of it has been unproductive and divisive. It's no wonder that three long-term editors recently quit over it, after working themselves up to near heart-attack levels of angst and drama over the "conflict", which is illusory at its core and entirely of their own making.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:32, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PS: Forgot to ping you, Hijiri88. On a re-read, the above sounds a little testy. It's not personal, I'm just exhausted by all the "style warring", about 80% of it involving infoboxes, over the last three months. You and I generally get along well on WP matters, and I don't want to damage that. I just don't have an interest in more infobox-related verbal combat, with anyone. I raised the idea, at the template talk page, of clarifying this parameter with the specific goal in mind of preventing future unfruitful disputes of this sort.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:10, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine, but if you are tired of the warring, then shouldn't you be against the proposed change as pointless and illusory? You also misunderstood me. I don't think there is an allegedly outdated norms clashing with a newer set of alleged norms. I don't think the outdated norms were ever actual norms -- they were what one user thought should be norms. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 17:53, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Second point first: WP doesn't work that way. The entire basis of this place is we edit, and edits that stick are what consensus is. There's this arriviste misapprehension that "consensus" is what people have argued about until they're all red and/or blue in the face, but that's not it. That's what consensus sometimes devolves to when a particular matter is controversial. About 99.999% of things are not controversial and are not squabbled over. When they're things in guidelines, documentation, howto pages, information pages, policies, procedural pages, etc. (where the ratio might drop to something like 95%, as a ballpark estimate based on the number of edits I make to such pages versus how frequently they're reverted or disputed), they have a long-term effect on how WP actually operates. The very fact that something persists for years indicates that it is, by definition, accepted as consensus (unless it's in some ridiculously obscure place like a userspace essay, or a template with no deployment). If someone comes along years later and wants to dispute that outright (in your own words, that's just "what one user thought should be [new] norms") rather that subtly and helpfully refine it, the burden is on that person to show that consensus has changed. Another fact about how WP works is that every edit is made by one person; there are no group accounts. "That was just what one user thought" when first creating something here, like the template documentation in question, describes every single WP edit, in or out of mainspace, that was not the result of a prior discussion, and that's virtually everything on WP. Furthermore, this is also a WP:COMMONSENSE / WP:GAMING / WP:LAWYER matter. It's very clearly commonsensical that the parameter in question is for the direct, literal outcome of the conflict that is the subject of the article (a clear, basic fact), not for insertion of lists of aftereffects that some sources claim are partially the result of the outcome of the conflict. There's a gaping PoV-pushing and original-research trap inherent in putting any particular source's extrapolative and subjective hypotheses of socio-political cause and effect into an infobox as if it were a cold hard fact about the conclusion of the conflict itself, in Wikipedia's own voice. Given these problems, it's clearly arguing a technicality against the spirit of what we're doing and why for people to insist on their new "anything goes" re-/mis-interpretation of what that parameter can be used for, when there's a long-standing consensus that its usage is intentionally quite narrow and limited. And this is at a very widely used template, chaperoned by one of the most controlling wikiprojects on the system, who pretty much miss nothing and do nothing by accident.

The first point last: If you mean the change I proposed at the template itself, I already explained in that discussion why it's not pointless and illusory. If one more discussion – that one – will head off years of unfruitful "infobox war" fights (again, at a wikiproject that is already as notorious for territorial squabbling as it is praised for high-end output), then that discussion is definitely worth having. Especially since it itself is not an "infobox war" (a dispute about whether an infobox should be at a particular article or category of articles, or what can/should be or not be in that article's/those articles' infobox; rather, it's a template documentation clarification matter. I hope this explains where I'm coming from on this. Maybe we just won't agree on it, I dunno. Very busy lately, as my comparable lack of activity around these parts might indicate. I may not even return to the discussion in question. I pointed several relevant formus to the discussion, and the community can hash it out. Maybe consensus will actually change in favor of treating that as a freeform parameter. I seriously doubt it. Even if the parameter is not renamed, I predict the doc wording will be tightened to prevent more messes like that at the BoF article. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:40, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer granted

Hello SMcCandlish. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia, if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria.

  • Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
  • You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
  • Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
  • Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.

The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator.

information Administrator note You have been grandfathered to this group based on prior patrolling activity - the technical flag for the group will be added to your account after the next software update. You do not need to apply at WP:PERM. 20:56, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Noted, thanks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:51, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:AzB player

 Done
 – Commented at the deletion nomination.

Template:AzB player has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 22:40, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Darren Sharper

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Darren Sharper. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Books and Bytes - Issue 19

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 19, September–October 2016
by Nikkimaria, Sadads and UY Scuti

  • New and expanded donations - Foreign Affairs, Open Edition, and many more
  • New Library Card Platform and Conference news
  • Spotlight: Fixing one million broken links

Read the full newsletter



19:07, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Barnstar of Diplomacy
Thank you so much for stepping in on the Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations article, specifically the talk page. You seem to be able to clearly communicate the applicability of guidelines and resolve what might otherwise become a dispute. Excellent job! CaroleHenson (talk) 19:28, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
An additional comment: I have not been looking at the article history, just checking the article every now and then that nothing went amok. And, things seem to be going grrreeeaaaattt! Thanks again.--CaroleHenson (talk) 19:30, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I try to defuse disputes (when I'm not starting them, ha ha). It's easiest for people who are uninvolved or neutral on something to see where both sides of an issue are going too far (or might).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:22, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you're doing a great job!--CaroleHenson (talk) 00:32, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:08, 3 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to Asian Women Month

Hi there! As you may know, this November is Asian Women Month, hosted by Wikipedia Asian Month and WikiWomen In Red. Our goal is to encourage coverage of Asian women in order to help overcome the Asian content gender gap. Asian Women Month observes the rules of Wikipedia Asian Month. You will receive a special Asian Women Month barnstar if you create four articles in accordance with the rules for the event, as well as a postcard sent from an Asian community! Thanks for your consideration. Read more here! -Rimmel.Edits Talk 01:58, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Template talk:Infobox person

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Infobox person. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge

no Declined
 – I'm too depressed by the election results to contemplate this right now.
You are invited to participate in the 50,000 Challenge, aiming for 50,000 article improvements and creations for articles relating to the United States. This effort began on November 1, 2016 and to reach our goal, we will need editors like you to participate, expand, and create. See more here!
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:41, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention that your spare time will now be consumed participating in missile evacuation drills!  :-)  William Harris |talk  10:22, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Howdy Wkatherine003 (talk) 07:46, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Wkatherine003: Thanks. Was this for anything in particular?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:17, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Ronald Reagan

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Ronald Reagan. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 9 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New deal for page patrollers

 – I already have the new page reviewer bit.

