This is an archive of past discussions about User:Iridescent. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Latest comment: 7 years ago37 comments10 people in discussion
People might be interested in this short list of "Featured data", as it were. I've only looked at one, John Cale (Q45909), where I find: field: "country of citizenship" (definition "the object is a sovereign state that recognises the subject as its citizen") Wales, with a reference from Italian Wikipedia. I wonder what further discoveries await. Ok, I notice that the only woman and the only country listed are both fictional/mythical. Johnbod (talk) 13:00, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
Rembrandt is the one that draws my eye—I imagine the Rijksmuseum would be as surprised as I am to know that his only notable works are The Night Watch, Syndics of the Drapers' Guild and The Jewish Bride (although since all three of those are in the Rijksmuseum, I think I can hazard a safe guess on who's making the call on which of his works are "notable"). Needless to say, even on a core topic like this they have plenty of unreferenced statements and "imported from Wikipedia". ‑ Iridescent23:27, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
Although in fairness, Wikidata is still in early days; three years into Wikipedia's history, this, this and this were what Featured Articles looked like. ‑ Iridescent23:37, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
"If you came to this page looking for actual images of nude celebrities, you may already know enough about the topic to add extra information to this entry." :D Well, quite. That somewhat designated our demograph for the next fifteen years. — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis08:46, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Maybe you had to be there—watching him cycle through various excuses was extraordinary when viewed in real-time. (Everyone has their own view on what the most surreal part of that episode was; mine was Jimmy proclaiming that he had zero tolerance for rude people while name-dropping his closeness to Alastair Campbell.) ‑ Iridescent16:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Ah, that is common human behaviour when called out about something so it probably isn't clicking anything for me. The juxtaposition of "abuse of multiple accounts" and the much more trivial "failure to remain accountable" in the other case does.
As for that block episode, I suspect I am more used to the TV Tropes block culture, where our former owner was very clear that the website is his and nobody is entitled to stay there or to give their opinion, meaning that blocks are normally uncontested. Ownership has changed but the basic policy "moderators decide who is permitted to stay and what is 'uncivil'" is unchanged. From various comments sprinked in the archives here, it seems that in Wikipedia's past the practice wasn't much different. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:10, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
To be fair, it is thanks to these showcases that I now finally now in which timezone I should locate Deirdre. No indication whether the myth deals with DST or not though, tsk. Fram (talk) 09:32, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
That Deirdre one is dreadful even by WD standards for its lack of sourcing. Both the en-wiki and Irish Wikipedia articles on her display also display an impressive lack of sourcing for what's allegedly an article with the same degree of importance to the mythology project as Robin Hood, Ghost and Folklore. Ceoil, you know about this stuff—is there any way to clean up the existing mess that isn't going to involve me wading through impenetrable texts on the Ulster Cycle, and is it worth the effort? I don't think I've ever heard this "best-known [Irish mythological] figure in modern times" (who very obviously isn't) ever mentioned outside the context of Yeats. ‑ Iridescent17:43, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I've heard of Deirdre in casual conversation upon occasion - usually as a comparison to someone who is being overly dramatic about their travails, they might get compared to Deirdre of the Sorrows. Or sometimes the overly-into-Celtic-lore-type will get called a Deirdre. Ealdgyth - Talk17:58, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Urine sidetrack
Ealdgyth, that reminds me of a completely unrelated question you seem the obvious person to ask: in something I was reading (I can't remember whatThe Last English King) it was mentioned in passing that to give blades durability and a stronger cutting edge, the Anglo-Saxons would cool seax blades in horse urine after forging. Is there any actual truth to this, which sounds to me like complete crap (if it were true, I'd think every class on A-S England would include the fact as a way to get students' attention)? And if it is true, how on earth did anyone ever discover the process? (Wikipedia's own, rather crappy-looking Tempering (metallurgy) article does briefly mention quenching in urine, but doesn't bother with anything as prosaic as a source.) And did it actually need to be a horse, or was it just that horses generate copious amounts of urine and it was safer to collect it from horses than from cattle? ‑ Iridescent18:31, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
I asked the spouse, who is fiddling with blacksmithing/bladesmithing, and he says he's heard of it, but couldn't say that it was specifically a A-S thing. But he says he's inclined to think it's bunk, for the same reasons that tempering in blood has been proven to be bad for the blade - too many salts/acids would probably weaken the blade more than strengthening it. He's poking around on the various smithing sites looking - you've successfully distracted him from playing Civilization VI! Ealdgyth - Talk18:37, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Good lord, Civilization VI? That makes me feel ancient; I remember playing Civilization I. (I've remembered the source, which was The Last English King, which is about as historically accurate as Game of Thrones so I'm inclined to think it's just a piece of garbage Rathbone threw in to add color—although people back then certainly did believe all kinds of weird stuff, so it's not beyond the bounds of possiblity.) ‑ Iridescent18:41, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
I started on Civ II, and have so far resisted the urge for VI. And it's not like we don't have weird theories now ... look at chemtrails or some of the other ... "interesting" theories out there. Ealdgyth - Talk18:49, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
What I find more interesting in that article is a little further down where we find "Take varnish, dragon's blood, horn scrapings, half as much salt, juice made from earthworms, radish juice, tallow, and vervain and quench therein. It is also very advantageous in hardening if a piece that is to be hardened is first thoroughly cleaned and well polished." which surely raises more questions than it answers. ‑ Iridescent19:15, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
This book, which at least looks like a respectable history of A-S blades, suggests they used the urine of goats and red-headed boys, albeit hedged with enough disclaimers to make it clear she thinks the stories are apocryphal. ‑ Iridescent19:21, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Well, our copy of Lorelei Sims' The Backyard Blacksmith claims on p. 38 that the used water from her quench bucket is good for drying up poison ivy blisters..... Ealdgyth - Talk19:25, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Urine for contact poisoning is certainly a long-standing folk remedy; as well as poison ivy I've also heard it claimed for nettles, jellyfish and beestings. I find it unlikely it would actually have any healing effect on any of them. (Our article on Jellyfish#Treatment of stings feels the need to point out that urine won't cure a jellyfish sting, so the belief is obviously widespread enough that someone thought it worth repudiating.) ‑ Iridescent19:29, 30 May 2017 (UTC) (adding) According to this, the other ancient folk remedy for nettle-stings (and presumably poison ivy as well) of smearing yourself with goose droppings does work as the alkaline droppings neutralize the acid in the sting. ‑ Iridescent19:32, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
I've seen new recruits pee in their boots and leave them filled with urine overnight, although I suspect this is more of a "what stupid things can we convince them they should be doing" exercise than anything that would actually have any effect on the leather. ‑ Iridescent20:39, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Well urine (and other things) were certainly used in the tanning/softening process for leather/skins/hides. I have no idea what effect it is supposed to have on a (supposedly) cured set of finished shoes. It shows up in fiction often enough as well, from Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series (also a good read if you want a recipe for ancient steppe gerbil) to Terry Pratchett's Harry 'King of the Golden River'. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:13, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Urine#Uses obviously needs lots of expansion. Peeing on bronzes to get a patina was, perhaps still is, established workshop practice for Rodin etc. Johnbod (talk) 21:14, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
This seems more like a publicity stunt than a genuine commercial proposition, but it got quite a bit of coverage a couple of weeks ago. MoSI used to have a small display (now sadly removed) on an early-Victorian entrepreneur who before the sewage system was extended to cover the whole city would collect the night soil from the Manchester slums, press it into cakes and sun-dry it, and sell it on—the list of things it was used for (aside from the obvious ones like fertilizer) were both eye-opening and stomach-churning. (And if there's ever a Wikipedia-award for "one-sentence paragraph that most requires further explanation, this is surely it.) ‑ Iridescent21:28, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Browsing recent and not so recent edits, I note that e.g. for more than 2 hours now, the item "Bubonic plague" has been moved (the English label has been changed, which has the same effect as moving a page has on enwiki) to "bubonic plague (Justin Bieber disease)"[1]. Meanwhile, a new proposal to implement a BLP policy is being obstructed by regulars as Slowking4 (here indef blocked) and GerardM (the less said, the better). Similarly, Bitcoin is now, since more than 3 hours, called "Poronga" on wikidata.
And then I wanted to perform another search, and got "A database query error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software.[WS7PHApAEKsAAH7TXlYAAABB] 2017-05-31 14:12:52: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError"" Anyway, it isn't clear to me why Wikidata would need pages (sorry, items) like this or this (love the English label); or this extreme navelgazing (nere mind this), and this is one week old blatant vandalism since edited by two bots.
And I'm really too stupid to understand the origin or meaning of this: a template on two wikis (ja and zh) gets an item on Wikidata: fine. The template on the two wikis though consists solely of the Qnumber of the Wikidata template. So Wikidata has an item telling us that two wikis have a template telling us that Wikidata has an item telling us that two wikis ... and so on ad infinitum. Fram (talk) 14:38, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
In all honesty, I don't know enough about WD to know whether things like that Wikidata item on a Wikidata item are unavoidable quirks of the software or actual problems. Heaven knows Wikipedia itself has no shortage of bizarre and pointless scraps floating around (a recent question at the Help Desk drew my attention to MediaWiki:External image whitelist, the configuration page for a function which for legal reasons can't be enabled on Wikipedia even in the event somebody wanted to). ‑ Iridescent16:23, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Nah, it's just a template quirk. That template basically shows the Wikidata item associated with the page it is transcluded on. I also tried to get d:Q30017373 nominated for deletion but didn't find out how to do so. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:19, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, definitely—the sign on the right-hand side is a dead giveaway. Personally I'd say File:The London Arch.jpg is of such poor quality it has no encyclopedic value and should probably be deleted, but good luck persuading the people who gave us A straight section of the B6458 and Category:Nude women with cats* that "no conceivable use to anyone ever" is grounds for deletion. ‑ Iridescent15:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC) *I'm sure you'll be as shocked as I am to learn who created that category.
Sorry about ballsing up your page with that, I couldn't get it to stay in the border. On a lighter note, my mission is now to get a bendy section of the B6458 :) In your face, straight section. — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis16:08, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Looking at the map, it doesn't appear to have one. If you really care about forcing an image to stay in the border, put {{-}} immediately after it, which forces any elements appearing after it in the wikicode, to appear after it in real life. It's occasionally useful on articles where you want to make sure that a left-aligned image isn't going to knock the subsequent header out of place, even on very wide screens, or when you want to make sure that even the most helpful browser won't try to wrap text around a particular box or image. ‑ Iridescent16:18, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
They could've at least shown us the very minor almost-a-kink at 55°49'48.8"N 2°56'47.2"W... Thanks for that bit of code- I always seem to mess up the layout of my articles the moment I insert an image; that should be useful. — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis16:29, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. I've renamed the file to a somewhat clearer name to resolved the conflict with another Commons file (actually, the image was here on enwiki, not on Commons) which I've also renamed as it's previous name (like many "Wiki Loves whatever" uploads) was absurdly ambiguous. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:28, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Adam certainly knew The ruins of Palmyra; otherwise Tedmor in the desart (1753) by Robert Wood (antiquarian) (one of the white dudes in togas in James Dawkins and Robert Wood Discovering the Ruins of Palmyra, by Gavin Hamilton (1758, NG Edinburgh), which I'm sure you know). At this period "inspiration" might mean adjusting by 1/16 or 1/32 the ratio between different parts of the order. Johnbod (talk) 18:36, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Not buying it; if that were in article space I'd slap an enormous {{cn}} tag on it. I don't see what this arch has in common with the Temple of Bel other than the "lots of columns" common to pretty much every classical structure, and why we should assume Adam based his designs on Palmyra when there are numerous similar structures like the Arco dei Gavi which we know he had seen in the flesh. ‑ Iridescent18:44, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Well, there are plenty of sources for Adam being inspired by engravings of buildings in Baalbek and Palmyra, although more at Osterley House and Syon House than Croome Court. This arch is listed, of course.[2] No doubt English Heritage has a reason for saying: "GATEWAY, a thin triumphal arch of Palmyra type with coupled Ionic columns ..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.251.196 (talk) 22:19, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
I've been to both Osterley Park and Syon House (strange that the articles for each are at 'Park' and 'House' respectively) and I remember the Syrian connection being mentioned at Osterley. Examples of online sources include this and this. The key point seems to be that "Wood also measured and recorded proportions of columns and remnants of friezes and ceilings". The inspiration from Palmyra (if any) was more likely to have been the Monumental Arch of Palmyra. Though the visual similarity is not exact. Carcharoth (talk) 14:10, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
If we are talking of arches Adam actually saw, then the suggestion of "the Roman Arch in Pula which Adam saw in 1757" is more likely than the Arco dei Gavi. See Arch of the Sergii. Which everyone (well, maybe only Iridescent) remembers from here. It is interesting to see what has changed (or not) in two years. Carcharoth (talk) 14:28, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
Regarding the image being of poor quality, that low-resolution and small file size is common with the geograph.org images, which are great if there is nothing else, but can invariably be improved. In this case commons:Category:London Arch, Croome Park has a number of better pictures. What is often lacking is historical images of such structures, seeing what they looked like in the past. Carcharoth (talk) 18:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
For the benefit of confused readers coming to this late, as the image in question has been moved to another title this is the image in question. ‑ Iridescent18:34, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
With geograph images, the size displayed on their file description page is no bigger than 640x480 (or 480x640), but they usually offer multiple sizes, sometimes up to eight times that (linear). In the case of http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/922254, they don't offer anything larger; but in many cases, there will be a "More sizes" link near the top right corner of the image. If there was one for that image, it would produce this. It's a WP:SPS, so we shouldn't give much credence to their captions; but it's useful as a source of images already licensed CC BY-SA. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:47, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Oh, I'm not knocking Geograph; they're in particular exemplary for documenting the sites of former notable structures, battlefields etc (obvious example), when one wants to document what something looks like now but doesn't have any great urge to trek out to the arse-end of nowhere to take a photo of an empty field. ‑ Iridescent18:52, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
I was mainly replying to Carcharoth, but what with one thing and another (three edit conflicts in a row, plus Firefox being so godawful slow since the latest "upgrade" - does anybody know how to revert back to an older version?) it takes me ages to get a decent edit saved. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:54, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
@Redrose64, instructions here, or if you want to go back further you can download versions going right back to the early betas here. As soon as you've installed it, you'll need to immediately go to the "advanced" tab in settings and change "update" to "never", or it will promptly upgrade itself to the latest version again. (Disclaimer; unless it's unavoidable, rolling back to a previous version of a web browser is a Really Bad Idea, as it unpatches every bug and security breach. Mozilla's own advice is that if you can't resolve a problem in the current version of Firefox, you're better off installing Chrome/Safari/Opera/MSIE/Edge and allowing it to automatically update.) ‑ Iridescent08:05, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
On that, it wasn't that long ago was it that everybody went mad because the then-latest updated Firefox had lost the 'back' button. An example perhaps of people wanting to roll back their browser without ever having a technical problem with it? — O Fortuna semper crescis, aut decrescis08:29, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
I've got the last version of Chrome that was available for Windows XP: Google stopped supporting XP in April 2016. I have a copy of Safari 5 that I got in about 2010, but Safari stopped being available for any Windows version in 2012. I have IE 8 but that is even slower than any of the others (IE 9 et seq. are not available for XP). I picked up Opera 36 (without asking for it - it suddenly installed itself last year) and it seems to be about the only one which is both still supported and not unusably slow - but it seems to have lost a lot of features compared with older Opera versions, such as Opera 11.
Upgrading from Windows XP is not feasible because my hardware won't handle it; upgrading the hardware is out of the question - too expensive. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:13, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
You might want to give SeaMonkey a try, which is still XP-compatible and still kept up to date. (If you're of a certain age and were online before Endless September, you may remember it in its previous incarnation as Netscape Navigator.) If you want to keep the Chrome experience, try SlimJet which is also based on Chromium but with all Chrome's bloat stripped out.
I know it's blasphemy to say it, but you could do worse than go back to IE. Because that's the browser the big legacy customers of XP use (governments, big corporations, militaries and anyone else who's invested in a network of 10,000+ terminals, isn't inclined to replace their hardware just because Microsoft says so, and has the clout to bully MS), that's one that MS do ensure is kept up-to-date and backwards-compatible. (Although MS have officially abandoned support for XP, they do actually keep updating it; they just don't make the updates available to the public any more in an effort to discourage the use of it.) IE has an atrocious reputation, but that's largely owing to the dismal IE6 (the version which used to ship with Windows and thus the one with which most people are familiar) and IE11 is a considerable improvement. ‑ Iridescent17:03, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
If you want to talk to Jimmy privately, I think Special:EmailUser/Jimbo Wales is what you're looking for; if you want to complain about how Wikipedia and/or the WMF is Just Plain Evil then I'm sure you can manage to locate Wikipediocracy (although if they're anything like their old WR incarnation, they're if anything less tolerant than is Wikipedia of people making allegations without evidence, even when the allegation if true would further their agenda). Otherwise, "anyone can edit" applies to Jimmy's talkpage just as much as it does anywhere else on Wikipedia; in his case even more so than any other user talk page, since it still retains some aspects of its legacy role as a de facto noticeboard. I have just as much right to comment there as do you, and neither myself nor Guy Macon are under any obligation to have to agree with you. As I suspect you already know perfectly well. ‑ Iridescent20:09, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Give me a break, QuackGuru. You posted a comment on a talk page accessible to all (knowing full well that Wikipedia has an "email this user" function for when you want to have your comment read and replied to by one person) and then you tell someone not to respond? I refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram. Don't post things if you don't want people to reply to you. Use email. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:16, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Toot toot
Latest comment: 7 years ago10 comments6 people in discussion
I've done some tweaking—I'm still not particularly happy with the blurb, but it's a topic that's quite hard to sum up in 1200 characters. This was a genuine "the actions taken on that day affected the entire course of human history" moment (the Making the Modern World gallery accords Rocket the same holy relic status as the Difference Engine), but because it's not particularly well known it needs to be explained why this is an important event rather than just a story of a railway line's opening ceremony. ‑ Iridescent14:21, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
@TFA coordinators it might make more sense to run it on 15 September, assuming there's nothing else earmarked for that date (there's nothing listed at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/pending so presumably nobody else has their eyes on it). The anniversary isn't significant (187th) but given how much this article is banging on about 15 Sep 1830 as Day One of the modern world, it might not hurt to rub the readers' noses in the date. You've collectively been burning off both railway and UK articles at an accelerated rate recently, and it looks like other than the very niche SECR N class this is the last UK transport FA (of any kind) yet to appear. Given my boycotting of the FA-related processes it would be hypocritical for me to suggest how FAC/TFA should run things, but given that you've only just run Wood Siding railway station and Westcott railway station it may make sense to space them out a bit more. ‑ Iridescent18:51, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Everything listed here is at least eight and a half-years old; there are quite a few old FAs that have not run. As you can see on that page, for many of the articles it's unlikely they ever will run, but some are still in good condition. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:43, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Responding to your ITN talkpage reply: It was not "The attack" (summary's words) that injured David Bailey (non-gunshot related), just as Rep. Roger Williams's ankle injury (requiring bandaging & crutches) diving for cover is in the same category. By your logic, the Main Page should say "An attack injures six people." (Or more, if anyone scraped their knee or elbow running or diving to the ground!) — DennisDallas (talk) 20:04, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Mika, Bailey, Griner, Barth, Williams. Count them. The current wording of An attack on members of the United States Congress in Alexandria, Virginia, injures five people is correct; it would only be six if we included the attackeras well, which by convention isn't done in the case of this kind of attack. ‑ Iridescent20:13, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Things
Latest comment: 7 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion
Internet connections in the sticks leave a lot to be desired. Been locked out for the last few hours. Anyway, this and this for maximum wierdness. Ceoil (talk) 22:12, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
It probably makes me a hopelessly straight-up L7, daddio, but I never really got the whole cult that's arisen around Aphex Twin—everything I hear of his to me sounds like someone trying to recreate The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle using a dozen Commodore 64s. That Trump video is just plain peculiar. Official admin bit; posting links to YouTube videos that aren't in the public domain has been deemed verboten by the Defenders Of The Wiki despite the fact that the whole point of YouTube videos is to generate interest in the musicians which they can then translate into sales; some of the more stick-up-the-ass tendency among the admin corps will be quite happy to rock up uninvited on your talkpage issuing dire warnings to you for linking to them. ‑ Iridescent19:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
I believe "meh" is the term the youngsters use. There are some aspects of the whole free-culture movement I loathe, such as the torrent mentality of treating theft as something to be proud of and the general contempt for those whose livelihoods depend on the industry, but I find it hard to get excited about streaming music recordings and videos. For at least a decade the entire music industry has been predicated on de facto free content, with album releases and music videos acting as loss leaders to generate interest in live showns, merch, PAs and commissions which is where the labels and artists make it back.
If the industry somehow managed to come up with a Digital Rights Management mechanism that worked, and it became impossible to copy and stream music, it would probably kill off the music industry overnight; today's youths have enough alternative entertainment options that they're not going to sit in their bedrooms listening to the radio, note down the names of the artists they like, and trek out to a record store to buy their albums on the off-chance that the single getting airplay isn't the only decent thing on an otherwise filler-packed album. ‑ Iridescent19:44, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
No worries. There's no possible way the cassette-and-crossbones logo doesn't fall below the threshold of originality in the US, given that it's just two rectangles and six circles (plus the crossed bones, but anyone who tried to claim image rights to that would be laughed out of court since it's an symbol dating back over 500 years). Given that TPB have been using it as their logo for a decade—and the recording industry would love any pretext to prosecute its operators—one can safely assume that in this particular case, an awful lot of very highly paid attorneys have concluded that the HTIKM emblem is unprotectable. ‑ Iridescent12:15, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Once again, my bad for not checking the license for a conflict with the rationale. FWIW, I wasn't challenging the PD tag; I just didn't notice it. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:22, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Re Throbbing Gristle, yeah but thats how music works. MBV are "Never Understand" taken to it logical, painterly, conclusion; J&MC happily admitted they smashed together "good" Beach boys and the nosier elements of Wire. I love the cheesy analog aspect; for me Apex Twin is about the uncanny, especially invoking the strangeness of dawn - the light effect here are primal, and give a similar feeling, and has to have been an influence. Re inexpensive analogue keyboards/26kb memory hardware; see also 1987-88 era Acid House [3], was deliberately reductive -minimalist- creating very simple drum patterns as backdrop for the main stage - single repeating melodies or notes that then subtly modulated or changed pitch over 7-8 minutes. Compare that and Apex Twin to the cluttered hardcore Hoover sound he was no doubt reacting against. Also, I dont know where you stand on the whole 'all guitarist and vocalist are fussy too many notes wankers and bass players will someday inherit the earth' argument, but I know were David James stands; its all about bass oscillation. See also early PiL, early 80s ragga. Ceoil (talk) 09:49, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
Psephology
Latest comment: 7 years ago22 comments10 people in discussion
Am being driven slightly insane by the presentation of the seat changes at United Kingdom general election, 2017. There is a convention to present seat changes since the last general election, and to ignore any by-elections or other changes that occurred in the intervening period. i.e. to present the number of seats as they were at the 2015 general election, and the number of seats at dissolution, but to present the change since the 2015 election. I'd have thought it would be logical to also include the change since dissolution, but it seems not. It is leading to people insisting that the change in Richmond Park should not be included and that Copeland switched or maybe it didn't. Hidden notes are added, but don't help. I think I am going to quietly back away now... Carcharoth (talk) 19:33, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
My attitude towards MP articles has always been to do whatever BrownHairedGirl says, on the assumption that at the very least that will lead to consistency. (FWIW, that article seems like the poster child for WP:NOTNEWS—how can you write about the impact of something when nobody has the slightest idea what the result of it will actually be? And who comes to Wikipedia to get election results?) ‑ Iridescent14:25, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
On trying out various constituencies, either the BBC or the local authority's elections office seems to be the top Google hit every time (with election result tottenham as the sole exception I can find—I'd guess the football team probably has some kind of weird distorting effect on PageRank). ‑ Iridescent14:48, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
I sympathise with Carcharoth's exasperation, but the use of last general election as comparator is the norm amongst psephologists of UKania's FPTP elns. By-elections are strange affairs, with high theatre and a concentration of resources, but usually a low turnout. And those who do turn out can usually assume that the govt won't change, so they are free to experiment with their votes. Hence the number of by-election upsets which are overturned before long.
