Archives

Archive 1 Archive 2

Precious

Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:21, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Per your comment to SchroCat, I noticed a discussion on about a guideline for infoboxes for biographies. I believe the guideline could be short:

• In an encyclopedia, people expect to see in the beginning when and where a person was born and died, and what the person is notable for. In the German Wikipedia, and the Italian Wikipedia, that is given consistently in the first sentece of the lead. I the English Wikipedia, however, the MoS recommends to "free" that first sentence" from the places of birth and death, almost relying on an infobox to carry that out. - So simple.

The only question might be about what else to put in. - Beethoven - installed by the arb who wrote the infoboxes case as the community consensus - is a good example. - I won't participate in infobox discussions if I can avoid it, so won't go to the discussion, but I felt I had to support the cogent arguments by Voceditenore for Mozart. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:55, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Gerda, it's good to see you! I'm also a believer in brief guidance, and find many guideline pages way too detailed and specific, but I guess most of it comes from discussions people spent time on, so I don't trip about it. I think what else to add to an infobox (biographical) really depends on the subject. For a modestly influential linguist or historian, for example, it's pretty interesting for me personally to see whom they influenced, which might not really have a great place in the prose, and would be towards the bottom of the article. A creative genius whose legacy influences whole generations, though— it doesn't make any sense to put influenced in the infobox: too many examples, and at that point we're just playing favourites. Notable family members or spouses are nice to have, but if we're just duplicating the first paragraph by removing the sentence structure, what really is the point?

My take on the whole thing is that, on Wikipedia, people will argue about anything. Everybody has things that are really meaningful to them, and some people have more hills they're willing to die on than others, but it's honestly a little refreshing to have arguments done properly, where it's clear we're on the same team, just disagreeing on how to improve the project, and people here are thinky types who can read and write!

Hope it's as beautiful where you are as it was here today. Perfect day for pressure washing. Be well! Folly Mox (talk) 00:38, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I think the list in the discussion should be more detailed, such as showing that there was no RfC in 2019 - 2020 - 2021, at least to my knowledge. - I made one for composers when Mozart was discussed. When we discussed Sibelius I asked how many RfCs we'd need to accept that treating infoboxes as a territory war subject is not a good way to spend editors' time. The answer is open ;) - The great Brian Boulton gave us directions in 2013 (link on my user page, look for "a fresh look"): have an infobox but keep it concise. - The day was great yesterday, pics to be uploaded right next. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:53, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

May songs

my story today

three pics of yesterday --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:44, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

five of today - more pleasant music (just heard!) if you click on songs --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:31, 14 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pentecost was full of music, and my story today is that 300 years ago today, Bach became Thomaskantor, with BWV 75, writing music history. - As for the composers, Puccini has a suggestion now. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:55, 30 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to hear it, Gerda! Is Pentecost this past weekend? My weekend was less joyous, but I'll refrain from spilling my feelings and problems onto this talkpage. Folly Mox (talk) 00:20, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, and I did the same. Pentecost was past weekend (in Germany, for two days, and I fixed the link above), and it was not as planned, but it was good, perhaps even better than planned. For dessert, I didn't get only the wonderful cakes my cousin made (pictured), but - last night when I was too tired to share - the yt video of the 6 May concert, Misatango and Te Deum. I put it there and on my user page. - Best wishes for your feelings! (When I read THERAPY I thought of what Doug shares.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:25, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.

If you wish to participate in the 2022 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add ((NoACEMM)) to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:11, 29 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Folly Mox,

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland/Evidence. Please add your evidence by April 04, 2023, which is when the first evidence phase closes. Submitted evidence will be summarized by Arbitrators and Clerks at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland/Evidence/Summary. Owing to the summary style, editors are encouraged to submit evidence in small chunks sooner rather than more complete evidence later.

Details about the summary page, the two phases of evidence, a timeline and other answers to frequently asked questions can be found at the case's FAQ page.

For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration.

For the Arbitration Committee,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:13, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings. First, thanks for your work on Siege of Yong'an. Sorry I missed your initial ping to me on that AfD. Would you mind taking a look at the above article? It has the same citation issues, and I sent it to draft, but the editor simply moved it back to mainspace. Before I send it to AfD, I thought I might reach out to you first. But let me know if this is a bother, and I won't do it again. We get about 5 of these articles a month over at NPP. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:13, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Onel5969: no worries about the missed ping! You have the reputation of a very busy person and I'm never in a hurry here. If it's on the order of five a month I'd be glad to try to look at each of them, but sourcing like this is definitely going to show up with regularity, because to a person who works with the Chinese historical record, the citations as provided are sufficient to verify the text. And any topic that's been given treatment in one of the standard official histories is going to meet WP:N on that fact alone.

The linked article is outside my era of expertise, and given my current source access the level of improvement I've done to the article here is pretty much all I'll be able to manage. Hope that's adequate. I'm typically not particularly active so if you send me an article and don't hear back for a few days, feel free to take it to AfD or whatever so another subject matter editor can spruce it up. Wikipedia:WikiProject Chinese history is pretty dead, but Wikipedia:Wikiproject China has a few watchers who might be able to help with this sort of thing too. Thanks again. Folly Mox (talk) 20:30, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Hate to bother you again, but could you take a look at this one as well? I wish these editors would simply take the time to improve the sourcing themselves. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:36, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No worries @Onel5969: I'm unusually unbusy irl at the moment. I was able to track down the references that lacked any citation (fortunately the author provided the exact text they were paraphrasing). The article still does have some issues, and I think I mentioned all of them in the edit summary. I also wish everyone would just cite content properly the first time around. Folly Mox (talk) 16:00, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks as always. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 16:12, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Mandate of Heaven, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Xunzi. 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.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 14:45, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Done in this edit. Folly Mox (talk) 07:33, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Another one, if you have the time.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 13:11, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Onel5969: I'm realizing now I never actually responded to you when I fixed up the cites in this article, but I addressed it the day you posted here I think. I do see a lot of biographies cited in this manner that have been in mainspace for years, and I've started improving the citation style whenever they pop onto my watchlist, but I'm sure there are hundreds and I'm not planning on working on them systematically anytime soon. Please don't hesitate to keep pinging me about Chinese history drafts with unclear citation styles though. I'm happy to help out in that regard. Folly Mox (talk) 00:42, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. Saw your changes, and marked it reviewed. Thanks for your efforts, and I'm from NYC. Not shy or hesitant. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:23, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Spring and Autumn period, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Guoyu.