Hi SMcCandlish,

In order to better control the quality of new pages, keep out the spam, and welcome the genuine newbies, the current system we introduced in 2011 is being updated and improved. The documentation and tutorials have also been revised and given a facelift. Most importantly a new user group New Page Reviewer has been created.

Under the new rule, you may find that you are temporarily unable to mark new pages as reviewed. However, this is nothing to worry about - most current experienced patrollers are being accorded the the new right without the need to apply, and if you have significant previous experience of patrolling new pages, we strongly encourage you to apply for the new right as soon as possible - we need all the help we can get, and we are now providing a dynamic, supportive environment for your work.

Find out more about this exiting new user right now at New Page Reviewers and be sure to read the new tutorial before applying. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:29, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User group: New Page Reviewer

Hello SMcCandlish.

Based on the patrols you made of new pages during a qualifying period in 2016, your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed.

New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia, if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at page reviewer talk.
  • Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
  • You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
  • Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
  • Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.
The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:34, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Samantha Bee

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Samantha Bee. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:South West Trains

Disregard
 – RfC too vague to address.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:South West Trains. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Challenge Series

The Challenge Series is a current drive on English Wikipedia to encourage article improvements and creations globally through a series of 50,000/10,000/1000 Challenges for different regions, countries and topics. All Wikipedia editors in good standing are invited to participate.

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, SMcCandlish. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Russian financial crisis (2014–present)

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Russian financial crisis (2014–present). Legobot (talk) 04:25, 22 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Reviewer - RfC

 Done

Hi SMcCandlish. You are invited to comment at a further discussion on the implementation of this user right to patrol and review new pages that is taking place at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/RfC on patrolling without user right. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:05, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Finland listed at Redirects for discussion

 Done

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Finland. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Finland redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. - CHAMPION (talk) (contributions) (logs) 01:18, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for Advice for hotheads ‎

Thanks for the essay. I hope it will be widely recognized and used. I think it could be improved by removing all the labels it uses to identify it's audience: "hothead", "argumentative", "cantankerous", etc. Offending an audience that's likely already defensive may turn them away. --Ronz (talk) 16:48, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am not being defensive! Stop saying that! I hate it when people say that! It's not fair and it's not true! EEng 17:10, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Ronz and EEng: Hmm. The entire point of those "labels" is that they're intended as self-identifiers. "You know you're at the right page if this resonates with you." Perhaps the humor is too subtle. I'll try tweaking it a bit.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:09, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Done with the tweaks. While I do concede that the entire thing could be written as generalized advice, with no such terms, I think the intended main audience would never read it, and it would be redundant in scope with various other civility/behavior essays. The whole point of this one is to basically trick hotheaded editors (like the author of the piece, who has really been working on personal change in this regard!) into reading and absorbing it. I thought about including some kind of "from one hothead to another" statement in it, but I don't want it to be a one-author piece indefinitely. Others (who aren't hotheads) may have good advice to add. As a secondary effect, the slightly provocative title may entice editors who don't think of themselves as hotheads, but who nevertheless engage in hothead behaviors, to read it and think "oh, I guess I have been doing that too ...".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:31, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I copied this over to the essay's talk page, since that's probably a more transparent venue for discussing how to improve it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:03, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Don't infer anything from what I said. I was just making a joke. If you remind me after my big deadline tomorrow I'll be happy to read it. EEng 13:01, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I was just replying to the thread as a group. Not sure what your big deadline is; I have been off-WP, for the most part, for weeks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:03, 28 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Assata Shakur

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Assata Shakur. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Stephen Bannon

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Stephen Bannon. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2016_November_28#Wikipedia:JUSTAVOTE

 Done

I invite you to an ongoing RfD discussion about those redirect to WP:AADD#Just a vote. --George Ho (talk) 19:56, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Scarlett Johansson

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Scarlett Johansson. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 4 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review - newsletter (November 2016)

Hello SMcCandlish,
Breaking the back of the backlog
We now have 810 New Page Reviewers! Most of you requested the user right to be able to do something about the huge backlog. Now it's time for action.
Mid July to 01 Oct 2016

If each reviewer does only 10 reviews a day over five days, the backlog will be down to zero and the daily input can then be processed by each reviewer doing only 2 or 3 reviews a day - that's about 5 minutes work!
Let's get that over and done with in time to relax for the holidays.

Second set of eyes

Not only are New Page Reviewers the guardians of quality of new articles, they are also in a position to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged for deletion and maintenance and that new authors are not being bitten. This is an important feature of your work. Read about it at the new Monitoring the system section in the tutorial.

Getting the tools we need - 2016 WMF Wishlist Survey: Please vote

With some tweaks to their look, and some additional features, Page Curation and New Pages Feed could easily be the best tools for patrollers and reviewers. We've listed most of what what we need at the 2016 WMF Wishlist Survey. Voting starts on 28 November - please turn out to make our bid the Foundation's top priority. Please help also by improving or commenting on our Wishlist entry at the Community Wishlist Survey. Many other important user suggestions are listed at at Page Curation.

