User talk:Horse Eye's Back/Archives/2023/December

Your revert

I won't revert your edit since it's just a couple of words, but you do know the lead has 40 refefences right? SBM is not the "sole reference". This wording could use improvement and is not an accurate summary of that section, which talks about SCM's reliability and does not emphasize "sole reference" at all. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:46, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Sole reference for what it was being used to support... Not for the entire lead. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

"Point 5"

Sorry again for mistaking your meaning, and for being so strident. A policy cleanup like this is fragile and difficult to pull off.

It is possible that "The article is not based primarily on such sources" (and the RS sentence restating it with some elaboration) no longer entirely reflect consensus, at least as to particular article types. Two that Thryduulf highlighted could probably be summarized more generally as "Articles on detailed non-fiction works, such as legislation or technical standards, which are notable but summarized in secondary sources in insufficient detail for proper encyclopedic treatment"; and "Articles on subjects, often in side-articles on sub-topical detail that have been split from main ones for length reasons, that provide lists of detailed facts, e.g. all the stops on a transit line, for which a primary source is authoritative but secondary sources simply reguritate that information from the primary source anyway". Both of these ate cases in which there is a single primary source that is by definition authoritative for the subject. They're unusual, and raise the "hard cases make bad law" issue.

Even if Thryduulf in the long run is not correct about lasting community consensus about these article types, the observation that the tacked-on sentence from RS is guideline-style language trying to apply and explicate policy language, and doesn't need to be merged into the policy (being redundant and inappripriately worded), is defensible and others have now made the same point.

A substantive change to that "point 5" policy line-item would need to be its own proposal (either also at WT:V or more practically at WP:VPPOL, given the far-reaching, cross-categorical effect such a change would have).

In the complete other direction, attempts to enforce "point 5" more stingently at (or against the existence of) particular articles are something for those articles's own talk pages, or FAR in some cases, or AfD if it came to that (and there is a high risk of failure because of previous consensus to keep them, which would probably resolve back to making a substantive change to the wording of "point 5").

It's not something we can address (in either direction) in what needs badly to remain a straightforward merge and copyedit proposal. If it veers into trying to make substantive changes to the policy's actual meaning or its interpretation/enforcement, then it will trainwreck pretty quickly, and "balkanize" these POLICYFORKs even further. There would be a lasting suspicion that the supposed merge discussion was a sneaky attempt to change policy out from under everyone's noses, and the BLP and RS regulars will become defensive of "their versions" (especially at BLP which is also a policy, and which is kind of collectively paranoid as to both scope and editorial pool). I've seen this happen before. E.g. WP:CITEVAR is not part of the MoS, despite being a style guideline section, for this kind of reason, a dispute dating back to the early days of the project; the split has basically become irreparable for all intents and purposes, and this has actually had negative results that I probably don't need to dwell on here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:29, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

No worries and I'm sorry it went edgewise... I actually agree with removing the tacked on sentence because its redundant. My worry is that the consensus will be pointed to at sometime down the road as evidence that consensus was against the removed text because consensus was against what was expressed in that text. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:34, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, things like that can always be a concern. That's part of why I'm pushing to fix the syntax problems in the material now, because there's reasonable likelihood of a second round of revision later being short-circuited by "you can't change this text, because we just had a discussion that ended with a consensus for this exact language" arguments. (Cf. literally years of wrangling over the wording at MOS:GENDERID, along similar lines: "This text was set by an RfC, so leave it alone even though it's crap.") That's why I'm not happy with the alternative "minimum change" proposal. The existing language and the drafts closely based on it would not pass a 13-year-old's middle-school grammar test, but we could end up stuck with one of them for an extended period. The time to fix the problem is now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:56, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

WP policies

I'm aware of both, I just couldn't see how either was relevant. Thmazing (talk) 19:33, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Please answer queries on your own talk page, I have duplicated this reply there for your convenience. Thank you. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:48, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Lord Nicholas Windsor

Hi. Just wanted to say that I agree with most of the recent changes you made to that page, however, there were one or two parts that discussed his work with anti-abortion organizations and some of his articles which I feel could be relevant given the fact that there is a section titled "Religion". I haven't had time to look at all of the citations but given the fact that you recently worked on the article I just wanted to bring it to your attention first. Best. Keivan.f^Talk 05:03, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I hope you can find secondary sources for most of it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 05:13, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Recent edits on Mark Zuckerberg

I know what you intend to say and I had support you but I myself did this under a fellow editor's work on other pages of my interest where he omitted the "then President" citing Obama, Biden and Trump being well-known. Regards MSincccc (talk) 16:12, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Well then point me to that editor and I will have a discussion with them... They appear to be mistaken. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:14, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

It was User:Векочел. MSincccc (talk) 16:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I have queried them. Its a reasonable position to take if it just said "President" but "then President" confers more information than just title so the same objection can not be made. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:20, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Not gonna lie...