That people do do these things doesn't mean they should do them. I can't remember who it was who recently proposed that Wikipedia shouldn't have an article on any event that took place less than three months ago, but I'm increasingly sympathetic to the notion—because Wikinews is such a mess, we tolerate far too much stuff that ought really to be sent over there. ‑ Iridescent20:42, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Your odds of getting that proposal or anything like it accepted are precisely zero, as long as the MMORPG-ers are in the ascendancy. The "I was the first person to write an article on this topic!" impulse is strong (to the extent that I recently saw an admin congratulating himself for updating ITN). I certainly can't be bothered to go and look for my exact words, but I've proposed in the past that if we must keep all this clutter on the main page, that the display of DYK/TFA/ITN/etc credits on userpages be forbidden and the assorted high-score tables like WP:WBFAN be deleted—while yes, there are some fine people involved in these processes (at least, the laws of statistics imply that there must be regulars at ITN and DYK who aren't self-important narcissistic whackos, and I know from experience that while it's rare to find a FA reviewer who can grasp the notion that "readability, comprehensiveness and accuracy are more important than complying to arbitrary criteria" a few do still exist), one only has to look at DYK or ITN at any given time to see that the "handing out prizes" culture has opened the crap floodgates. (If something is really "in the news", then if you want to know about it you can watch the fucking news. Why would anyone intentionally get their news from a website that by intentional design is always less up-to-date than mainstream news media? And no, I don't for one instant believe the WMF's excuse that The Kids In Africa are clustered around their Wikipedia Zero browsers, eternally thankful to ITN as otherwise they'd never have found out that Glenne Headly is dead.) ‑ Iridescent16:24, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
Well maybe we can give out awards for suggesting creation of an article, without actually creating it. Problem solved! EEng23:19, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
Probably answering a rhetorical question, but the reason I read ITN is because it isn't swamped with local news like most news out there. And because Wikipedia articles often have more context than actual news. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
Well, sort of—what you're actually seeing on ITN is the intersection of "someone has bothered to write it", "it complies with Wikipedia's standards on sourcing" and "somebody is familiar enough with Wikipedia's processes to nominate it", which IMO introduces more systemic bias than one would find in any reasonably mainstream newspaper, since it means relatively trivial topics in English-speaking countries get posted and relatively major topics in Foreign Parts get ignored. I have no doubt that fairly soon we'll have "Routine Islamophobic attack which the Met Police have declared as a terrorist incident so that the costs of reassurance patrols come out of someone else's budget" on ITN, while "Russia announces that from now on it will engage and destroy any US aircraft to enter Syrian airspace" languishes. FWIW, most major news sites/agencies have an option (usually a button marked "world" or "international") which strips out the local bias (examples from the BBC and The Guardian; note that both have the "Plucky Brits Battle the Terrorist Menace", "Saint Jeremy the Martyr Prepares to Smite the Demon Theresa with the Shining Sword of Truth", and "The DUP Will Ban Everything" hyperbole drastically slashed back compared to the local versions of their sites.) ‑ Iridescent17:40, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
I was surprised to see the Finsbury Park incident go up on ITN. It is a tricky thing to do, to balance only putting up things that are genuinely making news around the world, together with well-written articles on things lower down the scale. The Grenfell Tower fire article has been moved to 'ongoing' and that will take months maybe even years to be fully resolved (I travelled to work on Friday past the tower on the H&C line (since suspended between Wood Lane and Edgware Road) and it was a spine-chilling sight - now I have to go a different route; it made me realise that the impact of seeing something like that in person is greater than seeing it in the papers or on a screen; a minor nit-pick: many news sources reporting that two LU lines were closed implied that the H&C and Circle lines are separate lines at that point, which they are not). Talking of what Wikipedia shouldn't be used for, it shouldn't be used to find out if the building you are in is safe! Carcharoth (talk) 11:27, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
What has been completely overlooked (by the press as well) is Iran firing *mid-range* missiles over into Syria in the last week. The implications RE their technical ability to wage long-distance warfare are far more significant than the spate of recent terror attacks. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:16, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm not touching that; I don't know enough (read: anything) about Australian transport or how they choose to format their articles. My personal preference for a situation like this, where the station is both multimodal and has existed on more than one site, is to have a single long article detailing the history of both the current and former stations, and including rail, bus, subway etc, but there are certainly plenty of precedents for separate articles on the old and new station, and for separate articles on the rail, subway and bus stations even if they share a site. Whatever you do here, somebody is going to complain that you did it wrong; the trains project may not be as bad as the road project for pointless arguments about adherence to their own house style, but they're not far behind either. ‑ Iridescent00:43, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
AN/I
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Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I noticed this username on my watchlist. [4] Should I be concerned? Also, I am not sure if a ping would be worth it? If you think so, please do so for me. Callmemirela🍁talk12:49, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Trimmed to 1168 characters. I've changed the image as that picture of the locomotive was used last time, but feel free to change it back if you think it works better. I've also quietly 'lost' {{TFATOPIC}}, which IMO is one of the most worthless templates ever invented—anyone who finds the topic interesting will follow the wikilinks and read the related articles whether it's a "featured topic" or not, while anyone who doesn't find the topic interesting isn't going to be tempted by the offer of "would you like to read more articles like this?". ‑ Iridescent09:29, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Yup, when it comes to the existing articles, although Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway could probably be taken through FAC (or maybe FLC) with minimal effort. Theoretically one could write Church Siding railway station—it was listed in the passenger timetable for a few months, so technically qualifies for a stand-alone article. Given that it was just a heap of mud at the trackside where the trains stopped briefly in the morning to pick up full milk cans and in the evening to drop off empties, and I doubt any passenger ever actually got on or off there (it was only about 200 yards from Wotton railway station which actually had such fripperies as platforms and buildings), I really don't feel it warrants any more than the couple of lines it gets at Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway. Brill Tramway is in the OTD rotation for April 1—a day on which for obvious reasons anything on the Main Page gets increased scrutiny—so it will continue to get periodic spikes in visitors after the TFAs have gone. ‑ Iridescent20:41, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. At least this clears the Brill Tramway ones out; for such an obscure topic, they seem to attract a ridiculously disproportionate level of disruption. ‑ Iridescent14:13, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
I'd be reluctant to comment there—because it's a topic about which I know nothing, I have no way to judge whether Francis's concerns are valid or not. As with the Bengal Famine FAC, if the dispute can't be resolved quickly and it doesn't become immediately obvious that the position of either Francis or yourself has no significant support, the sensible thing is probably to withdraw it, have the discussion off-stage rather than on the FAC page with lots of people watching, then re-submit it. Otherwise, you run the risk of the FAC being archived as "no consensus", but nobody wanting to comment on it when it's renominated in case they get drawn into arguments. (FWIW, I withdrew from FAC altogether when they introduced re-running TFAs as a matter of routine, and haven't missed it in the least.) ‑ Iridescent14:30, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
I don't blame you. For Bach's Magnificat, we simply wrote two articles, I began with E-flat major, he improved the stub in D major. We can't do it for all articles, I guess ;) - I am close to telling him to pick any given stub (there are one-liners and redirects for Bach cantatas) and work on that his style, instead of converting a developed one, or spending two hours on explaining why he thinks the first navbox (second in history, but he placed his first) should be expanded and be the only one, while I believe we could do without it, because the traditional one offers all possibilities (but only when expanded, - the treasure is in the footer). - People told me that the principal editor may make editorial choices: I make the choice to use tables, and refer to them, even if a certain pdf-writing program ignores them. I like information structured, just made another table ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:56, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
As you might have guessed, I think formatting data as tables and infoboxes should be the default where there's appropriate data to display, as it makes it easier for readers to find a particular piece of information quickly; I've written at least one article which is essentially nothing but a big table. While I've certainly created my share of articles that don't include either, they're either on topics where the information doesn't lend itself to breaking down into data or to do so would be to oversimplify; on topics where the data that would go into a box or table is so limited that it can just as easily be included as a single sentence; or articles on visual arts topics where making the lead image large enough for readers to see the detail is of paramount importance. However as I assume you've noticed not everyone feels the same about this, and "articles are intended to be read not skimmed and a well-written paragraph can present the same information in a more aesthetically pleasing way without the potential for oversimplification that 'data field' format requires" is certainly a valid view. (I could not care less about whether Wikipedia's PDF export function omits all tables. Despite what a few free-culture crackpots and the coterie of self-promoting "Wikipedia consultants" may think, Wikipedia articles are written for Wikipedia's readers, not for the benefit of assorted third parties trying to re-use Wikipedia's content for their own ends. If someone needs a copy of a Wikipedia article that badly, I'm sure they can manage to copy and paste. What's more of an issue is that tables are quite confusing and make it difficult for new editors to edit the article, although some may consider that a blessing.) ‑ Iridescent16:17, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
If needed I may point to this. - However, I am completely at ease with this nomination. Brianboulton wants Noye's Fludde on 14 July, so I don't want to propose a 2 July cantata this year, - he wanted Noye last year already, and made way for my centenary wish for July 16 instead. We have at least a year to sort it out ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:43, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
On 22 May, Wagner's birthday, I remember the many questions I had in his FAC, - I think it's typical for a new reviewer. Francis has no FA experience afaik, and the Magnificat mentioned above is his one and only GA, with a thorough review by Tim riley (who kindly reviewed both). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:28, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
For the record: he has now a discussion on WP:RSN that more or less requests that all articles be changed because he sees a problem that we don't see. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:15, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't know enough about the topic to judge whether he's right or not. I personally wouldn't consider it a copyright violation to link to a website as a reference even if the website itself is violating someone else's copyright—which seems to be what's in question here—but anyone who claims they understand international copyright law in the context of Wikipedia is a liar. (Newyorkbrad, do you know what the official answer is here?)
On the more general topic of self published sources, there's no straightforward answer; while usually self-published sources should be considered unreliable, there are numerous occasions where a well-respected academic writes material which is too obscure or esoteric for mainstream publication, but which they self-publish for the benefit of those who are interested. (A noted architectural historian self-publishing a history of his local village church, or the author of a major reference work on the popular music of the DDR in the 1960s self-publishing a monograph on Blond wird groß geschrieben, for example.) ‑ Iridescent12:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't actually know the "official" answer here. My personal favored approach to some copyright issues on-wiki would sometimes to be ask "is any rightholder likely to actually care?", but I am certain that whatever the official answer is, that is not it. Some quick research suggests a response of "in some countries it's probably okay and in most no one is sure," which may not help much either. Now you have me curious myself, of course. Have you asked Moonriddengirl? Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:56, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
We talk (exclusively) about liner notes, material that is freely available on the internet anyway. I confess that I don't see the reproduction as problematic. The "right holders" should actually be happy that their thoughts get more distribution.
Most recent example: the recordings of BWV 2, history explained in the GA review. They were added in 2009, taken from this page (now called Bach Cantatas Website) without saying so, - after years I said so, adding the page as a reference. That one page references all items in the table (items at that time), and a reader can easily browse on it: what other recordings there are, and yes, read the interesting liner notes, - I call that convenient. (It's like that in about 200 articles on Bach's cantatas, some FA, with source reviews by Nikkimaria and Brianboulton, among others.) Came the critic who wants to ban the site from Wikipedia, with a tag declaring the table as unsourced. Voceditenore and I add some extra supporting refs, I make some mistakes, so next day we see this (new tag, uncountable "failed verification" notices). So I find more supporting refs. The table, clean in the beginning, is now cluttered with refs, and the poor reader has to click from one to the other, and still doesn't get the precise and detailed information (when and where recoded, instrumentalists ...) as on the Bach Cantatas Website. Poor reader. Don't we have IAR if it serves the reader? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:58, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Gerda Arendt, regarding Don't we have IAR if it serves the reader?, the answer is "no" if the rule in question is one like copyright, libel, publication of classified material etc, as these rules are real-world laws rather than Wikipedia's own practices and as such no Wikipedia consensus has the power to overturn them. As I understand it, Francis's argument is that by linking to these sites Wikipedia is making itself potentially liable in law for any breach of copyright, and as such only the WMF (paging Mdennis) can rule on whether the links are valid. (Remember, Wikipedia content can be and is reproduced elsewhere without restriction; the writers of the liner notes may be perfectly happy for the educational and nonprofit Wikipedia to be linking to them, but might be considerably less happy when a neo-nazi website copies the article as part of their series on the supremacy of Germanic culture.) My personal opinion is that since nobody is ever likely to notice there isn't really an issue here, but as Brad notes above when it comes to legal matters "nobody cares" has never stopped lawyers quibbling. ‑ Iridescent16:26, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, only just noticed this reply as I got distracted by the section below about the station. "Questioning the sourcechecks of experienced FA writers" certainly isn't a problem in and of itself—part of the reason the delegates always insist on multiple reviewers at FAC is that experienced writers and reviewers can be just as bad as DYK or GA when it comes to "I can't be bothered to read the original, let's just assume it says what the writer claims it does", "this article is about something I like" and "this article was written be a friend and I don't want to upset them". (It was "experienced FA writers" who saw nothing wrong with supporting this piece of reliable-source free drivel and this cut-and-paste copyright violation, to take just a couple of completely non-random examples.) ‑ Iridescent15:59, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
I didn't mean that Nikkimaria, Brianboulton and Wehwalt never make mistakes, but if I'd come to a territory that's new to me I'd look around what those do who were there before me. The website that this involvement thinks is copyvio was used in Wikipedia articles in 2005 already, is part of c. 50 GAs with checked quality and 6 FAs checked by the named users. But - even after I gave up (the FAC), no end. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:31, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Oh, I'm not casting aspersions against any of them—just pointing out that "questioning a source that's previously been used without anyone raising issues" isn't something that should necessarily be discouraged. There are plenty of cases where spot-checks just happened to miss the fact that a particular source didn't actually say what it was claimed to say, or that an apparently reliable source is unquestionably wrong in a particular instance.
(To give a concrete example of an apparently reliable source being wrong, this page was published by the Pitt Rivers Museum, probably the single most reliable source in the world on English archaeology. It quotes a medieval poem from "old charity documents" as proof that the Biddenden Maids were depicted in a stained-glass window at Biddenden Church, and consequently that the legend is either true or has an medieval origin, and isn't a late 18th-century fabrication. Had I not noticed that this is actually a slightly doctored quote from b2 v11 of The Lay of the Last Minstrel—and realistically one can't expect most Wikipedia editors to be familiar enough not only with Scott, but with what's probably his single worst work, to spot that—then when I wrote that article I'd have been saying in Wikipedia's voice that the Biddenden Maids are demonstrably a genuine folk belief, not the relatively recent invention to which all other evidence points.) ‑ Iridescent16:46, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
Break: Rerunning TFAs
@Redrose64, this thread has reminded me that this isn't the end of this saga. The "close our eyes and pretend the train's still moving" approach that TFA has taken to the slow self-destruction of the FAC process means that articles which were TFA more than five years ago are back in the pot. Brill Tramway itself is now eligible again, while if the TFA schedulers lost their minds they could theoretically keep the six stations in annual rotation until the heat death of the universe, given that (with the exception of Quainton, which Chiltern Railways makes occasional noises about reopening) there's no possibility that anything about the former stations will ever change and thus the articles won't ever go out of date. ‑ Iridescent08:20, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Not at the moment—it (correctly) describes the current situation in which it's formally disused, but the line remains open for freight service, the station itself remains in usable condition for the Buckingham Railway Centre's steam trains, and Chiltern occasionally run a non-scheduled mainline service through from Aylesbury if there's an event that's likely to generate traffic. Chiltern Railways is notorious for floating grand proposals to reverse the Beeching Axe, some of which get planning permission and some of which don't; this particular scheme is postponed until 2024, and there's no guarantee that a re-opened line would actually stop at Quainton, so we're well into WP:CRYSTAL territory. ‑ Iridescent17:01, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
I did suggest some years ago (before I sat in the TFA hot-seat) that repetition of TFAs should be limited to, say, "vital articles" but that idea got no traction at the time. I don't know the principles upon which the current TFA schedulers are picking re-runs that haven't been nominated at TFAR, but I would hope that they would be taking account of the views of the principal authors, which would help you in this situation. BencherliteTalk20:18, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
If I were in charge, the only re-runs I'd be scheduling are the ones that are central to their topic, regardless of how niche that topic is. Thus, in this case I wouldn't have any particular objection to Brill Tramway being repeated ad infinitum, but don't think the individual stations ought to be re-run (with a possible exception for Quainton in future should it re-open to scheduled services); likewise, I wouldn't have an issue with the biography of a composer, singer, painter, author etc being repeated but would object to individual songs, paintings, books being re-run. Realistically, I assume that what Dank had in mind in proposing this change was that it would allow the re-running of articles like William Shakespeare and Lion, not every two-bit hurricane, painting and videogame. ‑ Iridescent20:25, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Me too, but of course I'm not going to tell Mike and Jim what to do. For instance, I'm looking at Canada for July 1, the 150th anniversary of confederation, and Buckingham Palace since summertime is when they have their garden parties. Anyone spot any problems with those? - Dank (push to talk) 20:33, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Buckingham Palace was Giano's baby, so he's the best person to ask about it. In my personal opinion, it might be worth hanging on to it, given that its present occupant is now in her 90s and not immortal and it would possibly be prudent holding a high-profile British monarchy article back for Charles/George's coronation. The "summertime" argument seems a bit weak to me. As someone who lives in (just about) walking distance of Buckingham Palace, I can assure you that the only people who are even aware that a Royal Garden Party is taking place are the people at said Royal Garden Party—they're just a minor perk for people with long service in the public sector or who've made contributions to posh-approved charitable causes, not some kind of Tory equivalent of the Glastonbury Festival. The only news coverage they ever get is the occasional "local woman who volunteered at donkey sanctuary for 50 years attends Royal Garden Party" story in the local press, and maybe the occasional "(insert z-list celebrity) flaunts her curves at the Royal Garden Party" story in the Daily Mail. ‑ Iridescent10:24, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't have and never have had much sympathy for the notion of "Vital articles", at TFA or elsewhere, unless they're genuinely core concepts like Sea or Animal. It strikes me as second-guessing what we think the readers ought to be interested in, rather than what they're actually interested in; I can assure you that in terms of serving our readers, maintaining a quality biography of Taylor Swift is a considerably higher priority than maintaining the biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (some wiggly lines to back me up). Maybe an "only re-run an article if it's had at least 10,000 views in the past month" rule would work, although I can see that causing anguished screams of protest. ‑ Iridescent20:33, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
As an aside, Taylor Swift, who I just picked at random as an example of a celebrity, is an astonishingly high-quality article, especially given that it's such a BLP minefield. Kudos to whoever wrote it. ‑ Iridescent20:37, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
It was written by FrB.TG, who is relatively new to FAC, I believe. Re your comments about reruns; no, I think the motivation for suggesting reruns was just that we were running low. There was no prior discussion about wanting to rerun certain types of article. For myself, when I pick a rerun, I might well pick something high profile if I see it (I reran Shakespeare authorship question, for example) but I don't think I'd be justified in skipping certain types of articles without some discussion at WT:TFA to see if others agreed. We don't make that kind of distinction at TFA for first-time-round selections, so I'd be hard-put to justify it for reruns. For me, so far, the main criterion has been variety -- I build a list of TFA articles for the month, from TFAR and TFARP and elsewhere, and then look for topics not represented to fill the rerun slots. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:06, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
WMF strategy
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
For what it is worth, I linked to your talk page discussion of Wiki data on the newest round of the WMF strategy session on meta [5]. Didn't contribute to it, but ran across it and I thought it raised good points that were useful. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:45, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Good grief, what a pointless discussion; someone really needs to show the door to these Agile fuckwits and their obsession with permanent revolution and with keeping ahead of some kind of non-existent competition. Wikipedia has a lot of genuine problems, but I don't think any sane editor has ever actually thought "becoming irrelevant" is a concern. (What these Silicon Valley pricks Jimbo keeps bringing in with their notions of trying to turn Wikipedia into Google II can't seem to comprehend is that Wikipedia content isn't meant to be either interesting or relevant to anyone other than people who are actually interested in the topic in question.) I note with a total lack of surprise that Wikipedia's least interesting long-term troll is responsible for roughly as many edits to that discussion as everyone else combined. This is purely a "make the community feel like they're being consulted" exercise; the WMF strategy will remain what it always has been of "Pour money and resources at whatever happens to be the pet project of devs who are friends with board members or the management, if they succeed take the credit, if they fail blame it entirely on whoever the last high-ranking staff member to leave happens to be". ‑ Iridescent15:13, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
My First Sermon
Latest comment: 7 years ago10 comments6 people in discussion
Good grief, talk about a bubble economy—the Guildhall would probably sell you the original for that. (And just what would be the point of having My First Sermon standing alone? Without My Second Sermon alongside it, it's just a rather unengaging generic Victorian winsome child.) I've never understood the appeal of late Millais (and his faithful imitator Augustus Nicholas Burke); after the demise of the PRB his works are almost without exception irredeemably twee, and those few that don't fall into that group are just plain repellent.
If I were advising someone wanting to invest in Victorian/Edwardian British art—or to someone wanting to outfit a provincial art gallery on the cheap—I'd point them squarely towards William Etty and Louis Wain. Both are at the nadir of unpopularity so their prices can't fall any further, and both are due to be rediscovered and to come back into fashion at some point. You can pick up a decent quality Etty history painting or a high quality figure study for about £6000 (Cupid and Psyche just went for £6250) and those can only go up in value, and you can get a decent Wain for about £3000 for a cutesy cat or £5000 for weird psychedelic shit, and since we stand at the dawning of the Age of the Cat Picture those can also only go up. If you really want to invest in the future and don't mind hopping on a Eurostar, wait for something by Adolphe Monticelli to come up. You can pick a high quality Monticelli up for ≈ €5000; the hype driving the Van Gogh bubble is pushing even his most wretched works outside the reach of even the richest collectors, and as the man VVG was trying to emulate Monticelli would seem well poised to become the Next Big Thing.
I've seen a couple of "Wains" recently at Arfer's saleroom- fetched £120 (cat and fiddle) and £150 (footballin' cats). The kind of price which is too expensive for a fake, too cheap for the real thing. His china cats are getting faked. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 20:55, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
The china cats are horrible, albeit weird, but too easily faked—there was a flood of fakes on the market about 10 years ago which are all presumably still circulating. The Wains that ought to really appreciate in value at some point are the reallyoddpsychedeliccats he painted in Napsbury—they tick all three of the 'outsider art', 'colourful but not cute' and 'includes a cat' boxes for modern-day popular culture. There's no way I would ever have one of the things on my wall, but crazy cat people are probably the Anglosphere's third fastest-growing demographic after 'people who want to share their ill-informed opinions about the politics of other countries' and 'people who start their sentences "I'm not a racist but"'. (Incidentally, if any WP:MED people are watching someone should probably do something about the pseudoscientific speculation at Cat lady, which is a new contender for my coveted "Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey Award for the Worst Article on Wikipedia".) ‑ Iridescent21:21, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
The NG Room A used to have a lot more in it, stuck to partition board in narrow aisles, often with hand-written labels, or just a number like at an auction. I liked it better before they tarted it up, when "Spot the Fake!" offered more possibilities. There must now be a proper sin-bin somewhere, or maybe the offices are well-decorated. In fact there were always (and still are) some great paintings there. Some of the Dutch artists they have too many of are rotated every few years. My father was I think given a Louis Wain cat decades ago, but though he loved cats it alarmed him, and he destroyed it. Johnbod (talk) 00:46, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
The replica at Sotheby's now is about a third the size of the Guildhall original, so I expect they would demand considerably more for the original! I wonder if part of the price reflects its (claimed) previous ownership by Ranjitsinghi. The auction catalogue says it was created for Agnews to engrave so perhaps there is a similar Second Sermon somewhere.
