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Good morning! I have been reading the AN discussion regarding Legacypac. If you were the subject of the following exchange, how would you react?

Ah, that ref desk troll – better known as Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/**** *** *** ****** – supposed to be of the female persuasion, btw. Blocked. I'll the page is now on my watch list, but no guarantees.

- Favonian 14:59, 8 September 2016

I wonder who persuaded her.... _Muffled ^Pocketed 15:00, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Her progenitors have much to answer for!

- Favonian 15:02, 8 September 2016

(This comment was under edit summary original sin. His next comment was under edit summary he, she, it, what?) 92.19.174.96 (talk) 08:23, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I will not pass judgement unless I have seen the context. And I don't have time to examine the context. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:45, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:92.19.174.96 What blocked user are you? I assume that you are not User:Legacypac, whom I think is honest and won't block-evade. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:42, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)The context is that when misogyny is reported to an Arbitrator (example reports [1], [2]), an administrator shows up within two minutes to shut down the investigation by protecting her talk page [3]. When Favonian is reported for vandalism administrators show up within the same timescale to shut down the investigation by edit warring the report out [4]. 92.19.174.96 (talk) 19:19, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Robert McClenon, this is Vote (X) for Change, who after a couple of days will get bored and go find someone else to pester. ‑ Iridescent 19:57, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is the ANI report "De-sysop time for Favonian" which was revision deleted by Oshwah with an ingenuous log entry:

[Shouldn't the above be disingenuous? Rouge administrators (especially Favonian, who removed the following) will note that my report to the Trustees of 01:02, 29 April) was secretly suppressed (by Mr Nobody). No problem - I can re-post it to the talk page of a senior Foundation staffer.]

In the case of Winhunter the Arbitration Committee decided that restoring false information to articles after removal (even by a "banned user") is "pathological" and will result in de - sysop. This pathology has been noted in Favonian for over a decade. For example, at Hemen Majumdar he

- 5 July 2013.

- 31 July 2014.

Accusing people of "lying" is a personal attack, so please read WP:NPA; even if you think I am mistaken, you should stay well clear of such accusations unless you are very, very certain that a deliberate lie is being spread, and not something expressed in a way that you have misunderstood completely. - Fram 06:44, 7 October 2014

On 26 April 1989 the official organ of the Chinese communist party spoke out against democracy. As the thirtieth anniversary of the massacre approaches Wikipedia has been cut off - we've not heard from Anna Frodesiak since 23 April. In this country, expect people like Nigel Farage to continue speaking out against democracy - Leavers secured less than 30% of the vote in the EU election, but to hear him speak you would think they had secured a landslide. On this website Favonian continues to fight for falsehood in articles against truth and dictatorship against consensus. He has rangeblocked a large area of the country. 92.8.182.49 (talk) 09:15, 27 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Other similarities between "Favonian" and Nigel Farage (apart from their both being F-words):

• Nigel Farage has dumped two wives in favour of a mistress. Boris Johnson has dumped one wife similarly.
• Nigel Farage is a delusionist. Commenting on the EU poll result on 27 May he said:

If you look across the country, it's about 52-48 - we're pretty much where we were three years ago. Things haven't changed, people haven't changed their minds.

His party only won 31% of the vote.

• "Favonian"'s rangeblocks are disenfranchising more and more people.
• Nigel Farage campaigns under the banner "Leave Means Leave".
• "Favonian" campaigns under the banner "Banned Means Banned".
• "Favonian" does not understand that WP:INVOLVED editors are not qualified to !vote, especially when (like himself) they whip accused editors' comments out of discussions. Jimbo has said that he will overturn all sanctions where the accused editor was not notified and/or not given the opportunity to comment.
• Nigel Farage does not understand that views can change, and that it is the 2019 election, not the 2016 referendum (in which anyway half the countries in the Union voted to Remain) that is relevant today. If he wants to break up the Union he's going the right way about it.
• "Favonian" does not understand that no AN binds its successor. A nine-year old discussion is irrelevant today.
• Writing in the Daily Telegraph on 28 May Allison Pearson commented:

The losing parties started adding other people's results to their own and claiming that they'd won after all. Who was doing the maths - Diane Abbott?

A very useful Member of Parliament - I wrote to her (as well as the Mayor of Hackney) this morning. Anti-EU parties still only make up about a quarter of the new EU parliament and Nigel Farage's party is not the largest. How is that a win? 86.16.15.46 (talk) 15:22, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

At least when a bot does huge numbers of changes very fast I can hide it from my watchlist. At the moment my watchlist is pretty much useless owing to your bot-like, but not bot, edits. There is no need to update these links. DuncanHill (talk) 13:51, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi DuncanHill

Sorry about that. They are all tagged as minor, so you can hide them from your watchlist.

I am am aware of the general aversion to changing such links, but the reason I am doing these ones is that they are a tightly bound set of topics, and canonicalising the links helps readers by ensuring that the differentiation between visited and unvisited links works clearly, and helps editors by making it easier to track what-links-here and track MOS:REPEATLINKs in each article.

To minimise the number of edits, I have organised it so that a large set of links are done in one pass: all UK general elections, European elections, Scottish Parl & Welsh Assembly elections, and referendums. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:12, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hiding minor edits has drawbacks - 1) it's a common camouflage used by vandals, and 2) a lot of good-faith editors wrongly tag things as minor when they are not. I don't think the marginal gains you posit justify the disruption to watchlists. DuncanHill (talk) 14:24, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The intrusion to watchlists is short-lived; this job is already half-complete. But the gains are permanent. Now that the titles of election articles have been brought into line with the norms for other pages, they are likely to remain stable for a long time. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:40, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this task should go forward. It yields an overall long-term benefit to the project. bd2412 T 14:47, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well then how much longer is it going to go on for? Hours? Days? Weeks? DuncanHill (talk) 14:50, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe another 24 hours. I am about half way through the list. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:52, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant job - well done. Emeraude (talk) 10:44, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is a minor thing but actually rather helpful IMO, thanks for taking the time to do this (even if it has flooded my watchlist for a few days). Mélencron (talk) 23:18, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Mélencron. Now that I have sorted out my methodology, I have almost finished all the UK and Ireland elections. When I have finished them, I plan to do France and Israel and India. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:33, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

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If you are watching Strauss's user page, you may have noticed that I expressed annoyance at JJMC89 for reverting the non-close close of the 25 music portals. Because it wasn't really a close, I didn't think that involved applied. The background is that in the 1980s in the United States, there were financial institutions known as non-bank banks. They paid higher interest rates than regular banks, but were not protected by government bank insurance. This sort of usage has vaguely caught on in North American English, so that there can be things like non-paper papers. Maybe the usage is an Americanism. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:37, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Lewis Richmon requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:39, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm here to ask for your input regarding a matter as you are an admin and the talk pages of the relevant pages are empty and both pages have few people editing them. I have added the matter to the page 2019 in the United Kingdom a few days ago - as it is a related page - but have yet to hear any respones. I have also seen you have been very good at being able to go around fixing pages that have been consisttantly formatted incorrectly e.g. updating links to UK party leadership elections.