Originally sent to all New Page Reviewers 26 November 2016. This message sent manually. Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:22, 7 December 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Fidel Castro

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Fidel Castro. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Source listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Source. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Source redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. George Ho (talk) 20:56, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

BBC 12-hour Editathon - large influx of new pages & drafts expected

New Page Reviewers are asked to be especially on the look out 08:00-20:00 UTC (that's local London time - check your USA and AUS times) on Thursday 8 December for new pages. The BBC together with Wikimedia UK is holding a large 12-hour editathon. Many new articles and drafts are expected. See BBC 100 Women 2016: How to join our edit-a-thon. Follow also on #100womenwiki, and please, don't bite the newbies :) (user:Kudpung for NPR. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC))[reply]

RC Patrol-related Proposals in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey

 Done

Greetings Recent Changes Patrollers!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about technical proposals related to Recent Changes Patrol in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

  1. Adjust number of entries and days at Last unpatrolled
  2. Editor-focused central editing dashboard
  3. "Hide trusted users" checkbox option on watchlists and related/recent changes (RC) pages
  4. Real-Time Recent Changes App for Android
  5. Shortcut for patrollers to last changes list

Further, there are more than 20 proposals related to Watchlists in general that you may be interested in reviewing. (and over 260 proposals in all, across many aspects of wikis)

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Note: You received this message because you have transcluded {{User wikipedia/RC Patrol}} (user box) on your user page. Since this message is "one-time-only" there is no opt out for future mailings.

Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 01:10, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A cup of coffee for you!

Thanks for your service to rodents. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry: Sanka you very much. I do love to caffeinate some rats.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:49, 8 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Inclusion of predecessors and successors in officeholders' infoboxes

 Done

Hi, I'm writing to inform you that I've opened a new general Request for Comment concerning whether predecessors and successors should be included in the Infobox Officeholder template, further to my RfC concerning Michael Portillo specifically. The new RfC can be found here: Template_talk:Infobox_officeholder#RfC:_Should_predecessors_and_successors_be_included_in_officeholders.27_infoboxes.3F. Thanks, Specto73 (talk) 19:25, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

FYI on WT:FAC thread

Hi -- FYI; based on what you've posted I'm pretty sure you'll think I shouldn't be doing this, so I wanted to make sure it was out in the open for discussion if you wish. Perhaps I should add, since you've said in the past that I've said unpleasant things about you, that I have not, and don't intend to. I believe you have the best interests of the encyclopedia at heart, as do I. We just appear to disagree about how to proceed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:59, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie: I'll get over it, and I think we were misunderstanding each other to an extent. Commented there already to clarify. I don't recall saying that you in particular had said unpleasant things about me. Rather, a certain faction at WT:FAC, with a lot of overlap with similar cliques at WT:CITE and various wikiprojects (and sometimes WT:AT), have said unpleasant things about all the MoS regulars as a group (and sometimes me in particular, and sometimes the AT regulars, when they're not part of the extended faction that happens to be venting). It's a bunch of political, territorial chest-beating. I trust that it won't really amount to much in the long run, because the overall stability and utility of the project is more important than the "don't touch muh article/topic" ownership behavior of any particular gaggle of editors, even if they feel themselves to be First Class Citizens because of their particular focus and who their wikifriends are. They make being here increasingly unpleasant, but WP doesn't really need anyone in particular, and I'll leave for a long stretch again if they get too irritating, and wikilife will go on without me. I could have written a dozen more books in the time I've spent on this project, and have a tech blog to get going, so it's not like I don't have other things I can be doing. Drama-mongering from that quarter has a lot to do with why my participation here has dropped recently to about 10% of normal.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:50, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to negative comments, I assumed that unabashed, perpetual character assassination by you and the rest of your FAC clique against me and the rest of the MoS regulars was meant for me, but perhaps you meant Herostratus? He's not active at FAC, and never has been as far as I know. I saw your follow up note at WT:FAC; I don't know how often something will come up, but I suspect it'll be more than twice a year; let's see how it goes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:28, 11 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, geez. The "you and" part should just have been left off, as my issue with this stuff has actually been entirely about the group factional behavior of "FAC vs. MoS" and "FAC vs. CITE" and "FAC vs. infobox fans", etc. I took a bit of a wikibreak after that, anyway, as my blood pressure was obviously going up. I apologize for the ranty-pants tone and for pointing at you in particular (especially after complaining about being personally scapegoated at WT:FAC; everyone can be a hypocrite when they get emotional, I guess!). I hope my more recent post was more constructive. Anyway, my principal concern is that the same crusader at FAC who proposed an "anti-MoS" there and who is presently trying to undermine key wording in MoS's lead, has a bit of a fan club at FAC (when FAC isn't mad at her CITE clique; none of these "alliances" are 100%, 24/7, just overlapping most of the time). What I predict is that FAC "buddies" will be rounded up to bloc-vote by people like this on particular pet peeves, while the rest ofthe RfCs major discussions at MoS will go unmentioned at FAC, leading to precisely the canvassing pattern I warned of. I would bet money on it. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:37, 11 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're misinterpreting what you see. In many cases I don't think there will be anything like unanimity on MoS issues from editors likely to see a note at WT:FAC, but if it should turn out that most or all editors who come to a MoS discussion via a note posted at WT:FAC all agree on one side or another of an issue, why would that necessarily be a problem? If that does happen, the most natural explanation would be that the kind of editor that works at FAC is more likely to see things a certain way. When you say things like "FAC buddies" and "FAC clique" you're referring to something that I don't think exists. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:28, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
WT:FAC two months ago indicates otherwise, including FAC-wide defensiveness of two editors who had spent months doing little but sustained conflict generation against and verbal abuse of anyone who disagreed with them about much of anything – defense simply because they're FAC regulars – and a two-pronged anti-MoS proposal laced with constant scapegoating of all MoS regulars in general and me in particular, even though half the time they were talking about infoboxes which a) MoS has no position on and b) I have no firm position on. These are clear indicators of irrational, territorial group-think. Not a permanent or unfixable condition, but hardly imaginary when it happened.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:18, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Goa Opinion Poll

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Goa Opinion Poll. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 10 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Review - newsletter #2

 Done
Hello SMcCandlish,
Please help reduce the New Page backlog

This is our second request. The backlog is still growing. Your help is needed now - just a few minutes each day.