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 06:02, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oops yeah I can never remember what we translate the titles of books as. I'll check it out, unsupervised cronjob 💚 Folly Mox (talk) 06:57, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Done in this edit. Folly Mox (talk) 07:39, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Folly Mox, Just to finish a thought from ANI: I agree with you that a person armed with any decent work of scholarship could fairly easily go through it and add sources to various things. But this is not how the "add sources" task is structured: instead, it presents new editors with a bunch of things tagged for not having sources, and asks them to find sources. In my opinion, this format favors much less promising approaches like the one I described. (And in my experience fixing something tagged as unsourced is often not really about finding a source, but rather about dealing with a content issue like OR or SYNTH.) Anyhow, it is not the most important thing in the world, & I am happy to agree to disagree about it (having now satisfied my compulsion to write one last thing on the topic). Happy editing, JBL (talk) 17:54, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@JayBeeEll: having had a look at how the "add source" task is set up, I find myself in complete agreement with you that it seems significantly more difficult than copyediting. I guess I've been wikipeding wrong all these years 🙃 Folly Mox (talk) 19:14, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1127 § Awful 'copyediting' by SuspiciousReality70. Folly Mox (talk) 13:39, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

• A "generic title" error. References show this error when they have a generic placeholder title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

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) 21:00, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Bot:Qwerfjkl (bot)#Task 17. I've removed the reference. The link was dead anyway. Folly Mox (talk) 21:35, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Folly Mox, When creating redirects, please check that the target article actually mentions the redirect term somewhere, as its absence can be confusing to the reader, particularly if it is a foreign language term. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:22, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's a pretty good idea! I'll make sure it's somewhere prominent. Apologies for the oversight. Folly Mox (talk) 05:25, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Much appreciated, Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:30, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

	The Barnstar of Good Humor
	This is awesome. Thank you so much for giving me something to laugh about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again. Here's another one, if you wouldn't mind taking a look. Thanks. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 16:00, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Onel5969: I've improved the citation style, but identified some contradictory claims, neither of which I was able to verify (which leads me to believe the second one: "it is not known..."). Most of the prose is supported by the two pages I called out specifically in Template:harvtxt. Folly Mox (talk) 14:56, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, thanks as always. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 16:05, 27 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

	The Technical Barnstar
	I can't thank you enough for your tireless efforts to repair citations damaged by ReferenceExpander, and how far above and beyond you've gone to identify issues with the script and explain them in a way that is both easily understandable and considerate toward the script's author. — SamX [talk · contribs] 17:09, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While I'm here, I'd like to note that I'm thinking about going through everyone whose common.js is listed at Special:WhatLinksHere/User:BrandonXLF/ReferenceExpander.js and posting a boilerplate message on their talk pages alerting them of the script's issues. I'm thinking of directing them to your summary of the script's issues on the MFD page using the ((noping)) template, but I wanted to run that by you first.

That's fine with me and should give me some impetus to finally do my homework and dig up diffs for all the example behaviours I complained to the script author about. I don't feel like I've been very fair to them, but the damage speaks for itself. If you're not already planning to, be sure to link XOR'easter's cleanup page as well with their permission, since they've gone through the trouble of finding all the potentially damaged pages and given us a hub for the cleanup work. Thanks to you for your efforts in this as well. Folly Mox (talk) 18:07, 31 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Scottywong. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Scottywong/Evidence. Please add your evidence by June 21, 2023, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Scottywong/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 19:21, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

• A "missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

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) 04:47, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Thanks, Bot:Qwerfjkl bot (task 17). I've addressed the error here. Folly Mox (talk) 05:09, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

your username Iljhgtn (talk) 14:58, 17 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

• A "bare URL and missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

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) 21:59, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. Thanks Bot:Qwerfjkl bot (task 17). Looks like I accidentally deleted a title= parameter while deleting a bunch of other nonsense. Folly Mox (talk) 23:35, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Folly Mox - in this discussion where you said "Feel free to nuke the refs and we'll deal with it post facto," I was curious about what you found for cleaning up content and sources after the GreenC bot nuked the blacklisted source.

Do you feel it's best to manually remove a blacklisted source (tedious if from hundreds of articles) or deal with sentences having no source after the bot's action?

Do you have any thoughts about whether a nuking bot could add a [citation needed] tag? This would seem to be a common need once blacklisted sources are removed, so may need some Village Pump discussion, for which I could offer a proposal, if you think it's warranted.

Following you here. Thanks. Zefr (talk) 16:39, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To be completely transparent, my findings so far have been that I totally forgot about it until yesterday 😅 Fortunately User:GreenC did all of the edits consecutively in a little over twenty-four hours on 20 and 21 June, so the next step is to Wikipedia:Request a query that will return all of User:GreenC bot's edits between Special:Diff/1160957035 and Special:Diff/1161117705, which can be formatted into a worksheet similar to this. The following step is then trying to find an archived version of the usurped reference and rebuilding the citation using that.

Our use cases differ because hugedomains is just a domain squatter that no human editor would ever add to an article, so there should always be an actual source that precedes it, which got wrecked when a citation filling script followed it and updated it to the usurping website. For healthline, it's altogether possible a human editor added the reference without understanding the unreliability of the source, so it will take more effort than just locating an archived version in order to clean up after.

I think for the healthline source, it probably would have been beneficial for User:GreenC bot to drop a ((cn)) where it deleted the blacklisted citation, since medical articles are held to higher standards than many other sorts. It wouldn't have hurt to place ((cn)) tags for the hugedomains task as well. I think the only case where it's not an improvement to replace a blacklisted citation with a ((cn)) tag is when the deleted source is immediately adjacent to – and thus superfluous to – another reference.

To address your middle question, if we've come to an agreement to blacklist a source, I do think it's probably best to nuke it first and clean up afterwards, rather than performing the long manual cleanup task and add it to the blacklist afterwards. It does result in unsourced content (which as yet is not labeled as such), but it prevents adding any more instances of the source during a process that could take months. Depending on the severity of the blacklisting (hugedomains is just the equivalent of no source masquerading as a source; healthline could be actively harmful), the ideal might be to blacklist first and not nuke at all, which would prevent human editors from publishing edits to the affected articles until the source is removed or improved. This would spread out the responsibility of dealing with the cleanup, but unfortunately would require a software change, because as far as I know mediawiki doesn't surface which source is tripping the blacklist filter, or even say specifically that is why an edit cannot be saved, which is probably intentional.

