Hi. As per WP:RM, "If you have no reason to expect a dispute concerning a move, be bold and move the page." Do you really think folks would contest this move, seeing the recent popularity of the app? Especially in light of the app article getting over 10x more views than the tinder (material) article? Onel5969TT me 17:05, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
Also per WP:RM: "In particular, use this process before moving any existing page with incoming links to create a disambiguation page at that title." Clearly I have disputed the move. The popularity of the app is a perfect example of WP:RECENTISM. The pageviews are insignificant compared to the long term historical importance of the term relating to the material. bd2412T 17:36, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. Although I disagree with your interpretation of WP:RM#CM. Keeping in light the suggestions throughout the guideline that editors are encouraged to do the move themselves, I think that clause is only meant if there is a potential dispute, not in all cases. Also when you consider WP:FIXDABLINKS, that also seems to indicate it should only be used in specific circumstances. But I respect your reasons for disputing, which is why I asked the question. Take care and have a very Happy New Year. Onel5969TT me 18:44, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
An update, the Tinder page is just having an RM on this topic, and it's gone in the opposite director of the above editor's expectations. It's garnered a snow vote to keep it as it is, and the nomination has been given-up by the nominator. So Tinder is still your basic tinder on Wikipedia, and not encyclopedically portrayed as a hooking-up app. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:56, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the update - happy new year! bd2412T 12:11, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
This is not proper at all. An RM with participation that low should be relisted, especially when respondents indicate uncerainty (as the first does), or are simply arguing against guidelines (as the second is, using cherry-picked sources to ignore all those that lower-case – and these were the only two). If RS are not consistent, WP does not use capital letters, and you must surely know that by now. It's also not credible that you don't know that all previous RMs of this sort about named of non-trademarked games and sports have resulted in lower case. I could have speedied this, but chose not to because not everyone's aware that "morris" in this case is not a proper naem.
I would have taken this to WP:MR and certainly will if it happens again, but an actual RfC is more appropriate, because your bad close has directly led to anti-MOS:CAPS editwarring at other articles by someone who mistakes it for a consensus in favor of capitals, not a low-participation failure to come to consensus about moving one article. — SMcCandlish☏¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 00:31, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
I do not find it credible that maintaining an existing status quo that has been in place for fifteen years can suddenly lead to edit warring. Feel free to renominate the article for renaming after a reasonable period of time has passed. Cheers! bd2412T 00:41, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the correct close on the Morris pages. I don't know if you know that SMcClandish has started an RfC to not only overturn your decision, but is lashing out and templating me on my talk page for questioning his wisdom. His wisdom has blind spots in it, and I'm apparently the most outspoken editor who is letting him know that, so I am in the blind-spot of the storm on this one. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:48, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Opinions, as it turns out, may vary. bd2412T 12:13, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't know that I'm the one to try that either. bd2412T 12:14, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
It seems to have been fixed now. Most have been an upstream template error, because no edits were made to the article. Safiel (talk) 15:40, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
One final note on this, just in case you were curious. The problem was with Template:Inflation-year which went out of date at the turn of the new year and was finally updated earlier this morning. Safiel (talk) 19:16, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
I figured it would be something like that. bd2412T 19:31, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
While I am here, I am actually fascinated by the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court article you are bringing forth, well actually by the topic itself. I will say one thing with certainty. You will NEVER see a Supreme Court jury proceeding, even if demanded by both parties. The Supreme Court will never allow it to happen. Safiel (talk) 07:16, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
You're blowing up my watchlist with your repeated deletions. I don't even know why your archive is even on my watchlist, as I never edited or watched those pages.—CYBERPOWER(Happy 2018) 05:32, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
I have no idea why those might be showing up on your watchlists, but I am done with all of my archiving. bd2412T 05:34, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm guessing based on what I'm seeing is that you moved a page I watch, to that archive and then deleted it, then moved a bunch more pages to that archive and deleted those as well, and then you apparently restored all of the edits. I'm guessing you were hist merging them all.—CYBERPOWER(Happy 2018) 14:55, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
That would be the neighboring disambiguation links project. I archived all those pages, as the project was of no use any more. All the links from the time that it was created have been fixed. bd2412T 16:15, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Absent substantial expansion and improvement to the article, it wouldn't change the outcome, so I see no point in revisiting the discussion. bd2412T 22:56, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
Your closure rationale said that no one made a showing that there is coverage beyond a dictionary definition. I have at least ten sources that discuss the concept in depth and could easily explain them if no one else could be bothered to make that showing. As for physically expanding the article, that isn't AfD's remit, to my understanding. czar 23:49, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
AFD's remit is to delete topics that don't merit an article. There is no cleanup question here because a one-line stub has nothing to be cleaned up. I would suggest creating a draft (although I believe Galobtter is working on exactly that at User:Galobtter/Sapiosexuality), and then propose through WP:RFD to move that over the current redirect. bd2412T 23:56, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
"AfD is not cleanup" also refers to articles that only consist of sources. As in requesting editors to draft the actual article is "cleanup". If the sources are sufficient, they are so with or without prose. I also see better arguments against than for the redirect in the discussion. I only asked that the discussion be relisted to better find consensus. czar 02:24, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
That sounds to me very much like 'relist to get a consensus I like better'. AfD's run for seven days for a reason - because that is time enough for interested parties who are keeping an eye on the topic of their interest to weigh in. In this case, I have already proposed a better alternative: write a draft that makes a better case for the topic being independently encyclopedic, and propose that draft to the community as the better occupant of the title. bd2412T 03:23, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
interested parties I wasn't notified. write a draft We just discussed how this isn't AfD's burden ("cleanup"). I think my solution was reasonable, but if we're at an impasse, I'll advance to the next venue. (unwatching, {{ping}} as needed) czar 03:48, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry that you were not notified, but I would suggest that when you create an article on a topic that has repeatedly been nominated for deletion, that you keep an eye on it. For example, make a subpage in your userspace listing the top few dozen articles that might draw a problem, and then check for related changes every few days. bd2412T 03:56, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Hello, you recently made some edits to the PLCLogix page. This page has now been flagged for deletion due to non-notable references which have since been addressed. Please weigh in with your thoughts regarding keeping or deleting.
Peppi35 (talk) 08:52, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
I only fixed a disambiguation link. I have no further opinion on that article. bd2412T 13:42, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
I moved three judges from Richard Nixon to Gerald Ford
Just a note that in the process of overhauling List of federal judges appointed by Gerald Ford, I moved three judges from Nixon's list to Ford's list. While all three judges were nominated by Nixon, they were commissioned by Ford after Nixon's resignation. I placed notes to the effect that their nominations came from Nixon. Safiel (talk) 21:40, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, your attention to detail is much appreciated. bd2412T 02:00, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Surely it cannot be policy to have a centuries-old dictionary term hijacked by a v minor pop culture topic? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 10:38, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
Putting "The" in front of a common noun changes its nature - consider "The Frogs". I would not necessarily have !voted that way, but absent other topics in the encyclopedia specifically titled "The Advantage", I can't see how consensus in the discussion could be interpreted any differently. bd2412T 12:13, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
But WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is about "primary topic", not "primary title." WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT is explicit that the title of the primary topic article may be different from the ambiguous term.