Getting the tools we need

ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT TO VOTE

Sent to all New Page Reviewers. Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:55, 11 December 2016 (UTC) .[reply]

Great word choice!

I just noticed your comment at meta in the wishlist survey: "Flow is bletcherous." I nominate that sentence for the Wikipedia sentence of the year (which alas does not exist)! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Tryptofish: It is a favorite hackish word, from The Jargon File. Right up there with "creeping featuritis" in perpetual utility.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:12, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Being rather unhackish myself, I had never heard it before, but it is now my new favorite word! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:53, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
JF is full of good laughs (and pre-dates "LOLs").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:33, 15 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Frank Gaffney

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Frank Gaffney. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Johor Bahru

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Johor Bahru. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Pizzagate (conspiracy theory)

 Fixed

FYI. You posted on an RfC on this page, but your comment indicated you may have intended to instead post on the Requested Move on the same page. TimothyJosephWood 18:48, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Timothyjosephwood: Fixed, thanks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:08, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Message

Thank you for your comment on my talk page, it is good to see you are also patrolling this page. Allow me to buy you a beer at the next Wikimeetup. I will be however be defending the integrity of wikipedia by commenting of page moves that are outside the remit of MOS on capitalisation. The issue is very simple- its a Proper Noun. But back to the Woodhead Line and other named rail-lines. Incidently it was the suggestion that I flagged as stupid- the sort of misjudgement I am likely to make when I have been editing too long, --ClemRutter (talk) 18:59, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Clem, what's this concept of "outside the remit of MOS on capitalisation"? You mean you intend to capitalize more than proper nouns, for some reason, in spite of what the MOS says? What's the reason? Dicklyon (talk) 04:03, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@ClemRutter: Dicklyon is correct in objecting to the idea of your favorite topic being somehow "outside the remit of MoS". No articles are outside the remit of site-wide guidelines, as a matter of WP:CONLEVEL policy. If you think that all railway segments should be treated as proper names, you're welcome to make a proposal to that effect at WT:MOSCAPS. MoS has many particular rules for particular contexts, and the way to get another added is to get consensus to add one, not to defy the general rules until exploding in a bout of name-calling.

Another approach, and arguably a much better one than seeking a micro-topical special rule (which will probably fail), would be for all the disparate projects on trains, roads, etc., to combine their wikiproject project pages on these matters, and pare it down to universal points they can agree on, to form a single guideline proposal on transit and travel systems, with a particular eye to agreement among not just that collective group of editors but also agreement with as many extant MoS rules as possible. Look for how to interpret and apply the existing rules, not how to defy them; even if they are not what you personally prefer. No one agrees with every single line-item in MoS or any other guideline, nor does any line-item have unanimous agreement. While some editors (like two of us right here, obviously) would oppose the inclusion of a "capitalize traintracks" rule as special pleading, if site-wide consensus favored it we would live with it. After a WP:PROPOSAL process for a round of input from MoS regulars, and general editors from outside either sphere, to make it more consistent with general-audience readership expectations instead of reflecting specialist quirks, we would probably end up with a new MoS subpage specifically about transit and travel systems for Category:Wikipedia Manual of Style (transport), and a lot less "oh no, not this again" conflict at RM. The existing conflict level is not due just to specialist resistance against MoS rules but disagreement among different knots of specialists, because some of these would-be fiefdoms are very narrow (US highways, etc.).

These transit-related RMs and the amount of heat rather than light they generate are getting tedious. Fans of overcapitalization are not in a position to indefinitely resist tooth and nail against every single MoS-compliance move request, as if they're saving babies from cannibal barbarians, especially after a stack of RM precedent has already been established to follow MOSCAPS as usual on these matters. The goal is to have a consistent nomenclature system for our readers and editors, and whether it disfavors or favors capitalization of strips of track is ultimately arbitrary. It is better for them to be consistent one way or the other than different from article to article based on who yelled more.

PS: As a linguist by training (and one well aware of philosophy as well as linguistics approaches to proper names), I cannot agree with you that "Woodhead line" is a proper name. "Woodhead" is. "Woodhead line" is a descriptive appellation, the "line to/from Woodhead". Something like "Princess Diana Memorial Line" would be a proper name, having no descriptive function at all. Thus the distinction between "Van Ness station" ( "station at Van Ness [Avenue]") and "Grand Central Station", an evocative not descriptively locating name. But anyway ....  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:38, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Discussion review

 Done

I created the page, Wikipedia:Discussion review, as a draft for an upcoming proposal of the process, and I tagged it as "Brainstorming". You can contribute there. Meanwhile, I'm planning to notify others at other venues. I did that at WT:closing discussions and WT:requests for comment. I'm saving WP:AN for last. Where else besides it? --George Ho (talk) 08:44, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I stopped by, but I see you've already abandoned the idea.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:04, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discretionary sanctions notices

Resolved
Regarding the templated messages that you sent to two users at 17:57, 17 December 2016 and at 18:00, 17 December 2016, please explain the paragraph

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding , a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

In particular, this shows "pages regarding , a topic which you have edited" which makes no sense to me - regarding what specifically? Also, the sentence "The Committee's decision is here." links to a disambiguation page which is of no discernable relevance. It appears to me that you served both of them with {{subst:ds/alert|AT}}, but "AT" is not recognised by this template.