The page 2019 in Wales and the page 2019 in British music have their dates linked. I have tried to remove these date links due to it breaking the MOS:OVERLINK and WP:DATELINK rules. However another editor is reverting me arguing the dates should be linked simply because the previous years have done so. However, I'd argue if something does not follow Wikipedia's rules it should be corrected, just because something is wrongly done elsewhere in a consistent fashion does not make it correct.

Your thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time. Helper201 (talk) 12:40, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Helper201, and thanks for your message.

I think that on this occasion, you may have missed a wee nuance in the relevant policy.

You are right about the broad principle. WP:DATELINK does say that in general, month-and-day articles should not be linked. That was decided in a series of RFCs in 2008/09, with much drama (including an arbcom case).

However, WP:DATELINK does provide an exception: "in intrinsically chronological articles (1789, January, and 1940s), links to specific month-and-day, month-and year, or year articles are not discouraged".

The examples which you give seem to me to fall within that exception. I just took a look at 2019 in Wales, where I see that your edit[6] removed links which seem to me to be relevant in the context. The prime point of each line is that an event occurred on a particular date, and the date link points to an article which list more events on that date, so that seems appropriate to me.

So I think that Deb was right to revert your edit.[7]

Hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:21, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The file File:Bigben small 2015-20.png has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

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This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:01, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on Category:Publishing in South Africa requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. CptViraj (Talk) 04:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• No longer empty! -- CptViraj (Talk) 05:42, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @CptViraj: Indeed. It took me a few seconds to find the sub-cats which should populate it. Before rushing to speedy delete a category, it's better to check why it became empty, and whether it could be populated. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be possible to look at the portal deletion nominations again shortly? I realize that you are also working on other things besides portals, and, besides, the WMF Office business has gone crazy. You had said a few days ago that you would look at Portal:Civilizations. Other than that, things are calmer than usual, but there has been some discussion that could use your perspective. I have nominated one country portal for deletion as completely out-of-date, and SmokeyJoe has said it is worse than useless,with which I agree, and I have nominated three unmaintained little-viewed US state portals for deletion. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In this edit, you introduced a link to 1835 Spouth Devon by-election. I do not have the time to check all your edits. DuncanHill (talk) 16:28, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Rather more seriously, in this edit and ion this edit you turned a bluelink red. DuncanHill (talk) 16:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @DuncanHill.

I spent a few hours yesterday coding an AWB module which displays the links in the edit summaries, precisely to allow easy identification of cases where a blue link is turned red. This wasn't needed for the general elections (where the canonical name is consistent) , but it is important for the by-elections, where the canonical name is not always predictable.

It also shows up cases such as "Spouth Devon" which have been broken to start with.

It allows me to go back through my contribs, and check the edit summaries to fix any which need fixing. I do this in batches. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:22, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi BrownHairedGirl,

Noticed the wiki category created by Bryce Cameron, Coffee Table Book. There is also an index of several publications listed with this category, a directory of sorts.

Representing several fan club members of West Coast Midnight Run™ we thought you may want to add the title of the publication to your Coffee Table Book page. The publication is along the lines of an art book/coffee table book with strong qualities influenced by lifestyle and entertainment magazines. We invite you to look them up and contact their editors for more information if they qualify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:A886:7500:9842:2D27:82F4:E21C (talk) 04:12, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

legacy - 124.104.233.122 (talk) 10:45, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Huh?

Try to explain what you mean, and please link to relevant pages. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:46, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This person is actually an LTA, My Royal Young. He's trolling people, as usual. Just thought you might wanted to know. LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk) 21:14, 15 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@LightandDark2000: Thanks! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:20, 16 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The long section for comments at WP:VP/P has me thinking about a different way of doing these, where the section is divided by subsections which each have a well-written summary of the argument. Are you going to compress the arguments from the given comments into something short? -ApexUnderground (talk) 14:56, 16 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ummm ... @ApexUnderground, how about some links so that I have some idea what you are talking about? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:59, 16 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Organizations:_Discussion/survey -ApexUnderground (talk) 16:17, 16 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. I certainly won't do it; too much effort. And anyway, attempts to summarise are best left to the closer. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:22, 16 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Thanks for improving so many articles in so little time, keep up the good work! Vif12vf/Tiberius (talk) 11:21, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks, @Vif12vf. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:25, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello BHG. enjoyed reading your profile page, especially the correspondence highlighted in this section. I noticed that there was a typo (intentional?), in case you wanted to change it. Vauxhall Bridgefoot (talk) 11:38, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Vauxhall Bridgefoot. Fixed it[8]. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:28, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I noticed you recently moved pages in relation to Australian referendums, Australian referendum, 1928, Australian referendum, 1951 & Australian referendum, 1948 to put the year first per WP:NC-GAL. Maybe I am missing something, but it looks to me like each of those pages was already redirect to the relevant articles, which follow current naming conventions 1928 Australian referendum (State Debts), 1951 Australian Communist Party ban referendum and 1948 Australian rents and prices referendum & that what has been created are double redirects. It's no big deal, but I am bringing it to your attention because I thought you would want to know if there is some glitch in your processes. Find bruce (talk) 20:49, 19 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• clean up, Election links (n/n): Foo election, YYYY → YYYY Foo election

While close inspection showed me that WP:NOTBROKEN does not apply, a different edit summary template might make this more obvious. Maybe this comment belongs at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser; I don't use AWB and can't tell from Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User manual#Edit summary whether this is default or user-configured. jnestorius^(talk) 12:00, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi jnestorius

That edit summary is the product of a custom module which I wrote to assist in identifying the effects of each edit. It links the before-and-after titles, which allows an at-a-glance check of whether the change has created a redlink.