The time to buy Victorian works was the 1950s and early 1960s, when they were difficult to give away. There is the story of the Alma-Tadema bought for buttons for its frame; and Andrew Lloyd Webber missing the chance to buy Flaming June for £50. (Must get to the Leighton House Museum this summer.)
The lower right "vegetation" in the panel of six at Louis Wain is pretty creepy. But not as creepy as a comatose baby in a flowerpot, or anything by Tamara de Vettriano. There's the fortification figures of migraine and the strong symmetricality of… something and what looks like true psychedelia, and Dr Maclay's apparent prewar dabbling with mescaline. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 07:40, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
While I used that £50 Flaming June story in Victorian painting as emblematic of the fall in prestige in the form, it's not actually as impressive as it sounds. Inflation is such that £50 in 1963 is equivalent to about £1000 of new money, which is low but not unreasonably low in terms of what you'd pay for a decent quality work by an unfashionable artist of circa 60 years ago (as Leighton then was). Aside from the PRB boom, which is an artefact of the Tate Gallery's hype machine, the Victoriana market is driven almost exclusively by Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Juan Antonio Perez Simon bidding against each other—if and when the two of them die, then aside from the big names like Burne-Jones and Rossetti which are still sought after by museums, prices will probably drop back to those levels fairly quickly. ‑ Iridescent19:13, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
I rescued three paintings by H. Harvey from a pile of junk thrown out by his grand-daughter. Small unframed landscapes on hardboard, they were consigned to auction where they were knocked down for £150. Henry Harvey, and not even one of the listed "Henry Harveys". Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 20:17, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Regarding "twat"
Latest comment: 7 years ago15 comments7 people in discussion
Iridescent - First, you must know how much I respect you since we first interacted here in Wikipedia a thousand years ago (okay, somewhat less, but you get the idea). I recently came across a comment you made (also old history, 2 real years ago) located here regarding the meanings of the word "twat" and explaining that for some the word is not offensive/ should not be read as such. Can I disagree? Because "twat" may not be an offensive word in parts of England does not mean it is not completely offensive and explicitly uncivil in many other parts of the English speaking world! (including most of the United States). Offense is not determined by the person making the comment, it is determined by the audience receiving it, and I am pretty sure that the editor who used it there was intending to offend with as much sauce as he could muster. Having read his other comments on a number of talk pages now, I am a little stunned that his verbal behavior hasn't gotten him banned from the site yet... I am all for the occasional "fuck" if a situation really demanded it, but I would never call another editor a "twat" or a "cunt" (or a "fucker") and expect to get away with it.
Anyhow, you aren't asking for advice, and I am trying not to offer any— I am just saying that I think "twat" is pretty damned offensive, no matter who it is leveled against nor even why, and that I hope you will understand that perspective, in my view, matters a lot when assessing offense. It really does. Okay, sorry to interrupt, getting off soap box now, just wanted to get that out there. Hope you are well! KDS4444 (talk) 17:32, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
I think you're somewhat missing the point here. Whether it's a sexual term in the US is irrelevant; in Britain it has no sexual connotations and is purely a portmanteau of "twit" and "prat" (to the extent that back before the collapse of print media, the local listings magazine for south Hackney was the Shoreditch Twat). If the comment in question had been directed at someone who had legitimate grounds to feel upset I'd take the Offense is not determined by the person making the comment, it is determined by the audience receiving it argument seriously, but given that the two editors in question were Baseball Bugs (who has spent the last decade doing little but spew abuse at anyone in range) and Chillum (the admin whom people generally have in mind whenever the perennial "hold reconfirmation RFAs to remove people who gained the admin bit in the old days when standards were lower" debate is held), I find it very hard to take seriously the notion that either was doing anything other than look for a pretext to be offended.
For some reason, this "we need to respect the views of people who read the comments not the views of those who make them" argument only ever seems to go one way. If we started dishing out sanctions every time a North American editor used language which people in other parts of the world found offensive, we'd have about three editors left. (Try calling someone a "Brit" to their face and count how many teeth you'd have left at the end of it.) ‑ Iridescent19:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
"No sexual connotations in Britain" is far too strong. The term may have been largely shorn of such connotations in recent years, but the OED has citations for the use of the word "twat" to mean a woman's genitalia more or less continuously back to the 1650s, and it is defined as such in an etymology of 1727 ("pudendum muliebre"). Not as ancient as "cunt" but a pretty long heritage. Citations of "twat" as a word of abuse (like "twit" or "prat") only go back to the 1920s. The suggestion that "twat" was formed as a portmanteau of "twit" and "prat" feels like a folk etymology (almost a back formation).
Yes, I'd have to agree with that. I have a suspicion it is more used for the genitalia by women than men in England. Johnbod (talk) 14:08, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Well, yeah—I'm talking about its current sense (in which it had to be explained to David Cameron why everyone in the room was reacting so unusually to his "The trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it, I think too many tweets might make a twat" comment—he thought they were all just laughing at his weak joke); nowadays it has about as much impact as "berk" or "dork", both of which also have equally demonstrable origins as slang for the female and male genitals respectively. (As opposed to "prat" of course, which has been a term for the buttocks since Shakespeare's time.) Outside a few enclaves like Manchester where 19th-century slang has yet to die out completely, "he is a twat" would just be synonymous with "he is a pompous fool"—in Wikipedia terms it would technically be a personal attack since it's still negative commentary, but anyone reaching for a beyond-the-pale wounding barb would hardly reach for "twat" when they have the unique richness of a language that has been developing new obscenities for a millennium on which to draw. If one really tried to censor every term that originated in slang for either genitals, intercourse or excreta, the English language would lose about 50% of its vocabulary; even "quaint" has its origins as a term for the genitals going back to before Chaucer. ‑ Iridescent17:29, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Someone other than an American tourist doing the Madchester trail would drink Boddies out of choice? Never was the closure of a brewery less mourned, with the arguable exception of this piss factory. ‑ Iridescent22:01, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
If you use the gent's at the Fountain Head you'll note that the spring that gives the pub its name runs through the urinal. Two miles downstream is the brewery. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 10:32, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
RfA
Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
You're right, of course. I lived in Germany for nearly 20 years, I loved every minute of my time there, 9 of them at university in Berlin. To paraphrase (IIRC) very loosely something actually quite different said by Frank McCourt: There's only one thing worse than a stiff, unbending lawyer, and that's a stiff, unbending German lawyer. You're not even allowed to hang your washing out in your own backyard there on a Sunday, and if you do, someone in the street will be sure, absolutely sure, to file a lawsuit. In fact there was a joke in our housing development in Hambühren in the 70s that there were more cars on the road in the village on a Sunday than on weekdays - they were driving around slowly looking for washing hanging in backyards.... Let's hope that his background won't conflict too much with our Anglo-American culture. Anyway, I did support. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:06, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
I totally agree—despite what the "all nations are one" types might claim, I've lived in enough places to know that "cultural differences" very definitely do exist (hell, in the more melting-pot towns of the US and UK you get significant cultural differences between neighboring streets), and the Germanic "rules are made to be followed" mindset is utterly alien to English Wikipedia's culture. However, the dogmatic inflexibility that says Bazz Ward was a great roadie and I wish he was as well known as Lemmy. Cheers Bazz. is a viable Wikipedia article because it includes a "credible claim of significance", despite the fact that such an article is not only totally inappropriate but an active disservice to anyone wanting to find out who Bazz Ward was (because the shitty Wikipedia article will climb to the top of search results and displace actually informative articles from other sites)* is the sort of mindset who can run their eyes over a foul-tempered RFA and tot up which of the supports and opposes are actually based on policy and which are based on personal dislike. Some of the other notoriously jobsworthy admins like Sandstein and the more officious Arbcom clerks would probably make equally good 'crats for the same reason. (The bar for RFB is ludicrously high, anyway. If every single crat on Wikipedia fell under a bus tomorrow, I doubt it would have the slightest impact on any editor other than a couple of bot writers.) ‑ Iridescent21:45, 25 July 2017 (UTC) *This is not an actual example of a deletion contested by SoWhy, although I've no doubt he would contest it were the article written and tagged for deletion—it's one of the examples Ritchie333 used back when he used to try to set gotcha policy traps on RFAs to trick candidates into saying they'd delete an article which technically didn't meet the speedy criteria. It's stuck with me since as the platonic ideal of the ARS-hole mindset taken to its logical extreme.
It was never intended to be a gotcha, it was intended to be something where speedy, prod, redirect and rewrite were all reasonable options and I just wanted to see the candidate's thinking. Even "instant A7, can't find any reliable sources, if somebody wants to write a half decent article, they won't miss this" would be alright. Anyway, I think this line of questioning has run its course Ritchie333(talk)(cont)22:23, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
RFPP
Latest comment: 7 years ago11 comments3 people in discussion
Hey, I think the bot is having a bit of trouble parsing your responses to RFPP requests. It's probably because you're writing it out fully and not using the {{RFPP}} template, though I'm not sure. @Cyberpower678: Would you be able to give an explanation? Here are some examples: [7][8]. Cheers, Anarchyte (work | talk)11:23, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
If I can tailgate this, on a different issue- but using the same diff!- I was wondering how come the PC you placed didn't seem to work- as fifteen minutes later an IP edited? Just wondering, that's all. Cheers, — fortunavelut luna11:54, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
@Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: At a guess, because some admins don't understand how flagged revisions work (understandably, as it's very rarely used) and think that if they can see the spam/libel/bias, the readers can see it as well—you'd have to ask the admin who unilaterally overruled me without bothering even to notify me for the definitive answer. Per my comments at RFPP, I think even semi-protection is completely inappropriate here as the "inappropriate edits" are a BLP subject trying (albeit not in accordance with Wikipedia policy, but one can't expect people who've never had any dealings with Wikipedia before to understand the arcane rules on sourcing and verifiability) to correct what they see as errors and what semiprotection effectively is in these circumstances is a Wikipedia admin saying in Wikipedia's voice "we'd rather believe what the Daily Mail says than hear your side of the story". It's this kind of thing that fuels paid editing—because Peacemaker has now effectively prevented him from going down the route of collaboration, as far as he's concerned the only step he can take now is to engage a PR firm to edit the article for him. (This is the official advice we give to article subjects wanting to edit their articles in these circumstances. Look at it with the perspective of someone who doesn't understand Wiki-jargon and is understandably upset as from their point of view a tag-team of Wikipedia and the Daily Mail have emerged out of the blue to attack them, and ask yourself how far you'd get before giving up in disgust and hiring a PR firm instead.) ‑ Iridescent14:48, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yeeas; I see what you mean. Although to be fair to the 'tag-team,' only a couple of sentences refute the allegations- the rest was pure publicity. Re. the DM, I said I would address that- unfortunately I cannot because the Times is behind a paywall, whereas, sod's law, the DM isn't. Unless I just remove it unilaterally- which I think goes against the spirit of the RfC- on the other hand (the irony!) IAR, if it goes someway to placating a complainant? — fortunavelut luna15:08, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I'd say just slap a {{prod}} tag on it and in a week the problem will be solved. A company that's only known for a single article in The Times regarding a single incident, a follow-up piece in the Daily Mail, and a single press release from these guys (who are not the Center for Investigative Reporting that's currently linked in the article) is the very embodiment of "trivial coverage"—even I have more published sources about me than that. ‑ Iridescent15:15, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
That would probably keep them happy, and not a great loss to us, either (at least, that will be interesting). I'll cite your reasoning, if that's OK. In fact, probably should have thought about that in the fist place. — fortunavelut luna15:20, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Also, doesn't the fact that you can't find any sources other than the Daily Mail and The Times say something about how notable this firm is? It's not like Oxford University is some obscure club of which nobody's heard and about which nobody cares—it's a world famous and widely disliked organization. If this were actually a story with legs the world's press would be gleefully lining up to put the boot in. ‑ Iridescent15:23, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
@Anarchyte, I'm just using the default options MusicAnimal's (I think) script gives in the toolbar—my extended annotations are added on afterwards. The bot ought to pick them up without difficulty, I'm not sure why it's skipping them. ‑ Iridescent14:51, 27 July 2017 (UTC) Ah, I see what's happened—I must have subst'ed the RFPP template out of habit (I've been spending a lot of time in places like DYK and FAC where the page is so long that templates need to be subst'ed to avoid hitting the template limit), so the bot didn't spot it. ‑ Iridescent15:05, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
RfB
Latest comment: 7 years ago15 comments6 people in discussion
I was serious when I said that if I had my way the whole 'crat setup would be unceremoniously dispensed with—it's ridiculous to have a caste of supposed super-users who have so little to do that we quite literally don't notice when none of them are around, but whose position is taken so seriously that it's impossible for anyone to be elected. (If SoWhy ran for Arbcom he'd have a decent shot of winning, and that not only gives you the official power to wield the Shining Sword of Justice, but the soft power of being able to set Wikipedia's internal agenda and priorities to a surprising extent, and automatic checkuser and oversight rights, with which one could do considerably more damage than even the most power-crazed rogue crat could dream of.) My seven-year-old proposal to replace Wikipedia's arcane power structure with a "true" arbitration committee dealing with genuine dispute resolution and acting as a court of last resort, and a GovCom with the authority to issue binding closures to community discussions (including those things currently dealt with at RFC and at RFA/B), has never shown a glimmer of being accepted, but I'll be willing to bet that if Wikipedia survives in its current form, that's what its internal governance will end up looking like in the long term. ‑ Iridescent20:02, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
I can't be fagged to go look for it, but there genuinely was a serious proposal back in the early days to give Wikipedia the administrative structure of the Roman Rupublic, complete with Latin titles. It wasn't even the stupidest proposal I've seen. ‑ Iridescent20:17, 31 July 2017 (UTC) Found it ‑ Iridescent20:22, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Probably a little unfair to unload on Kostas- I'm not sure they understand the implications of what they are nominating for- but they've been nominating from here to Hounslow ([9], [10]). I agree with about the supravoters though; so easily missed means so little achieved, as someone once said (find out who- my treat for the evening!). Take care all, — fortunavelut luna21:04, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
If this were a new user who thought they were just nominating someone for a generic Wikipedia honour sure, but Kostas is a year-old editor who as I write this is drafting an Arbcom proposal, not some well-intentioned newcomer who doesn't understand Wikipedia's internal mechanisms. ‑ Iridescent21:09, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Actually they were just writing their statement for the case request here. I am sure once Arthur Rubin re-appears from the other websites he is currently active on his timely illness, it will get the attention it deserves. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:14, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Uh uh :) all of which contributions kind of prove my point. I think they more of less copy what others write and regardless of tenure we just get the generics. Harmless, but pointless too. On a lighter note, that Senatus Populusque Wikipedius is a great idea. Ave, iridescentia! — fortunavelut luna08:05, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
One of my contributions to Wikipedia's rich and varied history is that I coined the phrase "ANI flu", of which the unfortunate Mr Rubin appears to be a sufferer. (I also gave the world "civility police", "Bradspeak" and "Facebook for ugly people".) ‑ Iridescent21:18, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Personally I think if you are going to claim illness, you probably should not log into other social-based websites which are designed to track your online presence/availability, under your own name, using the same profile picture. Of course thats just me. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:23, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
I aleady have, but the point is that both the ANI and Arbcom hearing seem to have stalled because Rubin has declared himself unfit for purpose (medically this time) so it would be useful to let those of use who are waiting (including Arbcom) that he apparently is fit enough to engage in other social media activities, just not Wikipedia, and I blame Billy Ocean. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:38, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago15 comments7 people in discussion
Hello! I read your idea and opabine's suggestions, and I really think they are good. So, I intend to create (as draft first). I will send you the link for the case you want to help! --Kostas20142 (talk) 07:09, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree with Opabinia regalis that a fundamental change to Wikipedia's internal governance and deprecation of the arbitration committee could be brought about by creating WP:WikiProject Vanguard of the Proletariat and unilaterally declaring the New World Order.
As an informal mechanism ("the parties of this dispute will agree beforehand to abide by this decision") this would just be a reanimation of the Mediation Cabal, which failed because participants realised there was no means to compel people to abide by decisions they didn't like. The only people who'd volunteer to staff a purely advisory committee like that are the kind of officious busybodies who infest ANI, and other editors will quite rightly disregard any decisions made by such a committee as unrepresentative and out of touch.
As a formally constituted part of Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes it would need the imprimatur of both the existing arbitration committee and the WMF board, as the demarcation lines between areas of authority and of who gets to overrule whom need to be in place before the decisions start being made.
If User:Alice and User:Bob are flinging insults and abuse at each other over an intractable dispute, and Arbcom feels Alice is at fault and RFCCom feels Bob is at fault, does action get taken against Alice, Bob, both or neither?
If an RFC is canvassed on IRC and attracts huge numbers of people who hold a particular fringe position and thus RFCCom writes that position into policy as having an overwhelming consensus among participants in that RFC, can people appeal against that ruling? If so do they appeal to Arbcom or do they set up a rival RFC to overturn the original one? Can Arbcom strike down RFCCom rulings in these circumstances as unconstitutional, and if so is there any appeal about that?
Can one committee vote to dissolve the other?
Can the community as a whole vote to dissolve one or both of the committees against its members' wishes?—and there is precedent for that.
All these questions, and more, would need to be resolved before it became operational.
Bear in mind that this is not a new discussion—"how can we flush the arbitrariness, cronyism and favoritism out of Wikipedia's internal governance without making Wikipedia unworkably bureaucratic?" and "how do we preserve the core values of equality and anonymity, while recognizing that some editors are more knowledgable than others?" are debates that have been ongoing on and off Wikipedia since Bomis days. (The discussions that led to the destruction of WP:Esperanza above and the "never must this happen again" mentality those discussions instilled are well worth reading if you want to understand the background; once you've read those work your way through the stack of failed proposals at Wikipedia:Reforms; once you've read those start working through Kudpung's talk archives.)
Since there enough well-fed turkeys among the ANI board-whores who'll block any attempt to mandate Christmas and spoil their fun thus making "change by community consensus" virtually impossible, and after the Superprotect farce the WMF aren't going to want to touch imposing change on en-wiki by fiat, the only way significant change is going to come is through Arbcom inviting calls for change. There was a brief window where this could have happened, shortly after the ACPD incident, but that window seems to have closed—since Roger Davies's departure Arbcom no longer has someone who has the interest in Wikipedia reform to spend months drafting and trialling wordings for a Wikipedia constitution, and the status and respect to persuade other people to accept it. What will force that window wide open again is a genuine constitutional crisis—either Arbcom making a string of clearly perverse decisions leading to the community rejecting it, or more likely a lack of candidates meaning not enough people get the requisite 50% in the election and the whole thing just withers away—but that point hasn't yet been reached. (There is something to be said for the Hasten the Day argument that the best way to fix Wikipedia's problems is to vote oppose to everything. Despite all the WMF's "run fast and break things" waffle Wikipedia is actually extremely conservative, and its collective instinct is invariably Keep Buggering On unless something happens to force a change.) ‑ Iridescent10:07, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
Surely to really hasten the day we should 'support' everything rather than oppose? Opposing tends to lead to stagnation/lack of change, and there is not enough really invested editors to work through that. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:03, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
HTD is a matter of what one wants it to be (although I dare say an IP beginning with 2001: will be along shortly to give the official line). I'd say the quickest way to get there would be to oppose every candidate for every position, but "support mutually contradictory positions in the hope they both get accepted and become unworkable" would certainly be a valid interpretation of it. IMO, "support everything" would just be taken as a community endorsement of the Agile cultists with whom Jimmy Wales is incomprehensibly besotted, and consequently as a community endorsement of the status quo. ‑ Iridescent11:09, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
I am not sure how much development experience you have in an agile environment, mine is extensive and every time management has decided to push 'agile' its turned into a massive clusterf**k. So fits my definition of HTD. I am sure there is a business somewhere that applies Agile (or worse, Scrum) correctly, but I have yet to encounter it. Of course being a contractor means I do tend to go in when everything has already gone to hell... Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:44, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
The problem with Agile, and Six Sigma, and Total quality management, is that a working project needs people who have sufficient clue to be able to improvise and adapt to things without having to be hand-held through it. A team that knows what it's doing will effectively do what Agile was designed to do in the first place without actually realising it's Agile. Same for Test Driven Development. The reason these methodologies are all discredited is because other people use them as cargo cult management thinking that success can be done by simply doing "A", "B" and "C". It never happens. (And those that think it can have probably given Kevin Trudeau more money than he should ever have been allowed to possess). Ritchie333(talk)(cont)13:27, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
Agile is uniquely problematic. Most management fads are a simple set of instructions ("do this, this and this to be successful") which may or may not work; Agile is "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks", which means most of what you're doing is wasting time. When TQM et al screw up they either work or they damage the company; Agile does significant damage even when it's successful. (It's not an exaggeration to say that I have never seen an organization of any kind try to implement Agile in even its most watered-down form without causing massive demoralization to their staff and devastation to the loyalty of their user base. The Facebooks of the world that still try it survive despite it, not because of it—people keep using Facebook because they find it useful despite their staff fucking about with the software configuration all the time, not because they find it helpful that things suddenly stop working the way they've grown used to.) ‑ Iridescent23:58, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
I know of at least one small Canadian company that actively uses agile, in, of all places, the defense industry. --Izno (talk) 03:33, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Pardon the phone post, but: I think you're overestimating the extent to which this stuff has to be decided a priori rather than allowed to evolve as circumstances allow. We all know there has already been a significant change in how we divide dispute resolution responsibilities between arbcom and other parts of community infrastructure - but it happened slowly, and not according to someone's specific reform program, so nobody slapped a "reform" sticker on the fact that early arbcom cases would barely be ANI blips now. Having designated closers doesn't seem to be a radical change stacked up against the typical dispute resolution experience of "a dozen people show up at your ANI to say they don't like you, and then an admin-hopeful closes it with 'consensus' to topic-ban you" - the actual significance of arbcom here is overrated. Opabinia externa (talk) 17:09, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
These are some really important concerns and problems that must be dealt with. This discussion will most likely be long, so would you prefer have it moved at my project's draft talk page?? (I am waiting for your reply before adding my actual response) --Kostas20142 (talk) 12:17, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
I think Iridescent has hit the nail on the head when he says you should look at how many times people have proposed major change and failed. For example, Biblioworm managed to get a few relatively minor things at RfA changed, such as dropping the discretionary range from 70% to 65%. It took about six months (I avoided most of the discussion to be honest), burned him out, and gained him a few enemies in the process. And that was for something that on the face of it, isn't exactly a major change, and was the first structural change of any kind to RfA in about ten years or more, despite the many, many, many attempts to do so in years gone by. So, on past precedent, I don't fancy your chances of getting anything passed through. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)14:04, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
Particularly to Kostas20142, in additional to what Ritchie says above I'd also echo what OR has said on her talk; slow way down until you're certain you understand the issues. Closing RFCs isn't a case of doing a headcount but is a complicated, unpleasant and generally thankless task since you're reading the opinions of a big bunch of people and explicitly stating which of these people's opinions have merit, and trying to summarize that in a little box, and then having enough respect amongst the broad Wikipedia community that even those who don't agree with your judgement will grudgingly respect it despite there usually being no official mechanism to force them to do so. (How would you have closed this RFC and why? Since the two sides in that dispute included some of Wikipedia's most vocal personalities, how would you have reacted when the "losing" side accused you of corruption or incompetence, or announced that they were going to disregard the closure and carry on regardless?)