I weighed the policy-based arguments that were raised, including WP:SMALLDETAILS. If the community tends to think that "The" in this case is such a detail, I have no authority to force an alternative outcome. bd2412T 14:20, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
WP:SMALLDETAILS says The general approach is that whatever readers might type in the search box, they are guided as swiftly as possible to the topic they might reasonably be expected to be looking for. Nobody in the discussion offered any plausible evidence that someone looking for the centuries-old concept of "the advantage" was likely to be outnumbered by those looking for a barely-notable musical group. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:08, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
By the "centuries-old concept" do you mean Advantage of terrain? Your proposal was to point the term to the disambiguation page, not to a specific article on a concept of "the advantage". If such a concept exists, and can be written as more than a dicdef, you could write that article, or provide sources showing that a particular concept was commonly referred to as "the advantage". Otherwise, I have already suggested looking for other potentially ambiguous concepts to the specific phrase, which would support a claim of ambiguity specific to it. We typically don't redirect articles from their definite article, and we frequently have articles for terms beginning with one (the aforementioned The Frogs; The Abandonment, The Badge, The Earring, The Gates, The Happenings, The Piano, etc.). bd2412T 16:04, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
I only fixed a disambiguation link in this article. I see that the discussion is well in hand, and have nothing to add there. Cheers! bd2412T 14:19, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm not holding my breath; but if there is a positive response, I will feed the rest of those pages in there over time. Narky Blert (talk) 03:32, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
I have gotten some decent disambiguation responses from this project in the past. bd2412T 03:56, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
But WP:CFDS has a wait period: "A request may be processed 48 hours after it was listed if there are no objections".
That one looks quite straightforward, so I won't revert. And I have removed it from WP:CFDS[3].
I know difft speedy processes have difft delays, which can be confusing, but please in future please can you give other editors a chance to scrutinise category speedies? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:26, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
I created the category structure in the first place, and had not realized that the category naming scheme for structures had developed a different standard. Frankly, if someone had pointed that out to me, I would have moved the category without it even being tagged. bd2412T 21:31, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Not quite the "oops" reply I had expected from an experienced admin. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:44, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
How about, oops, I created this category structure in the wrong place ten years ago? bd2412T 21:51, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Actually, it sounds like you created it in an OK place 10 years ago, but the other cats have developed in a different direction. If you'd created it 10 weeks ago, WP:C2E would apply; but after 10 years isn't creator privilege getting a little WP:OWNerish?
One of the advantages of listing in cases like this is that it prompts other editors to look at the wider tree around it. Most speedies are unopposed and not even commented on, but it's quite common for the listing to throw up other issues in the tree, such as the exception being the better format, or several variant formats. A 48-hour delay seems like a small price to pay for the benefits of that scrutiny.
In this case, I immediately wondered if there were any articles on federal US courthouses outside the US, akin to Scottish Court in the Netherlands. The only one I can think of offhand is Gitmo (which seems not to have an standalone article, so doesn't impact this renaming), but I'd be surprised if there haven't been other temporary courthouses outside the US. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:31, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
There have been two that I know of - the United States Court for China and the United States Court for Berlin, although I don't know about their facilities (the one in China occupied some space in the U.S. consulate there). Strictly speaking, I would not count those as federal courthouses - even buildings in the U.S. that temporarily house federal court proceedings are not usually thought of as such. bd2412T 22:40, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't know of either of those. The strangely muted history of the Berlin court reminds me of the weird atmosphere around Checkpoint Charlie, which was one of the oddest places I ever saw. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:03, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
I have a quick question that I just wanted your opinion on…if I need to take it to the project page, just let me know.
I have a question about infoboxes. If a person has been nominated for a position, is the infobox supposed to be updated to reflect that nomination or should we wait until said individual is confirmed (or not)?
The person/page in question is Edward C. Prado. He has been announced as a nominee for an ambassadorship, although the nomination has not been made official yet. I didn’t update the infobox to reflect his nomination, although I did note the intent to nominate in the article. He hasn’t received a hearing, much less been confirmed. Another editor had made changes, adding his ambassadorial nomination to the infobox. I hid that portion in a subsequent edit and my edits were reverted, the comment being, “making nominee for ambassador to argentina visible as has been standard practice with other presidential nominees. Just because he's currently a federal judge doesn't mean he's an exception”
I’m just curious…is there a standard practice? I’ve been an editor for almost 5 years and primarily focus on federal judicial nominations/appointments and I’m unaware of a directive that says a nominee’s status has to be listed in the infobox. To me that doesn't serve a purpose.
What say you? Thanks in advance Snickers2686 (talk) 22:59, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
I wouldn't add a nomination to an infobox - they can always fail for any number of reasons. bd2412T 23:23, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
@BD2412: That's my rational too, hence why I hid that portion, but I don't want to revert again and then it turn into an editing war... Snickers2686 (talk) 23:26, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
@BD2412 and Snickers2686: Well this is awkward... I'm the user in question who made the edit restoring the Ambassador to Argentina portion to Edward C. Prado's infobox. I do that with this in mind: every single political appointee of Donald Trump who has an article has nominee in their infobox. It was present in people like Andy Puzder's and Scott Garrett's infoboxes, and both of them have had their respective positions removed from the infoboxes since both nominations failed. It is also present in Alex Azar's and Jay Patrick Murray's boxes, and both are pending nominees. I thought including the nominee portion in the infobox was standard practice as that was done for James Mattis, John F. Kelly, Rex Tillerson, and a host of other cabinet articles this time last year. The Prado page also does not indicate that he will definitely be confirmed. The page does have a footnote in the infobox noting that his post is "pending senate confirmation" and also states that he is a nominee. For those reasons, I added the Ambassadorship to Argentina to Edward C. Prado's page. – JocularJellyfishTalkContribs 01:42, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
@JocularJellyfish and BD2412: I guess my issue is I just don't see where this standing precedent started and if, going forward, it's still going to be continued. Logically, I just don't get why we can't wait until ANY nominee is confirmed, regardless of the position and then update the infobox accordingly. That would then mean that all nominations pending before any committee have to be listed as such in their infobox, why? Being as I work exclusively on judicial nominations, that would mean said nominees have to be listed as nominees to their respective courts, but they aren't official members of the court. So we just revert once a nominee either fails or never makes it past committee? Where's the guiding rule on this? Snickers2686 (talk) 03:03, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
@Snickers2686 and BD2412: I only joined Wikipedia in April of last year (If you're wondering why I brought up his cabinet nominees since they were confirmed in January/February, I visited those pages as a reader a few too many times). I've been going along with the SOP I've seen ever since becoming a user. If you want things to change, I think the best thing to do would be to have a RFC somewhere that is visible enough for anyone with a vested interest in the relevant project(s) to comment. – JocularJellyfishTalkContribs 16:07, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi you might be interested in knowing that barely veiled references to your deletion decision here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jacob Truedson Demitz have been made without clearly naming you in this diff [4]. I have also been accused of lying in this diff but decided to ignore it until this last comment on a talk page here following the attempt by this editor to reinstate information about a subject that he has a declared COI in. Domdeparis (talk) 10:50, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
That is a link to the previous revision, not the diff, which would be this link. I am not seeing a reference to my deletion decision, which I would stand by in any case as a dispassionate reading of consensus in the discussion. bd2412T 14:06, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Sorry my bad for the diff. The editor refers to "Administrators who clearly see a lie being told over and over ("For days SW refused to admit ... [etc.]") with the intent of swaying any discussion should not have the right to ignore that, whether or not the deletion proposed (e.g. of an extensively sourced B-class BLP that existed for 9 years!) is correct per se." and just before that "Whether or not administrators specifically invoke IAR is irrelevant when, e.g. in a deletion debate, they ignore facts repeatedly pointed out to counter obvious lies repeated over and over about a user's conduct." For me he is refering to the Demitz article (B class and there for 9 years). So I believe he is refering to you clearly see(ing) a lie and ignoring it. Anyone familiar with this editor will know what article he is talking about and its deletion discussion is easy to find given the links to his talk page. He also rather disloyally misrepresents Bishonen's comments on his own talk page with a piped link "sadly gives up" wheras in fact Bishonen is in total agreement with your decision, he should have linked to this diff [5] he says "The only "real" action was by BD2412, who closed the discussion on 23 October and found "substantial consensus" that the article subject didn't meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria, and then deleted it. He's right, you know. There was substantial consensus.". What I don't like is the fact that he refering to your actions and my edits in a highly visible petition as either vengence or canvassing support from other admin. He is now returning to articles that have been cleaned of his unencyclopedic COI edits to try and revert the actions. I concur that he has avoided naming you but I will simply suggest that if he is not happy he can take the deletion to review. Domdeparis (talk) 14:34, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