Unfortunately, AWB doesn't allow full-length edit summaries (see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T199347), so adding more words of explanation would reduce the number of links which can be displayed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:07, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the custom format is designed to assist only you, which is fine since it's most likely to be of interest to you. For the use-case you describe it seems to me you don't actually need the before title to see whether the after-title is a redlink. Is there some other reason you want to include it? jnestorius^(talk) 13:18, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@jnestorius, this format assist anyone who wonders what has been done, and esp whether the change has created any redlinks.

Including the old title makes it v easy to fix any redlinks which do occur, simply by moving the old title to the new one. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:20, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course any edit summary is to "assist anyone who wonders what has been done"; but it should also assist them to see why it has been done if that is not obvious; and if several types of thing have been done it should not give undue emphasis to one type. I guess my broader question may be, are you making numerous edits whose primary purpose is to bypass a certain subset of redirects, namely those of format "Foo election, YYYY"? If that is your primary purpose, it seems to violate WP:NOTBROKEN. If that is not your primary purpose, I cannot tell what your primary purpose is, and your edit summaries are not communicating what it might be. jnestorius^(talk) 14:06, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@jnestorius, this is a cleanup exercise after the RFC last year which changed the WP:NC-GAL convention for election names from "Foo election, YYYY" to "YYYY Foo election". I weakly opposed the change, largely because of the large amount of cleanup it would involve, but there was a clear consensus to change the convention, and I accept that consensus. Now I am trying to make it work by doing that cleanup.

This run of edits has three primary purposes:

1. To fix the use in running text of [[Foo election, YYYY]]. It is much more readable to have [[YYYY Foo election]].
2. To fix the now-pointless redirects of [[Foo election, YYYY|YYYY Foo election]]. The wikicode is much more readable as [[YYYY Foo election]].
3. To fix the broken links caused by changes in naming format. This is complex, but surprisingly widespread, so I'll try to explain it without to much verbosity by giving two examples of the permutations I have encountered which raise issues requiring standardisation:

   By-elections

   General elections usually involve many many links to a single title. In the case of Ireland, there have been 32 general elections to Dáil Éireann since 1918, but 131 by-elections to the Dáil. In the UK, there have been 56 general elections since the UK was established in 1801, but 4,167 by-elections.

   It's relatively easy to use redirects to cover most permutations of general election title: a dozen redirects in each case covers over 99%.

   However, doing that with a large set of target articles gets very problematic. For example a biographical article may contain a long-standing link to "ThisTown by-election, 1927" ... but if the by-election article is now created, it should be at "1927 ThisTown by-election", and all the redlinks will remain red. Alternatively, an editor may encounter the redlink in the biog and mistakenly create the page at the old-style "ThisTown by-election, 1927".

   With UK by-elections, there is further complication in that the place name may have variations: e.g. Midlothian used to be known for some purposes as Edinburghshire, and there are variants such "Western CountyName"/"West CountyName".

   So canonicalsiing the year format significantly reduces the chance that a redlink will remain red after article creation, by removing the major variant in naming format.

   Re-named series

   The development of naming conventions has often led to several changes in naming practice for article. For example:

   • Editors start creating articles on the local elections to FooBar Council, using the format "FooBar Council election, YYYY". Redlinks are created as appropriate, both from lists of elections and from other articles such as biogs, timelines etc.
   • Other editors conclude that greater specificity is needed, so they rename the articles to "FooBar Borough Council election, YYYY". Redirects are of course automatically created from the old titles .... but that leaves redlinks to the articles which did not exist.
   • Then the WP:NC-GAL renaming happens, and the articles are renamed to "YYYY FooBar Borough Council election". So now we have three naming formats to contend with, giving permutations:
     1. "YYYY FooBar Borough Council election" (the new canonical name)
     2. "FooBar Borough Council election, YYYY"
     3. "FooBar Council election, YYYY"
     4. "YYYY FooBar Council election"

   In some cases, there are even more permutations, e.g. the article currently named 1986 Southwark London Borough Council election could also be titled as "1986 Southwark Council election", "1986 Southwark Borough Council election", "1986 Southwark London Borough Council election", "1986 London Borough of Southwark Council election", etc. Allowing for the possibility of years at the end instead of the beginning doubles the number of variants, which means more redlinks; and in practice it quadruples the number of variants, because the links may be written with or without a comma, e.g. "Southwark Council election, 1986" or "1986 Southwark Council election 1986". It's a trivial matter for AWB to pick up both variants and standardise them.

When I started on this job a fortnight ago, I was initially doing a very restricted set of use cases. But the more examples I encountered, the more I realised that there was no advantage in doing only a sub-set, when each edit could resolve a much wider set of issues.

So the effect of what I am doing is to fix a set of redirects, some of which may be broken, but where identifying only the broken ones is massively more work than just standardising the lot. AWB just handles text patterns, and can't identify whether a link is red, so unless someone wants to handcode a whole bot which does squillions of system calls to identify only redlinks, this is the neatest way of doing it.

As to WP:NOTBROKEN, it doesn't adequately address the myriad complex issues raised by a change in naming convention for a broad set. If we interpreted it as forbidding any change other than to redlinks, then the job would be impossible and we would leave all these unresolved. I think that would be very bad for Wikipedia, both for readers who encounter redlinks and for the editors who try to fix them manually.

