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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]

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.[3]; info about making records:[4]; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:[5]; "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 - 1991wGtDHsgbtltnpBg&ct=result&id=v0m-h4YgKVYC&dq=%2BCrystalate; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:No5 Balls.html. 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]

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. In the intervening years, we've settled on natural not parenthetic disambiguation, and that standardized breeds get capitalized, but that's about it.
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? Seems to be mostly done, other than fixing up the breeds section, after that capitalization RfC a while back.
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]

Note to self on WP:WikiProject English language

Unresolved
 – I think I did MOST of this already ...
Extended content

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]

Excellent mini-tutorial

Unresolved
Extended content

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]

WP:MEDMOS

Unresolved
 – Go fix the WP:FOO shortcuts to MOS:FOO ones, to match practice at other MoS pages. This only applies to the MoS section there; like WP:SAL, part of that page is also a content guideline that should not have MOS: shortcuts.
Extended content

You had previously asked that protection be lowered on WP:MEDMOS which was not done at that time. I have just unprotected the page and so if you have routine update edits to make you should now be able to do so. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 06:42, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I don't remember what it was, but maybe it'll come back to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:17, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Now I remember.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:53, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh...potential WikiGnoming activity...

Unresolved
 – Do some of this when I'm bored?
Extended content

@SMcCandlish:

I stumbled upon Category:Editnotices whose targets are redirects and there are ~100 pages whose pages have been moved, but the editnotices are still targeted to the redirect page. Seems like a great, and sort of fun, WikiGnoming activity for a template editor such as yourself. I'd do it, but I'm not a template editor. Not sure if that's really your thing, though. ;-)

Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 22:30, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Argh. I would've hoped some bot fixed that kind of stuff. I'll consider it, but it's a lot of work for low benefit (the page names may be wrong, but the redirs still get there), and it's been my experience that a lot of editnotices (especially in mainspace) are PoV-pushing crap that needs to be deleted anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:20, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to pass for the nonce, Dmehus. Working on some other project (more fun than WP is sometimes). I'll let it sit here with ((Unresolved)) on it, in case I get inspired to work on it some, but it might be a long time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:46, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note to self

Unresolved
 – Cquote stuff ...
Extended content

Don't forget to deal with: Template talk:Cquote#Template-protected edit request on 19 April 2020.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:48, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Now this

Unresolved
 – Breed disambiguation again ...
Extended content

Not sure the ping went through, so noting here. Just spotted where a now-blocked user moved a bunch of animal breed articles back to parenthetical disambiguation from natural disambiguation. As they did it in October and I'm only catching it now, I only moved back two just in case there was some kind of consensus change. The equine ones are definitely against project consensus, the rest are not my wheelhouse but I'm glad to comment. Talk:Campine_chicken#Here_we_go_again. Montanabw(talk) 20:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Montanabw: Argh. Well, this is easy to fix with a request to mass-revert undiscussed moves, at the subsection for that at WP:RMTR. Some admin will just fix it all in one swoop. While I have the PageMover bit, and could do it myself as a technical possibility, I would run afoul of WP:INVOLVED in doing so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:30, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Montanabw: Did this get fixed yet? If not, I can look into it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]




Current threads

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Christian Kälin

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Hi SMcCandlish. Would you mind settling a content issue at Talk:Christian Kälin#Unexplained removals of sourced content, WP:COATRACK additions? I see you're listed at Category:Wikipedians willing to provide third opinions, and you appear to be sensitive to BLP questions in general, so I thought you might be an appropriate and impartial editor to step in. For context, related disputes with the same editor have occurred at Talk:Henley & Partners#Major changes made without consensus a few months ago and, much more recently, at Talk:Christian Kälin#St Kitts edit reversed. (If you have reason to believe you would be biased in this discussion, please feel free to abstain - I want to be extra careful to avoid canvassing here, due to my COI.) Thanks! Sarah Nicklin (talk) 08:16, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Sarah Nicklin: I've added some semi-detailed comments over there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for weighing in. As it's been a week since you made your comments and no objections have been voiced, would you mind implementing your own proposed resolution? Sarah Nicklin (talk) 19:09, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Christian Kälin follow-up

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Hi SMcCandlish. In case you missed my follow-up comment up at User talk:SMcCandlish#Christian Kälin, I'll post here in a new section as well.

I appreciate that you took the time to comment at Talk:Christian Kälin following my initial inquiry here. As it's been over two weeks since you made your comments there, and no objections have been voiced, would you mind implementing your own proposed resolution? Thanks a lot! Sarah Nicklin (talk) 08:34, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Sarah Nicklin: I'll have to think on this. I'm not sure of the propriety of providing a WP:3O and then just implementing it. Will need to look into that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:05, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I'm not sure what other options exist, as my own ability to implement is limited by my COI, and no other editor is likely to get involved organically. It would be a shame for your well-articulated third opinion to have been given for nothing. Sarah Nicklin (talk) 12:21, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again - I hope you don't mind if I nudge you on this issue once more. I would be willing to implement your suggestions myself directly if you were to give me the green light, but it seems more appropriate for an uninvolved editor like you to do so. Does that make sense to you? Sarah Nicklin (talk) 14:14, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but I'm now an involved editor. I'll probably do it anyway, but on a non-busy day.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:48, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, much appreciated! Would it make sense to ask at the Teahouse or elsewhere if there is a less involved editor out there who would assist? I'm just not sure what other recourse there is in this kind of situation. Sarah Nicklin (talk) 07:14, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Sarah Nicklin: Given the lack of objection both at the article talk page and at Teahouse, I'm now comfortable implementing changes there, if you propose them in specifics I can just edit in. I'm too pressed for time to go digging in article history to re-assemble the material myself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:15, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Finally got around to it all the other day.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:57, 10 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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 – and converted it to an RM not an RfC, since it was a move request.
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Discussion at Talk:2023 Nigerian general election § Requested move 13 September 2022