I get what OR is saying about organic incremental but I can't see it working when it comes to dispute resolution. People might be willing to nominate a small group of editors respected by both sides in a given dispute to mediate that dispute, but the small group of editors who have that level of respect tend to be busy with other things and would be reluctant to sign up to a timesink like an RFCcom unless they could be convinced the post was important—otherwise what you'd get in practice with the "voluntary group" approach is a group made up of the ANI basement-dwellers.
However, the only alternative to an ad hoc volunteer committee would be a formally constituted body with officially delegated powers. A formal Closure Committee would be a huge step, given that not only does Wikipedia instinctively tend towards the status quo, it also has a hardwired hostility to any process that can be perceived as giving some editors more powers than others. (Lest we forget, Arbcom itself was imposed by fiat by the WMF and wasn't the result of a community longing for a bunch of self-proclaimed power users stomping around like bargain basement Judge Dredds.) Such a committee would need to be elected since the overwhelming majority of the people who'd volunteer for it would be totally unsuitable and the decisions of an anyone-with-a-pitchfork-who-fancied-being-part-of-an-angry-mob-that-day ad hoc committee would just be ANI 2.0 and be routinely ignored (and it would have to be elected, not appointed; this is what happened last time someone seriously suggested appointing a Wikipedia committee without elections, and there's no reason to think the notion of a Wikipedia House of Lords would be any more popular this time around), and running elections on an open wiki is not a simple task. ‑ Iridescent23:58, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
Oh, I get the "instinctively conservative" part, but coupled with that resistance to change is a weirdly widespread perception of ongoing and dramatic change. So I don't know why the organic incremental method wouldn't work - it already has, and has a much better track record than the Grand Sweeping Reform RfC at actually doing anything, for exactly that reason. (Admittedly, talking about Grand Reforms has some attractive points - speculating about how everything would be better if everybody did what I told them to do is much more fun than dealing with normal boring wiki-responsibilities. I'm probably supposed to be reading the case pages or ARCA or my email right now.) Nobody specifically planned arbcom's long slow obsolescence; people just slowly stopped filing cases and started using other routes instead.
I take your point on the composition of the hypothetical closer group - one problem with organic incremental blah blah is that it's highly dependent on the personal reputation and influence of the people who do the early work, and thus highly attractive to people who wish to burnish their reputations and enjoy the status of Being An Influential Person. But the "informality" doesn't seem like much of a problem - even "binding arbitration" is only as binding as our collective willingness to enforce it. Anyway, isn't regular old ANI 1.0 basically a mechanism for aggregating the decisions of anyone with a pitchfork and a desire to use it?
Of course, I realize I have a COI here - the more I believe in the superiority of an organic incremental approach over one initiated by arbcom, the more I can tell myself it's Somebody Else's Problem ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:14, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Organic incremental change is fine when there are viable transitional stages all the way between A & B (116 cases in 2007; → 30 cases in 2009; → 12 cases in 2013; → 5 cases in 2016), but it's hard to imagine what the transitional form between "we're clearly never going to agree on whether to use an en-dash or a hyphen, let's ask a couple of people we both trust what they think" and "abolish the Bureaucrat userright, strip the arbitration committee of the right to hear ban appeals, formally deprecate the ability of AN/ANI discussions to set precedents, prevent individual members of the community from closing any RFC that will have consequences for multiple editors or for the visual appearance of Wikipedia, and transfer all the aforementioned functions to an elected committee" would look like—it's far more efficient to draw up a proposed new constitution and have a straightforward "here's the existing setup, here's the proposed new setup, which do you prefer?" popular vote as we did when the remit of Arbcom was formalized in 2011. Natural selection may lead to the optimum results over the very long term if you're willing to put up with all the tare-each-other-in-their-slime unpleasantness along the way, but selective breeding under domestication avoids the blind alleys, and genetic modification is a lot quicker than either if you have the tools to do it. ‑ Iridescent08:55, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Sorry
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I have just seen that I removed your comment with one of my edits (another kindly soul replaced it). It was entirely accidental, and I only realised when looking at the history. 213.205.198.246 (talk) 22:54, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
No worries, that happens at ANI sometimes. Some kind of bug in the software means it doesn't spot edit conflicts. ‑ Iridescent08:05, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
Gwent Watcher
Latest comment: 7 years ago23 comments5 people in discussion
Per my comments at the ANI thread this is a bit of a frustrating one. At least some of those removals do at least warrant discussion (if Josie d'Arby was born in 1972 then she was born in Monmouthshire, not Gwent), but there are far too many obviously goofy ones to make it practical to go through them all individually. ‑ Iridescent20:07, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Except there is no publisher called "Ray Westlake Military Books"? Whether based in Gwent, in Monmouthshire, or anywhere else?? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:09, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Maybe I'm confused by the fact that most of Ray Westlake's books have been published by other publishers. Well GwentWatch certainly has a bee in his bonnet when it comes to such changes as this one. Quite inappropriate. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:20, 2 August 2017 (UTC) p.s. looks like Ray's based at 15 Llewelin Walk, Malpas? (although I'm a bit surprised he can't even spell Llewellyn...)
You'd think if there were one word everyone in Wales would be able to spell, that would be it. I even just went and checked on Google Maps just in case Newport Council had deliberately gone for some kind of weird archaic spelling, but no. ‑ Iridescent20:34, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
A website called "History of the Great War" that spells it "Militairy". That just fills me with confidence. ‑ Iridescent20:58, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Blimey. So poor old Ray, in lowly Malpas, Newport, Gwent has now been magically transformed into "Hellfire Corner" Tom Morgan based in "West-Midlands in England"?? The plot thickens. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:01, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) To be fair, Ray seems to have been publishing his books in 1993—I imagine he's sold up and put his feet up. Also in fairness, this kind of setup where a specialist bookshop occasionally commissions its own material to fill in what they consider gaps in the coverage they stock isn't particularly uncommon—Ian Allan Publishing is probably the most famous example. Also also in fairness, for some reason this kind of thing appears particularly common in Wales—every village with a population of more than a dozen appears to have its own indie publishing house. ‑ Iridescent21:09, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
The only Welsh-language album ever recorded that you can listen to more than once is Y Dydd Olaf by Gwenno Saunders—fact. For a country whose inhabitants rarely shut up about how musical their culture and language is, it certainly has an unerring knack for churning out acts that sound like Bulgarian Eurovision entries circa 1992. ‑ Iridescent21:18, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Don't get me started—his appeal (in all his incarnations) is something I don't get at all. He always seemed to me like a Lidl own brand version of Johnny Marr. (To be strictly accurate, I can see why he became big on the Welsh language scene, as he was offering something different to the usual 80s electropop and beards-and-chiffon folk, but don't get how the SFAs ever even got a sniff of the English language mainstream other than by clinging on to the Manics' coat tails for dear life.) ‑ Iridescent08:11, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
Whilst ignoring the Manics' accusation (for which there will be future retribution) I will say the live-action theatre production version of Candylion was a treat for the missus and my young nephews. Regardless of what Guardian reviewers might say, while undoubtedly there is a bit of cultural bias, the Wales Online review seemed to get the intent and audience. A really excellent combination of music, puppets & theatre. And pant-wettingly scary when Candylion balloons to the size of a house and starts eating everyone. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:45, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
Llewellyn Walk seems to have been named as that since its creation in 2001 - see page 3. Oddly enough for the home of a military historian, it was built on the site of a Territorial Army centre, and is name after a General. It's unclear who, but might be Morgan Llewellyn - pure conjecture on my part, but the best fit I could find...
The Malpas TA centre was quite an imposing building, but I can't find much on its history, although American GIs were barracked there in WWII. Robevans123 (talk) 21:32, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Afraid not (and that one which still exists screws google searches) - it was a large red brick two or three storey building, earlyish 20th century. Robevans123 (talk) 21:45, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I was trying to link Goal (website) on another article today before I discovered it had been deleted by yourself under A7 grounds (Article about a website, blog, web forum, webcomic, podcast, browser game, or similar web content, which does not credibly indicate the importance or significance of the subject). Goal is the largest online soccer publication in the world, and the 2nd largest online sports publication in the world behind ESPN only (via Alexa]. It certainly has the significance for a wikipedia page. I was hoping to reinstate the page. Thank you! Best, Jkmj (talk) 07:17, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
Restored, although be aware that unless it's expanded with reliable, independent sources to indicate its notability, it's very likely to be deleted again. Wikipedia is based solely on what independent sources say about the subject—we have no interest in what the subject of an article says about themselves except inasmuch as it's reported elsewhere, so the "about us" page of a website is useless as a source for Wikipedia's purposes. ‑ Iridescent16:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
On Lidl quality
Latest comment: 7 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion
Ahem. They (and Aldi) have won a distressingly (to the big supermarkets) large amount of food and alcohol awards based on their stock. Some of the competitors they have smacked down in blind tests (undertaken by food & wine snobs) have been pretty huge. I think the knife slid in when they started doing freshly baked goods. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:16, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
I think it depends where you are—supermarkets (of all varieties) tailor the stock to the area. Around here, Lidl is a dingy shed where the East Europeans go to stock up on 24-packs of lager and frozen pizza, and "freshly baked goods" are a pipe-dream (even the Tesco here wouldn't stretch to fresh-baked goods—even fresh fruit just consists of a few sorry-looking apples, oranges and bananas). Remember this is London where most people don't have cars and if the stores are new-build they don't have parking spaces, so grocery shopping is primarily online—the main markets for the physical supermarkets are impulse buys, "shit I forgot to order milk", fags/booze (and Lidl doesn't sell the fags) and transient workers/students who don't have the online access or fixed address to be able to order delivery. ‑ Iridescent17:02, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
It's not just "because it's London"- within the mansion there are many houses etc- so, for instance, the Lidl on Morning Lane might be akin to your aforementioned kip, but the Aldi in Enfield is a purveyor of such award winning goods as OiD references above. Mmmm. Have to try their blueberry muffin with their ownbrand single malt :) clearly it's a class issue, and what can be bought for the average hourly wage in every store's catchment area is what gets sold there. Of course, every store has its different catchment, so that of say the co-op on Wanstead High St is a helluva lot smaller than the Tesco at Baker's Arms. But then compare that Tesco with the one in Tunbridge Wells. There you have it. — fortunavelut luna07:09, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
Sort of. It's not just about catchment areas—supermarkets (both the Big Four and the discounters) vary their stock not just according to their catchment area, but to what their customers are likely to be buying, which in turn is heavily determined by parking. Supermarkets in central London (and central Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff etc) are glorified convenience stores catering to office workers picking up their lunch and whatever essentials they've forgotten, while out in the suburbs (say, zones 5+ in London terms) still cater to people doing their weekly shop and follow the "catchment area" rule you describe above; those in the zone 2–4 doughnut in generally don't have the parking space so aren't selling bulk items, and are targeting people who don't shop online, hence the huge stacks of Lech Lager, cans of beans and 30%-meat sausages. (Even in the suburbs you see this same split in miniature; taking Enfield as an example the Tesco on Windmill Hill has no parking facilities and is packed with ready-meals and booze, the one on Enfield Highway with its vast car park is a true "anything you could possibly want" hypermarket, and the one in between on Southbury Road has a good selection but is heavily skewed away from bulk items and towards things you can cart away in carrier bags. Or, compare the Lidl in Palace Exchange, with all the award winning etc etc, with the Lidl in Edmonton or Tottenham Hale which are glorified Kwik-Saves.) ‑ Iridescent17:48, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
Cardiff is not quite the same as the others. It has three Lidls within 15 minutes walk evenly spread around the center. All 3 have been refurbished to the new-type Lidl with all the bells and whistles. Anecdotally, when I lived in Splott 5 years ago, the Lidl barely had one till open and was as you described RE lager etc. Quite cheap and run down. Now its one of their flagship new-type stores and is rammed at all times. Dont get in early and the fresh baked stuff is gone by mid-day. And Splott is one of the poorer areas of Cardiff. They actually enlarged the store and reduced the parking space. Cardiff doesnt really have a big center, so the four city-supermarkets (two Sainsbury's, a Waitrose and a Tesco) are mainly to cater for office workers picking up something on the way home or lunches. What I have found changing in Cardiff in the last ten years is that when it comes to food, drink etc - it is punching way above its weight. When I go back to London to see family (or Birmingham for the missus') I am constantly griping not so much at the cost, but the sheer lack of quality and choice available. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:35, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
London suffers from being polycentric (Los Angeles and Berlin have the same problem for the same reason)—it has some of the best food in the world, but because there's no "downtown" as such (other than the West End tourist-trap and the social dead zones of the City and Canary Wharf), everything decent is spread out across 600 square miles so unless you know exactly what you're looking for chances are you won't find it. In my experience, the UK place with the best good-shop-to-population ratio is central Liverpool of all places—because the regeneration money was targeted so ruthlessly into the L1 postcode, every shop worth visiting tends to be within a five minute walk of each other. The same effect is also happening with post-IRA Manchester, although the price bubble there is starting to push the decent non-chain places into Ancoats. I agree entirely about Cardiff (and Swansea, come to that)—the centre of both is small, but neither has yet been overrun with the generic midmarket chains or flogged off for housing. ‑ Iridescent20:09, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
(adding) Agreed about Birmingham, although not in December when the Christmas market is on—the food there is usually so good, that people will actually make the journey up from London to visit it even if they don't actually do any shopping in the market when they're there. ‑ Iridescent20:25, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
Grammar
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
What was and wasn't struck was intentional, to indicate that I initially felt there was a rough equivalence between the conduct of Arthur Rubin and The Rambling Man, but that as the situation has developed I no longer consider that the case and that (in this particular instance) I consider AR's conduct sanctionable and TRM's not to be. I'm aware the striking has mangled the grammar, but I'm sure the arbs can figure it out. While I'm aware of the current fad for rewriting statements at Arbcom and pretending the earlier statement never existed, it's not a development I support and I have no intention of giving this tactic a tacit endorsement by engaging in it myself. ‑ Iridescent19:12, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
Can you exercise your admin-rights...
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
And shut down/point the Gary Renard RFC's on the talk page of the redirect? Its just going to extend the arguing. Its a protected redirect now and so nothing short of a successful DRV is going to change that. What with SL making not-so-veiled attacks on Alex's closure at ANI, that should probably be closed too. I voted at the AFD, otherwise I would do it myself. Who knew such a non-notable author would get people's knickers in a twist. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:41, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Although it's extremely unorthodox, I have a vague preference for allowing the discussion to continue—precisely because it's in such an impossible-to-find place, nothing decided there can possibly be considered binding consensus, and it acts as a frustration heatsink for people to vent rather than engaging in lengthy editwars on DRV or the actual article talk page. I'd have no objections if anyone else were to close it, though. ‑ Iridescent15:34, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
I would love to close that whole thread down with a massive "go away and be quiet", but I closed AfD #3 as "no consensus" which kind of kicked this whole kerfuffle off, so I guess I'm WP:INVOLVED :-( Ritchie333(talk)(cont)12:33, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
TFA September
Latest comment: 7 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
I'm about to start scheduling TFAs for September, and Mike Christie said he remembered that you had suggested something Russian (Lenin? October revolution?) for that month. Can you point me to that discussion or otherwise refresh my memory so that I can see if it can be fitted into the list? Thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me?12:12, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
@Jimfbleak, he'll be conflating two different conversations; this one in which I suggested Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway be either run on 15 September or held back until next year as the UK transport articles were scheduled disproportionately often in 2016/17 and are about to run out, and this one in which I suggested pulling Vladimir Lenin from the queue to ensure there was something appropriate for the centenary of the Russian Revolution on 7 November. Since the only topics that would be more appropriate for the centenary are Soviet Union, Communism or Russian Revolution and none of those are going to achieve FA status any time soon, Lenin is a shoo-in for that date. I don't generally like the notion of "date significance" at TFA, as I'm certain none of the readers even notice "ah, today is the 46th anniversary of a battle in which this warship sustained light damage!" (or indeed "ah, today is the 187th anniversary of the invention of the concept of scheduled low-cost mass transit!"), but November 7 2017 will be an exception as the Russian Revolution has a decent claim to be the single most influential event of the 20th century (with no Lenin there's no People's Republic of China, no North Korea, no independent Poland and consequently no World War II and no eclipse of the British Empire by the United States…), and pretty much every media outlet in the world will be running multi-page spreads about the man and his legacy. I have no strong opinions on whether/when OOTL&MR runs—although it's a core article in its specialist niches of the early history of civil engineering and the history of the Industrial Revolution, it's a topic of little general interest, and as I've commented elsewhere Manchester is probably the single most overrepresented place on the planet when it comes to FAs (there are as many FAs on Manchester alone as there are on China). ‑ Iridescent14:17, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
I was indeed conflating them; I'd have dug into your talk archives to find the discussion but am on holiday in France and was posting in a spare moment -- thanks for the response. I'll be scheduling October and am inclined to leave OOTL&MR to next year if it's an overrepresented topic area this year. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:14, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Fine, I'm not planning to run the railway this year since Northern England is a TFAR. I agree about dates; while some are important especially if it's a 25/50/100, some are clearly there just to get on the date list, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me?15:23, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Billy Hathorn
Latest comment: 7 years ago14 comments6 people in discussion
Hi, you were involved many years ago in an RfC/U regarding Billy Hathorn (talk·contribs). He is now banned but much of the crap lives on. I've just noticed the efforts of 68.203.251.2 (talk·contribs), an IP that geolocates to Laredo, Texas, where Hathorn was based for some time. Those contributions include things like this which, if it is indeed Hathorn, would be self-citing. He had previously edited that article using his registered account.
I would appreciate your thoughts regarding what, if anything, should be done. Similar things have happened regarding entries he maintains at findagrave, although I have deleted those where I've spotted them. - Sitush (talk) 11:27, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
As regards the existing articles he's created, I'd support creating an XCSD criterion as we did with Neelix, in which "created by Billy Hathorn and no substantive edits by anyone else" becomes grounds for speedy deletion (in which case I could probably clear the lot in a couple of hours), but that would need formal consensus—it was hard enough getting consensus to do it for Neelix and he'd created something like 100,000 pages. It may be worth asking at WikiProject Texas for people to dip-sample his articles and see if they're actually worth any effort to try to salvage. ‑ Iridescent16:06, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Never happened to me so far. Then again so far I've mostly done uncontroversial actions. Regarding that last one, someone mistook "admin action I don't agree with" with "admin action that violates policy"? JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 11:42, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
You'd think that this person, who by every metric seems to be a good, white, Southern, Christian member of the community, wouldn't resort to self-citing, promotion, and evasion. Have there been rangeblocks? Sitush, didn't I see you at ANI about Billy the other day? Drmies (talk) 15:21, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Ah yes. I see that his big edit to that Van Thyn article (quite a famous name in the NL) was reverted, and picked up on by others. I didn't suggest he was malicious, BTW; I've seen plenty such editors go by during my tenure here. More tirritating than the socking is the failure to grasp RS, etc. Is he still committing these copyvios all over the place? Drmies (talk) 15:32, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Drmies I am involved at ANI regarding Richard Arthur Norton accusing me of anti-semitism, which in turn is connected to the Hathorn efforts at Van Thyn, an article I sent to AfD. I'm pretty sure the AfD comments here and here are the same person (Hathorn, not RAN).
Given his demonstrated complete inability to grasp WP:COPYRIGHT and what appears to be extensive evasion through use of IPs, I'd be surprised if copyvios are not still happening. Difficult to prove, of course, and especially for someone like me who does not have access to much in the way of US news media. The issues with copyright absolutely astound me, bearing in mind he claims to be a retired academic. There is also quite a lot of activity at findagrave from someone using the same name, where copyvios of newspaper obits etc also appear and which, given his frequent use of that site as a source on WP, raises all sorts of other issues. - Sitush (talk) 17:37, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
If RAN is involved, I'm not touching this any further. He's one of the most unpleasant people I've ever encountered on Wikipedia and I have no desire whatsoever to engage with him in any way. ‑ Iridescent17:51, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
So I am finding out, although I've had little (if any?) direct dealing before now. It looks like he is going to pretty much get away with another incident. Sorry to have sullied your page. - Sitush (talk) 18:03, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Since you semi-protected Gap Inc., could you add one of those little lock icons to the top of it? I was going to do it myself via {{pp-vandalism}}, but I'm concerned it won't automatically come off when the semi-protection expires. Thanks! AlexEng(TALK)00:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
The bot adds and removes the {{pp}} template automatically—it doesn't need to be done manually, unless you need to specify an additional parameter such as "reason=" or "section=". ‑ Iridescent09:26, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
Que? With the exception of this one-line comment I've not had any involvement with Arbcom in the last week—I've been virtually inactive on Wikipedia other than replying to posts on this talkpage for the last couple of weeks. ‑ Iridescent15:21, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Despite appearances, they're actually carefully chosen—they're all suggestive but (aside from cats, stick-figures and Fierce Bad Rabbits) there's actually no sex or violence there*, and there's a virtually 50/50 gender balance. Astonishingly, even this nonsense is actually in use on articles. ‑ Iridescent20:15, 18 August 2017 (UTC) *The bombing of the Arnhem bridge is probably technically violence as well
I guess this answers the question of what motivated you to ever run for Arbcom, yourself. I'm pretty sure I don't want to practice legilimency on you. Risker (talk) 04:16, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
IIRC I was talking to you when I made that particular decision—a genuine (if possibly mistaken) belief that I'd have something useful to add. As with Chase Me, I didn't appreciate just how problematic "sometimes unavailable for long periods with little or no notice" would be in the Arbcom context—as with everyone else, I perceived it more as a hyper-ANI in which it would be relatively easy to skim discussions and catch up, and didn't appreciate the sheer volume of unseen stuff that goes on in the background, and that someone who can't commit at least an hour a day, every day to it rapidly becomes a drain not a benefit regardless of whether their input is useful when they are there. ‑ Iridescent11:44, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
I feel like the protection you made here was pre-emptive. I agree that the user hinted at sock puppetry here, but until we actually see it, I feel like a threat made from one person shouldn't warrant page protection like this - if anything, I feel like it still gives him what he wants. What are your thoughts? I wanted to ask you about it and get your input :-) ~Oshwah~(talk)(contribs)03:55, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
(This is about this thread, for anyone keeping score at home)
Other than this edit-war the page hadn't been edited for well over a month prior to protection (and the last IP edit was on 26 June), so the protection is unlikely to be causing harm to good-faith IP editors wanting to make edits;
It's trivially easy to demonstrate that this was an edit-war with a right and a wrong side, since the "false claim" Stuffedturkey was removing is demonstrably true, so locking down the wrong version isn't unduly favouring a particular side;
ST is on an IPv6 range, and a rangeblock that would be effective would mean knocking Verizon Oregon off Wikipedia, with considerable potential collateral disruption;
By semi-protecting the page rather than dishing out indefblocks, it means that if ST wants to be useful when the 24 hour block wears off they can do so, since their disruption is focussed on a single topic—if this is genuinely a good-faith user who thinks they're fixing an error as opposed to a rather inept paid editor, it gives them the opportunity to demonstrate this in a topic away from their bee-bonnet interfacing;
If ST does have a valid point about undue weight being given to a labour dispute in the Northern Marianas on an article about a global multinational (the only reasonable line for anyone wanting to get this material removed), then protecting the article but still allowing ST to edit elsewhere will force ST and the IPs to the talkpage to discuss the removal rather than continuing to edit war;
WP:DENY is about dealing with trolling and vandalism, and doesn't apply to Crusaders For The Truth. A vandal can take pride in "hey, I forced a top ten website to make a change in response to my actions!". A POV-pusher is editing to get their point across, not for the buzz, and isn't going to get a kick out of it. At most, they might feel a bit of righteous "I have uncovered a conspiracy on Wikipedia to suppress The Truth!" indignation and write an angry blog somewhere. (If they do so, it will be shouting into the wilderness—neither the Daily Mail, the WR crowd, the conservatives who think Wikipedia is too liberal or the left-wingers who think Wikipedia is too conservative are likely to spring into battle on behalf of the right of sweatshop operators to force their staff to have abortions without Wikipedia mentioning the fact.)