I hope that makes sense. User:BD2412 has also done a lot of work on these article sets, so may want to add something. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:53, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation. A couple of points:

1. There is a high ratio of edits of the form [[Foo election, YYYY|alias]] to [[YYYY Foo election|alias]] (example). If I understand correctly you accept that this is redundant but that it's quicker to do it mechanically (albeit unneccessarily) than to spend time calculating whether it would be redundant?
2. Is it the case that you are using the edit summaries to recheck your own work? In which case this check is limited by the length of the edit summary, edits like this one which exceed will have some changes omitted which thus cannot be checked in this manner.
3. More generally, I would propose adding a page explaining what you've just explained to me, and changing your edit summary template to include a link to that explanation. If you add a redirect (e.g. [[WP:ELLINKS]]) to the explanation it would take up less space than the "cleanup, Election links" text it could replace, thus not exacerbating the limitations of point #2

jnestorius^(talk) 16:28, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@jnestorius, I will take those points in order:

1. Yes, it's vastly quicker to do these changes it mechanically than to spend time calculating whether some of the set of changes on any given page would be redundant. Note that the module I am using does an unlimited number of changes on any given page, so any evaluation process would need to evaluate any link.
   Also, it's a slight overstatement to describe replacing one bluelink to redirect with a direct bluelink as "redundant". The basic logic is that it's not usually a sufficiently important change to do it alone, but if done, the change has some small advantages (visited link marking for readers, duplicate link tracking for editors).
2. Yes, I use the edit summaries to check every edit to make sure I don't turn a bluelink red, and fix it if I do. And yes, I am constrained by the length of edit summaries (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T199347, grrrr). That's why I also have a counter in the summary to help identify pages which need to be viewed.
3. I could in theory create a WP:ELLINKS page, but it seems like a disproportionate amount of work. I have now done about 50,000 edits on this task, and you are the only to express detailed concerns ... while I am getting lots of thanks notifications. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

I've written a draft User:Jnestorius/ELLINKS — how hard is it to change your custom module? jnestorius^(talk) 17:31, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @jnestorius. I have used that as the basis for creating the page: User:BrownHairedGirl/Election links cleanup, shortcut = WP:ELLINKS. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:04, 22 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Having corrected these links for U.S. presidential election articles by year, I believe that this task can be carried out for most of the related links by a properly programmed bot. My biggest concern would be that there are some quirks, like series of elections where the name of the country or constituency changes for some period during the history of the election, or elections carried over multiple years (the 1788–89 United States presidential election caused some hiccups in my process). The thing to do is start with a proper list of cases needing the change, and then sort that list between those that can be changed with a very simple formula, and those that need an adjusted formula (or modification by hand) to accommodate quirks of that sort. As for the edit summary, I specified in mine that this was one-time change to make it easier for later processes to parse the links. bd2412 T 17:11, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @BD2412. My initial runs at this could have been done by a bot, because they were replacing cases where the precise canonical outcome is known in advance, e.g. 1929 UK general election/United Kingdom general election 1929/United Kingdom general election, 1929/UK general election 1929 /UK general election, 1929/1929 UK General Election/United Kingdom General Election 1929/United Kingdom General Election, 1929/UK General Election 1929 /UK General Election, 1929 all go to 1929 United Kingdom general election. I presume that's what you did for US presidential elections, and I agree it's all easy for a bot to have a simple rule on how to handle a case the set of UK general elections.

However, I rapidly realised that doing that brought its own problems:

1. In many cases there are multiple types of election links on any given page. A dedicated run for each type of election means multiple edits to each page, beating up watchlists very badly.
2. That defined-target approach work well for cases where there are a lot of links to a single target, e.g. the 3793 links to 2012 United States presidential election and its redirects. However, it simply isn't viable in sets like by-elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, where there are several thousand articles, nearly all of which have only about a dozen incoming links other than from navboxes. Same for the hundreds of local council elections, many of which have changed names multiple times in the last century. It's simply not feasible to try to define the canonical outcome in each case.

The defined target approach only works if there is very careful selection of pages to edit. It requires knowing which pages try to link to which election, and that doesn't work with redlinks. So for example, there are about a thousand UK by-elections on which an article has yet to be written, and maybe ten thousand local council elections. It's simply not feasible to use whatlinkshere on every variant of every name for each of those elections: a hundred thousand whatlinkshere .

That's why I switched over to using User:BrownHairedGirl/Election links cleanup/AWB custom module, which does all the election links on any given page at the same time. So as well as looking links to specific elections, I can chuck in huge sets of pages (e.g. Category:British politicians by party+subcats and Category:Elections in the United Kingdom + subcats) and let AWB's list-making function filter out which pages contain fixable election links.

Of course, the results are not perfect, which is why I don't think that my approach is suitable for a bot. I monitor for the exceptions, whereas a bot is supposed to be error-free. But the accuracy level is high enough to make this approach workable: I estimate that less than 1% of my edits turn a bluelink red. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:13, 22 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How does changing one redirect for another, as here, help? Also, I am seeing rather more new redlinks popping up in my watchlist than I would hope for. With the best will in the world, given both the enormous number of edits and the shortness of the edit summaries, I find it hard to believe that these will all be picked up and fixed by you. I did above ask how long it would go on for, and it has already been going on much longer than you suggested at that time. I have a watchlist filled with multiple passes of renaming categories or changing links - see for example here. How many more weeks will it take? DuncanHill (talk) 17:23, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that you were busy on other matters for about a week and now have changed your primary focus to be the cleanup of election articles, but that you are also keeping up with the portals. I am surveying the portals in a somewhat random way to see which ones need attention. As you can see, I have nominated a few portals, mostly lightly populated US states, for deletion, and the ones that have been nominated recently either have been deleted or are waiting for final close on deletion. We still have a few large bundles that are stalled. When they are closed somehow, and I think that Procedural Keep is an honorable resolution, we will know better how to proceed further, but I think that the pace of the portal cleanup has slowed down.

Everything went berserk about ten days ago with the decision by the Office to ban Fram, and at this point I am waiting to see what the next major step is in the area of governance, and whether this is the beginning of a new phase for governance, or whether Fram is a one-off that accomplishes nothing other than to anger editors.

Enjoy 17 hours of sunlight (through the clouds) for a little while. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:27, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Robert

Yes, I have had had my nose firmly pressed against the election grindstone. My head was too full of portals, and a marked deterioration in the already low standards of reasoning by the portal platoon was doing my head in, so I needed a change of scene.

Sorry I have I have been uncommunicative. I kinda went into single-task mode, but it was v rude of me to not even reply to your msg above. You have been doing great work continuing to assess and MFD the worst of the abandoned portals, and it's great to see that your diligent analysis has led to more junk being deleted. It's depressing to see how much of the remainder is in very poor shape.

Thanks too for telling me about Fram. I had missed all the drama, and have done some catch-up reading at WP:FRAMBAN. Wow! What a mess. AFAICS, either

1. WMF has acted with appalling heavy-handedness or
2. WMF is setting a record for the worst-ever communications

Either way, this ban of a v productive and outspoken editor by some secretive process is scary. No defence, no appeal, just flick the switch.