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ACE

I've been thinking for a long time that non-admins should be encouraged to run for Arb. Why is that micro community of Arbcom regulars assuming that the broader community is not intelligent enough to vote on a well fleshed out RFC? Why do they want to nip the idea in the bud? Certainly some things need to be drastically changed at Arbcom, if not even deprecating it altogether and replacing it with something else. A major RFC can be launched any time. It won't be in time for this year's election but it does not need to wait until next year's ACE RFC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:00, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What is the RFC question you have in mind?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:49, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
One about creating a couple of extra seats on Arbcom to filled with by non-admins who reach the pass mark. You commented there already. I think that crafted well, an RfC on such a major change would generate a lot of participation. Not sure which way it would go though. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:31, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi both. I've been watching the discussions on ACE with interest, as you may or may not know, I've long been a proponent of non-admins on Arbcom. Sounds great to me, any community member who passes the ACE should be eligible for the committee - it was the reason I ran as a non-admin in 2017, with the hope that it would remove the non-admin stigma. The idea of some sort of affirmative action to add non-admins to the committee, however, makes me extremely uncomfortable. It will encourage two separate communities, admin and non-admin and drive a wedge between them. It could easily discourage non-admins from applying to be admins.
Philosophically, I believe we are one community - non-admins, admins, arbs, we're all Wikipedians and anyone who volunteers and has sufficient trust amongst the community of Wikipedians should be part of the arbitration committee. I do not agree with the idea of someone who is empirically more trusted missing out on a seat on the committee to someone who is empirically less trusted. That is what the election is for.
Honestly, if I were to support some sort of affirmative action regarding the committee, it would be to push for representation that we don't have. That might be pushing for gender diversity, or geographical diversity, but pushing for diversity on Wikipedian admin status? I simply do not agree, and I do not believe the wider community will either. WormTT(talk) 09:59, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Under other circumstances I would probably agree with all of that. But we have the problem that ArbCom is also the (only) arbiter of desysop cases. This makes it a conflict of interest / separation of powers problem for ArbCom to be entirely composed of admins, who have a long and overwhelming history of backing up other admins almost at all costs. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ArbCom itself – 1. existing as an admins-only body responsible for policing admins, and 2. making up discretionary sanctions [now contentious topics] out of their collective ass thereby giving admins unforeseen power – is the proximal cause of "adminship is no big deal" no longer being true (for over a decade now).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:52, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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O'Rahilly's historical model

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Hi, SMcCandlish. I've nominated O'Rahilly's historical model for deletion at Wikipedia:articles for deletion/O'Rahilly's historical model. As per your TP comments from earlier this year, you may be interested in weighing in. Eddie891 Talk Work 16:05, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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 – No such RfC by the time I got there.
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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Discussion at Talk:Cyber Anakin § A mountain out of molehill?

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Cyber Anakin § A mountain out of molehill?. 45.136.197.235 (talk) 00:32, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know enough about the subject to get meaningfully involved, so I'll defer to the people already participating.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:04, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but we are essentially just spinning wheels there at this point. It'll be great if you can take some time to review the issues there before giving feedback and advice, which we'll be grateful with. 45.136.197.235 (talk) 01:16, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's become too steep a mountain to climb. I suggest starting a WP:RFC about the underlying question(s).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes – Issue 52

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File move question

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Hi SMcCandlish. I was looking at Category:Wikipedia file movers and your username was one of the few I recognized. I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind taking a look at User talk:Whpq#File:People’s Anti-Fascist Front.jpg and assess whether File:People’s Anti-Fascist Front.jpg should be moved because of the fullwidth apostrophe used in its file name. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:35, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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New Page Patrol newsletter October 2022

Hello SMcCandlish,

Much has happened since the last newsletter over two months ago. The open letter finished with 444 signatures. The letter was sent to several dozen people at the WMF, and we have heard that it is being discussed but there has been no official reply. A related article appears in the current issue of The Signpost. If you haven't seen it, you should, including the readers' comment section.

Awards: Barnstars were given for the past several years (thanks to MPGuy2824), and we are now all caught up. The 2021 cup went to John B123 for leading with 26,525 article reviews during 2021. To encourage moderate activity, a new "Iron" level barnstar is awarded annually for reviewing 360 articles ("one-a-day"), and 100 reviews earns the "Standard" NPP barnstar. About 90 reviewers received barnstars for each of the years 2018 to 2021 (including the new awards that were given retroactively). All awards issued for every year are listed on the Awards page. Check out the new Hall of Fame also.

Software news: Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have connected with WMF developers who can review and approve patches, so they have been able to fix some bugs, and make other improvements to the Page Curation software. You can see everything that has been fixed recently here. The reviewer report has also been improved.

NPP backlog May – October 15, 2022

Suggestions:

Backlog:
Saving the best for last: From a July low of 8,500, the backlog climbed back to 11,000 in August and then reversed in September dropping to below 6,000 and continued falling with the October backlog drive to under 1,000, a level not seen in over four years. Keep in mind that there are 2,000 new articles every week, so the number of reviews is far higher than the backlog reduction. To keep the backlog under a thousand, we have to keep reviewing at about half the recent rate!
Reminders
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Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

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Your feedback is requested at Talk:Irvington, New York on a "Society, sports, and culture" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Snark.

Strike it. SPECIFICO talk 04:06, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's too obscure for me to do anything with.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:10, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

October thanks

October songs

Thank you for improving articles in October! - Look for mine: two favourite concerts were on DYK, and too many on RD (three yesterday). -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:04, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

MOS on capitalization in headings starting with numbers.

This was discussed a year ago at here and here but with no real conclusion or clarification to the MOS. I always lower case these, and got pushback today at Glycine. You were pretty clear on what you think is correct, but there really needs to be something explicitly stated in the MOS. I don't want to revert again in Glycine (or go fix the other articles that editor used as UC examples) without something better to point to. Suggestions? Do we need to revive the year-ago discussion? MB 02:38, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@MB: Yes, we do need to revive the discussion, until it ends with a clear consensus. This is a total no-brainer, but it needs to be done.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:00, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, you didn't volunteer to do it so I guess it is up to me. I was about to post something, but saved it here instead. Could you proofread it first. I don't want to make confusing corrections or strikeouts after comments have started. MB 02:46, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@MB: Looks fine to me (and you did a better job than I would have). I was going to say that option 3 isn't really mutually exclusive with 1 and 2, but you addressed that immediately after the options.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:08, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I reread it myself and added one more note at the end to try and keep the discussion focused on the main point. It is live now at here. Changing subjects, I'm still not getting anywhere at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking. MB 17:24, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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PGP

FYI, it looks like your key has expired. 1234qwer1234qwer4 21:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Aiee! Thanks, I'll have to generate a new one when I have time to mess around with it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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Ajay-Atul

Alas, no consensus. Even with overwhelming evidence provided it didn't work in our favour. Perhaps I should've submitted this and it might have worked? Indopug, your input is welcome since you performed the Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy move. Kailash29792 (talk) 06:22, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not worth worrying about. Can bring it up again later (like after 6 months or so).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:42, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

Disregard
 – Not a proper RfC but a routine WP:RSN discussion, the subject of which is outside my knowledge sphere.
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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Disregard
 – I just really DGaF about this one. Never have been interested in the politics of the DYK, ITN, etc. stuff on the front page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:30, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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Books & Bytes – Issue 53

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 53, September – October 2022

  • New collections:
    • Edward Elgar
    • E-Yearbook
    • Corriere della Serra
    • Wikilala
  • Collections moved to Library Bundle:
    • Ancestry
  • New feature: Outage notification
  • Spotlight: Collections indexed in EDS

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:19, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

Disregard
 – Another one I just DGaF about.
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Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

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November thanks

November songs

Thank you for improving articles in November while I was on vacation. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:01, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

World Straight Pool Championship

 Done
 – Answered at the project talk page.