After the page move Bhavana (actress) → Bhavana (Malayalam actress) you changed all the instances of the former using AWB. Now it's been changed back to Bhavana (actress) after RM. Could you rollback your edits. Thanks. Let There Be Sunshine (talk) 15:29, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Then why did you fixed it in the first place. Let There Be Sunshine (talk) 06:14, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
When the page was moved, the page mover made the title into a disambiguation page, which made all the incoming links disambiguation links needing to be fixed. bd2412T 12:47, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mid-South (region) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Maproom (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
I have improved the article and replied there, thanks. bd2412T 16:10, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Please discuss in order to form a consensus, rather than edit warring. bd2412T 04:46, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Hold on, I don't see who opposes a better board for to fit into all screens. Also, I transferred the politics text so that the Clinton template does not create a huge vacuum on the screen. WhatsUpWorld (talk) 04:49, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Adding text fill screen space - and removing it from an article where it is already appropriately situated - does not seem to be an optimal solution to that problem. This is one of a series of dozens of articles, starting with List of federal judges appointed by George Washington, a featured list. All of these pages should conform in presentation. Numerous editors have worked on the presentation across the series over hundreds of hours. It should not be trifled with absent discussion. bd2412T 04:57, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Washington's article has no sidebar so there is no blank space. WhatsUpWorld (talk) 05:00, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Several of the more recent ones do have sidebars. Irrespective of whether material should be added to the list page, there is no reason to remove the material from Bill Clinton Supreme Court candidates, where it provides a necessary introduction to the content on the candidates who were in fact nominated. There is no emergency here - we can take the time needed to sort this out correctly. @Safiel: What are your thoughts on this? bd2412T 05:04, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I oppose the changes. At the VERY least, they should be held until all regular contributing editors on the project have been contacted and have had a chance to weigh in. This is a major change and very much needs to be discussed. In the interim, I have changed the photo's to gallery format, which has eliminated much of the white space. I can also expand the lead slightly to eliminate more white space. But changes that major need to be discussed before being implemented. Safiel (talk) 05:14, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I agree. We could easily add another row of gallery images (and enlarge the existing images). There should be a several Court of Appeals judges worth including, beginning with Sonia Sotomayor and Merrick Garland. bd2412T 05:17, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
It's just super weird to put gallery images in the intro. The boards are also way too big for small screens, I advocate to re-establish my changes. By the way the lists articles should not have a bold subject in the intro. WhatsUpWorld (talk) 05:33, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I think that comes down to a difference of opinion. bd2412T 05:41, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
No, it's just common sense to reduce the size of the boards as I did to fit into all screens and not using bold letters in the intro to follow the rules. WhatsUpWorld (talk) 05:49, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Bolding is an entirely separate issue. We are discussing whether there is consensus here to move a section from an article to a list. bd2412T 16:09, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't care if the text is moved if the blank is filled. I just want to point out that two of the boards do not fit smaller screens. WhatsUpWorld (talk) 16:53, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Note As an aside to this discussion and pending an outcome of the overall issue, I am going to try to properly size up the photo gallery on the Clinton list. I may have to change images to accomplish this, due to limitations in the gallery formatting system. Safiel (talk) 19:09, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for that change, the blank is filled. Now only the boards' size is a problem. Please compare my changes on the boards with the current situation. WhatsUpWorld (talk) 19:40, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I created a Draft of the Thomas Clements article for review
The text is the same, but I made sure to only use sources from third parties. There are also some articles he wrote online about his life on reliable third party sites, not sure if it would be worthwhile to add them. What is your opinion on this draft? Ylevental (talk) 15:19, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
No opinion. I just closed the AfD as delete because nobody was opposed to deletion. Sandstein 16:01, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
I understand that. I would add that this is clearly not a case where the editors voting to delete were way off base. bd2412T 16:23, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi BD2412 - I am a lawyer and freelance journalist. I would like to write an article profiling you and your contributions to Wikipedia, especially those entries relating to the legal system.
I think it could be a really fascinating story, especially given your massive work editing the federal courts articles. Please consider reaching out to me at stephe nbharri son@gmail.com. Thanks for your ongoing work updating Wikipedia.
I'm glad to talk, and can do it right here. There is nothing that I would say via email that I can't say on this platform. bd2412T 18:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
If you could be a tree what tree would you be? Favorite ice cream? Boxers and/or briefs? Thanks. (and I broke up the eddress above so the outside hound-dog bots don't fetch it) Randy Kryn (talk) 19:10, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
If I could be any kind of tree, I would be an orange tree, because I would at least be producing something. Also, it would mean that I was in a warm climate. My favorite ice cream is vanilla, since it is the best palate for toppings. It's good on waffles, too. I am a lawyer, which means that my kind of combat is done with words rather than fists, so obviously I prefer briefs over boxers. bd2412T 19:55, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Interview...complete. Thank you for your time. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:17, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Ok, sounds like a plan. If it’s okay with you, BD2412, I might spread the questions over time and ask them individually. Let’s begin... you’ve spent so much of your free time editing Wikipedia. Literally hundreds upon hundreds of hours without financial compensation. And I guess I’m curious: why? What motivates you? Stephenbharrison (talk) 05:26, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
I started editing Wikipedia out of curiosity, which is probably the same reason anyone does. At the time, I was in law school, and I found that writing Wikipedia articles on the legal topics that I was studying was a good way to internalize the basic concepts. I used this same method to an even greater extent while studying for the bar exam, and by then I was hooked. It is impossible to work in one area of Wikipedia without crossing into others, so I became attached to tasks like disambiguation fixing and other sorts of gnoming. I just seem to stumble upon tasks that need doing, like creating articles for all the state supreme court justices, so I start doing them. I don't have a great and noble motivation for doing it, other than I enjoy putting them together. bd2412T 17:19, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
On your user page, you state that you have edited “about 14.25% of the articles on Wikipedia; if you have edited more than seven articles, there is probably an article that both you and I have edited.” English Wikipedia has over 5.5 million articles, so this is clearly a massive contribution to the world’s largest encyclopedia. And you’ve been editing actively for almost 13 years. What is the significance of that 14.25% statistic to you? Stephenbharrison (talk) 17:54, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
To some extent it is a curiosity, and to some extent it signifies a greater sense of connectedness. It is a very modern sort of connection that two (or more) people can have to be able to say, "hey, we've edited the same Wikipedia article". At the same time, I recognize that the breadth of those edits are gnome work like disambiguation fixes, common typo fixes, capitalizing language names. I probably spent about a hundred thousand edits on the "New York" disambiguation effort alone, which was a process that took months. On another project, I'm sure I spent about 50,000 recategorizing sortname redirects. Sometimes I find a project a bunch of other people are working on and dive in. Sometimes I find a widespread problem that no one is working on and dive in all the same. I think perhaps that those editors who don't use something like AWB (the AutoWikiBrowser to aid in these kinds of tasks see problems like these as things to be handled an an article-by-article basis. It's kind of like a corollary to the saying, "if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail", which is that once you know how to use the hammer, you learn to more easily spot the nails sticking up. bd2412T 19:03, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
A quick follow-up on editing 14.25% of all articles: is it a goal of yours to maintain or increase this percentage in the future as Wikipedia continues to grow?