WMF seems to have gone from one extreme to the other. A few years ago, when the community was unwilling to restrain some utterly outrageous editors, I took a prolonged Wikibreak; I wasn't sure whether I wanted to continue editing that environment. I had some brief private communication with WMF staff who showed no willingness to intervene to uphold the Terms of Use ... yet here we have a much less troublesome editor with a far greater positive side to the balance sheet, who has been simply zapped with such minimal engagement that the community has no clear idea of why this happened. We have lost several fine admins, and the community is shaken.

If the WMF had positive intent, that has not been reflected in the outcome. If they wanted to exert a chilling effect of the community, they have succeeded. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that you recently added links to disambiguation pages.

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(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 22:01, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am unsure of the rules for this sort of thing (I only use AWB for things I already know there's approval for), but could I run WP:ELLINKS on the articles in my watchlist and a few more Connecticut-related ones? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 03:35, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @MJL

I can't answer that question for you. I can just tell you some the issues to bear in mind when making your decision.

1. I published the code for the sake of transparency, so that other editors could examine precisely what I am doing. I hadn't given any consideration to others using it, but since it's on a Wikipedia page, it's licensed for re-use. So anyone is entitled to use it and/or hack it as they wish
2. The bottom line is that WP:ELLINKS is on the edge of WP:NOTBROKEN. In some cases its use amounts to a minor violation of NOTBROKEN; in other cases its fine.
   So there is always a possibility that someone could object, but I note that the discussion above is broadly positive, and I get lots of thanks notifications for my WP:ELLINKS edits. So make your own call on how close to the wind you want to sail.
3. I have not attempted to perfectly generalise this module or to document its quirks and failings. It's good enough for my own use, and I don't intend to polish it for publication.
4. As with any code, I recommend that it be run only if you either have confidence that it has been polished and checked (which has not happened here), or you understand what the code is doing and have satisfied yourself that it does what you want, without errors.

So the code is there, with no guarantees, and with the usual AWB rule that you take full responsibility for every edit you make. If this module blows up your house, kills all babies within a ten-mile radius, and triggers a new ice-age, that is your responsibility.

If you do decide to run it:

• To maximinise the number of characters available for edit summaries (before the risibly low length limit is hit), setthe AWB default editsummary to just a single space.
• Make sure to run it with AWB genfixes enabled
• Please clean up any bluelinks converted to redlinks. The aim of this exercise is to reduce the number of redlinks, not to create more.
• Watch out for pages where the number of links converted exceeds the number displayed in the edit summary. See e.g. this edit[9], where the the edit summary begins "WP:ELLINKS (9/11)". That summary indicates that 11 matches were found, and that 9 titles were changed. But the summary displays only 3 titles, so some some checking is needed.
• Beware that this can make a real mess of links to sub-articles about elections. So e.g. "Ruritanian local elections, 1975" gets converted to "1975 Ruritanian local elections", which is good. However, "Bipartisan orgies in Connecticut elections, 2012" gets converted to "2012 Bipartisan orgies in Connecticut elections", which is wrong: it should be "Bipartisan orgies in 2012 Connecticut elections".
  I have coded the module to ignore certain types of phasing which occur in such titles, but I can't cover every possibility, so you may need to modify the regex beginning Match bannedPhrases in the function processElectionName to add any new cases you discover.

Hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:48, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Very detailed answer which helps a lot! You've given me a lot consider. I'll probably have test it out first in my sandbox to make sure I do it right since it seems like there's a lot of pitfalls I didn't originally think of. Thanks BrownHairedGirl (as always lol). Also, I totally clicked on that article because I am so easily gullible. Cheers! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:40, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Glad that helped, @MJL ... and that the hoax worked. <evil grin>

Sandbox testing is a great idea, so that you see the effects. Also note that it has a diagnostics mode to help show what it does, which you may find helpful when sandboxing. To turn it on, just change bool diagnose = false to bool diagnose = true, and it will dump a pile of diagnostics at the bottom of the article text. Obvs, don't save a real article like that! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:51, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Can you find the right person to answer this question: How do I stop Huggle from adding IP talk pages to my watchlist? Interstellarity T 🌟 12:50, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't use Huggle, so I have no idea how to do that.

Why not ask at WT:Huggle? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:52, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See here. Interstellarity T 🌟 13:00, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

... it only leads to trouble, and in my last edit summary autocorrect turned "soz" into "son", which isn't what I wanted to call you! ---Sluzzelin talk 20:32, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No prob at all, @Sluzzelin. I thought it was funny

The way these edits go, they turn some bluelinks into redlinks. I check my edits after a batch of anywhere between 50 and 5,000, and fix where needed. I don't rely on anyone else to clean up after me ... but if another editor is kind enough to cleanup after me, I'm v grateful.

Thanks for your help so far, and for the autocorrect comedy. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:36, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! (for smiling, explaining, and responding kindly) ---Sluzzelin talk 20:46, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Subject: Cherished World Champion voting system

I propose the following voting system as a much fairer alternative to our present one, Its name refers to the hope that Britain should set a good example to the rest of the world in its democratic practice, to help shame the dictatorships and biased systems of the world into putting their people's needs first before their own pathetic and malevolent selfishness.

My late father's initials were C.W.C. Clarence Wilson Clough and he strongly believed in fairness.

At the next Election.......

Firstly a citizen's manifesto should be compiled as a result of unbiased questions suggested and approved by the public and parliament.This could be filled in on-line or even at the polling stations during elections (refreshments being greatfully provided to the willing participants for their voluntary effort!)

When it comes to voting the only change would be that the voting paper would have an empty box at the bottom in which the voter could put a number.

The number would refer to a name on display in the polling station,and perhaps as many as 50 candidates would be standing as national representatives with their numbers next to them,(a bit like dishes are printed out in a Chinese takeaway restaurant.)

These representatives would represent a constituency of opinion, and in picking one, the voter would automatically abstain from being able to vote for their local choice.

Every Vote Will Count!

When the votes are counted there will be four kinds of representation

One : The person with the most votes will be the local M.P.

Two : The unsuccessful local candidates will be able to vote on behalf of the voters who chose them in each debate in the House of Commons.(This would be via an internet connection to the speaker).They would enjoy this privilege no matter how few voted for them,they would not however be allowed to speak or act as an M.P.in any other way (unless perhaps the legitimate M.P.hired them as a locum, in the case of ill health e.t.c.)