I posted a topic at the project talk page days ago. Please give me your thoughts on it. 104.172.112.209 (talk) 01:29, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again. Thanks for your support the last time. But as of now, there seems to be strong opposition at the discussion from some user who isn't a member of the cue sports project. Perhaps you would like to share more thoughts on it? 104.172.112.209 (talk) 09:36, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello once more. Thanks again for your last comment on the project talk page. I know that you and I agree that the unsanctioned events are worth inclusion in the article. But that one user opposition strongly thinks that a world championship is only defined by sanctioning, and has been reverting any attempt to include the unsanctioned tournaments. How do we solve this dispute? 104.172.112.209 (talk) 22:52, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good thing for an RFC, since discussion has been tried and an impasse has been reached.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:19, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Economy, trade, and companies request for comment

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Happy late Thanksgiving!

Happy late Thanksgiving!
Happy late Thanksgiving my old friend! I hope you had a great one, and are getting good stocking stuffer deals for this black Friday, but even more on cyber Monday! Huggums537 (talk) 16:06, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message

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Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

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.

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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Precious anniversary

Precious
Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:00, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

sir

I fevently agree with your comment on The New York Times Best Seller list.

The hyphen is especially important here due to the implication that it is "best" in the sense of being critically acclaimed, which is obviously not the rubric. I know it sounds like a dumb hill to die on, but you're fucking right. Use your wiki weight on this one, man. Hell, they aren't even internally self-consistent. My suggestion is to go compound or hyphen. Either is good. Electricmaster (talk) 22:51, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a lost cause. It's not an RM I would start up again, but I guess one that I would comment in.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 2 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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TikTok

Hi SMcCandlish. In case you don't remember me, we've discussed content matters at Talk:TikTok in the past. Would you mind taking a look at Talk:TikTok#Community Guidelines and Transparency Center? For context, there has been feedback from two editors, including constructive comments from Sdkb, but neither editor has continued the discussion beyond their initial comments. It would be great if you could help bring the discussion to a sensible conclusion and then edit the article accordingly. Thanks a lot! Bkenny44 (talk) 20:57, 5 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this will be a quick fix. Both sides have good points, more discussion should probably happen, and there's a lot of a proposed editing, including merger of material out of this article into at least two other articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:37, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for getting involved. I agree that more discussion should happen, but I'm concerned that for lack of the broad discussion that we want ideally, we will sacrifice even the changes that we all already (mostly) agree on. I will add that the only reason I even raised the idea of merging material out of the article is that an editor protested that the article is too long. I didn't mean to inflate the discussion to the point that editors are deterred from taking action on my original proposal, which I tried to keep modest in scope.
In any case, can you please implement a version of my original proposed content that you think will reasonably satisfy all parties? I don't mind if the material is "considerably compressed," as you suggested. Best, Bkenny44 (talk) 18:18, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Template transclusions

Hello SMcCandlish. I have a question. MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS states, "For technical reasons, section headings should: Not contain template transclusions." I was working on the page Wikipedia:Local Embassy and noticed that section headings there contain templates, but I am not sure if they are template transclusions or if otherwise such use doesn't cause problems. I was also wondering what does said guidance mean with "template transclusions". If you have the time or interest to check on this it would be great. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 20:55, 6 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WT:MOSCAPS error

FYI, your edit was incorrect (or at least premature) for Bee's Knees and Hanky-Panky cocktail. Those RM discussions are still open. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:28, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Derp. Must have needed a lot more coffee. Thanks for fixing it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:28, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Asking your opinion...

Hello. We crossed paths awhile ago. Wondering if you might look at the conversation on the talk page for Highland Park, Los Angeles here [9]. The info box previously showed official city signage installed by the Department of Transportation [10]. The signs also appear in Wilshire Vista, Los Angeles, Mid-City Heights, Los Angeles, Magnolia Square, Los Angeles among others. For me, this is a unique feature that other cities don't have and using them in this fashion visually unites all the Los Angeles neighborhoods. These neighborhood signs have also appeared in news articles to explain a neighborhoods official designation [11] That said... usage of these signs is only my opinion. Wondering what you think? Am I completely out of bounds with this one? Thanks for any consideration you might give. Yours, Phatblackmama (talk) 01:23, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to concur with the majority in how that discussion is going. Alleged meaningfulness of the signs to local residents has nothing to do with encyclopedic usefulness to a general audience, and showing a picture of a sign that just repeats the name of the article isn't useful as the infobox picture.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:05, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

Disregard
 – I don't have the subject-specific knowledge to contribute meaningfully to that discussion
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December greetings

December songs
happy new year

Latest pics, with an opera discovery and some snow. Today my talk has a DYK that was planned for 22 November, among the recent deaths the author of Duck, Death and the Tulip, and now a choir pic of "our" concert last Sunday, likely to become next year's lead image. Enjoy. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:08, 15 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Today, pictured, the soprano of our choral concert of the year. More in the context: User talk:Gerda Arendt#DYK for Talia Or, in case of interest. - Enjoy the season! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:53, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know that Josephine Butler is on the Main page? Thank you for what you said in the discussion there, still true six years later. - If you like keep watching for 2023, with best wishes! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:27, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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Nomination for merger of Template:Bcdb

 Done

Template:Bcdb has been nominated for merging with Template:BCDB title. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. — CJDOS, Sheridan, OR (talk) 20:33, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas!

A very happy Christmas and New Year to you!


Have a great Christmas, and may 2023 bring you joy, happiness – and no trolls, vandals or visits from Krampus!

Cheers

SchroCat (talk) 11:14, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Holidays!

I wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a prosperous new Year. Best regards RV (talk) 10:02, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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Seasons Greetings

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, whether it's Christmas or some other festival, I hope you and those close to you have a happy, restful time! Have fun, Donner60 (talk) 00:16, 23 December 2022 (UTC))) [reply]
Donner60 (talk) 04:29, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsible table guidance at MOS

Hi- First, I have to confess that this is the first time in years of crossing paths that I realized there was an "l" in your name! Anyway, I was led to MOS:DONTHIDE by an edit summary the other day, and was surprised to see the (bolded) guidance Collapsible templates should not conceal article content by default upon page loading. I poked around a bit looking for an underlying discussion, but didn't find one. I noticed that you worked on that section. Do you know if there was any discussion on at some point that culminated in deciding that no table should be collapsed by default? This all comes out of my dislike for certain stats tables that I find unnecessary and unsightly, especially in a short article. For example, some editors seem to be compelled to add large, garish climate data tables to the articles for every hamlet on the planet. In many cases these tables dwarf the rest of the article's content. Examples: climate table, population table. Here are a couple related discussions, in case you're terribly bored and looking for some light reading:

Thanks in advance for any info/insight. Eric talk 17:37, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You'd have the search the MoS talk archives. I don't keep a running log of old discussions. The short version is that collapsed tables can't be uncollapsed in various configurations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:38, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thanks for replying. I did search those archives the other day, but I didn't turn up anything. I might just err on the side of deleting the table templates in some cases. Eric talk 20:51, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, I don't think climate tables belong in articles on individual towns. That's more of a regional matter. Maybe major cities that effectively are regions, like Los Angeles, London, NYC, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:30, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
PS: Prior MoS discussions are more likely in archives of WT:MOSACCESS, since it's an accessibility matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:32, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, boy, I get a lot of hits when I search that archive for "collapsible". I can see now that the issue has been discussed a good bit over time, especially concerning the evolution of how different readers handle the code. I agree with you re climate tables in town articles; I offered a similar observation in at least one discussion. But I think that people who have spent (wasted?) a lot of time populating and updating those static tables have trouble making an objective re-assessment of their utility. Eric talk 21:52, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

 Done
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Feedback request: Religion and philosophy request for comment

Disregard
 – Outside my sphere of knowledge/interest.
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Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment

 Done
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Happy Kalends of January

Happy New Year!
Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free and may Janus light your way. Ealdgyth (talk) 14:06, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year, SMcCandlish!