In addition to your editing contributions, you’ve created thousands of new articles. They vary widely from the many law-related articles to musicians like Cherokee jazz pianist Carl T. Fischer. You’re in the Top 10 List of Wikipedians by article count. What is your view of the relationship between editing articles and creating them? How do you think about that balance in the Wikipedia ecosystem? Stephenbharrison (talk) 20:06, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
I do not particularly have a goal with respect to this, or any of my editing statistics. it is just sort of an inevitability. their proportion of newly-created articles will continue to go down over time, as he major areas are comprehensively covered, While efforts to make large-scale repairs to common issues will keep up at a higher pace. If someone turn into an existing article into a disambiguation page, and this leaves a thousand links to be fixed, then by fixing these links, I will probably be touching articles that I have never edited before at a faster rate than new articles are being made.
Regarding the relationship between article creation and article editing, I would say that what has tied these together for me is disambiguation. When I started editing, my primary interest was in creating articles. If you do enough article creation, and make enough with links to new articles, eventually you will link to a disambiguation page. once you discover that disambiguation links are a problem on a scale that they were when I began editing, that leads you to make a whole bunch of disambiguation fixes, and once you start fixing disambiguation links, that gets you into editing all sorts of other articles. For example, the article you point to, Carl T Fischer, I created because there were links to the disambiguation page that intended that pianist, and there was no article on him, so it had to be created in order for those links to have a target to which to point. If you look at my de-disambiguation hall of fame, you can see that there are a number of Articles that I have written solely because there was a disambiguation page at that title, but there should not have been because there was really a broad concept that should have been at that title all along - articles like Battlefield and Cardboard and Container and Enemy and Guessing. Article creation is still important, of course because we have a lot of gaps that we need to fill, but we also have enormous numbers of completely inadequate existing articles to improve, and you come across those while doing disambiguation work.
Also, every once in a while, I come across an interesting topic in the news or while reading or watching something totally unrelated to anything that I am doing on Wikipedia, and I feel immediately compelled to see if there is an article on that topic. If there isn't, I can create one, like Birka female Viking warrior. bd2412T 21:08, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
You are a lawyer, and that training not only affects your subject matter interests but your perceived credibility in editing legal articles. For example, when you were nominated to be an administrator, your supporters pointed to the quality of your contributions *and* said it would be great to add a lawyer Wikipedian. What are your thoughts on the role of professional credentials and editorial authority? Is there a relationship between Wikipedia's democratic characteristics and formal qualifications? Stephenbharrison (talk) 00:35, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia tends to be more of an anti-meritocracy, where credibility is based more on track record than on claimed educational background. If I asserted the truth of something based solely on my being a lawyer, I would probably be brushed off. I think the benefit of a legal background is more in knowing where to find the kinds of sources that support assertions of legal fact, and spotting specious claims being made about the law. I remember once, someone created an article on a person claiming that the article subject was "a judge of the federal district court". The fact that no specific court was identified was an immediate red flag, and of course the article was a hoax. A lot of misinformation about the law has been circulated, so I have in the past put plenty of time into things like Tax protester conspiracy arguments and Titles of Nobility Amendment. Perhaps my proudest work, Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States, started off as an effort to respond to persistent efforts to shoehorn conspiracy theories about the religious composition of the court into the main SCOTUS article. Knowing the selection process and scope of jurisdiction of federal judges was also useful for successfully arguing that Article III federal judges are inherently notable, which was once a point of contention here. Ultimately, editorial authority is based on a track record of good editorial decision-making, and the tools that support that decision-making can be informed by the experiences of formal education. Law school just happens to hammer in the importance of providing a citation for every statement more than many other fields. bd2412T 03:28, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
You brought up the problem of inaccurate and hoax articles, which I view as Wikipedia’s version of fake news. I’d like to talk about the related problem of biased articles. It seems to me that law-related articles like Felony disenfranchisement could present a greater challenge to preserve objectivity than Birka female Viking warrior. What’s been your experience with neutrality in editing legal articles? Are you conscious of your own biases? Do you find it difficult to counter them or the biases of other editors? Stephenbharrison (talk) 13:02, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
I am a strong supporter of the idea of "teaching the controversy", so long as this is not used to the extreme of pushing fringe content. If there are multiple reliably sourced and non-fringe points of view available with respect to a notable topic, present them all in the context most appropriate to their relevance. One of the great benefits of Wikipedia is that the construction of a single article by people coming from all different sorts of viewpoints forces the participants to compromise on neutral language. This happens everywhere that disputes can possibly exist, primarily in science, religion, politics. Of course, this doesn't always work out smoothly, and can lead to enormous battles, particularly where advocates want to promote a fringe position, but I trust the system to basically work out the kinks. I'm sure that I have made mistakes along the way, but I am equally sure that any mistakes I make will be addressed by others, just as I seek to address mistakes made by others.
Felony disenfranchisement was one of the first articles that I made in 2005, and Wikipedia worked differently back then - with fewer articles overall, new articles like this would quickly gain attention without needing to alert WikiProjects or add talk page tags, so I started with a topic that lacked coverage completely, and made what I would describe as a fairly rudimentary start of identifying the relevant arguments that have been made with respect to the issue. As I expected, the article thereafter developed organically, with different people editing from their own knowledge base and experience until it reached its current, much fuller state. Obviously, I have not shied away from working on the controversial topics - I created both Efforts to impeach George W. Bush and Efforts to impeach Barack Obama (and, more recently, Efforts to impeach Donald Trump), and for doing so was accused by various people of pushing both a right-wing agenda and a left-wing agenda. When both sides complain that you are not pulling to their side, I think that means that I am probably hitting the right balance.