Three: Any individual will be able to vote on their own behalf if they register with the speaker via the speakers office (as opposed to picking a representative.)

Four: The national representatives will be able to vote on behalf of everyone who voted for them and take part in the life of the House of Commons (just like the traditional/geographical M.P.'s).

Finally,votes will be proportional with support i.e.(If 6 million people vote for a national candidate they would have a vote 100 times greater than a local M.P. who only got 60,000 votes.)

These votes would be individually recognised by a kind of credit card voting system on the floor of the commons.(A graphic display of the vote could also be exhibited to interest children and adults with learning difficulties.)

The speaker would vote for or against any motion according to the electronic poll her or his computer would register, (as a result of the contact of the unsuccessful local candidates) and individual (one vote voters).

I hope you are interested in my system, I would be very happy to discuss it with you or see it surpassed by a better or fairer idea

Yours Sincerely Elton S.P.Clough — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elton Sydney Paschal Clough (talk • contribs) 10:27, 25 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:39, 25 June 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

		The New Zealand Barnstar of National Merit
		For making my Kiwi watchlist go bananas.
		this WikiAward was given to BrownHairedGirl by Schwede66 on 03:43, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You can't get much further apart and still both be on islands of terra firma, let alone on islands where English is spoken. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What is meant by this category? What in particular is broken about these portals, and does it affect whether deletion is in order? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi BrownHairedGirl, I saw you were recently active and was wondering if you could unblock this account. I've verified their identity in OTRS. Thanks! --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 18:05, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cameron, that's done. See block[10]. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:10, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk)

Look at that! BrownHairedGirl is all over my watchlist this morning!

Thanks very much for your work in cleaning up Canadian election links in the various and sundry articles you've worked on over the past few days.......Cheers! PKT(alk) 12:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, PKT. Once I finally got AWB module working, it hasn't been too big a job to apply WP:ELLINKS to various countries. The Canadian set has been quite easy to work on, because the articles are nearly all in fairly good shape, without too many random redirects in use. Congrats to you and everyone else who has built and maintained them.

I'm now mostly doing some tidyup of links from navboxes. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:29, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good work on cleaning up a huge number of NZ articles too, from "New Zealand foobar election, YYYY" to "YYYY New Zealand foobar election". I stopped counting at 55 edits by the last week of June, but I see many more since (all on my watchlist). Good work. Akld guy (talk) 23:48, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your general conclusion that usually sub-national entities are not the sorts of broad subject areas that can support portals. There are exceptions, such as Portal:California and Portal:Texas, which at least are viewed more than some national portals. A Texan could point out that Texas was a nation briefly. However, Vermont was also a nation briefly, and its portal has been nominated for deletion. As you know, I have nominated three national portals for deletion, two of which have been deleted. I think that the Sun never sets on the areas of the portals that we have deleted. But I am also looking at some underutilized portals with entirely different sunsets because they are worlds. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:18, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, BHG,

You recently created two new tracking categories, Category:CanElecResTopTest with nil value and Category:CanElecResTopTest with month year that are currently empty. You might tag them with ((emptycat)) to get them exempted from appearing on the Empty category list. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:16, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please see my proposal to upmerge: Hugo999 (talk) 09:04, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:British Malayan law by year to Category:Malayan law by year

Category:1935 in British Malayan law to Category:1935 in Malayan law

Category:1936 in British Malayan law to Category:1936 in Malayan law

Category:Football in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. gidonb (talk) 13:34, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So, I started the article for Katherine Hughes (activist). It was listed on DYK earlier this month, but I wish I had more content in the article that was related to the hook. It seems that a lot of Katherine's work related to Irish activism was done by a pseudymn: Caitlín Ní Aodha. There's probably more sources out there that refer to that name instead of hers, but I'm not really sure where those sources might be. Since you've edited a lot of articles about Ireland, I was wondering if maybe you had a secret list suggestions about where I might be able to find reliable sources. Clovermoss (talk) 23:20, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Clovermoss

Congrats on making such a good start on an article about such a fascinating character. I can see why you want to find out more!

I'm a bit stuck on where to go for sources. The secretive nature of her work means that my usual suggestions of newspapers probably aren't much use. And the problem is compounded by the sad fact that after the Irish revolution, women were largely squeezed out of public life and written out of history.

So the only suggestion I can make is to ask at WT:IE and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Irish republicanism. Also, I will ping a few scholarly Irish editors who may have ideas:@Scolaire, Tóraí, and Spleodrach:. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:41, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't come across her, so I can't be much help. I did find two of her books: Father Lacombe and Archbishop O'Brien. I don't advise going to WikiProject Irish republicanism. There's been no significant activity there for many years. Scolaire (talk) 10:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect 201213 All-Ireland Junior Club Hurling Championship. Since you had some involvement with the 201213 All-Ireland Junior Club Hurling Championship redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Pkbwcgs (talk) 13:45, 30 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 11:35, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

News and updates for administrators from the past month (June 2019).

Administrator changes

28bytes • Ad Orientem • Ansh666 • Beeblebrox • Boing! said Zebedee • BU Rob13 • Dennis Brown • Deor • DoRD • Floquenbeam¹ • Flyguy649 • Fram² • Gadfium • GB fan • Jonathunder • Kusma • Lectonar • Moink • MSGJ • Nick • Od Mishehu • Rama • Spartaz • Syrthiss • TheDJ • WJBscribe

¹Floquenbeam's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

²Fram's access was removed, then restored, then removed again.

Guideline and policy news

• A request for comment seeking to alleviate pressures on the request an account (ACC) process proposes either raising the account creation limit for extended confirmed editors or granting the account creator permission on request to new ACC tool users.

• In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.

• The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
• The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
• A request for comment seeks to determine whether Wikipedia:Office actions should be a policy page or an information page.

Technical news

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.

Miscellaneous

• In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.

I added nationalities (mostly from the user page, or from evidence in the RfC) to User:Oculi/sandbox3. The closer is from Queensland; all 12 of the Aus/NZ contributors were of one mind (10 post-canvas). UK editors were about 50:50 (although post-canvas all but 1 from the UK were opposes). Oculi (talk) 11:40, 2 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Oculi.

I was surprised to see the overall number of contributors so low, but that's often the way with RFCs. They can look much busier than they actually are.