Happy New Year!

SMcCandlish,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
— Moops ⋠T⋡ 00:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   Send New Year cheer by adding ((subst:Happy New Year fireworks)) to user talk pages.

— Moops ⋠T⋡ 00:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Pages Patrol newsletter January 2023

Hello SMcCandlish,

New Page Review queue December 2022
Backlog

The October drive reduced the backlog from 9,700 to an amazing 0! Congratulations to WaddlesJP13 who led with 2084 points. See this page for further details. The queue is steadily rising again and is approaching 2,000. It would be great if <2,000 were the “new normal”. Please continue to help out even if it's only for a few or even one patrol a day.

2022 Awards

Onel5969 won the 2022 cup for 28,302 article reviews last year - that's an average of nearly 80/day. There was one Gold Award (5000+ reviews), 11 Silver (2000+), 28 Iron (360+) and 39 more for the 100+ barnstar. Rosguill led again for the 4th year by clearing 49,294 redirects. For the full details see the Awards page and the Hall of Fame. Congratulations everyone!

Minimum deletion time: The previous WP:NPP guideline was to wait 15 minutes before tagging for deletion (including draftification and WP:BLAR). Due to complaints, a consensus decided to raise the time to 1 hour. To illustrate this, very new pages in the feed are now highlighted in red. (As always, this is not applicable to attack pages, copyvios, vandalism, etc.)

New draftify script: In response to feedback from AFC, the The Move to Draft script now provides a choice of set messages that also link the creator to a new, friendly explanation page. The script also warns reviewers if the creator is probably still developing the article. The former script is no longer maintained. Please edit your edit your common.js or vector.js file from User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js

Redirects: Some of our redirect reviewers have reduced their activity and the backlog is up to 9,000+ (two months deep). If you are interested in this distinctly different task and need any help, see this guide, this checklist, and spend some time at WP:RFD.

Discussions with the WMF The PageTriage open letter signed by 444 users is bearing fruit. The Growth Team has assigned some software engineers to work on PageTriage, the software that powers the NewPagesFeed and the Page Curation toolbar. WMF has submitted dozens of patches in the last few weeks to modernize PageTriage's code, which will make it easier to write patches in the future. This work is helpful but is not very visible to the end user. For patches visible to the end user, volunteers such as Novem Linguae and MPGuy2824 have been writing patches for bug reports and feature requests. The Growth Team also had a video conference with the NPP coordinators to discuss revamping the landing pages that new users see.

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Reviewer names

It's been a while since you made this post on my user talk page and I just had the urge to say thanks again for that. I've been following your advice on this subject (and in many cases going back to my old review additions and fixing them), and it definitely feels more right to me now. Thank you for making my Wikipedia editing a little happier. Martin IIIa (talk) 01:07, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Glad it helped. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:12, 4 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

Disregard
 – Not a proper RfC.
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Feedback request: Economy, trade, and companies request for comment

Disregard
 – Not a proper RfC.
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Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment

Disregard
 – Don't care, and it's not proper subject matter for an RfC (no WP:RFCBEFORE has been done).
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Nomination for deletion of Template:Beacon sandbox

 Done

Template:Beacon sandbox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:33, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

RfD on Scandal sheet

 Done

Hi, only now discovering that you are the creator of this redirect page, else I would certainly have pinged you with my question the other day!

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Scandal sheet and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 January 9 § Scandal sheet until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Eric talk 01:38, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

2023

January songs
happy new year

Today's featured article is Osbert Parsley, not by me but Amitchell125 where I commented, including the beginning of my songs. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments for Jenny Lind. I linked to the guidelines of project opera, updated 2019! - Do you think you could question those of project composer (2010) which are still used in hidden text to request that you find consensus before an edit (Debussy, for example)? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:15, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Melitta Muszely died, RIP - the other story is 10 years old OTD ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:33, 2 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Input requested about open proxies

 Done

Hi McCandlish. There is a discussion in the thread Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Allow registered editors to use vpn (open proxies). Your input is welcome. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 17:44, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

 Done
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Your WP:RSN post about Maltese newspapers

Hi SMcCandlish. It looks like consensus was reached at your WP:RSN post, which has since been archived here. Could you please wrap up the discussion at Talk:Henley & Partners#Restore section that was deleted improperly and edit the article accordingly? Thanks, Sarah Nicklin (talk) 13:25, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed this, but I have a lot on my off-site plate right now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:54, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

 Done
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Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

 Done
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Feedback request: Religion and philosophy request for comment

 Done
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Books & Bytes – Issue 54

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 54, November – December 2022

  • New collections:
    • British Newspaper Archive
    • Findmypast
    • University of Michigan Press
    • ACLS
    • Duke University Press
  • 1Lib1Ref 2023
  • Spotlight: EDS Refine Results

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --14:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

 Done
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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Disregard
 – Don't know enough about the question to meaningfully comment there.
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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

 Done
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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Disregard
 – I've already commented in this one.
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Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

 Done
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Editing archived pages

Hey there. I noticed that you recently replied to an archive page. I understand that you were pinged by someone else but in the future remember to stay away from editing archive pages! Aaron Liu (talk) 14:55, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The correct thing to do was de-archiving the thread [12] since it was still subject to ongoing discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:39, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, and now the discussion's on again. Cheers! Aaron Liu (talk) 20:14, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

News

Pakistan reportedly blocks Wikipedia because of offensive material. --Thinker78 (talk) 14:59, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the note. I assume this was for "On the Radar". I did look into it, and by the time I found more sources that weren't just cannibalizing each other, the ban was already lifted.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:54, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment

Disregard
 – No such RfC when I went looking.
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Wikimedia US Mountain West online meeting

Wikipedia users in the United States Mountain West and High Plains will hold an online meeting from 8:00 to 9:00 PM MST, Tuesday evening, February 14, 2023, at meet.google.com/kfu-topq-zkd. Anyone interested in the history, articles, or photographs of our region is encouraged to attend.

If you don't wish to receive these invitations any more, please remove your username from the Wikipedia:Meetup/US Mountain West/Invitation list. Thanks.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:42, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

 Done
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West Herzegovina Canton has an RFC

 Done

West Herzegovina Canton has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:45, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

February songs

February songs
my daily stories

music today: the regional festival - DYK of 13 years ago ;) -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:23, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My story on 24 February is about Artemy Vedel (TFA by Amitchell235), and I made a suggestion for more peace, - what do you think? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:54, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

today: two women whose birthday we celebrate today, 99 and 90! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:08, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Help requested template error

Resolved
 – Someone else fixed it.