On the other hand, having worked and practiced in the federal courts, I do have a sense of what kinds of claims are just legally absurd. For example, going back to the tax protester conspiracy theory arguments, some of the propositions that are made would require that every single member of the federal judiciary has agreed to hide some secret legal truth, which would require a level of coordination and cooperation between judges of all different backgrounds that just does not exist in reality. Judges and lawyers are in an interesting position in society, one that requires them to be antagonists. Lawyers, of course, represent parties and disputes, so it is easy to perceive the attorney for the other side as an enemy. Judges are required to remain neutral remain neutral towards the parties, but eventually they have to make rulings. When a judge makes a ruling against a party, it is easy for that party to immediately feel embittered, and have all sorts of negative feelings towards that judge. I have seen plenty of articles on judges where a losing party before that judge tries to use Wikipedia as an outlet to complain about a perceived mistake. Of course, we don't permit the inclusion of, for example, random instances of a judge being reversed on appeal, as all judges sometimes are, but people who want to add that sort of information will get very upset if their efforts to add non-notable material about something that is personally important to them are unsuccessful. bd2412T 18:54, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
You mentioned that you edit Wikipedia primarily for intrinsic reasons because you enjoy putting the articles together, and not for any great and noble motivation. But I'd like to follow-up on that. Lots of Wikipedia articles are on somewhat trivial topics, however, your legal articles could be read by people who are directly interacting with the legal system. I could imagine, for example, a lawyer brushing up on the Rules of Evidence to better advise her client. Or a criminal defendant researching the presiding judge before his trial. Any comment on this potential public benefit? Stephenbharrison (talk) 20:00, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
I think that a lawyer using Wikipedia to brush up on the law itself would probably be committing legal malpractice. As an attorney, and particularly as an intellectual property attorney, I have used Wikipedia far more often to get a sense of other kinds of information relevant to a case, like learning about the corporate profile of a potential adverse party, or getting a general understanding of the technological field of a patent. For most areas of study, Wikipedia (like most encyclopedias) is still a launching point to get a general overview and find better sources. bd2412T 23:16, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
I’m curious about a “day in the life” of an active Wikipedia editor and your experience overall. How much time do you spend here on an average day? Do you monitor some of your favorite topics religiously? If you haven’t been on Wikipedia for a while, does that feel strange? Do you still get excited for a good old-fashioned editorial debate? When you begin a large disambiguation project involving 1000s upon 1000s of links, do you treat yourself to Redbull or beer? Does this feel like work to you? Would welcome any detail you’d like to add outside the scope of these specific questions — whatever you’d like to share. Stephenbharrison (talk) 03:58, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I usually get up at about 7:00 AM, turn on the computer, and check my watchlist to see if there are any fires that need to be put out. I have around 7,000 pages on my watchlist, generally including articles that I have created, articles with ongoing disputes to be monitored, and some of the major message boards. Once those are addressed, I check The Daily Disambig, which updates progress in the effort to eliminate disambiguation links, and identifies new issues (particularly high-volume issues). Once or twice a week, an issue will come up requiring the repair of hundreds or thousands of links. I don't drink Red Bull or beer, I just set up an AWB-assisted script for obvious and likely fixes, and grind through it. During this process, it is fairly common to find links being made to a disambiguation page because the intended article does not exist. For example, I recently came across links being made to Victor Garcia which intended a cyclist for which an article only existed on another language Wiki, so I started Víctor García (cyclist) as a translation. On average, I make an article along those lines once or twice a week. I also run an AWB-assisted script pre-loaded with likely fixes for around a hundred of the most common recurring disambiguation link targets (thing like Pop, Rock, English, Chinese, BA, Amazon, Variety, Georgia, Model, Bass, Battery). I have an entirely separate script just for New York links. I also usually try to pick one or two pages off of the monthly DPL contest (this month's has already been finished, which is, I think, the third time that we have ever managed to clear the board). Over time, I have accumulated a large number of projects in various stages of completion, so usually I will cycle back to one of those every few weeks and work on it for some time. For example, I have 1,594 drafts underway for Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/United States judges and justices, and I have a list of about 4,470 TLA redirects to check for potential ambiguity (my there is that a truly unambiguous TLA is a very rare thing), and 3,500 TLA red links to check to see whether they can be disambiguated or redirected somewhere. I have a list of about 180 ensembles in the "girl group" genre disambiguated as bands, which should probably be moved to titles with "girl group" in the disambiguator, since they don't play instruments. I also fairly regularly check the ongoing discussions at WP:RM and the XfD boards. I try to close at least one move request and at least one AfD per day, to help prevent a backlog from developing. Some days I don't get around to these tasks, but some days I will go on a tear and close a dozen discussions. On top of all that, I have occasional drafts that I come up with on a lark, such as my current very rudimentary set of drafts for the MCU versions of the major characters, my most developed thus far being Draft:Iron Man (Marvel Cinematic Universe). I have about 150 drafts on stuff I just come across somewhere and think might make a good article, and I poke around with those every few weeks. bd2412T 19:28, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
As an aside, this is great detail and I really appreciate you taking the time to describe. FYI, I’m planning to give myself a few more weeks to work on this story because the scope keeps expanding. Just wanted you to be aware that there is not an immediate rush on my end.
In light of your notes above, my questions relate to your work/life balance. Being an intellectual property lawyer is demanding, and I understand you also have a family. How do you fit in your Wikipedia hobby? Do you edit less when you’re busy preparing for a complex trial? You mentioned that you might use Wikipedia for preliminary background on a potential adverse party. Are there other synergies or trade-offs between your Wikipedia efforts and your professional legal practice?
Also, circling back, could you by chance estimate your daily average Wikipedia time? It’s a bit hard for me to gauge the human time required to use automated tools like AWB. Stephenbharrison (talk) 22:44, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Ironically, you have actually caught me at a time when I am about to significantly reduce my editing for the next three months due to my commitment to another project, from February through April. In general, though, I am fortunate that I had enough success in the first decade of my career to be able to to put more time into personal interests at this stage. I suppose it helps that my primary hobby costs nothing. Trial work actually makes up very little of my current practice, and at the moment is mostly in an advisory capacity or as local counsel, so other lawyers or firms are doing the bulk of the research and writing for those cases. The few cases that I have taken of late as lead counsel have settled fairly quickly, which is also sometimes the nature of the business. The key to a successful intellectual property practice is to make sure that your clients have airtight intellectual property, so that when infringement arises, the resolution is swift and inevitable. To this end, most of my practice is transactional - filing applications for trademark and copyright registration, negotiating the sale or acquisition of IP, and sending out cease and desist letters. All of this generally leaves me plenty of time to edit, which I start doing around 7:00 AM and go back to throughout the day until around midnight most weekdays. Weekends are a bit more fluid. I would estimate that I actually spend between seven hours a day editing, depending on what else is going on in my day. bd2412T 23:59, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Has that average 7 hrs/day Wikipedia time had any impact on your personal life? For example: have there been any marital arguments about spending too much time on the site? Or is your wife completely on-board because it’s a fun inexpensive hobby? Maybe you met your wife while editing, and you two bonded over shared Wikipedian values? Has Wikipedia had any effect on your ability to make friends IRL (in real life)? Has editing become a family affair with children and older relatives all joining in to edit together? To be clear, I’m throwing out these somewhat tongue-and-cheek personal questions solely to the extent you’re comfortable. Stephenbharrison (talk) 01:24, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
With respect to meeting people in real life, I have made it to three Wikimanias, and have connected with a number of Wikipedians at these and other events. bd2412T 03:04, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Can you help me better understand and explain the use of automated tools like AutoWikiBrowswer? I’ve done some research and might just need to test AWB myself. How have these automated tools been a game-changer since you began editing in 2005? Readers might also be interested in whether these tools are only used by the administrators or available to all. Stephenbharrison (talk) 15:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
AutoWikiBrowser is a program that is downloaded onto an editor's computer. There is a list of authorized users to which an editor must request that their name must be added by an admin to be able to use it on Wikipedia. The barrier for entry is 500 good edits. Once the functionality of the tool is understood, it can be applied to a wide variety of problems. For example, if someone decides that Dog should be a disambiguation page, and the current content should be moved to Dog (animal), an editor with AWB could create a list of all pages linking to Dog, and then add a line in AWB instructing it to substitute [[Dog (animal)|Dog]] for [[Dog]]. The user could then click through all the pages, and visually confirm that the change is correct. If it is, click save and the fix gets saved; if not, the user can either manually fix it in an edit window in AWB, or skip it. That is the most common utility for AWB, but I actually used it to create those thousands of drafts for the missing state supreme court justices. In that case, I first manually created a list of red links to draft pages for the missing names for each state, and then used AWB to create stub articles for that state basically containing only the name and a stub description, DEFAULTSORT, and the appropriate judge category. I, and other editors, then filled in the details and turned these into complete articles. In some instances, I found things like public domain books with short biographies of the nineteenth century justices, and could go through all the judges for a particular state using AWB, and copy and paste those paragraphs into the the relevant articles, with the appropriate citation.