Unprotect it if you really feel the letter of the law is more important than the spirit of the law, provided you're willing to take responsibility for watching and reverting. If you really think I'm misusing the tools feel free to initiate a recall petition on the noticeboard of your choice. ‑ Iridescent11:08, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) "If you really think I'm misusing the tools feel free to initiate a recall petition on the noticeboard of your choice" seems like a bit of an over-reaction to me. There is no sign I can see that Oshwah is suggesting anything of the sort - all I see here is a civil and very polite question, to which all admins should be open. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:19, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
I said if Oshwah feels I've misused the tools, after giving a point-by-point explanation of why I've gone down the "narrowly focussed protection" rather than the usual "targeted blocks and leave the page unprotected" route which would normally be mandated by policy. ‑ Iridescent11:28, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
I just don't see why you needed to elevate it to that level when nothing close to that had been suggested, especially as I respect you greatly as one of those whom I've always considered as unusually adept at defusing rather than escalating disagreement - I was very pleased to meet you in Manchester that time. Anyway, those are my honest thoughts, and I thank you for listening. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:37, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
See my comment below (which was in reply to you as much as to Oshwah); the intent was to make it clear that I don't consider myself some kind of super-user and that if Oshwah felt my explanation was unsatisfactory they should feel free to complain about it, not "well if you don't like it take it to Arbcom". ‑ Iridescent11:47, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
OK. I have to say my first reaction to a polite query over any of my admin actions (especially when there is no suggestion of abuse of admin tools) has never been to advise the complainant of how to escalate the issue. But each to their own. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:53, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
I wasn't trying to imply that you were misusing or abusing your tools, and I don't mind at all if the spirit of a policy is enforced over the letter of it (that's how it should work, really). I just didn't feel like I understood all of the context and the reasons behind your decision to do so is all :-) ~Oshwah~(talk)(contribs)11:31, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
No problem and feel free to reverse any action of mine if you feel it appropriate. The intent was to make it clear I'm open to reversal of the specific action if anyone feels it inappropriate and open to recall if anyone feels I'm being wildly inappropriate; I'm extremely aware that I fall into the "admins from the old days who've recently re-emerged" group, on whom it's currently open season. ‑ Iridescent11:28, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
Change to RfC at NOT
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Thanks for the notification. It looks like it's going to fail—primarily because people are misreading the proposal and think it's a proposal to ban coverage of current events, rather than a proposal to ban giving undue weight to commentary on current events—but I support it wholeheartedly with either wording. ‑ Iridescent22:52, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely
Latest comment: 7 years ago20 comments8 people in discussion
Thanks for this edit Iridescent. Your edit summary is spot on and I would add that the eggy nature of the previous edit "scrambled" the article :-) Cheers and have a pleasant week. MarnetteD|Talk18:06, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
I think the assorted sockpuppets (I assume these are all the same editor) are genuinely acting in good faith, think they're being helpful and can't understand why they keep being reverted. They cited this source, which looks kind-of-official at first glance and gives a headline figure of 10,549,000 as the population of London, which is bigger than that of NYC.
I did (rather snappily) explain the issue on the talk page of the Legendii account; it's only when you drill down to the small print on that site that you see that the 10.5 million figure is derived by including the whole of the contiguous urban area, including places like St Albans and Cheshunt which border on London but aren't legally, culturally or psychologically part of it, and that the actual population of London is 8,173,941. If we accept the "entire urban area" methodology for deriving the population of London, then we also have to include Jersey City, Westchester, Yonkers, Hoboken et al in NYC. (It would also mean treating a sizeable chunk of southern California as part of Los Angeles, and ditto for Chicago/Milwaukee/Gary and the whole of Gauteng—I'm not going to bother doing the math but it's perfectly possible that this methodology could actually relegate London into fourth or fifth place, since London's Green belt sets a physical limit on what can be considered part of London by even the broadest definition.)
It is possible that London has overtaken NYC—London has had a recent population boom while NYC is relatively static—but even if it's true the sources by definition won't exist until the next UK census in 2021, by which time Brexit will likely have led to a very sharp drop in London's population as the big multinationals move their operations to the EU, the ≈ 1 million EU citizens currently living in London leave, and the drop in the value of the pound makes emigration to the US or EU a more attractive proposition.
Expect this edit-war to keep running. Assorted cranks on the English right wing currently nurse fantasies of London as the cultural capital of the Vibrant Anglo-Saxon Order standing in opposition to the Decadent Declining Europe and Corrupt Unimaginative Asia, and the Atlantic Bridge nutcases hate having it pointed out to them that the rest of the world doesn't consider Britain anywhere near as important as they consider themselves. ‑ Iridescent18:34, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
Is it, though? Say that in Watford or Weybridge and you're likely to get your head kicked in for suggesting it. If they'd stuck to the original plan for an inner and an outer M25, then the inner one would roughly correspond to the London boundary, but in reality they built half of one and half of the other, so the Heathrow-Orpington and Uxbridge-South Mimms stretches - which follow the intended outer route - have no real relationship to the London boundary. You also have anomalies like North Ockendon, which are in London but well outside the M25, and places like Chigwell which are within the M25 and have London tube trains, London buses but would fight to the death to avoid any redrawing of the border that placed them into London. ‑ Iridescent19:46, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
Yes. Do we care what people in Watford think? ;) My family are 99% cockneys and think that if you are not born within the sound of the bow bells you are not a Londoner... The Chigwell thing is largely historical ignorance. As anyone who has an actual passing knowledge of where the East End cockneys migrated to once the property developers started pricing us out of our homeland. Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:56, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
The real East End cockneys moved to Basildon, Billericay, Becontree and Benfleet (with the exception of the former dockers, who went to Grays and Tilbury). I guarantee to you that even in the 1950s, Chigwell was standing firm against allowing the oiks to pollute their green and pleasant land—I'm sure if they could erect razor wire and watchtowers along the border with Hainault, they would. A fairly accurate rule-of-thumb is "if they do their shopping at Lakeside (surely the only shopping centre that has an eel shop in the food court), the town was colonised by displaced Cockneys after the war". ‑ Iridescent20:04, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
This is only slightly on topic, but when I was a little kid, I was fascinated by the fact that my grandpa used dead eels as bait for fish pots, dead fish as bait for crab pots, and dead crabs as bait for eel pots. I suppose it messed with my simplistic vision of there being a clear, well-organized hierarchy of predator/prey, and is my first memory of finding out the world was more complicated than I thought. My grandpa would say that the only reason God put eels on Earth was as bait. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:05, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
One of the viler culinary traditions of the Hudson Valley, which has hopefully deservedly died out, is glass eels eaten like spaghetti. Imagine you made your bootlaces by forcing a squid through a cheese grater and you'll have a rough idea of the taste and texture. ‑ Iridescent21:22, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
(adding #2) The "other products you may like" recommendations for that on Amazon are intriguing. Anyone feel a pressing need for 1000 live banded crickets and a gallon jug of soy sauce? ‑ Iridescent21:28, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
That glass eels dish... does not look appetizing to me. But there's no accounting for taste; if you had told me many years ago that I would willingly eat goose barnacles, I'd have called you crazy. But they're heavenly. If I could get them on Amazon, I would. I imagine many eel-eating Cockneys and Hudsonites (and possibly you too) are shuddering at the thought. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:39, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
According to a quick-n-dirty summation the population of Southern-California-if-you-use-the-broad-definition-of-"Los Angeles"-needed-to-make-these-claims-for-London-work is over 21 million people. Surely more than London and more than the entire New York State (New York metropolitan area clocks in at 23 million people). Gauteng currently has a population of about 13 million people, not counting any outlying regions that should be counted as well. London's looking pretty picayune there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:48, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
Years ago I came across a reference to an (auto?) biography of a WW1 British diver. He was the only person the RN could find who wasn't phased by working in confined spaces, amongst thousands of writhing eels eating dead U-boat sailors. No roses bloom on a sailor's grave- the eels would just treat them as 'salad'. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 07:12, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
UpsandDowns1234, again
Latest comment: 7 years ago18 comments7 people in discussion
Yes, agreed; having looked at his history since he came off the block his edits are entirely unconstructive. I've given him a final warning just in case he thinks people are yanking his chain and doesn't realize just how unwelcome he is—if there's anything more after this the next block will be indefinite until he actually demonstrates some kind of understanding of what Wikipedia actually is. ‑ Iridescent18:10, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
That was one of my first redirects that I created, and that was before I knew that it is bad to get pi to so many digits. Ups and Downs (↕) 06:13, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
UAD, if you're going to tell lies don't tell lies that anyone can see are lies in less than two seconds of checking. The first redirect you created was Ctrl-Alt-Esc; that pi redirect wasn't created until almost a year later. ‑ Iridescent08:06, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
That is why I said it was one of my first redirects, even though the first redirect that later I requested deletion for a year and a half later was Ctrl-Alt-Esc. Ups and Downs (↕) 07:14, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
(A) You were assuming that "any language in a funny alphabet" must be Arabic, which is at best grossly insensitive and a serious competence issue and at worst intentionally racist;
Seriously, will you stop pissing around and either agree to abide by Wikipedia's basic rules or stop editing Wikipedia? This is getting well beyond a joke. ‑ Iridescent10:00, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I think I've successfully convinced my kids that Wikipedia is utterly dull, unexciting and something only boring old farts do, so they don't want to touch it and won't be tempted to come along and "improve" articles in the way teenage boys do. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)17:10, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
He seems (touch wood) to have calmed down now. Hopefully, reading him the riot act will either make him decide Wikipedia isn't the place for him and he'll go over to Wikia and annoy them instead, or he'll decide to settle down and follow the rules. If not, the next disruptive edit he makes will be the last. ‑ Iridescent17:33, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
@Iridescent: This is my last mistake. Follow through with your indefblock, and make sure that I do not come back until I can show that I can do better things than creating pointless redirects, messing with other's pages, and treating Wikipedia like a webhost. Ups and Downs (↕) 03:07, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
I'm treating that as a request. Going through UAD's contribs it's 50% self-reverts and more than a few places where I've had to revert. Primefac (talk) 03:22, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Yes, reluctantly endorse both the block and the "indefinite" aspect. U&D has promised to stop wasting other peoples' time and to stop using Wikipedia as his personal code testing sandbox too often for any promise to be taken remotely seriously any more. (User:UpsandDowns1234/intentionally upsidedown page, really?) ‑ Iridescent15:24, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Was that what the random ping yesterday was about (I'm assuming others got one as well)? I was confused as to how that happened because I couldn't find my name on the page. Anyway, a NOTHERE block seems appropriate. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:26, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Case opened
Latest comment: 7 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
Urgh. While I support them taking the case, I really with they'd dealt with this by motion rather than going through the whole workshops-and-proposals show trial. I can tell you now that the result will be "(1) Arthur Rubin desysopped, he can regain the bit following a successful RFC; (2) TRM advised to moderate his language when discussing other Wikipedia editors; (3) The community reminded that Wikipedia is a collaborative environment and that should people raise concerns in good faith about your actions you are expected to justify those actions; (4) The community reminded that making allegations without providing evidence constitutes a personal attack". Dealing with it by motion would have the exact same result, and avoided the whole slow-burning ritual humiliation of two long-serving editors and their respective supporters picking through the contribution histories looking for any mud they can throw. There are some occasions where it's important that due process is seen to be followed, but this is not one of them. ‑ Iridescent14:54, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
I'll take the bet, I'm in for (1) Rubin admonished (2) TRM further sanctioned and/or punitively blocked. But only after six weeks of the hawks dragging up every diff available under the sun going back to 2005 to ensure they can get at me. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:57, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Nah (although if they're feeling extraordinarily generous, they may replace "AR desysopped" with "AR given a final warning"). The most that could happen to you would be some variation of "please don't be so snappy, most of these people are trying to help even if they're doing it wrong"*—AR and his supporters have had a month to dig up whatever dirt they could find, and haven't managed to find any. I'll be willing to bet that all my four above points (with the possible exception of (3), which is a point they may feel the Magioladitis case makes more explicitly so they don't need to repeat it in yours) form part of the final ruling. ‑ Iridescent15:48, 30 August 2017 (UTC) *A sentiment I endorse to some extent. Remember, unless people have an interest in English sport they're likely only to know you from various arguments—I know someone else said you're becoming the new Malleus, and there are far worse people with whom to be compared, but what you don't want is for people to start seeing you as the new Baseball Bugs. ‑ Iridescent15:48, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Our arbitration system seems designed to make problems continue so long they get worse and alienate productive contributors when swift and sensible intervention could nip things in the bud. If an Arbcom like authority with its powers told Rubin weeks/months ago to withdraw the accusations or be desysopped, we'd be a lot happier. That body could be AN/ANI, except we've over-engineered ourselves so AN/ANI have no real teeth to deal with admins, other than community ban. I don't necessarily blame ArbCom's members for this - I get why it takes so long for them to act - because of how they're set up to fail. So here we are. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned!15:14, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
I blame them 100% I'm afraid. If they were paid by the hour this turn of events wouldn't be surprising. They collectively lack the ability to actually make timely and objective decisions. This one will no earlier than October, by which time no-one will even recall what the original issue (which started in April) was actually all about. Perhaps that's the point. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:18, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
By community decisions and the actions of they're predecessors, they're wedged into a pseudo legal framework that is slow and cumbersome. I agree with Iri's original point that motion (in May, ideally!) would have sorted this out, but they just are backed into a corner. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned!15:31, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
To give some benefit of the doubt, I assume quite a few of them have been away so it was always bound to move slowly, and the case being filed by a sock presumably meant a long debate somewhere about whether it should go ahead which would also have taken time. Plus, of the current crop NYB is (ironically) the one most likely to say "cut out the pseudolegal crap and just settle this", but because of his past history with TRM he's presumably felt he shouldn't comment. ‑ Iridescent15:57, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Public service announcement
Latest comment: 7 years ago15 comments3 people in discussion
Seeing as our insect overlords at the WMF don't appear to have deigned to actually announce this anywhere other than at a few obscure noticeboards, just to let people know they've just made this loopy pet project live (open your notification settings and scroll to the bottom). There may have been a stupider idea the WMF has sent live without consultation, but I can't think of one, and I'm old enough to remember Liquid Threads. ‑ Iridescent21:12, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the PSA, but I guess it doesn't annoy me as much as it annoys you. It's not earth-shattering, but it seems relatively harmless at worst, and mildly useful at best. I've already used it, albeit 95% to see if it works, and only 5% to avoid the unwanted pings from that editor. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:29, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
(ec) I know everything - I don't know anything. - I am not easily silenced ;) - In German we have an expression: "tritt es nicht noch breit" - as in breittreten - what would that be in English? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:57, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Editor A: "Editor B keeps telling me I'm a stupid fuckwit!";
Admin C: "Just mute editor B";
Editor A, a month later: "I've just discovered that every edit I ever made has been undone!";
Admin D: "Yes, that's because Editor B rolled back your edits and you had them muted so you didn't know. It's your fault for allowing this to happen".
That's at the basic level with Good Faith Assumed on all sides. If you're willing to accept that some Wikipedia editors are obsessive crackpots who enjoy edit-warring over stylistic decisions and are willing to be cynical and disruptive when they feel it necessary to enforce their personal preferences regarding things the overwhelming majority of readers don't even notice:
Editor A: "There's a change I'm determined to make to a huge number of articles, but some people are steadfastly opposed to (infoboxes / em-dashes / distances in chains / color-coded navboxes / separate male and female categories / list-defined references / non-free images / linked country and city names) being (added/removed)";
Editor B: "I don't want you making this change unilaterally. If you're not willing or able to get a demonstrable consensus in favor of this change, I'll take action if you go ahead with it anyway";
Editor A: "I'll go through Editor B's entire edit history for the last few months thanking them for every edit, and I'll mention them at every opportunity and be sure to bluelink their name so they get a ping. I'll do the same for everyone who is likely to support their position";
Editor B: "Every time I log on, I find that I've hit the 99-new-notifications limit after which the Echo system stops working, so I'm not seeing legitimate messages. I'll mute Editor A, that will solve it" (or alternatively "I'll haul Editor A off to ANI to complain about excessive thanking, and they'll just tell me to put them on mute");
(a month later)
Editor B: "Hey, every (instance of {{infobox composer}} / spaced en-dash / chain (unit) / etcetera) has disappeared!";
Admin C: "There's no point complaining now, you should have complained when the change was made two weeks ago, and it's not our fault that none of you noticed, it's your own fault for muting Editor A. Given the time elapsed since the change was made Editor A's preferred version is now the stable version, and it would be disruptive for you to change it back.";
Editor B: "Well, I'm not happy with this. Since ANI is unable to resolve the matter given that everyone's actions were technically within policy, the only option is to take this off to Arbcom where all of my and Editor A's friends can fling shit at each other like wild monkeys for six weeks".
You may not have been on Arbcom for long, but you were certainly there long enough to know that Editor A isn't a purely fictional construct and that this is exactly how some people will seize this opportunity. (Hell, it's only WP:AGF that's preventing my giving you a full list of the names of the people who'll seize this opportunity.) The infobox wars may have calmed down but it's at best an uneasy armistice not an actual peace treaty, the delinkers and endashers are still merrily delinking and endashing away, and there are enough arbs now who don't remember the old days or come from a non-content background that User talk:Betacommand#Public Appeal has a genuine chance of being accepted.
As Gerda says, I've never encountered anyone other than an outright vandal who hasn't acceded to "please don't communicate with me unless it's absolutely necessary". I can't imagine a circumstance where anyone wouldn't want to be informed that their edits had been reverted by one particular editor—either you want to be informed of every revert or none—so the only problem this is actually addressing is "I'm being thanked too often for my liking by one editor but I don't want to disable the thanks feature altogether", and I've never seen any evidence that this is a problem. ‑ Iridescent08:48, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
How about sorting the cases alphabetically? - The infobox wars are a myth that some seem to need, - it's almost religious. Please note, in order to get closer to reality, that I never use {{infobox classical composer}} (so it's 165 inclusions are all not by me), but {{infobox person}}, and that I think I know by now when better not to do it. I started a discussion yesterday on Verdi, and nobody went fighting, DYK? The last argument about a composer's infobox that I recall was Max Reger, in 2016. The last argument, about no more than the duplication of coordinates to an infobox, was yesterday. Waste of time. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:16, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
The Infobox Wars certainly weren't a myth—I had a ringside seat for them (you may remember that the string of discussions which ultimately led to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes originally began on my talkpage). As well as the traditional "this article should/shouldn't have an infobox" arguments, which still flare up from time to time, they've now metastasized into meta-arguments over how to format which fields are included in infoboxes and whether to populate the boxes from Wikipedia or Wikidata, and those arguments are still as vocal as ever (just put Template talk:Infobox person on your watchlist for a while). ‑ Iridescent09:43, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Infobox person is one of the more than 33333 items on my watchlist. (I like the number, hit yesterday, but I noticed only later.) You have a good memory, so will know that the arb case was basically about resistance to the new {{infobox opera}}, which is now in all major operas. As arbcom goes, the case caused the past of years before (much of it before I even joined, or noticed the problem) to be brought up also, and the arbs had to something, so gave me this wonderful restriction of no more than two comments per discussion. Imagine if everybody adhered to that ;) - I am a free person since 2015 but still follow that as a rule of thumb. In the above-mentioned discussion, even one comment seems too many. - I agree that there are other questions rather than infobox yes or no, but I regard that one as the most war-like conflict, which should have been over when the arb who wrote the case added the infobox to Beethoven as the community consensus. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:24, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
It was a dispute over opera that forced the case (as there were vocal people entrenched on both sides and refusing to concede), but the underlying dispute was certainly not confined to them. If anything, in my experience the "should this have an infobox" was most problematic on popular musician articles —classical musicians in general stick to music, whereas the Frank Sinatras, Madonnas, Michael Jacksons and Taylor Swifts of the world don't always pigeonhole neatly as "musicians". Nobody has every really satisfactorily addressed the issue that {{infobox specific profession}} generally means data related to that profession is given undue weight (so treating Michael Jackson as a singer ignores that he was the director of a huge business empire, treating Frank Sinatra as an actor downplays his musical career and vice versa). The "overly specific infobox" problem is by no means specific to music, but applies to everyone who's been active in more than one field—is Arnold Schwarzenegger a politician or an actor? Is Brian Cox a particle physicist, a 1990s pop star, or the BBC's go-to narrator for wildlife documentaries? How about chief economist of the Office of Fair Trading and former lead singer of Heavenly Amelia Fletcher (or indeed her former bandmate, 1980s indie music darling and 2012 Turner Prize winning artist Elizabeth Price)? That people overuse the "infoboxes give undue weight to some information" argument doesn't mean it isn't a genuine problem. ‑ Iridescent17:43, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Agree. Just today, I decided again to use "person", because the person is not only a pianist but also an academic teacher, in a way also a composer, - while most of the people he plays with have "musician". - I am happy with short infoboxes that give us the basics that persondata had previously. Did you know that the Italian Wikipedia has a format that doesn't make an infobox but a standard lead sentence for people? (example Maria Carbone, go in edit mode and see, - it was discussed in the last composers discussion, 2016, when Pierre Boulez died.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:31, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm aware of the Italian experiment, but I think it's a horrible idea and I'd fight tooth-and-claw any attempt to implement it on Wikipedia, for the same reason I'd fight tooth-and-claw any attempt to activate ArticlePlaceholder (example, if you've never seen it in action on the wikis that have it) or Reasonator (example, if you've never seen it in action on the wikis that have it), on English Wikipedia. I can understand the "something is better than nothing" argument when it comes to languages where there aren't many editors, but for the highly active Wikipedias like English, Polish, German and Spanish even the most obscure topic should be able to find someone who can write a couple of sentences on it if the sources exist. The Italian experiment of automatically generating the lead either means importing from Wikidata which makes the article a hostage to Wikidata, a project which even its staunchest defenders would concede is riddled with errors and has a well-deserved reputation for failing to spot vandalism; or, it means treating the auto-generated section of the lead as a de facto infobox in another format, which just displaces the "which information do we include?" debate from the left-hand to the right-hand side of the page.