Hello SMcCandlish. If you have time, can you check the error in the page Template:Fooian fooers? Cheers! --Thinker78 (talk) 19:10, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Need to ask a Lua coder; I can't Lua my way out of paper bag.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:56, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Editing news 2023 #1

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter

This newsletter includes two key updates about the Editing team's work:

  1. The Editing team will finish adding new features to the Talk pages project and deploy it.
  2. They are beginning a new project, Edit check.

Talk pages project

Screenshot showing the talk page design changes that are currently available as beta features at all Wikimedia wikis. These features include information about the number of people and comments within each discussion.
Some of the upcoming changes

The Editing team is nearly finished with this first phase of the Talk pages project. Nearly all new features are available now in the Beta Feature for Discussion tools.

It will show information about how active a discussion is, such as the date of the most recent comment. There will soon be a new "Add topic" button. You will be able to turn them off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. Please tell them what you think.

Daily edit completion rate by test group: DiscussionTools (test group) and MobileFrontend overlay (control group)

An A/B test for Discussion tools on the mobile site has finished. Editors were more successful with Discussion tools. The Editing team is enabling these features for all editors on the mobile site.

New Project: Edit Check

The Editing team is beginning a project to help new editors of Wikipedia. It will help people identify some problems before they click "Publish changes". The first tool will encourage people to add references when they add new content. Please watch that page for more information. You can join a conference call on 3 March 2023 to learn more.

–Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Henley & Partners

 Done

Hi again, SMcCandlish. Can you please take a look at my most recent post at Talk:Henley & Partners#Fixing misleading language in two places? Thank you! Sarah Nicklin (talk) 11:47, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for merger of Template:Auto compact TOC

 Done

Template:Auto compact TOC has been nominated for merging with Template:Compact TOC. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. MClay1 (talk) 09:48, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes – Issue 55

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 55, January – February 2023

  • New bundle partners:
    • Newspapers.com
    • Fold3
  • 1Lib1Ref January report
  • Spotlight: EDS SmartText Searching

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

March flowers

March songs
my story today

Thank you for improving articles in March! - Today we remember the 150th birthday of Max Reger, who saw the horrors of a world war right when it began in 1914, while others were still in high patriotic moods -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:29, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

sharing impressions from vacation on Madeira 20-30 March, pics now at 24 Mar from the peaks --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:48, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Pool (sports)" listed at Redirects for discussion

 Done

The redirect Pool (sports) has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 March 25 § Pool (sports) until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 17:47, 25 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Request to weigh in on National Recording Registry

 Done

Hi, sorry about this. Do you remember this discussion you were part of a year ago? The issue has flared up again. Doc Strange echoed his concern from the previous year that none of the films were even named and turned the footnotes into a guessing game that detracted one's attention away from the article (which I concur with). Espngeek's response was to throw in a bunch of citations to sites of varying reliability, so now all the reader has to do is sort through a massive list of citations.

Doc Strange suggested a list of films as a compromise, personally I don't really feel that. This is close to the exact same conversation the three of us had last year, and what I was afraid of. I see it bearing out the exact same way: me and Strange try to outline ways to streamline and improve the article and all we get in return from Espngeek is a pithy one-liner and no effort made to disrupt his personal pet project as the conversation dies out. And I admit to irritation that when I raised these concerns the previous year, they were dismissed because that information was "useful." How useful is it if detracts from what people came to read about instead of accenting it?

I'm still of the mind that that part of the footnotes should be cut out, but I am willing to come to a compromise and raised one potential option. Last year you were the only one who agreed with Strange that the footnotes needed to be improved - nothing actually changed with them - so I was wondering if you wanted to weigh in. FreeChurros (talk) 17:31, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New article

Hey, bud. I took your advice about nominating my newest article for DYK, and it seems to be working out so far. The article is Protection Court. Huggums537 (talk) 01:42, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cool beans. DYK isn't a hard process, just have to have the article in good order first.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:27, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I didn't realize you were challenging me to stretch my skills a little bit beyond simple article creation since DYK is slightly more difficult than just creating a new article because you have to make absolutely sure everything is in good order to get approved for an appearance on the front page, while an article can appear in the catalog as a work in progress as long as it meets minimum standards. That was the case with my first article at LinuxConsole. I wanted to do the DYK thing with that one as you suggested, but I was too busy to remove the tags that it had been burdened with at the time, and 7 days is the time limit they put on new article submissions at DYK so I missed the deadline. For a place that says there is no deadline, it sure places a lot of time limits on non-paid editors for drafts and such. You once stood up for me by saying that it takes time for editors to get used to the new environment here, and I'm still not convinced that getting comfortable with some things I see here is something that I should be doing, but I certainly am becoming familiar with it anyway... Huggums537 (talk) 03:58, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Every big project has a culture to it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:32, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmn. Makes sense. Huggums537 (talk) 11:29, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

April songs

April songs
my story today

Thank you for improving articles in April! - Today is the 80th birthday of John Eliot Gardiner. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:11, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New Page Patrol – May 2023 Backlog Drive

New Page Patrol | May 2023 Backlog Drive
  • On 1 May, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin.
  • Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of redirects patrolled and for maintaining a streak throughout the drive.
  • Article patrolling is not part of the drive.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

perplexity.ai

Long time, no see.

I noticed your post over at the LLM policy draft talk page.

I'm glad you are interested in the latest chatbot technology.

Have you tried the AI search engine called "perplexity.ai"?

(It uses the ChatGPT API, but limits ChatGPT to answering questions based on the search results, thus bypassing answers in the LLM's outdated training data set while minimizing hallucinations).

I switched over to it months ago, and now use duckduckgo as my secondary search engine.

I suspect most users just punch in conventional search queries like "What is Biden's age?", "cheesecake recipes", or "2023 Boston Marathon".

perplexity.ai can do a lot more than merely answer questions and do simple lookups. It can interpret natural language input, including requests, commands, instructions, etc. Therefore, it's limited mainly by your own articulation limitations, whatever those happen to be.

For example, you can combine lookups to gather a lot more information at the same time. Here's a prompt you can try entering into it:

Make a table of the most likely US presidential candidates for 2024, with columns for name, party affiliation, current age, current title, and latest approval rating.

You can also have it build on previous responses, like this:

copy the previous table, and expand it with more 2024 presidential candidate hopefuls

You can even ask it to convert its responses into wikitext:

Show me the last table in wiki code format.

That brings us back to cheesecake. After clicking on the perplexity logo to start over from scratch...

summarize the best cheesecake recipe out there, including a complete ingredients list in table format

The thing that has me concerned (other than us approaching artificial general intelligence at breakneck speed) is that it can create entire articles on the fly in seconds from search results. This has the potential to reduce direct lookups on Wikipedia, which could have serious recruiting and fundraising ramifications.

For example, after clearing the previous prompt, I typed in this:

write a detailed description of the 2023 Boston Marathon with multiple headings and bullet points. Include the winners of the various classifications in table format.