Another tool that I like, which does not require any permissions or downloading, is the Dabsolver. If you go to the regularly regenerated list of articles with disambiguation links, the [FIX] option at the end of each line opens this up, and makes it very easy to find and fix large numbers of disambiguation links on a single page. There are some other tools that I have heard of, but not used, like TWINKLE. I have enough to do with the tools I have that I have not found the need to pursue others. bd2412T 17:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
I may have a better understanding of disambiguation after trying out the Dabsolver. Let's see if I can express it using your earlier example of John Smith and this hypothetical: Assume that one day the Pocahontas entry appeared on the list of articles with disambiguation links. One of the links in that article is to John Smith (disambiguation page). As an editor, you can determine by the context of the article that the reader would prefer and expect that this text point to John Smith (the British explorer who encountered Pocahontas) and not John Smith (disambiguation page with links to every notable John Smith). You would therefore change that link from the disambiguation page to the direct link. Does that sound right? Overall, I'm seeing the purpose of disambiguation as streamlining the reader experience. Is that how you see it? Stephenbharrison (talk) 00:34, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
A disambiguation link is an error needing to be fixed, just as much as if the editor creating the link had accidentally linked Jarrod Smith rather than John. John Smith is a good example. If you were completely new to the subject area, and you landed on that page, how would you even begin to figure out which was the right one? When we started keeping track of the numbers in 2009, there were over 1.3 million links to be fixed. Today there are under 15,000. That is a testament to the steady work of the project. bd2412T 01:08, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
I want the article to be clear about the difference between automated tools like AWB and bots. I suppose the difference is that AWB requires a human operator whereas bots do not. Do you use bots for your editing? If so, how are they helpful? Stephenbharrison (talk) 13:37, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
AWB typically requires engagement on the part of its operator, although it can be run by a bot in "bot mode". I do have a bot - User:BD2412bot - which I use rarely, for pure large-scale bot tasks that do not require that kind of engagement (for example, if we needed to change a large number of links from "the English language" to "the English language"). bd2412T 14:31, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
A line from above might be tripping me up. You said you "spend between seven hours a day editing" Wikipedia. Did you mean between _ and seven hours?
Regarding bots: I would be interested in your opinion on the overall value they provide to Wikipedia. For example, I could envision a corporation using a bot to undo/censor any unflattering changes to its company article. Or maybe Russia uses bots to make inflammatory edits to the articles of U.S. political figures and sow social discord (note: I have no evidence of this and am simply using it as a topical hypothetical). Or maybe bots are a good thing, on balance, because they undo bad changes and reduce the effects of Vandalism on Wikipedia. Do you have an opinion on whether bots are ultimately a good, bad, or neutral force on this site? Stephenbharrison (talk) 16:49, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Oops, I meant between seven and nine hours. There have been days when I have gone fourteen or fifteen hours while pushing through a big task, but I don't really do that anymore. There have also been days where I have barely had time to make an edit.
I don't think that a bot could be used to censor an article in the way you describe - it would be caught very quickly and shut down. Also, although we have things like Cluebot, which automatically revert obvious vandalism (addition of strings of nonsense text, vulgarity, page blanking), but it would be nearly impossible to make a bot that was capable of determining that material was "unflattering". In any case, any article on a topic of note is being watched by multiple editors, including some whose primary interest is watching out for exactly that sort of thing. I do think that a day will come when an artificial intelligence will be able to write basic, properly sourced articles on missing notable topic, but it will be a long, long time before the human touch is no longer needed. bd2412T 17:49, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
A quick clarification: are those seven to nine focused human hours? Curious whether you can multitask to some extent.
Your comment about AI potentially writing articles down the line has me thinking about the future of Wikipedia. I see that you presented on the idea of documentary Wiki films during Wikimania 2016. Do you still think that's the future? Stephenbharrison (talk) 22:09, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
I would say seven to nine hours in which I am giving more time and attention to Wikipedia than anything else. Sometimes it is very focused, particularly when I get caught up in writing a new article, and am searching for sources and incorporating them into text, or if I am closing a complex discussion and checking the edit histories of the parties involved. Sometimes it is time spent going back and forth on a point in a forum discussion. It varies, but averages out to around 300 edits per day.
As for the future, I think we need to go in a lot of different directions, and documentary film-making is definitely one of them. We need to incorporate more interactivity into our articles. We need to expand the ways that people can approach the information that we have. For example, there is an effort that I endorse to physically attach QR code placards to famous buildings (with the permission of their owners or maintainers, of course) that would allow a passerby to scan the placard with their phone and immediately be taken to the Wikipedia article on that building. I have proposed (and would still like to see) cameras delivering a live feed of things like the Arc de Triumph to the article on that structure, or of the tiger pens at the Smithsonian Zoo to the article on tigers. With respect to audiovisual presentations, there are already things on the internet like a YouTube channel that makes videos like this (though not affiliated with WikiMedia), which is using rudimentary text-to-speech on Wikipedia articles. We should be doing that, and if we were, we would be doing a better job of it because we would actually care about the output. bd2412T 22:25, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
Your vision for the Wiki future is not only fresh (as in, I’m not finding much coverage about it), but also very quotable. Thank you.