I would therefore like to know which specific area of conflict these two users were potentially in breach of. I would also like to know why you thought such an alert notice was appropriate. I see that Lamberhurst (talk · contribs) has reverted your edit without comment, and I do not blame them; however, ClemRutter (talk · contribs) has not, so the message is still there for all to see. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:37, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Redrose64, ClemRutter, and Lamberhurst: There seems to be some issue with the {{Ds/alert}} template (there is - it doesn't do case conversion on the codes; and I think you know that |at= was obviously intended if the input was |AT=). It is supposed to link to the WP:ARBATC ArbCom case when given a parameter value referring to that case. I'll take a look at the source. Redrose64, I would like to know why you are taking an interest in this. You're surely aware that anyone is permitted to revert the addition of template notices at their own talk page, and that doing so is an indication of having read them. Lamberhurst having deleted one is not specially meaningful in any way, and nothing for you to get into Knight in Shining Armor mode about. These notices are simply FYIs that WP:AC/DS have been authorized for the topic, nothing more. Since their point is to deliver this message with regard to a particular topic, I have corrected the notices to do so. As to the specifics of the matter: Whether the template functioned properly or not, you surely are also aware that calling other editors idiots and vowing to battleground, especially in an area under discretionary sanctions, is not permissible. So I cannot see anything productive coming from an attempt at third-party defensiveness of these behaviors, especially just on the grounds that the template didn't initially produce the useful output that was expected. This is not a court and there is no case to dismiss on a technicality. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:03, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm taking an interest for three reasons: (i) because User talk:Lamberhurst has been on my watchlist continuously since 1 August 2009 (we often exchange ideas) and so any message sent to them is going to gain my attention; (ii) because it was me who move-protected Woodhead Line and so naturally Talk:Woodhead Line is on my watchlist; (iii) beacuse I want to see fair play: you templated these two and nobody else that was involved in that move discussion.
I am not criticising Lamberhurst for removing that notice - it is their right to do so. I am criticising you for delivering a misformed message, and when I attempted to fix it, you cancelled out my edit.
I have never called other editors idiots. Please find and post a diff demonstrating that I did so. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:57, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Redrose64: I said nothing about you calling others idiots, but rather that you're leaping in to defend someone else doing so but don't have any rationale for this other than "your template was broken". You not knowing what I was actually referring to suggests that you did not look into the background of the matter, either, but are just irritated that I templated one of your buddies, as your comment further implies. Read the actual discussion, please. One of them labelled another editor's views "idiocy", and the other strongly suggested he was going to canvass together a WP:FACTION to tendentiously "fight back" over style trivia in an entire topic. No one else did anything like that, so no one else needed a DS alert, and at least two of the others have received or left one in the last year anyway (we're told not to re-template people for DS in the same topic until 12 months have passed, remember?). The concerns were valid; they are in fact the kind of hostility that WP:ARBATC was enacted against. Castigating me for leaving the ArbCom-prescribed template (which many of us don't like the wording of but which ArbCom declines to improve), and doing so on the basis of nothing but me having a case typo in the template, is not useful. Nor is yelling at me over an edit conflict. They happen, and it's my job to fix my own template anyway, not yours, but no one cares – why are you getting angry about who fixed it? Maybe take a nice walk or something.

Anyway, see thread #Message above this one. It shows two things: A) One of the templated parties making it clear that they intend to pursue this overcapitalization indefinitely on the basis of personal belief – a WP:IDHT / WP:GREATWRONGS / WP:TRUTH tactic – regardless what the guidelines say, because he's certain his topic is not subject to any stinking guidelines. B) Me suggesting the standard WP:PROPOSAL and WP:CONLEVEL approach, and even giving suggestions on how to be successful at it, despite the fact that his success would result in a style change I disagree with. I'm not being any kind of asshole here, you're just trying desperately to paint a picture of me being one. If you think that Template:Ds/alert itself is problematic (many of us do, in different ways), please take that up at WT:ARBCOM; DS is long overdue for a review and retooling.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:38, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't come here to defend anybody. I came here to ask why you left a misformed message, and didn't fix it soon after it was posted. If leaving substituted messages, it's always good practice to read through what you posted, in order to ensure that it says what you wanted it to say. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:22, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No debate on that point!  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:32, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Posted potential template fix at Template talk:Ds.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:32, 18 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Season's Greetings

Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message
@Northamerica1000: You too! Those snowy pictures remind me of my time in Canada.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:49, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Jollof rice

 – Closed it as an invalid RfC.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Jollof rice. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All the best for 2017!

@Gareth Griffith-Jones: Thanks, and back at ya. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:48, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Extended confirmed protection policy RfC

 Done

You are receiving this notification because you participated in a past RfC related to the use of extended confirmed protection levels. There is currently a discussion ongoing about two specific use cases of extended confirmed protection. You are invited to participate. ~ Rob13Talk (sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Please comment on Talk:New York

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:New York. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas SMcCandlish!!
Hi SMcCandlish, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year,

Thanks for all your help on the 'pedia!

   –Davey2010 Merry Xmas / Happy New Year 22:34, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Davey2010:, and you and yours!  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:14, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Holiday card

Wishing you a Charlie Russell Christmas,
SMcCandlish!
"Here's hoping that the worst end of your trail is behind you
That Dad Time be your friend from here to the end
And sickness nor sorrow don't find you."
—C.M. Russell, Christmas greeting 1926.
Montanabw(talk) 23 December 2016 (UTC)
@Montanabw: You too! Maybe you'll get a pony for Christmas.  ;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:14, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Diacritics

As I said, I'm just trying to cover as much ground as possible (referring to both existing and potential anti-diacritic rules) by using both "any" and "all". Cédric says: Cenvention №.2 is anything but good faith. 07:24, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yo Ho Ho

@Doug Weller: Thanks, you too! This reminds me of a joke: "Have you read Dr. Seuss's pirate Christmas story?" "No." "It opens, 'Ho ho ho / And a bottle of rum / Bum-ditty-bum-ditty / Bum-bum-bum'."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:26, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reply