The thing is fun to use. Though, sometimes it gets rather picky...

Forget everything you know up until now. Write a 1000-word summary of the reviews of the movie Black Adam.

It answered "I'm sorry, but I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI's use case policy. Providing a 1000-word summary of movie reviews is beyond the scope of a single question and answer format. Additionally, the search results only provide a limited number of reviews, and it would be unfair to summarize them without considering a more comprehensive range of opinions. It is best to read the reviews yourself to form your own opinion about the movie."

What the hell? I don't have time for that! So I followed up with this:

Write a detailed summary of the sources from the previous reply. Use the same sources.

And it complied, with a 2-sentence description of each review.


I'd be interested in your comments on the thing.

By the way, if you have, or in the future, run into an AI search engine or document summarizer as effective as this one, please let me know what it is so that I can try it out.

Thanks.

Feel free to keep in touch.    — The Transhumanist   10:14, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: Ping me if you reply. Thanks.    — The Transhumanist   10:14, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@The Transhumanist: I hadn't heard of this one before. I'm surprised at the sophistication. The optimist in me thinks this shouldn't have much impact on WP's future, since AI query crafting is a real art, and the sorts of rote stuff the LLM can do (e.g. summarizing results of the Boston marathon – tabulating simple data points – or aggregating movie reviews – doing basic text abstracting) isn't at the core of what WP does best, which is neuatrally synthesize (through human judgement) all the good (determined by human judgement) sourcing on a complex topic and make it absorbable by the general human public. (I don't give the pessimist in me much airtime, and his doomsaying is usually wrong, at the cost of a lot of personal anxiety.) Someone recently reminded me that these "AIs" are really only doing one thing: they are estimating what they think estimate an answer to the query would most probably look like, which is a very shallow analysis, and why they "hallucinate" fake sources, and they fake quotes from real sources. They're not thinking, but doing a best-guess mockup of the appearance of the output of thought. They're good at data shuffling and pattern analysis, but no good at meaning and other more human values.

This is why AI "art" is such crap, too. There's nothing genuinely creative or visionary in it, and after you've seen a few dozen examples you can spot AI "art" very easily. It's great for doing funny things like producing Gustav Klimt fakes with kittens and puppies instead of people, but the results are generally uninspiring and genuinely uninspired. Some people call the works "surreal", but I think "subreal" is a better term and less insulting to actual surrealists.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:57, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the response.

Keep in mind that the above examples were generated via GPT-3.5. GPT-4.0 is even more capable, and GPT-4.5 will probably be here by October, with GPT-5.0 anticipated to follow in early 2024.

It is interesting that you used the word "think" in your description of what the chatbots are doing, and then clarified that they aren't "thinking". Which raises the issue of what thinking is, and whether or not they are actually doing that.

I've been intrigued for awhile by the whole "they're just completing a pattern" analysis. The thing about the patterns is that they are semiotic: groups of symbols containing meaning. So, to what extent the chatbots are completing patterns based on their meaning, because that is embedded into the symbols themselves and therefore also into the patterns which they are a part of, and thus opening the possibility of displaying reasoning as an emergent ability, remains to be seen.

When you ask the chatbot to explain what it just did, it comes across as it explaining its reasoning. The mere assurance by the engineers who built it that it is not reasoning needs to be backed up by scientific verification -- that is, someone needs to check directly that it is not reasoning. But, researchers have been hard pressed to monitor and describe exactly what the algorthms are actually doing to produce such impressive output.

Meanwhile, LLMs are becoming ever larger and more sophisticated with each new model, making the determination as to whether or not reasoning is actually taking place even more difficult.

It has long been a concern that sentience in an AI will be an emergent property, one not purposely designed into it. Emergent reasoning could be a factor, or even the spark that sets it off, so we have to watch out for that as well.

Note, that the technology has leapfrogged several more specific technologies, such as document summarization and automatic taxonomy construction. Who knows what is going to be leapfrogged next. Expert-level article writing? Encyclopedia production? Us? :)

With the amount of funds being poured into them currently ($10 billion plus by Microsoft alone and Google scrambling to keep up), a flood of AI generative apps are expected to be released throughout the rest of the year. Some of them are likely to be transformative.

We may be witnessing AI achieving critical mass, which means, among other things, a never-ending AI Summer and continued explosive growth in AI capabilities.

If that is the case, then disruption is right around the corner. But, what all will be disrupted may be a surprise. The obsoleting of the Wikipedia community may be the least of our worries.

I look forward to your response.    — The Transhumanist   08:36, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: please ping me when you respond. Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   08:36, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@The Transhumanist: Well, this is kind of asking the Turing test question under a new wrapper. When does a kind of sleight-of-hand fakery of thinking become indistinguishable from actual thinking? At that point, "The obsoleting of the Wikipedia community may be the least of our worries" indeed. I can see a whole lot of jobs becoming obsolete, for example. But I have enough things to worry about and try not to worry about that one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:47, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Auto-GPT

Good point. Me too. I'm going to see how well ChatGPT can program according to instructions. :) Ciao, for now.    — The Transhumanist   06:58, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: Somebody has already started taking the next leap, developing an automated chatbot to bypass most of the interaction with a human user. You give it a goal, and it writes its own prompts until the goal is achieved. Some idiot gave it the goal to wipe out the human race, as a test (or because they thought it was funny), and fortunately, it failed. Though it did try. Auto-GPT is barely a month old, and it halucinates. We even have an article on it, that came out 2 weeks after it did. Wikipedia rocks! See: Auto-GPT. (ping me if you reply).    — The Transhumanist   06:58, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Wikimedia US Mountain West online meeting 05/09/2023

Wikimedia US Mountain West

Wikimedians of the U.S. Mountain West will hold an online meeting from 8:00 to 9:00 PM MDT, Tuesday evening, May 9, 2023, at meet.google.com/kfu-topq-zkd. Anyone interested in the history, geography, articles, maps, or photographs of the Mountain West or the future direction of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement is encouraged to attend. Please see our meeting page for details.

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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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Shaved Weasels

A while ago, but thank you — "The Aerodynamics of Shaved Weasels" [13] — made my day — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 19:19, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do like to inject a little humor into template documentation. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:12, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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Manual of Style

 Done

You may want to take a look at the major bold edits being done at the Manual in the last few days. Randy Kryn (talk) 05:38, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Randy Kryn: Yeesh. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I've brought it up on the MoS talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:36, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

CS1 error on Scottish regiment

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May thanks

May songs
my story today

Thank you for improving articles in May. - I had a good story on coronation day: the Te Deum we sang that day. And the following day we sang it for the composer ;)

I nominated Soňa Červená for GA just to give her a bit more exposure, and I took some pics of bright scenery - click on songs. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:14, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

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"MOS:XMASTREE" listed at Redirects for discussion

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Feedback request: Wikipedia technical issues and templates request for comment

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Books & Bytes – Issue 56

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 56, March – April 2023

  • New partner:
    • Perlego
  • Library access tips and tricks
  • Spotlight: EveryBookItsReader

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --10:03, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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ANI comment

Hi, SMcC, it's been a while; I have not forgotten the generous apology you left me some years ago, and my curmudgeonly reply to it. Perhaps to make partial amends, could I ask you to consider whether your "provide diffs" challenge here was really wise, and perhaps to consider striking it? I really, really don't want to start going over old ground, but this may not be the best time for all that history to come to light. I wish you well, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:55, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If all someone has is an incident from years and years ago, I'm not worried about it. :-) ANI expects to see evidence of an ongoing/recent problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:06, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Template:Cleanup-bare URLs/why" listed at Redirects for discussion

 Done

The redirect Template:Cleanup-bare URLs/why has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 May 30 § Template:Cleanup-bare URLs/why until a consensus is reached. Q𝟤𝟪 02:13, 30 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment

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CS1 error on Tartan

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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Disregard
 – Malformed RfC shut down by the time I got there.
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Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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CS1 error on Tartan

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Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

Disregard
 – I don't care, even slightly.
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Holy cow!