I think one thing missing from the profile is how the Wikipedia time relates to your personal or family life. Apologies if my earlier questions about this were intrusive. I do believe the personal side is something readers would be really, really curious about. Would you be willing to share something from this angle? Stephenbharrison (talk) 12:39, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
I just have nothing exciting to say about it. Some years ago my wife had some exasperation with the feeling that I was putting a lot of time into editing, and not getting anything out of it, but then we went to Wikimania in London and Italy, and that turned around her thinking. bd2412T 13:26, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
Any concerns about potential burnout? Do you wish you had more help? That is, do you wish more people (and perhaps more lawyers) would step up to create and edit quality articles? Stephenbharrison (talk) 14:05, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
I take a wikibreak every once in a while. I don't think burnout is likely. It hasn't happened after the first twelve years here. I always encourage people to give Wikipedia editing a try, although the learning curve can be somewhat steep. There is a balance between wanting new people and dreading having to clean up after new people, particularly those who only stay long enough to make a mess somewhere. An editor who figures out how to contribute productively and makes tens of thousands of good edits is a rarity, and I wish I could find many more like that, but it's hard to tell how anyone will ever turn out from the start. bd2412T 04:44, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
I really love this NYT profile on this guy Tim Burke who creates these amazing animated sports GIFs. One interesting part of the Burke piece is the description of his office, and that has me thinking about your work space when you're creating and editing. Can you describe? And you mentioned supra that you don't drink caffeine or alcohol while wikiworking. Do you listen to music or otherwise stimulate yourself? If you're working on one of your longform articles like Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States, does someone come in from time to time to bring a snack? Stephenbharrison (talk) 14:09, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
I have a modest home office, with a two-monitor setup (one horizontal, one vertical). I usually have a news channel on in the background. I try to stay well-hydrated, and fix myself a snack from time to time. I hope that this has been useful for you, but my time will very soon be too limited for further extensive discussion. bd2412T 15:38, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, of course, this has been very useful. Fascinating for me as someone who's not very familiar with Wikipedia. It also looks like I'll be able to place the piece in a well-known national publication. *fist pump*
I will try to make my last few questions brief and also wrap today if possible because I know you are working on your new project.
First, a hopefully quick one: By my count, based on this contribs page, you have started or made substantial contributions to the articles for 548 U.S federal and state judges. Does this sound right? Do you have any stats or anecdotal evidence on who reads the articles on judges?
Second, can you tell me at a high-level about your new project? Is it through the law firm or wiki-related? Would you characterize it as a vacation, or to use your word, a wikibreak?
Third, and speaking of vacation, are you going to Wikimania 2018? :) Stephenbharrison (talk) 16:26, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
My substantial contributions to articles on judges probably number much higher than that - for articles I did not create, I generally only list those that I had to rebuild from the ground up. My new project is drafting portions of a legal treatise covering major intersections of health law, intellectual property, and public policy. However, I definitely won't be making it Wikimania this year. My schedule will be tight for the latter half of the year, and South Africa is just too far to travel - over 20 hours of flight time each way. bd2412T 04:49, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
That’s all from me for now, assuming my editor doesn’t ask for clarification. Good luck with the treatise. Can’t thank you enough for your time, sir. Stephenbharrison (talk) 05:15, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
You're welcome. bd2412T 14:34, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
When you have an opportunity, can you eyeball my very brief addition at William Lynn Parkinson (Eisenhower appointee). Seems the poor fellow ended up floating face down in Lake Michigan. I quickly summarized the source, but a second set of eyes likely would be helpful. Kind of strange that a Federal Judge died under such mysterious circumstances, yet there is almost nothing online about it. Safiel (talk) 00:56, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
I added a note about it in the see also section of "List of United States federal judges killed in office". bd2412T 01:06, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
It's Braniac2000 I would like to request that my Wikipedia Account is deleted please. Braniac2000 (talk) 15:45, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Do you mean that you want your User page and User talk page deleted? It is not possible to entirely delete an account. bd2412T 16:04, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I mean my user page, and talk page, and all the pages that i created.Braniac2000 (talk) 22:01, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
@Braniac2000: Just stepping in to answer this. Wikipedia does not delete user accounts. If your intent is to leave Wikipedia permanently and never return, you can check out WP:VANISH, but it is entirely up to the discretion of Wikipedia administrators whether or not your request to "vanish" will be granted. Frankly, however, the typical way a user leaves Wikipedia is to blank all their user pages and just stop editing. Safiel (talk) 23:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
This appears to be resolved. Cheers! bd2412T 23:09, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I had to make some substantial changes at List of federal judges appointed by Dwight D. Eisenhower due to the fact that three courts changed from Article I to Article III status during his tenure. I added an explanatory paragraph in the lead and differentiated Article I and Article III appointees in the Specialty Courts section. Safiel (talk) 23:37, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Very well done. bd2412T 23:40, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
On 28 January 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Digiday, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that a website run by Digiday generates random absurd Twitter bios followed by profanity-laced commentary? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Digiday. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Digiday), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
I'm just giving you a heads up that an article for a district court nominee (E.D. Tex.) may come up for speedy deletion soon. I created the Jeremy D. Kernodle article and as you are an admin and are able to undelete articles, I may need need you to recover the article for me if that happens. Paging @Safiel and Snickers2686:. Thanks! – JocularJellyfishTalkContribs 03:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@JocularJellyfish: As PROD has been declined, that deletion process is at an end. If the PRODer nominates the article under WP:AFD, it will be a relatively trivial endeavor to gain a consensus for keep given the long standing precedent regarding judicial nominees. Safiel (talk) 03:43, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@Safiel: I admit that I don't have much experience in the deletion side of the wiki so I wasn't really sure where this was going to go. Thanks for the info. – JocularJellyfishTalkContribs 03:46, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
@JocularJellyfish: I have plenty of experience, including the non-administrative closures of about 20 to 25 AfD discussions. If you need pointers or assistance, I can always assist in that area. Safiel (talk) 04:01, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
This now appears to be resolved, for the time being. Cheers! bd2412T 23:09, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Hey, regarding your comment on the RM, I thought I should let you know that the title Palis redirects to Pâlis, a former French commune, and the title Hindis redirects to Andis, Markazi, an Iranian village. You might want to consider using a different example. But otherwise, I totally agree – thanks for throwing in your two cents! 142.161.81.20 (talk) 21:50, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I am aware of that - the point still stands, that it is not a conflict for the language to be at one title while the addition of an "s" causes it to mean something else, without conflict. bd2412T 21:57, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
I have added citations from the other article, and clarified that this was an assertion made by proponents and opponents of the order. bd2412T 03:33, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
The judge's article is currently located at George William Whitehurst (judge). George William Whitehurst is a redirect to G. William Whitehurst, a former Congressman. Polbot created both the article and the redirect, so I will take this to you directly. My proposal is to move the judge's article to the non disambiguated title. I have already placed the appropriate hatnote on the judge's article to the congressman's article. I don't see any possible controversy with this move, so I don't thin a formal discussion is necessary, this seems fairly trivial. Safiel (talk) 05:37, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Note I tried to move it myself, but it wouldn't let me do it. Safiel (talk) 05:38, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Done, Cheers! bd2412T 04:05, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing the DAB page links on Chestnut Hill. I copy/pasted the page names and then forgot to go back and add the '(disambiguation)' part! Leschnei (talk) 14:25, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Not a problem at all. Cheers! bd2412T 15:11, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
Good evening! I just wanted to give you a heads up about a contentious topic that doesn't seem to be going away, Supreme Court Justices and senior status --do we acknowledge it in Presidential tables (i.e. Judges appointed by (insert name)) tables or don't we? I did a ping earlier but I'm not sure if it worked. The relevant discussion is here. Feel free to add to the discussion. I'm just tired of the reverts and re-reverts and constant back and forth so I'm trying to reach a consensus. If there's any other editors you think would benefit from the discussion, please let them know. Thanks! Snickers2686 (talk) 02:44, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
I have responded there, thanks. bd2412T 04:05, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
BD2412 Saw your draft while searching for links to a potential WP:WIR article on Jean V. Gilbert, who succeeded Wirtz as Honolulu City-County Attorney in 1944.