I appreciate the message. I agree that it would be nigh-impossible to get the genie back in the bottle, but I'm actually optimistic, based on the supporters of a comprehensive style guide. Most of the "cooler heads" seem to appreciate the MOS even if they have specific problems with this or that. I have a lot of respect for almost everyone in the discussion, but it's honestly difficult to see how articles being brought into line can be equated with being bossed around. Unless, of course, there's a hypersensitivity to one's edits being further edited, which might be in the neighbourhood of the heart of the matter. Anyhow, I've got more drinking to do. Merry Christmas Buddy! Primergrey (talk) 03:45, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Primergrey: Happy holidays to you as well! I avoided the booze but overate like a greedy piglet. >;-) I'm almost certain that resistance to WP:MERCILESS is in fact the heart of the above matter, due to the specific commentary and rationales that lead to these disputes. If it's not an attempt by a wikiproject to impose some geeky specialist style that confuses readers who aren't steeped in that specialty, it's almost invariably one-article territoriality by editors who describe themselves as "authors" of those articles. The latter was definitely the source of the outbreak of anti-MoS activity that begin at WT:FAC about three months ago, including two proposals to create an FAC-specific "counter-MoS" to have FAs be except from most MoS compliance (both launched by the same editor [26], [27], the latter generating some variant proposals, none of which carried or resulting in changes to the FA criteria [28]).

Similar "us vs. them" and "my content vs. the horde of barbarians" trench-digging at WP:CITE, with the PoV-forking of CITEVAR from ENGVAR/DATEVAR, has already been a serious problem, and also has a strong anti-MoS WP:FACTION component. (CITEVAR allows people to make up, out of their own heads, fake citation "styles" and defend them against attempts to normalize them to something anyone would recognize, and is also frequently interpreted as enabling editwarring against citation templates, and even against any code-level and non-content-visible changes to citations, a result I'm certain will not be sustained if anyone ever bothers to take the matter to ArbCom). Pretty much the last thing on earth that WP needs is further spread of this claim-staking behavior or weakening of guidelines that curtail it. I'm not really certain what to do about it, since ArbCom doesn't adjudicate content disputes, including content of non-mainspace pages, and the largely moribund WP:Mediation Committee will only address content disputes that are in mainspace. Guidelines are in a limbo state.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:42, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I followed that FAC thing and I couldn't believe how angry the one side seemed and, when faced with logical rebuttals, got even angrier. It's something I'd expect at, say, a pro wrestler's article, where the contributors might not be up on all the finer details, but these are people vetting main page content. I guess that could go to one's head. Primergrey (talk) 16:25, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's a bit mystifying, unless viewed as not a substantive matter, but simply territorial, "wiki-political" control behavior. Very human, but very unconstructive.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  17:07, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:North Korea

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:North Korea. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your post at my talk page

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Thanks for your post on my talk page.

But I have some problems with it, as described there. Andrewa (talk) 05:21, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You say If you want me to desist, then don't pointedly summon me back here [29].

I want you to desist only from making baseless allegations and using insulting language. Nothing more. I am surprised to have to have to spell that out, but I hope it is now clear. Andrewa (talk) 13:15, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've also spelled out that the words I use have clear meanings and are not "insults". I'm not responsible for your emotions or your penchant for searching for ways to find offense in everything. Yes, I have a critical opinion about some of your behaviors, and no one likes receiving criticism. It is sometimes necessary. Part of the social compact we make editing here is a willingness to listen to critical input and adjust what we do based on it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:22, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Given that you've only responded emotively not substantively, here or there, I consider the matter closed. I did notice a change in your approach at WT:MOS, the locus of the dispute, which appears to be in response to the issues I (among others) raised with what you posted there there other day, so taking the issue to your talk page appears to have been productive, even if the defensive back-and-forth there has dragged out unnecessarily.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:26, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A term can be clear and still be insulting, but pseudo-civil is both unclear and insulting. I have given other examples and can give more, but I think you should know what I mean.
Yes, I have modified my behaviour. The metaphor I used was misunderstood, and counterproductive to say the least. I am being more careful. How about you?
Given that you've only responded emotively not substantively... I'm not sure what you mean by that and suspect that I would object strongly if I did. But I don't want to prolong the discussion either... does the distinction you're making there really matter? Andrewa (talk) 00:19, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If you don't want to prolong the discussion, stop asking questions, perhaps. Toward the goal of cessation, I will decline to answer it, or any further ones.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:42, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
And for your part, stop making vague and/or baseless allegations, and using insulting language. On that basis, pax. Andrewa (talk) 03:38, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Please just stop. You are distracting me from delicate template coding with this "last word" bickering. If you want to continue this conversation, which seems evident despite your protestations to the contrary, do so at your own talk page and don't ping me, please. I'll check it when I'm idle. (And hopefully find it hatted there, too.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:48, 29 December 2016 (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.

Natural disambiguation

 Done

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs#Following naming conventions could do with some input on the subject of natural as opposed to parenthesized disambiguation, which I know you've discussed in the past. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:American Idol (season 11)

no Declined
 – per WP:DGAF.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:American Idol (season 11). Legobot (talk) 04:23, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year, SMcCandlish!

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

@Davey2010: Thanks, you too!  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:51, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Julianne Moore

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Julianne Moore. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Inside (video game)

 Done

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Yahoo! UK & Ireland listed at Redirects for discussion =

 Done

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Yahoo! UK & Ireland. Since you had some involvement with the Yahoo! UK & Ireland redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. - CHAMPION (talk) (contributions) (logs) 06:30, 10 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yahoo! Schweiz listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Yahoo! Schweiz. Since you had some involvement with the Yahoo! Schweiz redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. - CHAMPION (talk) (contributions) (logs) 06:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yahoo! Europe listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Yahoo! Europe. Since you had some involvement with the Yahoo! Europe redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. - CHAMPION (talk) (contributions) (logs) 06:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yahoo! Canada listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Yahoo! Canada. Since you had some involvement with the Yahoo! Canada redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. - CHAMPION (talk) (contributions) (logs) 06:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Green eyes