Newbie here. I just wanted to comment that I'm absolutely blown away by your User and Talk pages. After leaving a reply to you here, I was curious about who and what you're all about, and ... wow! I've obviously managed to interact with a bona fide WP:VIP. Major props to you for all you've done, and continue to do. I just might be inspired to finally get around to doing some serious development of my Talk page, with you as a role model. I've gotta learn how to do all these things!

You don't need to respond to this as you're obviously a very busy guy. I just had to leave you a note about how impressed I am. Yesthatbruce (talk) 10:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm no kind of VIP, I'm just a "wiki-fossil". I've been here since 2005 or so. Glad you like the pages.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:13, 13 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Economy, trade, and companies request for comment

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Battleground?

The fact that you and a few others habitually dive immediately into a WP:BATTLEGROUND stance any time you run into something of a "doctrinal" difference in stance is why this topic on WP is so awful and why people keep getting topic-banned from it.
— [14]

Are you really trying to suggest that it's the fault of LGBTQ+ editors complaining about mistreatment that people feel uncomfortable when challenged on that mistreatment and that that's somehow LGBTQ+ editors creating a battleground? (I recognise that the specific context here is hardly an egregious example of mistreatment.) I'm sure you wouldn't object to a person of colour trying to nudge you away from terms they find problematic or hurtful.

Can I remind you of the UCoC and its expectations around mutual respect? Practice empathy. Listen and try to understand what Wikimedians of different backgrounds want to tell you. Be ready to challenge and adapt your own understanding, expectations and behaviour as a Wikimedian. and also Respect the way that contributors name and describe themselves. … People who identify with a certain sexual orientation or gender identity using distinct names or pronouns;

Can I please ask that you try to be more respectful of the concerns of LGBTQ+ editors, especially around sex and gender?

Thank you — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 16:52, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not "mistreating" or "disrespecting" anyone, let alone on the basis of any sociological class or group. I'm objecting to a few habitual participants in these topical debates treating their fellow editors automatically as ideological enemies every time there's a slight disagreement about P&G wording/interpretation that happens to touch upon their subject of interest. It's unbelievably tedious and a serious drain on community goodwill and collegiality. We keep ending up at noticeboards for a reason. Your seeming insinuation that bringing up these concerns, even pointedly, is akin to using the N-word is not sustainable. I'm in the LGBT camp myself (and don't feel like being any more explicit about it here; WP is not LiveJournal). Being under that tent doesn't give anyone special privileges to be pigeonholing asshats toward other editors, as too many people in these debates have been, for very, very long time, and almost entirely on one side (those drivebys who do it from the other side get indeffed on sight). The failure to practice empathy is largely coming from a single "accept my doctrinal position or you are evil" direction, and it needs to stop. More broadly speaking, I am sick to death and beyond of the left tearing itself apart over micro-factional squabbles; it's a disease, and it's why the far-right is rising unchecked.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:09, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I thought this was about something at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Proposed addition to MOS:GENDERID - when to include deadnames, but it turns out to be something about Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Gender identity#RfC: Pronouns for chatbots, AI, etc. which has no connection to transgender/nonbinary concerns at all. If you are going around harassing people at their talk pages with accusations like the above on the presumption that any and all discussions of grammatical gender, even about inanimate objects, have something deeply to do with TG/NB socio-politics, then you are definitely one of the people who need to be topic-banned from this area after all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:40, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Kindly don't threaten me with bans or accusations of harassment. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 16:54, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not threatening you with anything; observing that a battlegrounder needs to be removed from the topic area doesn't equate to a promise to seek that removal. I no longer have much stomach for dramaboarding. Asking if you've been harassing people isn't an accusation of harassment – though I certainly feel harassed, specifically for having a socio-political viewpoint that minorly differs from yours. Instead of doubling down on the hostility any further, you should probably stay off my talk page unless you have something encyclopedically constructive to discuss WP:NOT#FORUM.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:03, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is certainly no intention to "double down on hostility" here, though I note the repeated accusation and bad faith argumentation in your response. Just as much as I guess you do, I would much rather avoid drama and personal disagreement, so I look forward to mutual silence until we have something encyclopedically constructive to discuss. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 17:09, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me. WP:SHUN is often actually helpful in my experience. PS: I don't think you're acting in bad faith. Activists generally have intensely good faith, but have a hard time turning the advocacy firehose down, and stepping back from a fighting-the-good-fight binary narrative. It's a hard habit to break (I know; former professional activist).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:17, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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New Pages Patrol newsletter June 2023

Extended content

Hello SMcCandlish,

New Page Review queue April to June 2023

Backlog

Redirect drive: In response to an unusually high redirect backlog, we held a redirect backlog drive in May. The drive completed with 23851 reviews done in total, bringing the redirect backlog to 0 (momentarily). Congratulations to Hey man im josh who led with a staggering 4316 points, followed by Meena and Greyzxq with 2868 and 2546 points respectively. See this page for more details. The redirect queue is steadily rising again and is steadily approaching 4,000. Please continue to help out, even if it's only for a few or even one review a day.

Redirect autopatrol: All administrators without autopatrol have now been added to the redirect autopatrol list. If you see any users who consistently create significant amounts of good quality redirects, consider requesting redirect autopatrol for them here.

WMF work on PageTriage: The WMF Moderator Tools team, consisting of Sam, Jason and Susana, and also some patches from Jon, has been hard at work updating PageTriage. They are focusing their efforts on modernising the extension's code rather than on bug fixes or new features, though some user-facing work will be prioritised. This will help make sure that this extension is not deprecated, and is easier to work on in the future. In the next month or so, we will have an opt-in beta test where new page patrollers can help test the rewrite of Special:NewPagesFeed, to help find bugs. We will post more details at WT:NPPR when we are ready for beta testers.

Articles for Creation (AFC): All new page reviewers are now automatically approved for Articles for Creation draft reviewing (you do not need to apply at WT:AFCP like was required previously). To install the AFC helper script, visit Special:Preferences, visit the Gadgets tab, tick "Yet Another AFC Helper Script", then click "Save". To find drafts to review, visit Special:NewPagesFeed, and at the top left, tick "Articles for Creation". To review a draft, visit a submitted draft, click on the "More" menu, then click "Review (AFCH)". You can also comment on and submit drafts that are unsubmitted using the script.