So to sum up this long ramble, I feel like the best solution is drop a ((cn)) while nuking, and clean up afterwards. Unsourced content is a problem, but it's absolutely everywhere. Folly Mox (talk) 20:54, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, requesting a database query for the hugedomains edits is overkill. This Special:Contributions link gives the exact results. Folly Mox (talk) 20:26, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Folly Mox. You have new messages at User talk:Remsense/chinese dynasty image.
Message added 23:54, 4 August 2023 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the ((Talkback)) or ((Tb)) template.

hey there, i hope you don't mind this unsolicited message, and i know this isn't necessarily your wheelhouse, but earlier this year i spent a lot of time making a new SVG graphic to replace , but I lost interest after filling it out to a considerable degree. what do you think, if you're inclined to take a look? https://ianremsen.nand.sh/中华/dynasties/ i would alter it considerably more before uploading it to wikimedia, but i'm curious if it's seen largely as useful/viable Remsense (talk) 23:54, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Remsense: thank you for making that! It is in my wheelhouse, as it happens, and I do have a few thoughts.

I think the current image and your new version serve slightly different purposes: the old one – while it focuses heavily on political history and military events – does contain some popouts about whatever the initial cteator considered to be very important events or people; your new version is concerned entirely with political control, with the additional benefit of adding Chinese characters, showing periods where political control was not uniform, and colour coding ruling ethnicities. I do have a lot of thoughts about the shortcomings of the current version, which I've always felt really overemphasises military events at the expense of cultural milestones.

My second thought, from a design perspective, is that your version feels a little busy, which is an almost unavoidable side effect of the colour coding and display of partial geographic control. If I were designing it from scratch with the same communication goals in mind, I'd probably choose more muted colours, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with MOS:COLOR to understand how colour choices affect accessibility for colourblind readers.

I do really like the addition of Chinese characters – which I always have a tendency to add in my topic area content work to facilitate understanding – but I could foresee some subset of people upset that simplified characters are used throughout. I personally don't think it's a big deal.

Despite the title "Timeline of Chinese Dynasties", I think some people might not appreciate the PRC or ROC showing up at the end, although it's such a thorny topic I wouldn't want to address it either.

As a general comment, I know neither your version nor the current version does this, but my dream timeline wouldn't use a linear scale for the time axis, and would give equal space to things not having to do with politics or military.

My final nitpicks are that it's not clear what is meant by "abridgement", and that although communicating political control seems to be a main goal, major differences in the strength of the central government are not highlighted super well. For example the Western Zhou, Springs and Autumns, and Warring States periods had entirely different political landscapes and dominant political theories; and the end of the Han under Xiandi just looks like it goes back to normal after what is displayed as a partial interregnum ascribed to the Yellow Turban Rebellion, when actually Emperor Xian never exercised personal authority and was controlled by warlords his entire reign (although if we go down that road, we run into the question of which of the boy– and baby-emperors of the Later Han were not completely at the mercy of their moms' families).

Anyway, I do think it has a place somewhere. Maybe Dynasties in Chinese History? You might also want to open a discussion at a more public venue than a user talk page, like Talk:Timeline of Chinese history, Talk:History of China, or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China. If you're not comfortable with or ready for that, some other active users in the space you could contact directly for feedback might be Aza24, PericlesofAthens, Qiushufang, or Underbar_dk. Folly Mox (talk) 01:34, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, certainly, thank you so much for the involved and thoughtful reply! Each of the points you've raised (the scope; the scale; the busy-ness; the attempt to keep to 'political'/military events being a good choice or not; the precise meaning of 'abridgement', i've definitely thought of on and off too. i will think over a few things, i think I have a few idea for graphics that are a bit smaller/more focused in scope if i can't quite get this one right, and if you have any suggestions to that effect i'd be thrilled to hear them too. you gave all the feedback i could have expected and more, thank you very much. :) Remsense (talk) 02:32, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I hope your day is better than yesterday.:) S0091 (talk) 15:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, User:S0091! That's really considerate of you 🥰 Folly Mox (talk) 19:15, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

	The Special Barnstar
	For your tireless efforts mopping up after RefExpander, your thoughtful contributions in a wide range of discussions, and your kindness to other editors. Thank you for all that you do! Beccaynr (talk) 02:46, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wow thank you! 🥰 I feel really grateful, although I haven't done any ReferenceExpander cleanup in a week or more, the tabs are still open in the background. Wage work picked up and other things around here have felt more critical.

Thanks for all you do too! I haven't forgotten your assistance in the early days of RefExpander cleanup lo these many moons ago. 💛 Folly Mox (talk) 02:59, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I found the RefExpander work a particular challenge, as it tended to draw me into deeper reviews of articles and sources, and then I wandered off to chase other squirrels, but I have been so happy to see the team effort and huge amount of work accomplished. Cheers! Beccaynr (talk) 03:19, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please, can you also help me to translate from Chinese these Mongols: zh:董狐狸, zh:长秃, zh:长昂? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.207.96.50 (talk) 08:33, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Replied on your talk page, but the short version is that I don't have 1. time right now, 2. topic area expertise, or 3. access to the source used in those articles. I hope you're able to find someone who does have those three things and is able to help you. Folly Mox (talk) 12:55, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether to be upset or amused by this edit summary :-). JBL (talk) 21:07, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In 2005, I was working as an IT professional. I might actually literally have been a web developer part of that year. The main issue is how the decades all start blurring together. Folly Mox (talk) 23:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lol, phew, great. (It is disconcerting to me that my (undergraduate, essentially adult) students view the seminal events of my life through an entirely historical lens, but such is life I guess.) Happy editing, JBL (talk) 19:08, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just to check -- are the sections tagged 'uncited' here actually uncited or is the family section in particular using genrefs that haven't been put inline? Have ran into this before, which you corrected :) The page is OTD-eligible if those sections are either removed or cited (well, the length tag...but my opinions of those, for this length range and especially for articles with length from "many sections" rather than "giant section", are on the record), so I'm looking at it with an eye to getting it on the currently partially-but-not-fully-swapped Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/September 7. Vaticidalprophet 19:36, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Vaticidalprophet haha wow oh my gosh I forgot that article looks like that. It's hovered around the borders of my todo space for a long time. Looks like Family tree of Sima Yi is pretty cited, so I can port those over as applicable to Sima Yi#Family. All the sources listed are available online, so I'll be able to verify as I go.