So it's not surprising that a small number of antipodeans could sway the balance.

I guess that the RFC outcome will stand until someone does a re-run. Meanwhile the categorisation problem remains unresolved

So far there seems to be no traction for sanctioning @Number 57 for this act of stealthy votestacking, let alone desysopping him as he deserves.

The lessons from this are clear, but depressing: if you don't like the way an RFC is heading, do some stealthy votestacking to tilt it your way ... and when challenged about this flagrant sabotage of consensus formation, accuse the objectors of sour grapes. It's a scumbag's approach to a consensus-based project, but those who choose to behave like scumbags can see that works and that they'll get away with it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Given that most of the opposers were Aus/NZ/UK, it might be that adding (a) except Aus/NZ, or (b) except Aus/NZ/UK/Ireland (no 'z' border) would have passed even with canvassing. In practice whatever happens one would need to rename Category:Organisations based in the United Kingdom which I expect would be controversial even post-RfC. I think a problem with RfCs is that the later contributors don't read the rationale as it is too many screens away. Perhaps new comments should be at the top. (c) might be 'except the Commonwealth of Nations' - one could easily set up Category:Organisations based in the Commonwealth of Nations. (Nigeria is the only one I've noticed with 'z'.) Oculi (talk) 10:43, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Update. All the present, former and prospective members listed in Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations use 's' except Category:Organizations based in Cameroon, Category:Organizations based in Canada, Category:Organizations based in Nigeria, Category:Organizations based in Tuvalu. Oculi (talk) 11:36, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on Category:Metro Transit station templates requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:28, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on Category:CanElecResTopTest with nil value requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:31, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the cleanup you do on articles. I have learned about some of the formatting mistakes I make from watching your edits. AWB looks intimidating to me, but I hope to help with your election link cleanups as I come across them in the future. Take care and all the best. Wallyfromdilbert (talk) 23:22, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have a question. What event and what day is celebrated in the Republic of Ireland as an Independence Day from England? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:12, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Robert McClenon

Sorry for slow reply. I was offline for a few days and missed this.

The short answer is that we don't have a single day to celebrate independence, because our independence was a gradual and often painful process which is still unfinished, and nearly all of the landmarks are at best bittersweet. Some of them are very divisive.

The major landmarks are:

1. The 1916 Easter Rising. A failed rebellion which triggered later events, though there are heated debates around how to view the violence it unleashed. It's our main celebration, on Easter Sunday every year, but there is a significant (tho dwindling) minority of people who refuse any part in it.
2. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 was bitterly contested and led to the Irish Civil War in 1923.
3. The Irish Free State was established on 6 December 1922. Even its defenders proclaimed it merely as the best stepping stone we could get; but for its opponents it was treachery of the highest order. So we don't celebrate that anniversary.
4. The Statute of Westminster 1931 was a hugely significant step on the path to independence, but it was a legal technical matter whjich never really caught the public imagination.
5. The Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936, which came into effect on 12 December 1936, was another huge step, the result of some v cunning politics. But because it retained acknowledgement of the British Crown, it is bittersweet and not popularly celebrated.
6. The adoption in 1937 of Bunreacht na hÉireann was another huge step, which gave us our own President (tho it was equivocal on whether the President was actually head of state). But it too has many points of controversy, so its anniversary is not celebrated.
7. The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 was the point where we finally declared ourselves a Republic and were recognised as such. However, that too is controversial, because it's only a 26-county Republic. For many Republicans, it was and remains wrong to have applied the label to a state which excludes the 6 counties of Northern Ireland ... so we don't celebrate that.

The result is best summarised as a contested, unfinished history which doesn't give easy answers or make neat stories for unequivocal celebrations. Some people would like it neater, but the older I get the more I have come to value the fact that our past and present are always having a difficult dialogue with each other, and sometimes an angry debate. This provisionality stops us getting too cocky, too monolithic, too assured of our own virtue.

I look at countries which tell themselves a simpler story, and I don't like how a dominant official story represses so many ugly realities. In France, a story of a great revolution of high ideals represses the ugly reality of a centralised rationalism which has too often been cruel and inhuman. In the UK, the official whiggish narrative of a nation bound by progress denies the reality of several centuries of violently pillaging the planet. In that big area south of Canada which celebrates the day you posted, I see a narrative detached from the realities of the genocide of a continent, and subsequent global violence.

I fear that if we in Ireland ever allowed oursleves a single, uncontested official story, that we be'd even worse. So I like that fact that we have lots of big buts in the stories we tell of oursleves, and little that we can celebrate without explicit reservations. I think it helps stop us from, as we say, losing the run of ourselves.

As ever, YMMV. Hope you had a great day on the 4th, whatever you were celebrating.

Best wishes, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:45, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the long answer and the emphasis that history is usually bittersweet. As you can guess, I partly agree and partly disagree with your comments about the region between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel, but what we had in the Maryland and Virginia area was unpleasant division on Thursday resulting from official imposition of an even more partisan and divisive narrative than is usual here on that day, an attempt to celebrate enforced uniformity in a nation whose strength is its diversity. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:43, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon, UnitedStatesian, Britishfinance, Hut 8.5, and SmokeyJoe: I would welcome your thoughts and forthright criticism of the following idea for an RFC (or mass MFD), which I have provisionally titled "WP:UNWANTEDPORTALS".

It picks up on an proposition repeatedly made by SmokeyJoe: that portals are a failed experiment, in which only a few have proven to attract readers. Joe has focused on the portals linked from the front page, which each gather over 1000 pageviews per day, and has suggested dumping the rest.

I have sympathy with Joe's idea, because WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers" ... and because the threshold Joe uses is about the same as the pageview count for the head article of most portals (most of them are 1000+).

However, I think that Joe is setting the threshold too high. I think that a threshold of 50 or 100 pageviews a day would be sufficient to weed out a lot of the low-traffic, under-maintained portals, while recognising that some portals which are not on the front page do nonetheless sustain much more credible pageviews than than the mass of unviewed portals.

The list of portal pageviews for Q2 2019 breaks down interestingly. There are currently 904 portals, of which:

So while Joe's suggestion would remove 98.8% of portals, I think that';s unlikely to gain consensus.

So my idea is to set a threshold of pageviews, and triage portals into three groups, as follows:

1. Portals above a given threshold, to be kept.
2. Portals meeting more than half that threshold, which may be improved to meet the threshold, so should be reviewed again after 12 months
3. Portals below half that threshold, which should be immediately deleted.