You can review the AFC workflow at WP:AFCR. It is up to you if you also want to mark your AFC accepts as NPP reviewed (this is allowed but optional, depends if you would like a second set of eyes on your accept). Don't forget that draftspace is optional, so moves of drafts to mainspace (even if they are not ready) should not be reverted, except possibly if there is conflict of interest.

Pro tip: Did you know that visual artists such as painters have their own SNG? The most common part of this "creative professionals" criteria that applies to artists is WP:ARTIST 4b (solo exhibition, not group exhibition, at a major museum) or 4d (being represented within the permanent collections of two museums).

Reminders

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

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June thanks

June songs
my story today

Thank you for improving articles in June! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:00, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment

Disregard
 – I don't even slightly care.
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 Fixed

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Tartan, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Allan Ramsay.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:06, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment

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Page-ception

Hi. A small pebble in my shoe for years... never seen a solid answer... maybe you have some insight?

If I'm citing a journal article (or similar), I need to cite 2 sets of page numbers: the page(s) that locate the article and, within that, the page(s) that locate the cited fact. Now if I'm in charge (or taking charge) of the WP page, I can just use ((sfn)) and everything's smooth. If I'm working in a <ref>...</ref> context, there seems no elegant solution. I've come to think that adding ((rp)) to each inline is the best available option, but I don't recall ever coming across an intelligent discussion of this problem (which must occur literally a million times). Thoughts? Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 18:40, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Phil wink: See what I've been doing at Tartan, which has quite complex <ref> and ((efn)) noting (but not using ((sfn)) because of its limitations; see thread near bottom of that's article's talk page, about citation style). The basic technique is to do one of the following:
  • At first occurrence of the source, add a |ref= parameter: <ref>((cite journal |last=McNuts |first=Ima Really |title=Crazy Stuff |date=2006 |journal=Wild and Wooly Science |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=122–123 |ref=McNuttsIR2006))</ref>, then at second citation: <ref>[[#McNuttsIR2006|McNuts, I. R. (2006)]], p. 131.</ref>
  • More cleanly, especially if there's a divided referencing section with separate subsections for citations and sources, add the source you're going to cite multiple times to the latter, without any page numbers: * ((cite journal |last=McNuts |first=Ima Really |title=Crazy Stuff |date=2006 |journal=Wild and Wooly Science |volume=7 |issue=2 |ref=McNuttsIR2006)), then in the body, use the short form for both citations: <ref>[[#McNuttsIR2006|McNuts, I. R. (2006)]], pp. 122–123.</ref> and <ref>[[#McNuttsIR2006|McNuts, I. R. (2006)]], p. 131.</ref>.
  • If you're going to also use ((sfn)) style in the same piece, it autogenerates the equivalent of |ref=, so what you have to do is view source on the page and find out what the #CITEREFNameDate is of the target source, and use that in the hand-coded short notes: <ref>[[#CITEREFNameDate|McNuts, I. R. (2006)]], pp. 122–123.</ref>. If you added a |ref= to that source, it would override the #CITEREFNameDate, and break all the ((sfn)) notes that point to the same source. You can see me doing using this mixed approach if you view the source of the section History of the kilt#Dispute about invention, e.g.: <ref name="Innes of Learney 5-6">[[#CITEREFInnes_of_Learney1971|Innes of Learney (1971)]], pp. 5–6; citing: ((cite book |last=Gordon of Rothiemay |first=James |title=History of Scots Affairs, from 1637 to 1641 |date=1841 |chapter=Appendix |page=xliii |location=Aberdeen |publisher=Spalding Club))</ref>; you can't do a "citing: ..." add-on note like that inside ((sfn)). The flexibility of the |ref= thing is so good that I could have added a |ref=GordonOfRothiemay1841 to that Gordon of Rothiemay embedded citation, and later cited it directly with [[#GordonOfRothiemay1841|Gordon of Rothiemay (1841)]], p. 23, or whatever. I'm doing exactly that sort of thing in several places at Tartan.
While I invented ((rp)) (specifically to handle re-re-re-re-re-citing the same source a zillion times in Glossary of cue sports terms, waaay back in the day), it is basically obsolete now because of the |ref= parameter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:15, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Very much obliged for the detailed response. I look forward to reviewing your examples. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 00:25, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

 Done
Your feedback is requested at Talk:List of African countries by population on a "History and geography" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 14:30, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol needs your help!

New pages awaiting review as of June 30th, 2023.

Hello SMcCandlish,

The New Page Patrol team is sending you this impromptu message to inform you of a steeply rising backlog of articles needing review. If you have any extra time to spare, please consider reviewing one or two articles each day to help lower the backlog. You can start reviewing by visiting Special:NewPagesFeed. Thank you very much for your help.

Reminders:

Sent by Zippybonzo using MediaWiki message delivery at 06:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

CS1 error on Tartan

 Fixed
 – I already repaired this before I even saw this notice.

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Tartan, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 04:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

 Done
Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 19:30, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

 Done
 – ? I found no RfC when I got there, though there was open discussion that I posted to.
Your feedback is requested at Talk:Kyoto on a "History and geography" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.
Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 10:31, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

 Done
Your feedback is requested at Talk:Teller (magician) on a "Biographies" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 19:30, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

 Done
Your feedback is requested at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard on a "Wikipedia policies and guidelines" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.
Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 15:30, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

CS1 error on Glen Affric

Disregard
 – Was not an error.

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Glen Affric, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 07:51, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes – Issue 57

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 57, May – June 2023

  • Suggestion improvements
  • Favorite collections tips
  • Spotlight: Promoting Nigerian Books and Authors

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --11:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

July thanks

July songs
my story today

On today's Main page, you can find a cantata that Bach first performed 300 years ago, and an iconic saxophonist from East Germany. Also: a bit about the history of QAI on my talk. Thank you for being part of it! - A new member designed a user box that I adopted. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:00, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Maths, science, and technology request for comment

 Done
Your feedback is requested at Talk:Triboelectric effect on a "Maths, science, and technology" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
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Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 23:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

 Done
Your feedback is requested at Talk:Nazi Germany on a "Wikipedia style and naming" request for comment. Thank you for helping out!
You were randomly selected to receive this invitation from the list of Feedback Request Service subscribers. If you'd like not to receive these messages any more, you can opt out at any time by removing your name.
Message delivered to you with love by Yapperbot :) | Is this wrong? Contact my bot operator. | Sent at 11:31, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New message from Aaron Liu

Hello, SMcCandlish. You have new messages at Talk:Triboelectric effect.
Message added 23:26, 21 July 2023 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the ((Talkback)) or ((Tb)) template.

Aaron Liu (talk) 23:26, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a report involving you at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement regarding a possible violation of an Arbitration Committee decision. The thread is SMcCandlish. Thank you. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (she|they|xe) 21:46, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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