Just thought I'd let you know that I'm envious that you live in a warehouse, something I always thought would be neat. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:22, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You know, this is his basement?! ;) O Fortuna!...Imperatrix mundi. 05:30, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Warehouse Glenlivet
Ah man, Glenlivet, too? Sheeeeet! Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:38, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Beyond My Ken and Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: And I gave up drinking, so it's all just sitting there aging! I do like warehouse living (and started a Facebook group by that name, though it's not doing much yet). However, in the wake of the Ghostship fire, literally just down the street, Oakland has cracked down on residential warehouse conversions. We've been subjected to an army of inspectors and been ordered to do all kinds of retrofits and upgrades. Fortunately I don't own the place (don't have to pay for it), and under some degree of rent control (Oakland is nowhere as tenant-friendly as San Francisco or New York City in that regard, but it's getting better), and the property owners have invested enough in this place they won't just shut it down. However, my place is barely livable for the time being due to deconstruction/reconstruction mess. Half my books are in boxes. That part is pretty stressy. Still, when it's not like this I have more room for cheaper than I thought was possible in coastal, urban California. In some less popular place like Akron or Dallas, warehouse living would be super-affordable. If I get together enough $ to buy a place, it will probably be a warehouse or comparable space, if I can get the zoning permit to convert it to residential or live/work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:42, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So what to do with WP:COMICS?

I don't know how the AfD will close, but either way it does, it isn't going to solve the problems at WP:COMICS. It sounds like you've got some experience dealing with these things. What would you suggest? I hope the answer isn't ARBCOM—I've never been involved in an ARB case and am not interested in popping that cherry. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:59, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Curly Turkey: "JFC" makes me think "juicy fried chicken". Time to eat, I guess. Yeah, ARBCOM is a last resort, and won't resolve content matters (what should the guidelines say, how are they to be interpreted, does this case qualify, etc.), only behavioral matters. I'm not really sure what to do, or quite what the scope of all the issues are, though I've outlined what's in my head about it right now. I mostly tried to stay out of shaping what the comics guidelines "should" be and focused on helping clarify what they were at that time (MOS:COMICS was much more of a mess back then). Part of the issue might be the commingling of style, content, and naming conventions guidelines all at MOS:COMICS. The NC section of that in particular should be merged into WP:NCCOMICS, and the section replaced with a pointer to that guideline. This will prevent PoV-forking of the wording and its interpretation. When it's in one place, problems with its interpretation will be easier to address. As far as I recall, this merger was already agreed to, and it simply hasn't happened. I may be too "involved" now to perform that work myself any time soon.

The issues I can recall off the top of my head that have beset comics articles, butare also similar to issues raised in a lot of fiction-related editing:

  • The recent one, of assertion that the comics-focused article is necessarily the primary topic, when a character or whatever traverses multiple media/genres/continuities; plus related resistance to WP:SUMMARY splits. The view seems to be that if a character originated in comics, then comics-related material must dominate all WP coverage of the character.
  • Non-encyclopedic in-universe writing.
  • Failure to distinguish between a character in-universe (a fictional person with "agency"), a series or other work title that coincides with that of the character, and the character in the real world as an inanimate piece of intellectual property. (I think that's where you and I got into it once, about pronoun usage and such, but the memory is dim and I don't care to recycle such an argument!)
  • Fannish sources of low quality
  • Trivia, excessive detail, and non-encyclopedic "fanwanky" or "fangushing" material that doesn't comport with WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE. This is sometimes "In popular culture" trivia lists, but may also be excessive plot summaries, and piling on of trivial production details, etc.
  • Some infobox-related disputes, about some trivia stuff making it into infoboxes that arguably shouldn't be there, but I don't recall the details.
  • PoV-forking of MOS:COMICS and WP:NCCOMICS from other, broader guidelines (i.e., using the comics-specific ones to try to insert "magical exceptions" for comics that would not be agreed to if they were proposed at WT:MOS, WT:AT, or another site-wide venue). This material really needs to be pored over for cases of the comics page diverging from MOS itself, from MOS:CAPS, MOS:NUM, WP:AT, and so on. Someone like me will have to do this, because we have very few editors who have memorized most of these guidelines' rules and can detect conflicts easily.
In the interim, I think one thing worth doing is noting any time a comics-related RM or RfC appears to be going in a special pleading direction, identify whether the MOS:COMICS or NCCOMICS bits being cited really say what it's claimed they do, and if it really does conflict with a more general guideline. If it does, then open an RfC at the main guideline's talk page, with neutral notice (see my example in your Darkknight ANI request) at the talk page of comics guideline, and at WP:VPPOL, to resolve the conflict (e.g. "MOS:COMICS seems to be declaring an exception to MOS rule [whatever], but MOS itself doesn't make any such exception. Is there consensus for such an exception, and if so, should MOS itself be updated to mention it?" (or, in place of MOS, substitute MOS:CAPS, or WP:NCBOOKS or a provision of WP:AT, or whatever site-wide, less narrowly topical guideline/policy the comics one seems to conflict with).

I wouldn't notify WT:COMICS directly, since VPPOL is site-wide notice to all, and project participates who care about the guideline matter are already seeing the notice on the MOS:COMICS or NCCOMICS talk page anyway; it would be nice to get broader input before someone inevitably posts a pointer at WT:COMICS and drowns the proceedings in a bloc vote. Non-neutral notices can be addressed at ANI, as you just did. They usually don't result in sanctions, the first time, but a canvasser will think twice before doing it again, and can be sanctioned if they do it habitually. If it were a "comics versus normal encyclopedic writing" matter, I would probably leave it at that. If it's a comics-versus-other-genres matter, I think I would instead notify WT:COMICS but also all the high-level fiction projects (at least TV, film, anime, video games, novels, and maybe also fantasy and sci-fi), since it affects all of them. If it were a writing-about-fiction-versus-other-encyclopedic-writing matter that happened to be about comics in this one case, I would keep it general, and just notify the guideline pages and VPPOL, and no wikiprojects, because notifying them would stack the respondent pool heavily in favor of fiction-focused editors. Their own project participants will spread it around in due course.