Plus, automatic article generation (or automatic lead generation) requires the assumption that any given topic is treated equally in different cultures, which isn't the case at all. To take a relatively trivial example de:David Hasselhoff devotes roughly equal space to the great man's musical and acting careers, whereas en:David Hasselhoff treats him almost exclusively as an actor and just mentions in a brief section that he also had a successful musical career in Germany; this is as it should be as English-speaking readers are much more likely to be looking for details of his acting career. To take a more serious example (the one which serves as my go-to example of Wikipedia's tendency to reflect the systemic biases both of the sources and the readers of a particular culture), compare en:Texas Revolution, es:Independencia de Texas and ro:Revoluția Texană—all Featured Articles on their respective Wikipedias—and observe the relative weight given to the Battle of the Alamo (a relatively minor skirmish but one with great symbolic value in the US) on wikis where the readers and sources of the article are primarily American, primarily Mexican and primarily neutral; I see this as a feature, not a bug, as the US readers are much more likely to be interested in the specifics of the Alamo, the Mexican readers are more likely to be interested in the broader politics and the course of the war as a whole, and the neutrals won't want the full details of the Alamo but need enough information to understand why Americans attach such significance to a battle with less than 1000 casualties. ‑ Iridescent16:41, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I agree; while I think the default should be "infobox unless there's a reason not to have one" it doesn't mean I don't think there are many situations where there is a good reason not to have one (generally "there are so few facts that any infobox would be meaningless", "the lead image needs to be displayed at a large width" or "the topic can't be summarised without accompanying explanation"). However, the "every page needs an infobox" faction certainly do exist.
(On a completely unrelated topic, do you want to try explaining to this person in German that their grasp of the English language isn't as good as they think it is, and there's only a limited amount of patience The Wikipedia Community will show when it comes to comments like "your pertinent professional incompetence", especially given that their recent edit history seems to consist almost exclusively of machine-translated gibberish.) ‑ Iridescent18:36, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
Can you sue a Wikipedian for libel?
Latest comment: 7 years ago16 comments8 people in discussion
I was cleaning up Darius Guppy's article just now, and somebody who was working on it said, "I'm just terrified of English defamation law". I can't believe anyone would have a case to answer by suing some random person acting in good faith on the internet, but I also know that Darius Guppy has history of threatening to duff up people who disagree with or strongly criticise him. Is it actually possible to file a defamation lawsuit against a Wikipedia user? Ritchie333(talk)(cont)12:03, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Technically in the UK yes in some situations - people have been successfully sued for repeating information online that someone else has originally said, for defamatory content. 'Someone else said it first' is not a defense under British defamation law. 'Its completely true' however is. But there is a world of qualifiers that apply. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:15, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
It's nice to hear that's changed. It didn't used to be the case that truth was necessarily an absolute defense to defamation claims in British law, especially if a peer was the target of the allegedly defamatory statements (when I worked at EFF in the '90s this would come up sometimes). — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:16, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) (edit conflict) It would have to be established that the user was based in a UK jurisdiction, and exactly who that user is. As it's an IP user, it's a near-thankless task to identify a specific individual behind a series of numbers - police powers and/or a court order would be needed (I worked on one of Elton John's libel cases years ago doing just that). If the information is from reliable sources (better, if it's in several high-profile reliable sources), it should be OK, but even then there is no defence in claiming that you are just repeating stuff in the public domain. - SchroCat (talk) 12:19, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
The TL;DR answer is "yes, and it does happen". Wikipedia is insulated to some extent by being based in California, which has anti-SLAPP legislation (that is, if the courts deem that the purpose of the lawsuit is to stifle free speech rather than to address a genuine grievance, it will be rejected). Section 230 protects the WMF, but it doesn't protect individual editors—indeed, the WMF is obliged to (and does) provide whatever personal information they hold on you if they get a subpoena requesting it. If you do get sued, the Legal Fees Assistance Programmay pay for your costs (and if they don't, the EFF may well take it on pro bono), but there's no obligation on them to get involved. As well as libel, there has also been (unsuccesful thus far) legal actions taken against Wikipedia and/or individual editors for publishing plot spoilers and consequently damaging revenues (including by the author of the wonderful Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say "No" to Drugs), and of course the fallout from the Siegenthaler incident which was never tested in court. If you're on speaking terms with the Wikipediocracy/Wikipedia Review crowd, someone like Greg or Somey could probably provide an up-to-date list of all the documented legal actions involving the WMF.
If you do think there's the remotest possibility that an article subject will sue, I strongly recommend letting the long-suffering Whatamidoing (WMF) know as soon as possible. For all the WMF's faults, Jimmy Wales and WMF Legal do have the financial and political backing to either call potential litigants and calm them down or to examine the evidence and conclude that there's no case to answer, which you don't. ‑ Iridescent15:43, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
I was pretty sure this case ended in court, and a conviction, where malicious WP editing was one aspect. But google searches now reveal no trace of these proceedings. Of course, I now can't be sure if my memory is playing tricks, or if the villain of the piece has excercised his EU human rights.... Johnbod (talk) 15:48, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
In this specific case, I have been cleaning up a BLP, but put forward multiple trustworthy sources showing Boris Johnson's failed attempt to provide Guppy with an address of a journalist he wanted to get beaten up - an incident that was broadcast on national television and has been watched by millions of people. Perhaps I'm just being over-paranoid, but why would somebody bring up defamation issues on the talk page if they were a non-issue? Ritchie333(talk)(cont)15:58, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
While it may ultimately be a spurious and unfounded lawsuit, the problem with UK defamation law is that like all privately brought cases, it favours those with the biggest pockets. Someone with enough money can make life extremely unpleasant for a victim of a false allegation, even if ultimately the case is based on a bogus argument. It would actually be trivial given enough money to get a court order for any personal/private information Wikipedia holds on its editors, IP or otherwise, as the WMF (as Iri points out above) is required to provide that information on request or risk being found liable for what its users post. EG should Guppy or Boris take offense at what is being posted to their article, they have the money to get the information the WMF holds on the editors who posted it, including location, IP address etc. If the editor is an editor who has identified to the WMF (for advanced permissions etc), they would also be required to hand over that information. I believe they don't actually keep track of that anymore precisely to fend off those sort of requests. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:03, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) That should be fine - it's been plastered over the mainstream UK press for over ten years without Guppy taking any action (and even an edition of Dispatches on it), so the courts wouldn't touch the case anyway (a statute of limitations for the 'new news' gives him some time to sue, but these are old and oft-repeated). I'll email you some articles from UK broadsheets to use as references. - SchroCat (talk) 16:08, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
In their defence, the WMF actually has a very good record compared to the Facebooks and Googles of the world when it comes to telling governments where they can shove it (see the transparency report I like above, and note how many requests are rejected). A litigant would need to go through the American courts to get at the servers, and US courts aren't known for their love of British litigants trying it on. The important think in the case of Guppy is to make sure everything is attributed not only inline but in the body text (a Sunday Times report said…, Isabel Oakshott claimed…, Ian Hislop alleged…) to make it clear that you're repeating allegations made in the public sphere by other people, not making allegations in Wikipedia's voice. ‑ Iridescent16:11, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
It is clearly possible and this is a significant risk if you go after high-profile public figures. A good example is McAlpine v Bercow in which Lord McAlpine made lots of people back down, apologise and pay damages. The fact that the WMF is safe isn't the issue – the risk is that individual editors will be sued. See Beware online words that can lead to a libel charge
...cases of libel or slander seem to be on the increase. Research published by Thomson Reuters in October 2014 showed a 23 per cent rise in the number of reported defamation cases in the UK over the past year, up from 70 to 86. At the heart of this growth, it seems, is a sharp rise in claims brought in response to online postings on social media, review sites and blogs. These more than quadrupled, rising from six to 26, the research says.
Although it depends what has been posted. The information about Guppy's request to Johnson for the address of a journalist he wanted to get beaten up has been published in the mainstream UK since 1993, and any attempt to sue for repeating it would be thrown out by a judge on the basis that none of the parties involved have taken any action in the preceding 24 years. - SchroCat (talk) 17:29, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
The issue with SLAPPs isn't whether they'd be won or lost—the outcome is a foregone conclusion. They're a mechanism used by the rich to discourage people reporting on their activities, by creating nuisance for the defendant (rich people can afford lawyers, poor writers have to waste a lot of time representing themselves) in the hope that even though the case will invariably be rejected, it will cause enough hassle that people won't repeat the accusation. Wikipedia's SLAPP article is US-centric but explains the phenomenon quite well, and (unlike in the US) English courts have no quick-reject mechanism for vexatious lawsuits—the crime of barratry was repealed and has never been replaced. ‑ Iridescent19:09, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Downgrading
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I think you have to read and understand about Downgrading , which is totally different than Downgrade. As Downgrade is a dictionary word but Downgrading here referred to a technology standard approved by ICANN and IETF. Its just like POP, SMTP, IMAP etc. Please revert the page to Downgrading or best we can name it to EAI-Downgrading, if its helps.
There's no way on earth I'm restoring this, which was clearly completely inappropriate as a Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is not a technical dictionary, and you've done nothing whatsoever to demonstrate that multiple, independent, non-trivial, reliable sources consider the topic notable, which is the bare minimum requirement for a topic to be covered on Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent15:21, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Thank-you for closing, but the close says I could be summarily banned without discussion and implies strongly that people have been indef'd for less than my behavior. That is very unfair to me, and places me at great risk from some trigger happy admin with a grudge. That aspect of the close is quite inconsistent with the discussion. Please modify the close to address the actual violation of the spirit of the ban and exclude me from the no discussion banning or any finding of inappropriate behavior. Legacypac (talk) 08:29, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that's fair; I'll reword it to make it clear it's Godsy's conduct that has been problematic in this instance. Obviously, the IBAN is two-way, but as best I can tell you've complied with the spirit as well as the letter of the previous wording. I have left Any breach of this ban by either party can be addressed without discussion by any uninvolved administrator with any sanction up to and including indefinite blocking in the wording; this may sound harsh but it's a restatement of the existing blocking policy, not something I've made up; while they appear unlikely, there are circumstances in which a breach by you could also lead to an immediate indefblock, and what I don't want is a closure that means you're subject to lower potential sanctions than someone completely uninvolved. The comment I've just made to Godsy here applies to you as well (other than the "dimmer view" part); if either you or Godsy do feel that this closure is unfair, I think the potential of community dispute resolution procedures has been exhausted and WP:ARC would unfortunately be the next step. ‑ Iridescent08:38, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Thank-you for the modification and explanation. I can live with this, even though my wiki reputation has been seriously damaged by all this. I will not be taking your close to ArbComm. I truly hope this is final closure. Legacypac (talk) 08:52, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Any close was never going to please everyone. As I think I made clear, this close wasn't the close I'd personally have chosen, but the consensus (to apply the same restrictions to both of you) was overwhelmingly clear. ‑ Iridescent17:55, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Help with getting MOS:TENSE established in an article
Latest comment: 7 years ago36 comments10 people in discussion
Hi, "Iridescent,"
I see that you're a fairly frequent contributor to the Manual of Style's talk page. I was wondering if maybe you'd be so kind as to offer your opinions and other help elsewhere as well. Have you been familiarized with MOS:TENSE? If so, what's your opinion about making sure it's applied? The MOS is a set of rules that applies to every article, correct? Would you please be so kind as to lend me your hand then?
From this thread on Corinne's talkpage, this (and the section below) relate to an ongoing dispute on Commodore CDTV. 174, I'll echo the warning you've been given there; regardless of your intent you're giving the impression that you're fishing for people who will take your side in a content dispute, something that's unlikely to end well. If you can't settle this through discussion with the other user, WP:RFC is the way to go to get genuine uninvolved input. ‑ Iridescent13:39, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
Re: "given that I've long been a very vocal critic of the way the MOS is currently implemented and enforced nothing I say is likely to be taken very seriously" – To the contrary, I agree pretty much word-for-word with what you wrote in more detail below, and it's very similar to what I said in the version of this stuff on my own talk page. I'd bet good money that other MoS regulars would agree. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:46, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm not saying my opinions are invalid—just that given that I've spent the better part of a decade banging the "the MOS should be drastically slimmed down, and it needs to be made much clearer that it's only a set of suggestions and not a part of policy" drum it would be somewhat hypocritical were I to turn up arguing in support of a set of rules to micromanage the rather obscure scenarios outlined below. ‑ Iridescent06:43, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
Just while on this topic: Any styleguide is going to be long and elaborate—too much for the average writer. But MOS performs two critical functions beyond this, in (i) centralising style disputes away from article talkpages, and (ii) giving imprimatur to gnomes who tidy things. No one should get beaten up for not knowing MOS. Perhaps you're underplaying these "silent" benefits? Tony(talk) 09:27, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
"(ii) giving imprimatur to gnomes who tidy things" The second main reason we have an MoS is for the benefit of gnomes? That's almost as lame as saying we have one to centralise style disputes. I can think of far better reasons for an MoS, but, like Iri, am glad they are only a suggestive guide, rather than the hardline necessity demanded by a self-satisfied minority. - SchroCat (talk) 10:17, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
Oh dear... there are bad blocks, and bad blocks and then there are crazy snowflake blocks... I'll let you decide which of those categories that one falls in! - SchroCat (talk) 20:30, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Well, sure, and I don't underestimate the importance of the lightning rod aspect (although I certainly question whether giving imprimatur to gnomes who tidy things is a net benefit; for every person who performs a valuable service improving consistency, there are three AWB-armed drones monotonously edit-warring to enforce whatever bee is in their particular bonnet). But, over a decade the MOS has grown into a bloated beast of arcane and sometimes mutually contradictory rules spread across multiple subpages, which some people try to enforce religiously "because it's in the MOS"—it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply is the most important sentence in the MOS but too many people don't see or don't want to see it. (Does Wikipedia really need an 1100-word rule on how to describe pool balls?) ‑ Iridescent13:14, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
Long sigh. You both seem to be unaware of what state WP would be in were it not for hundreds of gnomes. ... often tedious, repetitive work that ultimately gives WP greater authority. Sorry you can't see that. Tony(talk) 09:51, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Even longer sigh! No-one is beating down on gnomes at all, just that the second most important reason you've given for providing an MoS is to accommodate one section of editor, which seems to be putting the emphasis on why we have an MoS in entirely the wrong place. I would have thought that a list of 'good reasons to have an MoS' should start and finish with something about the benefits to the reader, not a small section of editors. - SchroCat (talk) 10:17, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Where were you bunch when I got blocked for referring to these self-appointed roving enforcers as "self-appointed roving enforcers"? [11][12]EEng18:10, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Don't blame me, I wasn't here… You've noted, I trust, just how well The Community has taken Magioladitis's and Bgwhite's self-appointed roving enforcing in recent days. ‑ Iridescent19:04, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Also, as long as I have you here reading my request for MOS-establishment help, let me ask you for your opinion on some other things, okay?
Which to you is more accurate: calling abbreviations in which letters are pronounced individually, like a lot of initial abbreviations such as "CD," "ATM," and "LCD" are, as "acronyms," even though they are not (since they aren't pronounced as if they were just single words like "LASER," "SCUBA," "PIN," and "VIN," etc. are, and so those abbreviation examples are acronyms [even as "laser" and "scuba," and probably several others, have long been commonly lowercased]), or just calling them "initialisms" or "initial abbreviations" when they are indeed NOT acronyms?
Which to you is clearer: saying that a given model of computer or game system looks like just a "stereo" (which could be anything from a non-portable, traditional home stereo system, to a vehicle stereo system, to a tiny little MP3 player), or saying that it looks like a traditional home stereo system component?
And then, as a follow-up regarding systems that look like home-stereo equipment, if they are still computers, then which makes more sense: to compare them with other devices that look like just "computers" (even though these still are computers, so they look like their own unique type of computer), or to compare them against computers that look more like traditional computers?
Which do you believe is clearer: that when a specific computer-derived entertainment system can be converted into that computer by adding back specific peripherals such as a floppy disk drive like the derived-from computer model the system came with has, to simply say "disk drive" (which is ambiguous because it can refer to the CD drive that the machine already has, or to a hard disk drive which is only secondary to the floppy drive on those computers), or to be more specific by saying "floppy disk drive"?
Thanks for your opinions, and then we'll go from here,
Again, I don't know why you're asking me; this is the kind of thing you should be asking on WT:MOS since none of this is anything in which I have any particular interest or in which my opinions would carry any particular weight. My personal opinions are:
"Acronym" is the correct term for all the examples you've given. It's a word with two meanings; if you want OED chapter-and-verse 1. A group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately; an initialism (such as ATM, TLS). 2. A word formed from the initial letters of other words or (occasionally) from the initial parts of syllables taken from other words, the whole being pronounced as a single word (such as NATO, RADA).. In the rare circumstances where you specifically need to differentiate between "each letter is pronounced individually" and "pronounces as if it were a word", you should probably explicitly explain that;
If the source says is "looks like a stereo", then say that, if the source says it "looks like traditional home stereo system equipment" say that. If it doesn't say either and you're just expressing a personal opinion then it's pure original research that shouldn't be being said in Wikipedia's voice. I'd question whether "traditional" is ever going to be appropriate in Wikipedia's voice in this context, since there's no such thing as a "traditional" stereo—what you actually mean is "typical stereo circa the 1960s–1980s";
Ditto; it's not Wikipedia's job to be comparing things, except for things like measurements which can be sourced. Saying "a looks like b" (as opposed to "Expert has said that a looks like b") isn't appropriate for Wikipedia except in a very few circumstances;
Wikipedia isn't a how-to guide so this probably shouldn't be being included at all. If there's a legitimate reason for saying that a floppy disk drive should be attached, and it specifically has to be a floppy drive, then "floppy disk drive" or "floppy drive" would be preferable over "disk drive". The number of occasions on which this should arise would be so minimal, I very much doubt it would be worth trying to get anything added to the MOS to cover these circumstances.
{{OED|Acronym|id=1844}} (it needs the id number as there's a separate entry for "acronym" as a verb meaning "to create acronyms" so {{OED|Acronym}} goes to a disambiguation page). It's better to use the {{OED}} template than cite book/web, as it means that if they one day drop the paywall it will only need a single edit to the template to remove the "subscription required" rather than hunting down every outgoing link and fixing it. ‑ Iridescent06:41, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
Just my two cents, since we're on the topic: I find the sub-pages of the MoS – linked at the beginning of a lot of sections of the MoS – rather confusing. They're like a maze, and sometimes I find something useful, but when I try to find it three months later, I can't. Would it be worth discussing a different breakdown of the MoS (not to say also a slight slimming down)? For example, if the entire MoS cannot be all on one page, to have the different pages be "Content", "Formatting", "Images", "Layout", etc., but with no more sub-pages within those sections. Then, for example, all information on italics would be on one page, not scattered over several sub-pages. – Corinne (talk) 16:33, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
I'd support that in principle (and I suspect most of the MOS people would as well), but it would be very hard to find a proposal that would gain consensus. Many of those subpages are the result of assorted WikiProjects inventing their own rules and demanding that they be enforced within their walled gardens, or of people concerned with a particular area not feeling that it's appropriate to make everybody read through a set of rules in which most people are unlikely to be interested. The latter case isn't necessarily A Bad Thing. For instance, merging WP:Manual of Style/Images and WP:Manual of Style/Visual arts might appear to make sense at first glance, but someone writing a biography of a baseball player who just wants to know how to format the image captions in the photos, or a technical article about aircraft engines who wants to know if it's acceptable to force an image to display at double size to make the technical details clearer, doesn't need to know (for instance) how to format the titles for articles about artworks, and we'd be doing them a disservice by making them scroll through a User:EEng-sized browser-crasher to get to whatever it is they need. Add to that the number of projects who guard "their" articles as independent fiefdoms and will resist to the death any attempt to consolidate rules (do you want to be the one to try to MFD WP:MEDMOS or WP:MOSFILM, or to explain to WP:WikiProject Trains or WP:WikiProject Ships that they can no longer unilaterally decide their own rules?). The timesink any effort to streamline the MOS would take is almost certainly not worth the effort; the status quo, of people disregarding those parts of the MOS they don't consider relevant and thus those parts which are being disregarded eventually being removed as no longer representing custom and practice, is probably the least worst solution to the issue one will get. ‑ Iridescent16:54, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Just for the record, to the extent anyone might have trouble opening my user/talk pages, it has nothing to do with the "size" of the page (whether in terms of source text, or generated html). It's the images. A comparably large MOS page would be no problem; ANI is just as big. EEng19:03, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Not quite; it's also templates, of which ANI doesn't transclude many. Try opening a template heavy page like Israel or International recognition of Kosovo in VE (or open the page in edit mode and select "preview", which forces your browser to bypass the cache and load from scratch) and watch your browser cry; I don't recommend doing it on a metered connection. Even ANI is long enough to routinely crash the browser on my phone. ‑ Iridescent19:18, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
For readers (i.e. not someone editing) templates have nothing to do with bandwidth or browser performance except to the extent they contribute to the html, which is all that matters (plus the images, as I said). My user page is 646K of html, which is only a bit bigger than ANI at 540K; but with images my userpage is 1.4M. Israel is 1.1M just for the html, 1.6M with images.
For someone editing, there's a delay while a complicated page is prepared on the server end, and the bandwidth used is the above html figures + the source size. That's for source editing. Visual editor creates a complete mess and I'm not surprised it fails on complicated pages. My advice to you on that is: don't use VE. EEng20:28, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
We're not just talking loading times and the amount of html clutter—when it comes to mobile interfaces, there's also the issue of readability. Remember, especially in developing countries a lot of editors as well as readers are using mobile devices (and often relatively outdated mobile devices) as their sole interface for editing—try navigating something like Talk:Emmett Till on a phone to get a feel for what a combined MOS:IMAGES/WP:VAMOS would feel like. ‑ Iridescent21:02, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Oh. I didn't know about those projects using their own rules and rejecting/ignoring parts of the MoS. What's special about those areas that would require different rules? Are their particular preferences mainly about content or mainly about formatting? – Corinne (talk) 17:03, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
With regards to the ones I'm most familiar with, WP:VAMOS and the trains project, they're a set of supplementary rules/guidelines for writing about specific articles. As an example off the top of my head, because the European and North American rail networks (and rail engines) were largely built by British or British-trained engineers in the 19th century who used Imperial measurements, on railways miles-feet-inches are far more significant than usual, even in countries like France that have been wholly metric for centuries; likewise, the official measurements for rail lines are often still listed in the elsewhere-archaic system of chains and rods. With regards to WP:VAMOS, there are numerous elements where it's desirable to consolidate and standardize (is it "Botticelli's The Birth of Venus", "Botticelli's 'The Birth of Venus'", "The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)" or "The Birth of Venus, Botticelli"?) but which aren't relevant to people writing on other topics, so it arguably makes sense to have the rules tucked away where they don't get in other peoples' way.
WP:MEDMOS is a slightly different beast; because of the way PageRank works and the Wikipedia Zero program, Wikipedia's medical articles are often the main—and sometimes the only—available resource for medical information, so it's more important than usual that they be consistent in format and style. If someone misinterprets something on Victorian painting because it's misleadingly worded, not in the place they'd expect to find it, or the article is incomplete, then it's an annoyance; if someone misinterprets something on Poppy tea because it's misleadingly worded, not in the place they'd expect to find it, or the article is incomplete, then Wikipedia is indirectly responsible for someone dying or suffering serious internal damage. Thus, MOS compliance is taken much more seriously on medical articles than elsewhere, and there are additional rules to try to make the articles as consistent and intelligible as possible. ‑ Iridescent17:28, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Wow. Thank you for such a thorough explanation, Iridescent. This is so well written that perhaps it should be placed somewhere for people to read it. It might prevent people from becoming upset when coming across these kinds of differences. – Corinne (talk) 22:27, 11 September 2017 (UTC) It might also help new copy-editors at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors. – Corinne (talk) 22:28, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
The MOS people (or anyone else) are welcome to reuse and adapt it if they want. (The problems with the MOS don't, in general, stem from the proliferation of rules or even from those occasions where the rules are contradictory; they stem from friction between people who see the MOS as a set of rules that need to be enforced, and people who see the MOS as a set of suggestions which don't need to be obeyed religiously provided it doesn't disrupt the reader's experience.)