Sima Yi#In fiction might be a little more difficult. I'll give it a go, but again I'll be relying on citations in adjacent articles. I might remove some of the pop culture stuff: saying Sima Yi is present in the Three Kingdoms expansions to things like Magic the Gathering and Puzzles and Dragons is just a weaker version of the equally true but probably not verifiable statement that Sima Yi has appeared in every pop culture artifact that does a Three Kingdoms thing.

Anyway, thanks for flagging this. I'll start taking a look at it today. I'll handle the uncitey bits first and should probably have that done in less than a day's work. Folly Mox (talk) 20:12, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh right and to answer the direct question, the sources for the Family section are present in the article already, but not inline. In fiction not so. Folly Mox (talk) 20:13, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Vaticidalprophet I have added citations to the two uncited sections, although I didn't source every single claim in ==In fiction==. I also undid a lot of 2022 GOCE work by resorting the alphabetic and numeric footnotes into a more standard split, improved some translations, did a bunch of other citation nonsense, and wailed in my heart to the unknowable cosmic mechanism. I believe the article is salvageable, with what music industry copywriters refer to as "deep cuts", by which I mean significant reduction in detail.

I have some more source stuff to do there, but the blockers should be resolved. Let me know if there's anything else I can do. Folly Mox (talk) 10:01, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! (The length tag is still a sticking point for by-the-book-eligibility, but...eh, biographies don't split well, so I'm skeptical about strict SIZERULE interpretations for them.) By the by -- "non-Western" and "pre-1600ish" are both incredibly hard to get good candidates for at OTD. If you know of any Three Kingdoms-era articles passing more or less a "good enough for DYK" standard -- or any ancient China articles at all, really -- please send them I will build 200 OTD sets. (Currently building the last three weeks of September.) Vaticidalprophet 19:35, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Vaticidalprophet I did at one point during the work at Sima Yi have the very sassy urge to reorganise its entire contents into ==Biography== and ==Controversy==. The main organisational problem with the article at present is how much detail there is in the Sima Yi article where there are existing subarticles (like Incident at Gaoping Tombs, Sima Yi's Liaodong campaign, Battle of Wuzhang Plains, etc.) The main Sima Yi article appears to have been subject of copypaste from some of the subarticles, which I noticed when I ran into two sources defined only by author and page number, which had full citations in the subarticles. I'm not sure I have it in me to do the necessary summarising in the main article and citation cleanup in the subarticles at present.

I'm not surprised at the difficulty getting early non-Western articles to OTD, given the differences in calendar and less rigorous timekeeping. The Three Kingdoms period is fairly well developed due to its modern popularity, but for me it's more a space I get dragged back into Corleone style than a space that calls me itself. A lot of the biographies are (unsurprisingly, since they were the organisational schema for most historical texts) relatively well-develoloped, but typically endure a non-standard citation style involving direct source quotes cited to an entire book or volume, which is more than adequate for topic area specialists but less so for the general reader. This citation style seems to have been pioneered around 2014, and spread via fait accompli to newer editors working on different time periods, but has received pushback from NPP in particular, which can be seen at threads above on this usertalk page.

Anyway, I'll keep an eye out for good enough articles (I've never participated or lurked at DYK) that have strongly supported calendar dates, all of which will be the accession or death of self-important blowhards famous dudes highly achieved individuals. I'll be sure to hit you up if I run into anything appropriate. Folly Mox (talk) 20:28, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DYK eligibility can be glossed as "not a stub, not cleanup-tagged, relevant bit of the article is cited inline, ideally wouldn't make the project a laughingstock if we ran it". OTD eligiblity is a bit more impressionistic (I tend to read it as permitting a limited number of cn or other inline cleanup tags as long as there aren't banners), but in the same sphere. It's a lower bar than quality-assessment, but once you split it by "oh, and the article is relevant to a specific date somehow" things get narrow. Things like idiosyncratic citation styles are very much fine, as long as they...exist. (Because much of OTD is unwritten practice of an editor who suddenly semi-retired and now has a bunch of people filling in and debating the gaps, I'm not entirely clear on general references and OTD eligibility. I would like them to be, because it'd expand options a lot and because interpreting DYK/OTD stricter than MINREF seems not-ideal, but they're nominally eligible for 'yellow' cleanup tags, which is a ruleout.) Vaticidalprophet 20:35, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

Other dynasties list confucsionism as a religion. And the Han dynasty clearly followed confucsionism Zman19964 (talk) 14:20, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Replied at Talk:Han dynasty. Folly Mox (talk) 19:45, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for answering questions while I was away. It was quite unexpected but I tell you more about that in my email response. For now I'm going to log off and get some much needed rest in my own bed for change. I wanted to log on to let you know I read the email and I think it was sweet of you to check in on me and were thinking of the impact on new editors. I appreciate all you do on the project. --ARoseWolf 18:12, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm extremely grateful to hear from you! I hope you have a thorough rest.

Quite embarrassingly, I never knew that "enable other users to email you" is a separate toggle than "receive email notifications", and mine was not toggled on. So I didn't receive your email, and may have been able to avoid the whole marking your mentor status as "away" business if I had thought to check for that toggle. If you still have the email in your outbox, I would love to read a copy of it, having now correctly enabled the ability to do so.

Sending positive energy. Appreciate you as well. Folly Mox (talk) 19:25, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While we're on this tangent, adding a collapsibility to level three subheadings, defaulted to uncollapsed, would be pretty nice. Some of those get real long, and it would be convenient to collapse them if I'm editing them one after another.
I remember looking at this some time ago for User:Alexis Jazz/Factotum and it gave me a bit of a headache. It should be doable server-side, but it's rather suboptimal to try and deal with in a gadget/user script, mostly due to performance. At some point I implemented the options (disabled by default) "Arrow in section headers to scroll to the previous section" and "Arrow in section headers to scroll to the next section" which seemed useful for mobile users. See also the "Customize settings to disable/hide on mobile" option on the mobile tab of the in-gadget settings if you're interested.
I had borrowed the idea from another user script but can't quite remember which one. It was a script with various modules that could be toggled and I think User:Qwerfjkl used it - that's all I can really remember. It might be worth giving a script that adds such arrows a try. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:29, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Alexis Jazz, I think you're referring to de:User:Benutzing or whatever their name was. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:39, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Qwerfjkl, "Benutzer" is German for "User", but your comment helped me to find what I meant. I'm pretty sure that feature was inspired by a feature in w:de:Benutzer:Schnark/js/fliegelflagel. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:57, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:Alexis Jazz, Factotum does look interesting and I'll plan to give it a go someday soon when I'm less busy. Thank you! Folly Mox (talk) 23:55, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You might be happy to know, that things got resolved on their own without me having to report anyone or even keep track of it 😅.