Then offer various options:

• OPTION A: Aim to keep only portals which average over 1000 pageviews per day. There are no portals in the 501–1000 range, so delete the remaining 897 portals.
• OPTION B: Aim to keep only portals which average over 250 pageviews per day. For now, delete the 848 portals which got <=100 views per day in 2019 Q2, and review again after 12 months.
• OPTION C: Aim to keep only portals which average over 100 pageviews per day. For now, delete the 758 portals which got <=50 views per day in 2019 Q2, and review again after 12 months.
• OPTION D: Aim to keep only portals which average over 50 pageviews per day. For now, delete the 577 portals which got <=25 views per day in 2019 Q2, and review again after 12 months.

I think that gives a reasonable range of options, but I worry that it may be too complicated.

Whaddayall think? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:17, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

From SJ:

• Keep the top level portals as the only stand-alone portals. Do not delete the next best portals, but merge them into the top level portals. Reduce the content in portals, and put much more emphasis on their role to provide comprehensive navigation to increasingly more specific topics. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:52, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Portal:LGBT, the first after the big step, of not being considered worthy of mainpage presence, clearly belongs within Portal:Society, in my view. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:18, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• The hierarchical structural of Portals should share things with the hierarchical structure of the categories. In fact, conceptually, I would like to see the two merged. I also consider categories for user navigation, to also be a failed experiment. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:18, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

From BF:

• I think the analysis is good (I would leave out the last two columns in the table for simplicity; no need to invert the data as the previous two columns captures it). Is there an easy way to do the last 6 or even 12 months of views (or is that a lot of analysis); I say that because it would avoid any concerns over a portal having a "bad quarter" of views.
• I see editors confusing portals with articles at MfD, and for them, low page views are not necessarily a reason for deletion (e.g page views is a rarely used arguement now at AfD). They don't make the connection that a portal which is not maintained has no purpose (e.g. what would be the purpose of WP Main Page if it was left frozen at say 2011)?
• The most compelling arguements are when it is shown the portal, bar the 2018 technical updates by the Transhuminist, has been almost untouched for +5-7 years, and has low traffic. This "double lock" of abandonment and no public interest are the most compelling deletes imho. Is there a metric/statistic like page views, that could capture abandonment (e.g. time since last real edit bar the TH and bots etc.)?
• I see when editors engage in the level of abandonment, and that this is not just an "unloved article" issue, but a "frozen Main Page" issue, they are swifter to take action.

Britishfinance (talk) 00:54, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

From USian

• Everyone knows I have been a major deletion nominator of Portals, and like BHG I have a few dozen or so more I intend to nominate.
• But I actually think once that is done it may be a good time to take a pause, so I would add an OPTION E: Do nothing more for now. One belief I have (a reason I have been so active) is that once the junk is deleted, the viewership of the remaining portals may (and only may: of course no guarantees) actually increase: certainly improvement efforts focused on the remaining portals will have more impact. I am surprised/disappointed more portal fans don't see this as a possibility.
• This means the current viewership stats may not really be relevant.
• Since there is no deadline, why not take a 12-month break, see where the portal viewership is at that time, and come back to the community then with a proposal along these lines? We have put out the fire, I for one don't see major value at this point of further deletion work in the Portal: space and the drama that would ensue. Why not look at the Outlines instead? UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:28, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

From Hut 8.5

I agree that portals have largely been a failed experiment and I would support getting rid of most of the ones we have at the moment. I'm not sure pageviews are the right metric to use for this though. The only other situation I can think of where we use pageviews to determine whether to keep or delete something is at RfD, where they are sometimes used to determine whether a redirect represents a real search term or not, and even then the use is to determine whether the redirect has any human views at all. Judging from a few clicks on Special:Random most articles would be deleted if we imposed a threshold of 100 pageviews a month. For portals I suspect pageviews are largely a function of how prominently we link to the portal, rather than any particular property of the portal itself.

I suspect a proposal to nominate most remaining portals for deletion will meet with quite a lot of pushback, as you can see from the responses this proposal got. I'd suggest waiting a while and then focusing on the portals which have the least value, such as those in the <25 bracket above. These portals likely have little value and eliminating them would get rid of more than half the remaining portals.

If I had to come up with a suggestion for criteria we should use for having a portal on some topic I would suggest something like this:

• A few portals on very high-level topics, such as those linked from the main page at the moment.
• Portals which have no corresponding article, such as Portal:Current events or Portal:Featured content (there aren't very many of these)
• I am also very sympathetic to portals which showcase very high quality content, such as Portal:Battleships, as we don't really have anything else which highlights to readers how good these articles are.

Hut 8.5 10:56, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

From RMcC

First, I thank User:BrownHairedGirl for a useful analysis. Second, I have just proposed that there should be an RFC, but a policy RFC and not a mass MFD. My preference is to proceed with a policy RFC. I share the sadness and concern of BHG about the "sullen passivity" of a group of portal advocates, who continue to say that portal critics are ignoring the expressed views of the community (basing that statement largely on an ambiguous RFC a year ago). So I would prefer that the community be surveyed as to its views again, and that there be no mass deletion of portals until the views of the community are surveyed again. Perhaps the community agrees with User:SmokeyJoe that portals are a failed experiment. Perhaps the community only agrees with me that there have been two failed experiments, partial subpage portals and automated portals.

If we are to triage portals based on pageviews, my preference would be to keep those with 100 daily pageviews and delete those with less than 25 pageviews, which is a hybrid of two of BHG's options that leaves a larger middle zone. However, I would prefer to survey the views of the community with a new RFC. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:30, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I see you created the page for Celtics assistant coach Jay Larranaga, however, his name according to his official work, as well as multiple other online sources, his last name does not have a tilde over the "n." Would it be possible for you, as an admin, to fix this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Larrañaga — Preceding unsigned comment added by Turtleturtle00 (talk • contribs) 02:02, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Turtleturtle00: I didn't create the page. I recategorised it in January 2017‎[11], but I know nothing else about the topic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:49, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on Category:Scottish people of Thai descent requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:19, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Civil awards and decorations of Andhra Pradesh, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:32, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please leave me alone. Thank you very much,  Buaidh  talk contribs 20:09, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]