If you don't have a subscription to Newspapers.com, all this link says is that he was named Circuit Court Judge for Maui. "Jean V. Gilbert Named To Post Of C-C Attorney". The Honolulu Advertiser – via Newspapers.com (subscription required). No. February 16, 1944. p. 2, col. 7. Retrieved February 9, 2018.
Good luck this this. — Maile (talk) 15:19, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
I am not seeing Wirtz in the HathiTrust book. bd2412T 16:12, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
I linked the wrong year of that annual. I had both open on my browser at the time. Sorry about that. This one I see the url says 747, but when you pull it up, it should say it's 711. Anyway, this should take care of that. — Maile (talk) 16:41, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
Got it, thanks! bd2412T 16:56, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
One more thing. If you don't have newspaper.com subscription, you might want to see if you can pull up December 31, 1980 of a Honolulu newspaper some other way. It's his obit. Looks like his death date was December 29, 1980. Write-up covering his career and individual comments about him. Buried at St. Anthony's Church Cemetery in Wailuku, Maui. — Maile (talk) 18:49, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
I just found and fixed an epic Wikipedia fail on Benjamin Horsley Littleton. Since you created the article on March 7, 2010, it has referred to Horsley as a member of the board of WAX appeals. The error was present in the old FJC Bio entry which has since been corrected. But it is rather epic that such a blatant and obvious error was not caught by anybody in almost 8 full years. Still chuckling a bit over it. More amazing is that it is that way on dozens of Wikipedia mirrors and STILL nobody caught it. Safiel (talk) 05:30, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
That is something. bd2412T 12:56, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:Joseph G. Standart. Thanks! Legacypac (talk) 23:42, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm sure I had some reason for creating this draft, but I have no recollection of what that was. bd2412T 01:39, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for unlocking Fresh Kid Ice. One of my goals when I joined Wikipedia, was to make a fair bio to all 2 Live crew members. Boy did it turn into gong show. At the time I didn't know or understand anything about re-direct and pages. At the time I personally contacted Fresh Kid Ice who was a real gentleman gave me photos that I could use, thank god he was a good guy because it was difficult to explain to him about wiki terms. They even re-directed the page of Mr. Mixx who made the blueprint and produce the biggest hits of Miami Bass music.
Anyways I intent to put them on point to the best of my ability, and did Brother Marquis as well, it was easy since both of them have the same history. I will take care of Mixx later this week.
I was wondering If wanted to put album covers, and crop some of them for profile pictures what are the requirement each time I did it except once people went after me, without giving me a clear explanation, or chronological order of what to do.
You may or may not know how to do this, but I am also in touch with his estate so what should I do present photos they allow us to use strictly for Wikipedia.
Thanks a lot it means a lot to me.Filmman3000 (talk) 02:41, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
I don't think that it is generally permissible to include album covers in biographical articles, as our fair use standards limit their use to articles about the albums themselves. The exception would be if the copyright owner releases the work under a license suitable for inclusion in the Wikimedia Commons. bd2412T 22:16, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi BD2412, Thank you for your help with improving links and other minor cleanups of the page PandaDoc. Maybe you can help me, I would like to change the 'P' lowercase in the title form "pandaDoc" to "PandaDoc". Could you please give an advice how to do that?Andreei (talk) 10:18, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
The reason the article appears at the lowercase title is that there is a {{Lowercase title}} template on the page. If you remove that template, it will show up at the uppercase title. bd2412T 11:41, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. If your account is more than four days old and you have made at least 10 edits you can create articles yourself without posting a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.
If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk.
Odd. I neither created this article, nor submitted it for review. bd2412T 14:09, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
It looks like you renamed the draft at one point, so that must be why the AFC script automatically informed you. I'll notify the actual creator. Sorry for the confusion. -- Ed (Edgar181) 14:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
No worries. Cheers! bd2412T 16:27, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
I request that you change you close at Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet#Requested move 2 February 2018 to a simple "no consensus", without any editorializing, especially in the direction of suggesting changing the lead to favor the "NATO" naming, when again and again respondents in the RM raised WP:NPOV and just plain factual accuracy concerns with the idea of identifying this communication system with NATO in particular. The fact that NATO happens to use it doesn't make it a NATO system. Otherwise I'll have to take this to WP:MR. This base result (no move) would be the same, but your directions to skew the article to favor the NATO viewpoint cannot stand. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 23:52, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
That would be absurd, and unsuccessful. As for "editorializing", where there is consensus for an article to be at a particular title, the lede should generally list the title name in bold early on, and explain variations from it. bd2412T 00:09, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi, do you know if there's any way to speed up the propagation of a change in a template when a link in the template has been changed, to avoid bots marking the previous title as having loads of incoming links? Thanks! Dr. Vogel (talk) 18:12, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
I just load up a "what links here" set in AWB and run through it with null edits. bd2412T 19:32, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Ah ok thanks. I need to investigate this AWB thing you mention! Dr. Vogel (talk) 00:15, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
WP:AWB. Cheers! bd2412T 00:55, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Just finished Theodore Roosevelt's list. Nice thing about going backwards by Presidents is that the lists get shorter and easier to update as I go. There is a problem that I encountered that I am fixing as I have proceeded through Taft and Roosevelt and will fix as I do McKinley's, Cleveland's and Harrison's lists. The United States circuit courts were not abolished in 1891, but continued to exist until December 31, 1911. During that 20 year period, Circuit Judges were duly appointed to both the Circuit Courts and Courts of Appeals (except in the DC Circuit where the Circuit Courts were abolished in 1863). The notes I have left in List of federal judges appointed by William Howard Taft and List of federal judges appointed by Theodore Roosevelt should sufficiently explain the situation to readers. I will leave similar notes in McKinley's, Cleveland's and Harrison's articles as I do them over the next several days. Safiel (talk) 19:29, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, that sounds like an excellent solution. I was mistakenly under the impression that there was a clean break. I should have known things are never that easy. bd2412T 19:33, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
No problem. Safiel (talk) 19:35, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I just finished rewriting List of federal judges appointed by Grover Cleveland. Hopefully, the lead gets across the numerous points I was intending to get across. I broke up the judges by Cleveland's first and second administration. I will do Benjamin Harrison's list next. Safiel (talk) 22:51, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
English? Sry85 deleted her Thai Wikipedia And Using the Wrong English Version intentionally.How can the person who is not neutral in politic be writing Wikipedia.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.171.97.171 (talk) 14:45, 6 March 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.171.97.171 (talk)
I don't have any facility with the language to meaningfully intervene here. bd2412T 15:30, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
Hello, BD2412. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Brownbook".
In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply edit the submission and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.
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Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:16, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
Regarding Global Christian Network (website)Special:Diff/714287244, do you remember what happened to the TV network? Many TV articles and GCN still assume the broadcast meaning. I'm attempting to clean it up, but am confused. Thanks. —PC-XT+ 03:56, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