One of the accounts was blocked on the 2nd (block1]) and the other was blocked ~24 hours ago (block2).
And yeah, both of them were just sleeper accounts of an older evader - although surprisingly enough the block reason of the main account is undisclosed paid editing not just your general stubborn evader (original account blocks).

Guess I didn't have to worry about it, the admins were on it anyways. – 2804:F14:80D6:E401:E8B6:1355:28C1:D6AC (talk) 08:07, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad this was resolved. I think I could have handled your initial question a lot better, and had typed out a full response about the evidence required to file an SPI (which I'm not sure is even available to unregistered editors), before I erased it out of caution that I might be advising a sockmaster checking in to see if their lapse would be picked up on.

So I apologise again for the initial annoyance I caused you, and I'm still not really sure what venue would have been a better place to raise your concerns than the Teahouse. I do think the evidence was weak for SPI, but from the chain of events it does seem you were the first to suspect – correctly – that the accounts were sleeper socks. I suppose a sloppy sockmaster is likely to make more serious errors in operational security and be caught eventually (the one SPI I ever filed was against an account that could have been blocked as a regular admin action for unrelated disruption, but the admin I brought it up with suggested it would be better to wait, both to get the SPI on the books as confirmed and to uncover sleepers, so sometimes it seems better to let the sockmasters build the cases against themselves rather than act quickly and possibly miss out on desirable knock on effects from more information).

So thank you for letting me know how this turned out, and apologies for the disjointed thoughts above – it's first thing in the morning here and I'm still on my first caffeine. Folly Mox (talk) 16:20, 6 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

		The Original Barnstar
		Thank you for fixing up the uses of ((SSDI rootsweb))! 192.76.8.91 (talk) 17:21, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, 192, for uncovering the issue and bringing it to everyone's attention! Folly Mox (talk) 17:27, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Precious anniversary

Precious

Six years!

I read our thought last year with interest ;) - how are you now? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:59, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gerda, always good to see you. I am still plodding along. Destitute, but my living situation has improved since earlier this year. My emotional wounds seem overall less worse week to week. I have been investing a lot of energy into a friend who is at a very low point. It's draining, and mirrors the darkness I carry myself, which I have previously leaned on others to help me cope with. It's something of a relief to worry more about my finances than my heart, which I think says something about the kind of year I've been having.

My participation here shot up during the summer, but this past month I've been so busy and without the time and focus to do significant work in mainspace, so I've been contributing mostly in projectspace since the beginning of September.

I sometimes read the conversations you have with other editors whose talkpages I watch. Maybe someday I'll have some new wildflower photos to share. Folly Mox (talk) 07:38, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Which shouldn't be a red link. Sadly I think she's dead, we corresponded quite a bit and almost met up in London. I haven't heard from her since Dec. 2021. She really needs an article. Her last email was sent to someone else as wel, so I"ve emailed them both. Doug Weller talk 07:08, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that not only did I not hear of her till yesterday, I even misspelt her name at the thread that formed the impetus for becoming aware of her.

It's always good to see you around, User:Doug Weller, and I did a rather deep dive into the academic publishers working with the Wikipedia Library to see what all we have access to by Kirsten Seaver. She seems to be – or, to have been – rather widely published for an independent scholar, but I think this might be a case where the primary topic in terms of notability might be her book Maps, Myths, and Men, which already has a subheading at Vinland Map#Maps, Myths, and Men, 2004.

I got search hits all over the place in Wikipedia Library affiliates for "Kirsten Seaver", and probably close to ⅓ of them were reviews of that book. It's also covered in some books searched on Google books, a news article or two iirc, and I guess she went on TV about it at one point?

Of course she's published a lot of other things besides, some of which was reviewed widely enough that it might be independently notable. She also had a bit of a published row with Gavin Menzies, the notorious 1421 hoaxster, as well as a Kensington Runestone fan surnamed Zalar.

For the woman herself, there seems very little information published, much of it in publisher blurbs or acknowledgements. From what I can remember, and don't have the energy to tab around finding links for again, she was an independent scholar, for an interval married to a certain historian Paul Seaver, lived at Stanford at some point, and was a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, which seems to be a purchased title.

I've never really attempted an article where I wasn't already certain about notability, but I don't think Maps, Myths, and Men would be too difficult to turn blue. I could coatrack a bit more about Kirsten Seaver on there, and redirect her name to it. I might attempt that this week or next, before the tabs fall off the top of the browser. I suppose an equally fitting tribute would be to keep citing her work as appropriate in articles her studies touched. Be well, Folly Mox (talk) 09:39, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great if you wrote an article. Paul died in 2020 leaving her a widower. Doug Weller talk 09:44, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm not sure how I missed this biography (probably sleepiness or stupidity), but it no longer seems out of the question to write a biography for her here, and it also seems like she may yet live. Folly Mox (talk) 14:45, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I was supposed to have been in bed before I even started looking last night. She's already at no:Kirsten A. Seaver and de:Kirsten A. Seaver. I feel like I spent two hours rummaging around in totes for something I'd left on the kitchen counter. Folly Mox (talk) 14:58, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox My bad, I should have given you that link. Sorry. Doug Weller talk 15:39, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No worries! I should have thought about a thing before starting it. Typical 🙃 Folly Mox (talk) 06:12, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