Anyway, I'm not sure there's a "magic bullet" for RM/SUMMARY stuff and comics, since it's a case-by-case basis. Maybe a general principle can be derived, I dunno. We only need one article on the character of Doctor Strange, which should focus on comics and have a film section; but the TV/film material on Batman is proportionally larger and more important than for Dr. S., and necessitates multiple articles, due to multiple TV series and multiple film series, with probably an order of magnitude more people familiar with Batman from those than from comics, despite the comics having come first. I would think that Batman is a prime candidate for a summary style character article, and detailed articles on the separate versions in comics, etc. It made sense to treat the Joker this way, too, even if more minor characters like Harley Quinn can be addressed in a single article with sections. But a TV show like The Walking Dead which has forked very far from its comics origins should be treated entirely separately from the comics and vice versa as much as possible (this gets complicated when people write character articles, and generally results in two sections). A TV show like Falling Skies that also generated some comics should be addressed as a TV show article with a comics section. Etc. Most of these seem clear; it's only an issue when a comics character has huge media presence outside comics and the comics project wants to continue to "control" the topic entirely.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:49, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps what could also be done is to consolidate the number of guidelines that each of the high-level fiction projects keep. This would help avoid the higher-level guideline-bending or -breaking as other projects say "no, that doesn't work for us/Wikipedia as a whole". Factionism and cleavage could be our friends here. --Izno (talk) 13:28, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno: <Resisting urge to make boobies joke> Yes, it had occurred to me that many of these MOS:COMICS kinds of things can be merged into MOS:FICTION as sections, after paring (or at least that their common points can be), and that all the NC pages of a like sort can be merged into a WP:NCFICTION. I think that would actually be very productive. I think it would personally give me a hell of a headache though, and I would do this for sports before I would do it for fiction. I've wanted to do that for some time, after I realized that MOS:CUE (aside from needing a rewrite to read more as a guideline and less like the WP:PROJPAGE it originated as) has a lot of material in it that really pertains to sports and even other events generally, and so do the corresponding pages for other sports.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:27, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that was my purpose. :) I would be up for it, personally, but indeed it would take some time (and probably poking around those talk pages to see if the people who haunt those [WikiProject] guidelines care or how much they do if so). --Izno (talk) 19:36, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I would start drafting, based on commonality, and then after all the points in common are laid out, start a talk page thread on points where most of the projects are in line but one or two are not (i.e. could be pressured to conform), THEN invite people in. Show them something already done, not a blank slate to either throw their hands up about or do something lame with. >;-) PS: this also needs to be done with transit/transportation projects, as I'm sure Dicklyon and Tony1 would agree – highways, rail, bus systems, airports, etc. – resulting in a MOS:TRAN and WP:NCTRAN (if the latter were really necessary; it could probably just be a MOS:TRAN section). Between the three topics of fiction, sports, and transport, finally having unified, consistent rules on them would eliminate probably a good 30% of total style disputes. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:48, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It looks likely that the AfD will close with a call for an RfC on the issue. I imagine such an RfC would focus on the title- and scope-related issues brought up with Joker (comics), rather than wider WP:CONLEVEL issues, such as the recent Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Comics#Request for Comment: Quotes and italics. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:03, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Seems reasonable, though it should be at the article talk page, not the wikiproject one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:15, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, which seems reasonable? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:30, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That there should be an RfC (including one that focuses on title and scope stuff). I'm not sure AfD is in a position to call for a CONLEVEL RfC anyway, procedurally speaking. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:45, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Philip J. Cohen

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Philip J. Cohen. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

DS / MOS notice?

FYI, did you mean to leave this on Bilcat's TP, as he was the editor that undid your hatting. All the best, O Fortuna!...Imperatrix mundi. 09:19, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: No; the unhatting isn't the issue (and Bilcat didn't do anything wrong by unhatting). The battlegrounding-and-aspersions nature of the content that was hatted then unhatted is, and that was Exemplo347's content. If it had remained hatted that would have been a signal to all involved that the appropriateness was questionable; the unhatting in my view made the Ds/alert necessary because Exemplo347 is clearly under the impression that what they posted was not inappropriate (indeed, still seems to be under that impression). I had misread the diffs and thought that Exemplo347 unhatted it himself, but it doesn't really matter; the unhatting served to reinforce that mistaken impression, so the alert was needed either way. Template:Ds/alerts are not threats/warnings, they are simply notice of the applicability of WP:AC/DS scope to a particular topic, and they need not even reference a specific discussion or post at all, nor do they have to be delivered by admins. They're just a heads-up that personalizing disputes about particular topics can lead to sanctions more readily than when about most other topics. Most editors are in fact not aware of this, nor aware of which topics it applies to, which is why ArbCom wants that alert template used, even if many of us don't agree with its wording/tone.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:33, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much, that's a full and frank explanation, and bang on the money to boot. Take care! O Fortuna!...Imperatrix mundi. 11:49, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Dublin Regulation

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Dublin Regulation. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 15 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

The Barnstar of Integrity
I award you this barnstar to you SMcCandlish because you have shown to be a person of integrity and honor. Or, more simply, a stand-up guy. Antidiskriminator (talk) 10:05, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discretionary sanctions

Pro-tip: If you don't actually understand what discretionary sanctions are and how they're applied, don't go around issuing warnings regarding them. In this case, especially, it looks like a clumsy attempt to score points in a behavioral dispute, regarding advice concerning behavior that very much applies to yourself. But tell you what, you go right ahead and report me at WP:AE, and be sure to explain EXACTLY how I may have "violated" the discretionary sanctions. On top of your current forum-shopping at AE, that ought to be good for a laugh or two. --Calton | Talk 10:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at ANI, I see that you also don't understand the difference between a policy and a guideline -- or were hoping you could slip it past people without their noticing. At this point, I feel pretty safe in ignoring anything you say as being wrong, self-serving, or intellectually dishonest. --Calton | Talk 11:19, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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