...your overuse of maintenance tags is starting to reek of WP:NOTHERE. I suggest you drop the stick. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 19:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

@LilianaUwU: Can you give some examples of what you consider to be my overuse of maintenance tags? I don't believe I stray from community standards or expectations but I'm always happy to take constructive criticism. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:22, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

If you need examples that bad, let's start with List of highways numbered 220, where you put a notability tag on a disambiguation page. I could go all night listing examples. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 01:02, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

@LilianaUwU: List of highways numbered 220 is not a disambiguation page, its a list and as such must meet the notability requirements of stand alone lists. I have it on my list to turn it into a disambiguation page though (thus solving the notability issue), want to help me with that? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:31, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

It does seem a little weird to tag a dab page with a notability tag, but I will admit to being a little confused on the ins and outs of the whole list/dab/set index thing in the first place. For what it's worth, I think you are definitely "HERE", although it does seem kind of strange to go through tagging like ten articles for notability thirty seconds apart. jp×g🗯️ 05:18, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Shying away from NPP

You piqued my interested here: do you mind elaborating on what you find bureaucratic about NPP, and why it keeps you away? I don't disagree, just curious to hear more. – Joe (talk) 14:04, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Its primarily the paramilitary aspect of it. We don't have many paramilitary groups on wiki and even less that are official or semi-official (Guerrilla Skeptics is a good example of a wiki paramilitary group that lacks recognition/legitimacy) so the ones we do have always seem to attract a certain kind of try-hard jerk (a problem not unique to on-wiki paramilitary groups, its a problem for all of them) who thrives in that sort of heavily bureaucratic militarized atmosphere. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:44, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I'm an NPP coordinator and happened to see this message. Was wondering if you want to talk a bit more about what parts of NPP are paramilitary, and ideas for fixing this? –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:37, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think its something that needs to be fixed... I don't think there's any way to construct a New Page Patrol (or New Page Army, or New Page Battalion, or New Page War Party) which isn't paramilitary. The "fix" would be for it to cease existing altogether and for all editors to effectively take on the role equally without rank or distinction. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:51, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

That's basically how NPP operated until the introduction of the NPR user group in 2016. I supported that at the time, because letting everyone review meant there was a lot sloppy reviewing happening, but in retrospect I do wonder if that was a mistake. Making it a closed group—along with this silly trend of giving eachother increasingly elaborate titles—does appear to have created these hierarchical, us-against-them tendencies that I don't remember being nearly as prominent in pre-2016 NPP. I'm unsure if there's a way back, but I keep trying to find it. Thanks for taking the time to answer. – Joe (talk) 15:12, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I think you have to find a way to incentivize the really awesome NPP editors while disincentivizing the power trip crowd. IMO the post-2016 setup does the opposite (take that with the massive grain of salt that I know next to nothing about pre-2016 NPP as it was before my time). I don't think its any coincidence that the best people I know in NPP are perpetually burnt out while a few jerks I wish would take a hike seem to have endless reserves of editing energy. Not of course unique to NPP in any way [1]. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:44, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Very good point. – Joe (talk) 15:50, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your perspective. Do you consider any other WikiProjects to be paramilitary, or do you think this is only a problem with NPP? –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:17, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

All of the Patrols are to some extent, but NPP is really tops the pile... ARS maybe second and then its the rest. I want to be clear that I don't necessarily think that paramilitary groups are a problem per say more they have different problems than other areas of wikipedia. There are many positives that come from a mission driven culture (the super PC way to say paramilitary these days) and the sheer prolificness of NPP is a good example of that. If there are any inherent problems they're philosophical, the conflict between the way paramilitary groups inherently frame operations in military terms and WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:44, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Unhelpful Editing

Edits like this ("ignorant") and this ("No. You're wrong") are clearly unhelpful and calling someone ignorant can be insulting and is borderline a personal attack. In the future, disengage or keep your commentary focused on the topic and not the editor. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@Gonzo fan2007: ignorant is not an insult, we were all ignorant of wikipedia's policies and guidelines once. Do you disagree? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:15, 29 December 2023 (UTC)