She's replied. Just celebrated her 89th birthday. That was my aim, but I can't say I'm sorry I won't achieve it, the world is going to hell in a handbasket in most ways possible, and I hate what's happened to my native country (America, I now have dual citizenship with the UK). As someone who grew up in the era of the Civil Rights Movement and the optimism of the Kennedy age and walked with King, it all makes me sick. Anyway, she'll help as much as possible with any article. Doug Weller talk 06:33, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Folly Mox: Stopped by to leave thanks for your insightful input on talk pages, this thread (Doug: how wonderful to hear back!) motivated me to start a stub for Seaver :) A wave to you both. – SJ + 21:30, 7 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, thank you, User:Sj! I had been meaning to get around to this all week but kept getting overwhelmed / tied up / sidetracked. I did manage to find the source of the Encyclopedia.com source, which is rather unfortunately paywalled. I'll see what I can do to help build out the stub with the tabs I have open. Notability seems like it might end up a bit cobbled together, but thanks for getting this going! Folly Mox (talk) 21:49, 7 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. I'm never sure what to do with other encyclopedias; sometimes I think we deserve a combo of dab and redirect that says "covered in other reference works: <list of links>". My rule of thumb is still 2 mainstream-publisher books = generally notable. And publishing in three different languages deserves an extra note! A case where non-English sources may be appropriate. – SJ + 23:39, 7 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Sj Thanks so much for starting the stub. Let me know if you want me to ask her any questions. She's a lovely lady. Doug Weller talk 07:37, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Any leads on published sources of her biography outside Gale's Biographies in context and its derived works would be super useful. I've started adding source suggestions to Talk:Kirsten Seaver, having not got past the research stage. Folly Mox (talk) 07:53, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry, I don't understand what you wrote in the MoS section about linking. The idea to link to a list of a composer's works (which is objective and neutral) instead of individual works (subject to personal preferences) dates back to ((infobox classical composer)) (2008) and has been followed in many articles, in several of those per RfC (Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart). FYI. Can we agree that the link to a composer's works at a glance, in the many cases that it is not within the biography, is desirable? -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:11, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry too, Gerda. I fell into the common trap of answering a question I didn't have a good background knowledge about, as well as the common trap of editing while sleepy. I looked at the RFCs you mentioned, which were already linked in the table linked in the OP, and posted a new comment while striking the speculation about future arguments on subjective lists.

I think I was trying to make the same point you mention just above: that an objective list is better than personal preference. Clearly I didn't do enough reading to have a fully informed opinion, and I was editing right before bed, which is a really good method for saying things that don't make sense.

Thanks for bringing this up here; I hope my new comment is more understandable. I just told someone two days ago, who had been posting uninformed responses at the Teahouse, that they should only answer a question if they were sure about the answer. I should really take my own advice before sleepily weighing in on a conversation I don't have expertise about. Please let me know if you still have any concerns. Folly Mox (talk) 15:42, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to bother you, but do you know if it would be possible for me to add into the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maida of Aukh these articles: Botur, Ors Ela and Battle of Sadoy-Lam? They suffer from pretty much same issues - unreliable sources and crazy claims with a little bit of forgery. Anyways, thanks for giving your insight on the topic! Best regards, WikiEditor1234567123 (talk) 21:28, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WikiEditor1234567123, I've never bundled AfDs before, and I don't currently have Twinkle enabled to explore the available options. I do know that it's technically possible and within policy to add articles to a bundled AfD after the AfD has already begun, but I have no idea how to do it. Folly Mox (talk) 22:04, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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

• A "missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

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) 19:40, 16 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I know, User:Qwerfjkl (bot) task 17. I fixed it in my next edit. I wasn't sure I had access to the source. Folly Mox (talk) 19:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

		The Chinese Barnstar
		Maybe I already have, but just in case I wanted to go out of my way thank you for being particularly supportive and helpful to me when I started actively editing China-related articles earlier this year. You're always thoughtful and a huge help whenever you pop up, which is often!

— Remsense聊 02:56, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Remsense, I really appreciate that and I'm glad to hear I've been helpful! The premodern China topic area has been pretty underattended the past year or two, so my watchlist has accumulated more articles than is perhaps ideal, and it's good to have another person around. New irl situations have left me with much less availability for active editing than the first part of the year, but I will still be showing up all over the place.

Part of me wants to do a roleplay and decline the barnstar three times while asserting my own ignorance and lack of ability, but I just woke up and don't have sufficient brain juices yet. Anyway thanks again and thanks as well for your contributions to the project and the topic area 🤍 Folly Mox (talk) 10:40, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I would like to understand three things: 1) should 'Pecorino Romano' be written only with a capital 'R' or also with a capital 'P'? 2) if 'Romano' is capitalised, why is 'Toscano' ('Pecorino toscano') not? 3) could you answer the last question I asked in the help desk? I would need it to continue my work; 4) could you please put 'Pecorino Romano' and 'Pecorino Toscano' in italics in their respective infoboxes, I have tried but I cannot do it. JackkBrown (talk) 13:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:JackkBrown, I'd like to help you with these things, but I don't have an answer for most of them and I'm about to log off and go to work. I am not an expert in capitalisation (that would be Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters) and I don't know how to format infobox titles. I just had one google ngram result from your one question. I'm sorry but I'm just out of time. 🙏🏽 Folly Mox (talk) 13:48, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(A random passer-by) To italicise the title of an infobox, you just need to specify a "name" parameter, and italicise the name. So, for example, | name = ''Pecorino Romano'' gives you an italicised title Pecorino Romano. HTH. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 16:44, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

User:JackkBrown, I had time this morning to answer your second question at WP:HD (item 3), which I pinged you to. As to items 1 and 2 above, I don't have the answers. I suggested some talkpages to raise the issue. Item 4 has kindly been addressed just above by User:Jean-de-Nivelle, in case you missed it yesterday. Folly Mox (talk) 13:42, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Contact a helpful administrator and WP:Revdel request. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 13:52, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@7&6=thirteen: it's been my understanding of the oversight policy that non-public personally identifying information is subject to suppression, not just revdel. The oversight team can always choose to revdel instead (or downgrade to revdel upon review), but their stated preference is to use suppression as the first line tool. Especially for an editor unfamiliar with policy, as the person who asked about this at the Helpdesk seemed to be, it's better to advise the higher level of security first, in my opinion.

I could very well be wrong, but both times I've emailed the oversight team about things like this they've chosen to suppress rather than just revdel. Folly Mox (talk) 18:45, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your suggestion may be preferable.

I don't care. I was simply making a constructive suggestion. I do not require compliance.