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bitcoin Magazine 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. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:34, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
Explaining why I altered the template
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I'm sorry for changing the template of the Tiffany Sessions page, I just saw that there were some missing words, and that I called a user an administrator which is misleading, so I didn't think that there would be any harm in just making some touch ups to it, so I apologize if I upset you. Davidgoodheart (talk) 03:08, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
(This AFD from three months ago, for the benefit of confused watchers; I have no idea why it's being raised now) I'm not upset—I was just undoing your disruption since you were ignoring the large No further edits should be made to this page notice, and warning you that of all the things to get blocked over this would be a truly stupid cause for which to go over the top. (The Wikipedia community takes a very dim view of people retroactively editing discussions.) ‑ Iridescent11:09, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
Self-nominated GAs?
Latest comment: 7 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion
I think if anyone knows the answer to this, you will. I was reading Forth Road Bridge, expecting it to be a good article (as distinctly different from a good article, which it is logged as) and came away crestfallen, so I went to have a look and see what reviewing had gone on in the first place. I realise GA standards 10+ years ago were lacking (and some might say still are, depending on what reviewers turn up), but I was surprised to see here a bare assertion of "A successful self-nomination as a good article was made last week"; and indeed, the "GA review" on the talk page is simply a diff.
There was certainly a time—up to when Malleus shook the GA project into shape circa 2007–08—when GA reviews were a straightforward tick-box "does this meet the criteria" exercise; 2006 would have been when the old system was still in place, so I wouldn't hold that against it. (Just to put the general rise in standards in perspective, this was what FAC looked like on the day of that GA review—note that such things as "Support. Wow! Impressive!" and "Support. Good work." were considered perfectly acceptable grounds for supporting.) It did get a GAR in 2009 (by Pyrotec, who wasn't exactly known for being soft) which it survived, so it can't have been too far out of keeping with community standards. The bridge project is virtually dead—when it came to the UK, it basically consisted of me—so I'm not sure who the best people to talk to would be (I wouldn't wish the roads project on anyone). ‑ Iridescent18:10, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
My point was rather that there's no evidence of a review actually having taken place at all - not even so much as a "looks awesome, good 2 go" sort of comment. I am not generally a fan of projects, as I think I've mentioned before, so I don't see any point in going there as you'll never get anything. (That's a little harsh on WikiProject London Transport as DavidCane does product some nice stats about this time of year, and there is a little bit of traffic, but questions can stagnate for months on there.) FRB basically suffers from having been in the local news a lot for the last ten years and having a lot of drive by editors come in and add a bunch of WP:RECENTISM into the article - I'm sure it can be sorted out one way or another without too much of a headache. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)19:51, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
Your view of WP:LTappears to be a little rosier than mine. That's no criticism of DavidCane, who's doing excellent work, but he's very much a flower growing in the sewer—the self-appointed owner of the project is one of the more toxic personalities I've encountered in my time and the project has consequently become something of an echo chamber. If you have anything to raise about the tube, you're much better off asking at WP:UKRAIL, which (once you learn to tune out the anoraks) is one of Wikipedia's less dysfunctional projects. ‑ Iridescent21:35, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
(adding) Ritchie333, looking at other GANs from the time the "drive-by passing" doesn't seem out of the ordinary. This was the entire GA review for A215 road (which, like the FRB, is a UK transport article about which there's not as much of interest to say as you'd think) at about the same time; This was the entire GA review for the mammoth A1 in London. If it was the author of FRB who assessed their own article (I haven't checked the history) that would be iffy, but even then it's survived a GAR so presumably wasn't wrong. It probably needs a wipe-and-rewrite from scratch in an ideal world, but I don't volunteer to do this. Edinburgh has always suffered in Wikipedia terms from having an unusually low population for a city of its significance (it's about the same size as Omaha in population terms, and a significant proportion of those are students with little attachment to the place), meaning there are not only fewer people to write the Wikipedia articles, there are fewer people to write the source texts on which to base Wikipedia articles. ‑ Iridescent11:09, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
I do mean to get round to doing some more cleanup. I don't doubt the GAR was effective, but a lot has happened to the bridge (at least politically) since then, which has meant it has got further away from the GA criteria. The recent opening of the Queensferry Crossing means now is probably a good time to keep an eye on FRB's article before it runs the risk of more well-intentioned edits that nevertheless deteriorate the article. As there have been no significant edits for nearly a week, I think I'm within my rights to take it to GAR again; I can't revert to the 2009 version as it would cut out a huge part of history.
Is it worth doing another round of "GA sweeps" as there were in 2009? If GAs deteriorate and stop meeting the criteria, they shouldn't be marked as such as it'll mislead the reader. Same goes for FAs, which do get swept on a regular basis (though I also recall Backmasking had slipped through the net somehow). Ritchie333(talk)(cont)11:24, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
A fresh round of sweeps would be a monumental undertaking. Last time, we had a group of people driving it who were fairly universally respected (even people who loathed them personally would concede that they knew what they were talking about with regards to quality control)—if you look at the actual list of who did what, a small handful of editors conducted the overwhelming majority of reviews. I don't have much dealing with GA nowadays, but the impression I get is that it no longer has a force-of-nature like Eric to hold peoples' noses to the grindstone, but instead has a far higher proportion of people who don't really know what they're doing and are working from WP:WIAGA as a checklist. I also get the impression that it's taken over from FAC as the favored haunt of the special snowflake prima donnas, many of whom will throw tantrums at the prospect of their shiny green baubles being taken away. Plus, there's the obvious elephant in the room in that when the first sweep began there were 2808 GAs and it still took three years to clear the backlog; there are currently over 25,000.
A more practical solution would probably be to break the lists down by category, and dump a "here are all your current GAs, can you skim them and see if anything is obviously wrong" list on the talkpage of every wikiproject. Some shit would slip through the net, but it would at least get people looking at them.
Personally, I think the whole notion of "article assessment" in the sense in which Wikipedia uses it is about a decade past its time. It's a legacy of a long-dead pet project of Jimmy's to cram Wikipedia onto a CD-ROM so he could play Great White Saviour dishing them out to suitably photogenic children in the developing world, and the WMF needed the quality/importance matrix to decide which articles would be included in a space-limited medium. Nowadays, when that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so is far more likely to have internet access than she is to have a CD-ROM drive, long discussions about whether something is B-class or GA are just a massive timesink. The only quality scale Wikipedia really needs to function is "shitty or not shitty", while "importance" has always been meaningless. (The topics that are deemed top importance are almost invariably those topics it's least important that Wikipedia cover, since they're the topics where there are plenty of other sources available. If Wikipedia shut down tomorrow nobody researching The Beatles or Elvis Presley would bat an eyelid but people wanting to research Damageplan or Faryl Smith would really suffer.) ‑ Iridescent23:10, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
By the time my article at Malvern, Worcestershire was reviewed January 12, 2010, the review was almost as strict as a FA. However I have increasingly come across many short articles that users have been passing on a 'I'll pass yours if you'll pass mine' basis. I assume this to be mainly by younger users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:05, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Need a problematic userpage (not user subpage) to article-page move sorted out
Latest comment: 7 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion
Hi Iridescent, I don't know if you got my ping from WP:Articles for deletion/Community Displacement in Philadelphia, but there's a devil of a problem in that the article creator (Sunshine424) created the article directly on her userpage (not on a sandbox or other subpage), and then moved it to article space, so that her own "talkpage" is now full of article banners and citations-modified bot notices in addition to her talkpage welcomes, notices, warnings, and discussions. This needs to be sorted out before the AfD closes, because the deletion of the article will delete all of her legitimate talk-page notices and warnings, etc. I have no idea how you would fix this mess without involving a move-back and then some cutting and pasting, but I'm sure you are up to it. Right? Softlavender (talk) 01:02, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
I'd be inclined to wait until the AFD closes. If it closes as delete we can just selectively revdel the history to recreate the talkpage, which will be a lot lot lot easier than splitting the history. (Or, we can just delete the whole thing—yes, policy says we should preserve talk history, but it's very unlikely anyone will ever care in this case.) ‑ Iridescent11:09, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
Since it is Iridescent's "project" at the moment, I believe it is up to him (or someone who has an absolute certainty about it) to resolve the matter. Softlavender (talk) 02:18, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Meh; it won'tbe the first time he's done this GoodBye routine when someone's challenged him, and it won't be the last. Enough people—many of whom have no love for me—watch this talkpage that if I've actually said or done anything inappropriate someone will jump on it within minutes. ‑ Iridescent09:45, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
Given what you have said about the wider cemetery in the past, I though you might be interested in this exhibition. I only just noticed recently, and will try and go at some point. Am currently pondering whether there is a way to highlight the major CWGC cemeteries, as the category at Category:Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries is a bit overwhelming. The memorials are numerous, but it has been possible to bring some order to listings and so forth there. The cemeteries are a different matter. Am trying to figure out which cemeteries might feature on a list. I suppose the logical grouping or criteria to use as a cut-off is size (there are 29 with over 4000 burials). I am sure I made some notes on this somewhere a while ago... :-) Carcharoth (talk) 14:14, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
I know that it's under new management now (and that the military cemetery was never under the control of the gaggle of colorful characters who ran the LNC), but I'd quite happily never have anything to do with Brookwood again.
I'm not sure size is really going to be useful as a cut-off when it comes to military cemeteries, as the significant ones aren't necessarily going to be the largest. (Some later burials in WWI have pushed it over the line, but if you treat the WWI section as separate, than even Gettysburg wouldn't meet the 4000 mark.) Something like Richmond Cemetery only has a couple of hundred war graves, but because of its association with the Star and Garter would be near the top of any list of historically significant military cemeteries in Britain. When it comes to overseas sites, because WWI casualties were so much higher than any other campaign the British fought then any cut-off high enough to limit the WWI listings to a reasonable number would end up excluding high importance sites like Kohima, Grangegorman and Sai Wan (not to mention the Flanders field where poppies grow between the crosses row on row itself!). Plus, for some campaigns like Gallipoli there are lots of little cemeteries rather than a single big one and some of the bodies were repatriated, so a 4000 cutoff would probably lose all of them.
I know The Wikipedia Community hates anything that can't be quantified as a hard-and-fast rule, but "notability of military cemeteries" probably is something where "do reliable sources consider it high importance?" is more sensible than trying to codify a rule. Paging HJ Mitchell who might have some thoughts. ‑ Iridescent18:17, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
There must be some sort of objective criteria we can use. We'd never get it incorporated into the category system or anything else on the basis of subjective criteria because it's not for encyclopaedia editors to be making those sorts of judgements about the relative importance of a subject. I don't have as much literature on cemeteries as I do on memorials, but there must be some that come up again and again in the books and others not so much. Funny you should mention Richmond Cemetery; as it happens, I wrote that, as well as the articles on the two war memorials in it (the Bromhead Memorial and the South African War Memorial, and the guy who built the former). None of those is fantastic, though they could potentially make GA, maybe FA with a lot of work. But I tend to bypass GA; too often you wait two months and then get a boilerplate tickbox review with no useful feedback on developing the article further and sometimes you're left wondering if the reviewer did more than skim read the article. i'll try and get to Brookwood, bu I'm unlikely to get there while the exhibition is on. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:00, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Just off the top of my head something that might work is:
At least 1000 military burials or
At least five people buried in CWGC plots who have their own Wikipedia articles or
At least two military memorials/monuments on the site with their own Wikipedia articles or
The cemetery is the largest CWGC cemetery in its country and includes at least 100 CWGC graves or
The cemetery is the largest CWGC cemetery (of any size) in a present-day country that was a part of the British Empire at some point between 1914–1945 or
The cemetery is the largest CWGC cemetery (of any size) in a current British overseas territory or dependency.
The numbers might need some tweaking; the CWGC list 185 with 1000-2000, 78 with 2000-3000, 34 3000-4000 and 58 4000+ giving a total of 355, but that's deceptive as for their purposes they count memorials as "cemeteries" for everyone listed on them (thus, they treat the Menin Gate as the 'burial place' of 50,000+ soldiers); the actual number would be far more manageable. I'd be reluctant to push "minimum number of burials" above 1000, since Essex Farm and Kohima* only have 1200 and 1400 burials respectively and don't meet any of the other criteria, and those two have to be included on any "notable Commonwealth cemeteries" list if it's to be remotely credible. Criterion 4 is there to ensure Archangel Allied Cemetery is included (even though it has a decent claim to be Wikipedia's shittiest article); the minimum number is to avoid 150 redlinks for tiny churchyards in Nauru and San Marino that happen to contain the graves of a couple of Commonwealth servicemen (the largest CWGC cemetery in Guatemala contains one grave, to take an extreme example). Criteria 5 & 6 will cause a couple of weird outriders in places like St Kitts & Nevis and Alderney, but it probably makes sense to include them rather than risk causing offence by sending a "your country isn't important enough to be mentioned" signal—it will rarely if ever come up, since places like the largest CWGC cemetery in Barbados will be very unlikely ever to get Wikipedia articles. ‑ Iridescent20:50, 29 September 2017 (UTC) *Kohima, as with everywhere with a lot of Indian casualties, is misleadingly small as most non-Muslim Indian casualties were cremated so don't count towards the totals.
That's a bit convoluted, but could give us a decent hitlist if we were looking at where to target article improvements. I'm not sure we'd get away with using it as the basis for a category or a list in mainspace. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:30, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Oh, it's horribly convoluted, but any purely-by-numbers method will end up creating a de factoList of cemeteries in Belgium and northern France with a couple of big cemeteries in Britain, Ireland and India tacked on. (If we adopt a 1000-burial cutoff without the special case exemptions, you can be the designated single point of contact to field complaints from outraged colonials asking why there isn't a single cemetery listed in Australia, Canada, South Africa or New Zealand.) I've certainly seen more complicated inclusion guidelines accepted on Wikipedia—the notability guidelines for horses spring to mind, while the even more convoluted WP:BAND is one of Wikipedia's most frequently cited guidelines and doesn't appear to cause undue confusion. ‑ Iridescent18:06, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Jesus wept. Which band was someone so desperate to save from deletion that they had to write that? I'm not sure I've seen any lists with such convoluted inclusion criteria, though I'd be far from shocked if they existed. What about a List or largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries? We could use your criteria #1 and #4, perhaps in two separate tables, and probably get away with a few case-by-case exclusions or inclusions but 355 is still going to be hard to navigate. I'd be inclined to refine it further, but if what we want is 100 most important cemeteries, Wikipedia really isn't set up for that kind of thing. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:34, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
A straightforward "largest" is still going to have problems, as it will exclude pretty much everything not on the Western Front. A list combining #1 and #4 might work pretty well, in that it won't exclude things like Archangel and Sydney but will make it clear to the reader just how huge the Western Front are compared to anything else. I'd still hate to lose Essex Farm, but if it can't be avoided then so it goes.
It will be hard to handle India sensitively. There's an obvious issue that taking a number-of-burials approach the singularly undistinguished Kirkee War Cemetery is technically largest but losing Kohima and Imphal to make way for it would be perverse. There's also the issue that because Christians and Muslims were buried but Hindus and Sikhs were cremated, any list would unavoidably downplay the sacrifices of soldiers from what is now India. (I assume this is at least in part why the CWGC have their "buried or named on a roll of honour" fudge.)
I wasn't there, but I'd guess much of the convoluted nature of WP:BAND is down to the Berserkeley faction at the WMF's obsession with "systemic bias" and a desire to ensure that someone who had a top ten hit in Albania in 1973 doesn't get deleted just because nobody in the world has ever demonstrated the slightest interest in them and the article has no sources, because that would be, like, culturally insensitive. (The real cynic in me says that in the early days of Wikipedia when all those policies were being written, Wikipedia was dominated by nerdy types with vast collections of obscure indie, techno, punk and goth EPs, who wanted to make sure that the likes of Vice Squad and Bearsuit couldn't be deleted despite their not being notable by any reasonable standard.) WP:BAND is by no means the worst offender when it comes to convoluted notability guidelines drawn up by people trying to ensure their pet article is kept (although the must insane notability guideline is surely Wikipedia:Notability (numbers)). ‑ Iridescent20:16, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
First of all, Buster, I'm from Berserkeley myself, so watch your mouth. And anyway it's called Albany, not Albania. Honestly! EEng23:04, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Indiscriminate lists
Latest comment: 7 years ago15 comments8 people in discussion
No, as that's a list with a clearly limited scope (assuming you're using a definition of "waste recycling centre" that means "industrial-scale operations", not "a couple of Romanians with a Transit collecting scrap and sorting it in their shed"); the usual Wikipedia practice is to limit such lists to entries which have their own Wikipedia articles, which would stop it getting out of hand. In terms of Wikipedia, it's no different to List of airports in India in that it's self-limiting to a manageable size and is potentially useful to readers. Indiscriminate lists would be List of Anglican churches (which unbelievably survived a deletion discussion), List of people by name (which didn't), or List of bridges in the United States (which has never been tested). ‑ Iridescent21:57, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. That's pretty much my take on it. I reduced List of public libraries in Delaware County, Pennsylvania per your comment about "usual Wikipedia practice" and refused an offer to take the entire list to AfD because I knew that would just be a waste of everyone's time. Things stalled at that point because I am (seemingly) being pointedly ignored on the talk page.
I must admit to not being a fan of lists in general, and to being fairly keen on the notion that we should not be a directory, but I think they're devices that appeal to a certain type of writer. I use the word writer in a very loose sense. - Sitush (talk) 22:22, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Don't take my "usual Wikipedia practice" comment as a hard and fast rule; I can certainly see cases where including redlinks in a list would be valid (for instance if you're listing every book by an author, haven't got round to writing all the articles about the individual books, but know that the books are undisputedly notable). Astonishingly, given how much its WP:OWNers like to micromanage every facet of other peoples' work, the MOS appears to be silent on the subject. ‑ Iridescent22:46, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
I realise that. I just see this list and ones similar to it as being the start of another rabbit-hole similar to schools. - Sitush (talk) 22:56, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
To play devil's advocate, I can see that one could make the same argument w.r.t. libraries that Wikipedia uses to justify having a stand-alone article on every railway station, every MP et cetera—because a public library is always an important building within its community, even the most obscure library can be presumed to be the topic of significant coverage in the local press when it opened, and regular ongoing coverage for as long as it remains open. (I don't agree with this when it comes to railway stations, let alone libraries, and have annoyed some people along the way in arguing that something like Railway stations in Cromer is more useful to the reader than three tiny stand-alone stubs, but I'll concede that my opinion is out of line with consensus.) User:EEng seems to be the MOS's current designated ambassador to the human race, and might be able to point you towards something official one way or the other. ‑ Iridescent23:02, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Me? What??? You must be thinking of SMcCandlish; except for MOS:DATE, which I'm well steeped in, I'm really just middling on MOS in general. Personally I've hardly seen a list I didn't think was ridiculous (one exception: List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice) but on the other hand, I think it's a shame WP:NOPAGE isn't invoked more often to give an integrated presentation of related stuff (e.g. the train stations you mentioned) on a single page. EEng01:34, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
Well, there's a consensus that redlinks (or, more often, entries that simply are not linked) are usually permissible, even desirable, in lists, as long as they don't fail WP:NOT (mostly INDISCRIMINATE). We have this consensus for the specific reasons that a) WP:Notability only pertains to what may have its own article not what may be enclopedically covered, e.g. in a list or section, and b) one of the primary purposes of lists on WP is to provide a place for non-notable but encyclopedic topics, to prevent a profusion of micro-stubs. Most lists should not have inclusion criteria that limit them to only notable entries that already have their own articles. We usually only do that in two cases: a) when there are too many potential items to list (e.g., there are over 100,000 academic journals; even subdividing them micro-topically is insufficient for us to be able to list all of them), or b) where the nature of the topic attracts promotional entries of non-encyclopedic garbage (e.g. lists of animal breeds, which attract additions of "backyard breeder" experiments).
On the broader issue, I think the Lord Mayor of London type article versus List of lord mayors of London type article (the whole class of which have been a nexus of dispute for several month) highlight the problem. It does a disservice to readers to have stand-alone list articles on things like that, instead of a single article with an embedded list. I have a feeling that the entire encyclopedia would be vastly improved by merging about 75% of our list articles into the main articles on the topics.
I like "MoS ambassador" as a volunteer job title, but no one "designated" me. Ha ha. Still, few gnomes, and zero non-gnomes, have either the MoS memory or the patience to do an article cleanup like this. Unless you desire to pull all your hear out, it also requires tools and know-how, like being able to construct regex patterns in a really good external text editor to auto-process a lot of such stuff. Doing it all manually is too much. It's important work, though. That article now reads like an encyclopedia article instead of like a blog put together by some stoned students, all without altering the meaning of the content in much of any way (other than some PoV fixes). — SMcCandlish☏¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 07:41, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
There's a fine balance between "the list is more useful in the parent article" and "the list overwhelms the parent article", though. To take my List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice EEng mentions above (itself a good example of a list in which every entry is notable by Wikipedia standards but where it's inappropriate to redlink them since the articles are unlikely ever to be written), that was split off to its own subpage because it would otherwise have made the already large Postman's Park unmanageably long. I always try to bear in mind that most of Wikipedia's readers aren't reading articles top-to-bottom on desktop PCs, but are either viewing on phones, reading printouts, or searching for a single specific fact; consequently, the longer an article is, the more difficult we're making it for someone reading on a phone screen to find whatever it is they're looking for.
I don't think the idea of a MOS Ambassador is actually a bad one. It can't have escaped your notice that the MOS has a reputation as being the haunt of arrogant obsessives insisting that everyone else drop everything now to immediately comply with whatever bee happens to be in their bonnet that day; nor can it have escaped your notice that this reputation isn't entirely undeserved. Someone willing to sit down and explain "here's why we feel that standardizing foo is a good thing, here's how we propose to enforce it, here's where you can comment if you don't agree"—and a feedback process in which people raising concerns are actually treated with courtesy, rather than bullied by the regulars until they go away—would undoubtedly be a good thing if the MOS is ever going to be seen as more than a retirement home for the veterans of the em-dash wars. ‑ Iridescent11:03, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
I've had two arguments in as many days with MOS at the root of it, and my basic issue is that nobody ever explains why this this part of the MOS is relevant for this article, in common sense terms. No, it's only ever "but the MOS says so waaaaah". Ritchie333(talk)(cont)10:56, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
Your mistake, Ritchie, is to think that common sense plays any part of the MoS: the MoS is, therefore obedience to at all times is necessary. Those who make it a false god or fetish don't seem to "do" common sense, rather like some of the people at AfD, it seems. - SchroCat (talk) 11:03, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
I used to be fairly die-hard anti when it came to the MOS, but have mellowed somewhat, and will concede that it serves a useful function in resolving "there's no obvious right way to do this, but let's standardize on this to avoid arguments". IMO a lot of the dislike of it stems from the fact that, because by definition the only time most people have a reason to refer to it is when something's in dispute, by definition one tends only to see people there when they're at their worst. (Plus, a well-intentioned desire to cover all disputes means things are sometimes micromanaged to a ludicrous extent.) Ironically, the one aspect of Wikipedia which desparately does need standardization - citation formatting - is one of the few things that the MOS explicitly refuses to touch. ‑ Iridescent01:28, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Excuse me ?