There may be more than one route to address this; and maybe both should be used. I don't have a dog in this fight. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:23, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Folly Mox, I've noticed your previous contributions to the talkpage of the Battle of Kosovo. Currently, there's an ongoing RfC on that page with divergent opinions. I would appreciate it if you could share your perspective, potentially aiding in reaching a consensus among editors. Thank you in advance! --Azor (talk). 16:55, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi AzorzaI, I'm afraid my topic area knowledge is not sufficient to offer an opinion in that RFC. Sorry 🖤 Folly Mox (talk) 00:31, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Folly Mox, thank you for reverting the error I made on William Messner-Loebs. This was one of those misclicks where I did not remove the removal of citation titles during the AWB run. Apparently even the Bot did not add those titles back. Anyways this time I've done it correctly. Thanks again for correcting me. ❯❯❯ Raydann^(Talk) 07:32, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome, Raydann! Citation bot was able to figure out the titles with the information still left, but the removal of the |title= parameter from the initial misclick resulted in broken links with spaces in them. I wasn't really sure what to do, so thanks for understanding the revert ☺️ Folly Mox (talk) 07:43, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Folly Mox -- Could I ask you to revisit the above AfD, as Cunard has found a couple of Chinese-language sources that could do with an evaluation by someone who is familiar with the topic area (which I think you are?). Cheers, Espresso Addict (talk) 17:10, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Espresso Addict, thanks for the heads up. I've responded at the AfD. Modern China isn't really my specialty, but I'd rate my familiarity as higher than average. Folly Mox (talk) 19:02, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. 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.

If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add ((NoACEMM)) to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:35, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Folly Mox, as one of the watchers of the Battle of Red Cliffs page, I must thank you and Remsense for your ongoing efforts to save it from being delisted as a FA! (And please accept my apologies for leaving the page in such a state of disrepair since its nomination - I must admit that my interest in the topic drifted away since.) Regarding your puzzlement on the edit summary here though,[1] I believe I have an answer. The mysterious Wang Li refers to Wang Li (linguist), whose placement of the historic Chibi at Jiayu can be found in 古代漢語 vol. 4, page 1319, though he does not elaborate on how he came to the conclusion (and hence, in my opinion, not worthy of inclusion). Thought you would like to know in any case. Happy editing. _dk (talk) 05:41, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just popping in because I happen to be watching Molly's talkpage: please don't disparage your work like that. I have the niche that I do but I would struggle tremendously doing the work you did to get the article to this point. I've been learning a lot editing articles, but I am still most comfortable tweaking and preening the meat of the work done by others whom I depend on and appreciate :) a place like this requires many different niches of editor, and you are a huge part of why the article is able to become what it will become. cheers! Remsense留 05:56, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

_dk, thanks so much for resolving that mystery! I agree that the mention in 古代漢語 doesn't really merit inclusion, and given the scope of the work is likely an uncritical acceptance of another's theory.

I feel you on "interest drift". I told someone a few months ago that 三國 period stuff is something I get pulled back into Michael Corleone style moreso than where I'd really still prefer to be doing content work, but so it goes. I feel like I remember maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, before I registered an account, it was you and like one or two others laying the groundwork for hundreds of Three Kingdoms articles, so your contributions have been fundamental here.

I'd be surprised if any 2008-era FA would pass today's much higher standards, and no apologies needed for not managing the article for a decade and a half. Thanks so much for stopping by! Folly Mox (talk) 11:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the kind words, @Remsense and @Folly Mox! (I must have you know that your well-intentioned reminiscence has aged me considerably and given me irrecoverable psychic damage. ) _dk (talk) 01:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

_dk, oops 😅 Feeling old gets psychologically more comfortable over time, even as it becomes physically more challenging (my new catchphrase this year is "Why does that hurt?"). Folly Mox (talk) 11:41, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Individual activators of Citation bot are limited in their ability to do anything about possible errors the bot makes. In the latest case to which you alerted me, I don't know if the bot will repeat the edit now that you changed the template to conference. It is best to bring these issues to the bot talk page. Abductive (reasoning) 18:05, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Abductive, I had a sassy message all typed out a few days ago, and never posted it. I still want to quote the top of User:Citation bot, which reads Editors who activate this bot should carefully check the results to make sure that they are as expected. I see some high volume editors like yourself activate the bot hundreds of times daily, and seldom do cleanup on the articles where it leaves errors behind.

But I do take your point that fixing the cause of the errors is more important and effective than holding individual bot activators accountable for their own cleanup. User talk:Citation bot is probably sick of me by now, but I've begun keeping closer track of my reverts and fixes, so I can be more helpful in my QA / debugging. I'll also stop mentioning you in edit summaries where I clean up an error Citation bot introduced during your runs of it. Thanks, Folly Mox (talk) 19:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One thing for sure is that the bot maintainers are saints who really do try to fix things and don't mind at all dealing with the complaints. Abductive (reasoning) 21:09, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Would be hot if you could apply some additional pressure there to get that bot to stop changing specific-page citations in journal cites to the entire page-range of the article. Some journal articles are tens of pages long, and occasionally they breach over 100, so this bot activity is "reader-hateful". Both I and Trappist raised this complaint, but the bot operator did not seem interested in listening. Same with the bot changing |date= to |year=; the date parameter is preferred because it is more flexible and just-a-year dates often get "upgraded" to more complete information. Probably around 20% of the citation cleanup I do is improving citation specificity, and incomplete dates (on non-books like journal papers, newspaper articles, and webpages) are a very common factor in that. It's obnoxious that I have to manually change it back to |date= when it began that way on purpose but the bot futzed it to |year= for no reason at all (WP:COSMETICBOT failure and then some, since it's actually reducing functionality and is not purely cosmetic). And thirdly, there is absolutely no purpose in the bot changing consistent |work= to pointlessly longwinded inconsistent aliases of it like |newspaper=, |journal=, |magazine=, |website=, etc. But I just don't seem to get anywhere with that bot author/operator.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:47, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I've always been confused by "work", and I think that sort of thing is debated by the folks at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Abductive (reasoning) 01:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've been very slowly whittling down Category:CS1 errors: periodical ignored (26,367), with some help from GoingBatty and even Citation bot itself, and I've found that the |work= parameter is very commonly misunderstood. I don't like that Citation bot unnecessarily changes it to specific aliases, but I could see how it could help newer editors understand what the parameter is meant to hold. I think I've seen almost every field there now: author, editor, translator, publisher (very common, sometimes an artifact of a translation module), title, chapter, location, and even quote. I can't remember seeing volume, edition, or page, but I've also seen it hold miscellaneous bibliographical information. I use |work= in my own citations because it is the shortest if its aliases, but its name lends itself to misunderstanding.

I do also wish Citation bot would stay away from page numbers, and there's another script which is even worse, reporting the total page count of printed materials (a common bibliographic detail) and including that in the citation template, as if everyone citing a book is citing the final page of the index.

On the other hand, it's pretty common for people to leave out page numbers when really they should be including them, and I've often wished that |pages= could coexist with |page= or |at=, so a page range for an article or chapter could be provided while also specifying which exact page is being cited, without resorting to ((rp)) (which moves specificity out of the template and back into the article body), using |quote-page= (which requires |quote=, or moving the full citation into a Sources section and converting references to it into shortened footnotes (which is a wholeass process). Folly Mox (talk) 13:39, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Saw that you liked Cat communication a lot. If you have general interest on the feline side, WP:WikiProject Cats badly needs active participants. It's kind of unbelievable, given the popularity of cats on the Internet, but the wikiproject is rather moribund, and we get a lot of bad drive-by edits, especially to breed articles and to veterinary ones.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:14, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi SMcCandlish, thanks for stopping by! I'm actually supposed to be working on an FAR this month, so in terms of content I'll probably not be much use, but I can prioritise WikiProject Cats for some gnoming work whenever I'm doing that. I'd also like you to know that even though we disagree on some stylistic preferences, I still have a lot of respect for you. Thanks again and happy editing, Folly Mox (talk) 18:58, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Same here, and I suspect some of the disagreements are actually more procedural/processual than substantive. (Like the one about putting East Asian names in family-name-first citations in a style like Soga Keiho, without a comma, instead of Soga, Keiho. For me, it is a matter of whether there is a clear consensus to do this – and there would be objections because of inconsitency with Smith, Janet, etc., and potential confusion on pages with untemplated citations not yet using a clear name order, and so on. It's not about me having a personal objection to the format because I simply don't like it or something. If there were an RfC about it I would have to really carefully weigh those con arguments against the cultural-respect and related pro ones.) I know I can argue forcefully sometimes, and I had actually already been thinking of dropping you an ((Olive branch)).

Anyway, any additional watchlisting of cat articles would be great!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:18, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Folly Mox, we need experienced volunteers.

• New Page Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles. We could use a few extra hands on deck if you think you can help.
• Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; Wikipedia needs experienced users to perform this task and there are precious few with the appropriate skills. Even a couple reviews a day can make a huge difference.
• Kindly read the tutorial before making your decision (if it looks daunting, don't worry, it basically boils down to checking CSD, notability, and title). If this looks like something that you can do, please consider joining us.
• If you would like to join the project and help out, please see the granting conditions. You can apply for the user-right HERE.
• If you have questions, please feel free to drop a message at the reviewer's discussion board.
• Cheers, and hope to see you around.

Sent by NPP Coordination using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Folly Mox, and thanks for your responses to the squirrely footnote question at the Tea house. Not sure if you're subscribed and have seen the aftermath, and I wanted to introduce you to the concept of the XY problem in case you were unfamiliar with it, as it is a conceptual framework that can be very helpful and save everybody a lot of time at venues like the Tea house, WP:Help desk, and so on.

I started to respond to OP in kind, as you did, because the most natural response to a question is to try to understand what they are asking, and then answer to the best of ones ability, because that seems self-evidently the best approach. But sometimes it isn't, and I ended up in the weeds with a lot of irrelevant nonsense; basically correct, as far as it went, but answering the wrong question and therefore unhelpful and a waste of my time and theirs.

The Eureka moment was reframing, and realizing that the OP had an XY problem and that that really wasn't their question at all. I can't mind-read, but I took a guess and either it was right or close enough, and it looks like they are now on track to something that will likely pan out. Had I thought of that at first, I could've saved myself the pointless analysis I did on their original question. As a Tea house responder, it's worth always asking oneself, "Is this really their question, or is it a subproblem of some possibly convoluted approach they've come up with in an attempt to solve their real issue, and if so, what is the real, underlying question?" Just thought you'd like to know. Mathglot (talk) 22:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mathglot, thanks for swinging by with the link. I am familiar with that problem, and have encountered it many times in the past, although I wasn't aware of its technical name. Thanks for the reminder of best practices; I think I might have been too eager to try to help since the questioner had a relatively detailed question that even included a link to an example article, at a venue where maybe 20% of questions involve checking a user's contributions or even global contributions just to figure out what article they're talking about.

I feel like that thread had a happy conclusion thanks so your involvement, and I feel thoughtless for having forgotten, in a comment right after I said templates couldn't insert page code in multiple locations, that the backlinks are generated in the References section rather than the locus of citation. Whoops. Anyway thanks again and happy new year. Folly Mox (talk) 12:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Folly Mox. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the ((You've got mail)) or ((ygm)) template.Doug Weller talk 17:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Replied via email 🙏🏽 Folly Mox (talk) 10:58, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

		The Guidance Barnstar
		For going far beyond what I expected in helping me source and cite a single sentence at the Hö'elün FAC. Your efforts are much appreciated. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:42, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	BinaryBrainBug (talk) 21:49, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A month without edits!? Hope you're doing well! Your efforts are much missed here. Aza24 (talk) 23:45, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Folly Mox, I hope this message finds you well and you are able to read it even if unable to respond. I have a few minutes left here today and remembered I hadn't seen you about the project for some time. Perhaps it is my intuition or the connection you spoke of last year, which I completely agree is an apt analogy, but I immediately grew concerned and so you are hearing from me now. I will continue to sing songs over you and trust you are safe, only taking time away, a much needed break. You are an invaluable member of this community and your presence is missed when you are away. From one tributary to another, return swiftly, we have more rivers to form. I still see you and appreciate you. --ARoseWolf 19:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very much agreed. It's been on the record already that Folly is a big part of why I'm around these parts, and they are always a wonderful presence, even if they happen to not be present. Remsense诉 18:14, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Core Contest—Wikipedia's most exciting contest—returns again this year from April 15 to May 31. The goal: to improve vital or other core articles, with a focus on those in the worst state of disrepair. Editing can be done individually, but in the past groups have also successfully competed. There is £300 of prize money divided among editors who provide the "best additive encyclopedic value". Signups are open now. Cheers from the judges, Femke, Casliber, Aza24. – Aza24 (talk) 02:20, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you wish to start or stop receiving news about The Core Contest, please add or remove yourself from the delivery list.