Latest comment: 7 years ago22 comments10 people in discussion
Like hell I will; nonsensical driveby bot edits—in this case, demanding that 19th-century prison photographs include author information or be liable for deletion—are clearly disruptive. (And that's just with regards to me; your tag-bombing of Giano's contributions today is starting to leave "disruptive" behind and cross over into pure harassment). ‑ Iridescent19:12, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Honestly, I don't see the problem. Formatting the information into the usual template does nothing to invite deletion, does it? EEng19:50, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I couldn't care less if he formats the information into a template; what I could care about is that he's spamming massive "This file has no author information, and may be lacking other information" templates over any image that doesn't meet his own made-up criteria for the information a file needs to include. (The authorship information is vanishingly unlikely to be recorded for 19th century police and prison records. Not only would the authorities not have deemed it important to record exactly which policeman/warder actually pressed the shutter—the modern concept of "evidence trail" didn't exist—but even the identities of the lower ranking prison staff was unlikely ever to have been published, given that in a 19th-century US/UK industrial city having your neighbors discover you worked in a prison would be tantamount to a death sentence.) Were this a new user I'd cut some slack, but AGF has long since ceased to apply to SFan who for the last couple of years has given the impression of being a third-rate Betacommand tribute act. (Note that six minutes after the above missive, he posted this (promptly withdrawn) revenge FFD—unless you think that by miraculous coincidence he'd just happened to stumble across an image I uploaded in 2007.) ‑ Iridescent21:08, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Incidentally, you might quite enjoy Almeric Paget, 1st Baron Queenborough from which that image comes. The quality isn't great—it was one of the first articles I ever wrote on WP and I've never gotten round to bringing it up to modern standards—but it's all true and is a deeply odd story. ‑ Iridescent21:11, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Just interested to know (in all senses of the word 'interested') how you think we're going to deal with images where authorship is genuinely unknown (such as the above) and where we know there are no copyright issues at play when the structured data juggernaut arrives on Commons and eventually English Wikipedia. The work which ShakespeareFan00 is doing (whilst unfortunately managing to upset so many people) will have been vital when it comes to porting over file data into the structured data format, and pages without information boxes and with an absence of clear authorship, copyright or other key data will need to be handled manually at some level and some stage. This discussion was going to be had in some way, shape or form at some point, basically. It would be useful if you could perhaps collaborate with ShakespeareFan00, who is, despite your criticisms, working with the best interests of the project and its downstream content re-users at heart to find a way forward which will keep you happy, and which will make the transition to structured data and machine readable file information painless. Nick (talk) 10:19, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
I have no issue with moving attribution data into a consistent format for the ease of metadata extraction and a consistent reader and editor experience (if I had my way Wikipedia would have a single citation format as well, for the same reason). The issue here is that while unattributed text references are relatively uncommon (although particularly with pre-war sources uncredited or pseudonymous newspaper and magazine articles aren't unusual), there's nothing at all uncommon about unattributed images, particularly from government or corporate sources, so they can't be treated as some kind of edge-cases where the few stragglers can be manually tidied up. (In the not unlikely case that Google decides that there's no commercial value in older versions of Street View and makes outdated versions open source as a PR/goodwill gesture, it will suddenly dump roughly a billion images into the public domain with no named author.)
SFan's script (understandably, given the limitations of software) is unable to discern the difference between 'the "author" field is blank or just says "unknown" because the uploader couldn't be bothered to look' and 'the "author" field is blank or just says "unknown" because the identity of the creator is unrecorded', and as a consequence is spamming large numbers of images with inappropriate maintenance tags. There are some quick-fixes which would mitigate the problem, such as a presumption that any file description missing an author in which an institution or organization is mentioned in the file description is going to be legitimately blank, and a presumption that anything pre-1914 which doesn't name an author is going to be legitimately blank, but ultimately this is something that needs to be done manually—some tasks just aren't suited for bots and scripts and this is one of them.
SFan takes the Betacommand approach, in assuming that anything that doesn't fit his expectations of what a file description ought to look like is automatically suspect, that WP:AGF is suspended when it comes to images and there should be a presumption that images are non-free unless proven otherwise, and that some legitimate images mistakenly tagged for deletion is a price worth paying if it gets the legitimate images sorted faster. I assume you remember how well that worked out for Betacommand, and also that every discussion that has ever been had on the topic has concluded that this approach is incompatible with en-wikipedia.
If you (plural) do feel that the time has now come for a "can't make an omelet without breaking eggs" approach to images, then the thing to do is get consensus before you start as to exactly what needs doing, how it should be done, and what an acceptable error rate would be. Any discussion would need to be project-wide and very widely publicized, since if it does get consensus (unlikely; don't underestimate just how much the Wikidata fiasco has poisoned opinion against the notion of making any concessions towards structured data), anyone who wasn't aware of it and finds images they've worked hard to source, clean up and upload suddenly disappearing is going to protest in the strongest terms. ‑ Iridescent11:01, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
I don't know if we're at the stage of "can't make an omelet without breaking eggs" just yet - it will, unfortunately, reach that stage when structured data is deployed and we've got a catalogue of images to deal with where the uploader isn't active and can't help clarify anything, but for lots of images now, like the above, we need to find a way for SF00 and others to add information boxes and provide meaningful machine readable data without leaving unnecessary maintenance tags, without leaving several (or more) templated messages which are likely to upset and antagonise the receiving editor, and crucially, without forcing anybody to make careless assumptions about authorship or content which may inadvertently lead to deletion (or in the small number of cases where there will be an issue with the content, retention). It would be interesting to know if there's a kinder, more gentle, far less annoying way of someone like SF00 being able to ask uploaders (much like yourself - experienced and not in need of a nannying template) to add any other relevant data to the image in order that the information template can be completed as fully as possible. Nick (talk) 11:53, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
My closing comments on this. @Iridescent:, I will concede that it the timing of the CSD on the uniform image was not appropriate, and would like to apologize for being too quick in unfairly tagging this image, given that you'd already responded to the concerns about the other images, at that point. Based on your previous reverts, I should have reasonably sought a second view on the image or used a less formal approach to you directly, even though I later self-reverted, and put in a basic source for it on re-consideration anyway.
I'm also sorry that we have a difference of opinion about the formatting of information on file information pages, and the level of detail that is desirable. The 'warning' message about authorship in the information template is generated automatically in response to a blank entry in that field, as is the "nag" in the source field. Prior to your concerns, I had planned on asking an admin like @Nick:, to open an RFC about how the information template could be improved in any event.
And one clarification, I don't use a script to add the {{information}} block. All the recent efforts were semi-manual edits. The {{information}} block being a cut-and-paste of the pro-forma block on it's documentation. The relevant fields as they existed where then moved into the relevant fields. As stated previously, the warning message about "authorship" is automatic. Perhaps this is logic in the template that needs updating? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:37, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
I would not disagree with such a notion. Sometimes knowing the author is not relevant, typically in very old images where we know for sure that they are old enough to not be in copyright irrespective of authorship. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:08, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
Is the "author" of this image Titian who painted the original, Etty who painted this particular copy, York Museums Trust who own this copy, or the anonymous staff member at YORAG who took this particular photograph?
Off the top of my head, a quick fix fudge would be to make the author= field entirely optional and to display as invisible in the template if left blank. The more I think about it, the more I come to think that "author field blank" is actually probably the default when it comes to images. Commons is deceptive because it's populated largely with the uploaders' own creations (or with scrapes from similar sites like Flickr and Geograph which are populated with the uploaders' own creations), but in the real world "authorship" is rarely clear-cut, and it's inappropriate to treat "author field blank" as grounds for a garish warning template message. When it comes to public domain photographs, probably the single commonest source at present is the US government, whose photographs are rarely credited (who would be the "author" of a satellite photo?); for historic images, unless an image is signed it's not in the least uncommon for its creator either to be completely unknown, for the attribution to be questioned, or (for derivative works) the "creator" not to be clear-cut.
@Nick, it will, unfortunately, reach that stage when structured data is deployed leaves out a very, very big "if". The introduction of Wikidata was atrociously mismanaged—the "tanks on the lawn" approach has soured relations between the en-wikipedia editor base and Wikidata so badly that one of the primary use-cases looks likely to be banned from Wikipedia altogether. Consequently, unless the WMF unilaterally imposes structured data for image descriptions (which is possible, but would make Wikipedia descend into all-out civil war—most editors and readers are unaffected by any of the issues which triggered this trainwreck, but everyone would be affected by a "you must change the file description of every image, anything not compliant will be deleted" edict) I can't imagine a consensus ever developing that images hosted on en-wikipedia should comply with a structured data requirement, regardless of what route Commons eventually decides to go down.
If there really is a consensus to go down this route, I'd suggest that you'd be much better off taking a database dump, quietly generating a list of which images on it are potentially problematic, and posting a single notification to uploaders of all the potentially problematic images they've uploaded (even if they've left, there's a good chance someone with similar interests will be watching their talkpages). After that, run the same query again and for all those images which haven't had their issues resolved, post to the talkpages of whichever articles they're being used for. There's a very big "if" here, in that I don't believe there is a consensus that non-template file descriptions that include the necessary time/place/creator information in free text ("This is a photo of a cat chasing a bird, I took it in Yonkers on 14 April 2010") are problematic. (The {{information}} template is intended for non-free content, and was never supposed to be used for PD-1923; it assumes that every file has an institution that owns, published or released the file which is obviously not going to be the case for something that has entered the public domain by virtue of age.)
As long as you (plural) don't have something (preferably an RFC) that you can point to to prove that there is a consensus, then continuing what BC did and what SF is doing, of machine-gunning templated warnings for not complying with what appears to be a non-existent policy, is only going to end in tears. At the very least, you need either to redesign {{information}} so that it can handle unattributed but undisputed PD-1923 material or create a separate template. To quote something I wish I'd said first (Guy Macon gets the credit for this one), There once was a drunk driver who was driving the wrong way on the freeway. Upon hearing on the radio (over the honking horns) that there was a drunk driver who was driving the wrong way on the freeway, he peered through his windshield, noticed all of the headlights heading toward him, and exclaimed "My God! There are DOZENS of them!!". I don't doubt that this all began as a good-faith attempt to standardize Wikipedia's file descriptions, but given just how long SF has been receiving blowback over inappropriate or overenthusiastic taggings, at some point the time will have to come when he accepts that just because he thinks files should follow a standard description format, when it comes to a change this drastic the onus is on those wanting the change to demonstrate that there's support for it. ‑ Iridescent17:41, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Apologies for resurrecting this thread, but I noticed the discussion about structured data as part of this discourse. Turns out those Wikidata "recent changes" entries have been causing some big-time trouble: Phabricator ticket, of particular interest JCrespo's post at Sat.Oct.7, 2:09 p.m., which includes the statement that (at that time) g) we are close of running out of space on several main database servers, breaking all of Wikipedia. It's gonna be a while before this one gets cleaned up. The appearance of wikidata edits on wikipedia watchlists was a big selling feature, and there's a pretty good chance that feature will be withdrawn everywhere (not just the handful of projects where the watchlists simply crashed and burned). I'm not sure anyone really thought about the actual impact of use of Wikidata on the functioning of what we would consider basic operations such as recent changes, or they never imagined it would have the impact it is having now. Risker (talk) 05:22, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
I am not surprised at all that the recent changes data transfer is causing issues. Wikimedia works on the "every project a bubble unto itself" principle and Wikidata following that rule despite not being a bubble has caused a culture clash with other projects, since these are taking information from Wikidata but have different standards. This contradiction is really the root reason for all Wikidata problems we have here. It was predictable that the tech wasn't going to handle interdependencies well, either. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 10:19, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Ugh. This is not an invitation to use my talkpage as the venue for an Infobox Wars II: This Time It's Wikidata cage-fight, but RexxS, Jytdog, Pigsonthewing, Fram, Alsee and lots of others, if you're not already aware of this then you should be since if it comes to a straight-up "one of you is going to need to be rebuilt from scratch if you're both to survive" game of chicken between Wikipedia and Wikidata the WMF is not about to shut down its showpiece project, and it's best that all those involved whether pro or anti start thinking about what the strategy for surviving a forced shutdown of links between Wikipedia and Wikidata would look like. ‑ Iridescent02:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Your page is very ... robust!! :) I had no idea it was such fun - I love the "Why" thread below, especially. Thanks for the ping. Watchlisted. Jytdog (talk) 02:46, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Because over the years I've earned my lumps in both the content-writing, bots-and-scripts, meta-admin and BADSITES cliques, it tends to be something of a neutral zone where people who normally can't interact without shouting, can give their points of view without worrying about the Civility Police. It's a lot calmer than it used to be - try this 300kb archive for a single month to get an idea of what it used to be like. ‑ Iridescent02:55, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago17 comments6 people in discussion
Why did you close a discussion at the Village Pump about a proposal that had nothing to do with paying anyone for anything? Because you impulsively reacted and closed the discussion prematurely I was unable to reply. My idea is not what you characterised. I do not support paid editing. I support the development of a reward incentive system. Please note the difference. What is your solution for our failure to follow our neutrality policy against soap-boxing and propaganda? Its very disturbed removing the gunk from Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2020. Are you happy to let it slide with no expectation the problem will be resolved? That is called not managing very well. I have the solution. I invented it today with a conceptual outline of Web 3.0 and how Wikipedia should adopt it. - Shiftchange (talk) 10:49, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
"Reward Incentive System" is a fancy word for paid editing, with the added negative of introducing huge systemic bias as it will encourage people to write on those topics likely to generate rewards. WP:VPP is for serious policy discussions, not for you to float a particular hobby-horse idea which has zero chance of acceptance and which the WMF would immediately veto; if you want to set up an alternative Wikipedia in which editors can give cash payments to each other, nobody's stopping you forking. (Your basic premise, that Jimmy Wales will donate a few million dollars to get the ball rolling, is laughable as well—he's not going to starve any time soon but he's certainly not wealthy. For the WMF to donate the funds directly is a non-starter, since unless the funds were raised directly for this purpose—and "giving free money to everyone listed at WP:WBFAN" is not a purpose any donor is going to subsidize—it would be both illegal and unethical. Even the trivial sums involved at the T-shirt giveaway are contentious.) If you really feel this is a discussion that's worth having, you could try the Idea Lab, but I'd caution you that you won't get an answer that differs from those you've already been given. ‑ Iridescent11:15, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
It has surely not escaped your notice that despite your relentless spamming (I count here, here, here, here, here and here), other than Wnt (who would be the first to admit that his views are fringe and don't represent Wikipedia consensus) you've not found a single person with a single positive thing to say about your crank proposal. If you must continue tilting at this particular windmill, do it somewhere in your userspace where you're not going to continue to waste the time of the people who have to read this nonsense. ‑ Iridescent16:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
You imagine I seek profit and you also mistakenly think that inventions win a popularity contest. You make too many assumptions. I'm not interested in your attributions such as the label "paid editing", only the parts of my invention you find lacking. The WMF is able to make any donations to whomever they think will help meet their goals. How about all rewards remain unreleased until the system is proven to generate integrity? Just by this one simple design feature all of your concerns can be alleviated. If a trial doesn't work, then the WMF retains all funds. Less hand-wringing and more thinking about what is possible please. - Shiftchange (talk) 20:02, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
I "imagine", eh? To refresh your memory, your proposal (in full) was "some kind of incentive reward system whereby editors can receive bitcoin micropayments on a the basis of merit, rather than external sources of income"; when challenged on this, your explanation was So Jimmy could pass some bitcoin to whoever he trusts for doing a good edit. And then that editor can move some coin to another editor they think deserves a reward. And so forth. All publicly verifiable. See how good that would be? If a micropayment is not deserved we will work out a solution, okay? Its not payment because there is no agreement. Just incentive and reward, a tip or a gift, if you like. The system will generate trust consensus. It will be self-reinforcing. We could create bounties, prizes, competitions, bonus rewards and whole host of incentives to encourage existing editors and to bring in new editors who want in. Think of the buzz this would create. This way, we control the gifting economy rather than external forces to marketing. (my emphasis throughout). Quite aside from the inherent idiocy in suggesting Jimmy Wales is a fit and proper person to judge anything more complicated than a prize vegetable contest at the county fair (he has a level of ethics somewhere beneath that of a typical cat, since most cats will at least pretend to be guilty when they're caught doing something they shouldn't, while any other admin with his degree of incompetence would long since have been desysopped - unless you think this is an acceptable BLP), I see no way to interpret your proposal as anything other than a proposal to formalize paid editing for those edits of which you personally approve, which for obvious reasons is never going to happen. (There's a case to be made for allowing declared paid editing - as you may know, I'm in large part the reason we don't ban all paid editors outright, and my reputation among the Free Culture purists has never recovered. There is most definitely not a case to be made either for monetizing barnstars, or for allowing paid editing but only if paid editors sign up to the Bitcoin pyramid scheme.)
If I have somehow misinterpreted you, and this isn't in fact a scheme to introduce payments for particular edits but instead simply to ration the supply of barnstars to create a pseudo-economy based on scarcity, then I concede that your proposal isn't ethically repellent to the point that I'd indefblock anyone who participated in it (and I'd feel confident that if it reached that point, consensus would back me up). Instead, in that case the proposal would merely be utterly harebrained, and create huge amounts of administrative work for no obvious benefit, given that most regular editors either disable the thank function or leave it at the 99 mark (at which point you stop getting further notifications). You appear to have a very warped idea of how the thank function works; I can tell you from experience that you'll get an order of magnitude more thanks by running a search-and-replace for "and and", "doe snot" etc than you will from writing a high-traffic Featured Article from scratch, mediating a seemingly intractible dispute, spending a week of time conducting an in-depth article review and real money obtaining and verifying sources, or designing a template which improves 10,000 pages.
You also seem to be working under two serious false apprehensions. Firstly, that the number of active editors is falling (it isn't). Secondly, and more seriously, that the number of edits is low enough that it's feasible for them all to be reviewed and assessed. To put that in perspective, since I made this post (02:01, 10 October 2017 (UTC)) there have been 338805095 edits made to en-wikipedia alone. ‑ Iridescent02:01, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
He's persistent, I'll give him that. I stand by the comments I made when he first made this proposal in 2016. It takes a peculiar form of genius to come up with a proposal that manages to combine the worst of both the "pure free culture with no COIs permitted" and "don't ask, don't tell, if an edit is constructive it doesn't matter where it came from" schools of thought whilst avoiding any of the benefits of either, but as far as I can tell this proposal manages it. (Shiftchange, I'll give you a pro-tip for free; if you're trying to persuade people that you're not a crank trying to push an agenda of cash prizes and forcing the WMF to sign up to the Bitcoin pyramid scam, you may want to remove the I believe that Wikimedia needs to address the following matters as a priority [...] integrate an incentive reward system whereby editors can receive bitcoin micropayments on a the basis of merit. [sic] from your user page beforehand. If you're trying to persuade people you're not a crank per se, you may want to remove the I invented the Semantic Web on 1 October 2017 from your userpage, given that not only has the Semantic Web existed for some years, but Wikipedia/Wikimedia has been one of its main players for over a decade.) ‑ Iridescent02:47, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Remember its voluntary, if you don't like it, don't join and your editing experience will not be changed by it. If and when you come around I will feel immensely satisfied. I want WMF to choose the currency in secret and only share when the system is proven. Structured data is for machines, there is little industry adoption and no buzz to it. Critics question the basic feasibility of a complete or even partial fulfillment of the old Semantic Web. On the other hand, my invention is for people, something real and tangible that brings meaning to participation on the web. My technology will enable the true Semantic Web, in its most useful and practical way. As far as active editor count goes I believe you will find the growth is from sock-puppets doing paid work. Also please don't assume you speak for the majority of editors who you believe would leave Wikipedia if it integrated reward incentive. Yes I have lots to learn as an outsider to some of these topics. I've never let that stop me in the past. - Shiftchange (talk) 10:21, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
If you want to make money from Wikipedia, just do what some editors do and start offering courses to companies on how to integrate wikidata into their business. No paid editing, no oversight, and you might even get the backing of a WM chapter to help you. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:27, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Shitfchange, when you look in the mirror do you see yourself on the TV screen? This is Wikipedia, not Narcissistopedia; when a proposal has zero support the thing to do is to stop flogging the dead horse, not keep complaining that everyone else just doesn't understand. (If your invention is really as world-shaking and self-evidently great as you say, and it's just that we poor Wikipedians are too hidebound to appreciate your vision, then Google's address is 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043. You can sneer at me from your Maserati in five years. Hell, if your invention is really as world-shaking and self-evidently great as you say, and it's just that we poor Wikipedians are too hidebound to appreciate your vision, then an IPv6 from Philadelphia will pop on this talkpage fairly soon offering to get in touch with a business plan.) And yes, I feel extremely confident in predicting that formal paid editing, especially coupled with gamification, would cause a mass exodus of the core content-writing and bulk-maintenance bases on which Wikipedia ultimately relies, given that I was present at every previous discussion on the topic. (If you really doubt this, pick a few names at random from WP:WBFAN and ask them how enthusiastic they are about your idea.) The Wikipedia model, and the Wikipedia community, are both fundamentally based on the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and not on who can offer the highest bid for positive coverage of whatever their special interest is, and it's the twin rooting in neutrality and altruism - regardless of how much people sometimes grumble about the constraints they impose - that are the reason Wikipedia is more trusted than the BBC. If you want to win points and badges for your contributions, I understand Quora, TripAdvisor and Stack Exchange are nice at this time of year.
@Johnbod, whenever you see anyone frantically banging the "the highest priority is getting as much information as possible onto Wikidata" drum, it's generally a safe bet that they have a COI and are running a "Make big money from Wikidata! Give me some money and I'll show you how" snake-oil business on the side. As Mr Change is amply demonstrating above "semantic web" has taken over from "micropayment" and "vertical integration" as the latest buzzword by which 'consultants' extract money from mid-sized companies and public sector bodies who don't really understand that the world wide web is at heart just a hugely scaled-up version of a Hypercard stack c. 1990, think there's some kind of secret and very complicated magic involved, and are paranoid that there's a gravy train about to leave the station and they're not on it. (I can't speak for OID, but I'm reasonably confident in guessing who he has in mind on this occasion.) ‑ Iridescent02:29, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
@Johnbod, regarding how might a business usefully "integrate wikidata into their business"? I can think of a fair few ways, obviously depending on the nature of the business. There's a sizeable business in extracting metadata from Wikidata, passing it off as your own (because Wikidata's license terms don't require attribution, even for content they've stolen from sites like Wikipedia that do require attribution) repackaging it alongside adverts and using whatever techniques you have at hand to try to push it to the top of search rankings for that topic. (Google are the most notorious and blatant example of that, but by no means alone.) There are also obvious commercial opportunities in anything that can be reformatted as "list of", be it a cellphone company who want to cross-check their coverage against a list of every populated settlement within a given set of coordinates, to the inventor of a new product for cleaning railway station platforms who wants a postal address for the manager of every railway station in the world, to someone setting up an "watercolors of every EU nation" exhibition who desperately needs a list of prominent 19th-century Maltese watercolorists to avoid causing an international incident by leaving them out. As with much of IT, the way self-appointed consultants get rich isn't so much because there are genuine opportunities, as because the consultants persuade them that if they don't get on board they'll be missing out and by the time the customers realize they've been sold a bill of goods the consultants have moved on to the next sucker. (This is a particularly pungent pile of bullshit, if you want a specific example.) ‑ Iridescent15:12, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
AlexEng(TALK) 00:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
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(it needs the id number as there's a separate entry for "acronym" as a verb meaning "to create acronyms" so {{OED|Acronym}} goes to a disambiguation page). It's better to use the {{OED}} template than cite book/web, as it means that if they one day drop the paywall it will only need a single edit to the template to remove the "subscription required" rather than hunting down every outgoing link and fixing it. ‑ Iridescent 06:41, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Softlavender (talk) 08:48, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
Facepalm. Softlavender (talk) 10:08, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
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