This is an archive of past discussions with User:Mandruss. 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: 10 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
I have reverted your post to the Teahouse, because it over-wrote numerous questions. If you want your question answered you will have to re-post it. - Arjayay (talk) 08:59, 8 July 2014 (UTC)@Arjayay:
Thanks for rescuing me. So I tried again, being more careful, and it did pretty much the same thing. I'd post a Teahouse question about that, but, well ... Mandruss (talk) 09:59, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Mmmm not sure what is happening - How are you trying to edit the page? Are you clicking the big blue "Ask a question" button? or are you clicking the edit tab? - Arjayay (talk) 10:02, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Both User:Yunshui and I have carried out test edits - they seem to be working without any over-writing - but the new post appears at the bottom, not the top of the page. Can I suggest you try again? - Arjayay (talk) 10:57, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hello Mandruss! I don't believe I've had the pleasure of talking with you directly before, but I have seen you at several discussions, which is a very good way of getting the hang of how things work here at the Wikipedia. I read your discussion with Philg88 at his talk page on how to "get to know stuff". One way is to become a Wikipedia:Talk page stalker like me. It is a perfectly acceptable social behavior in an open community like this. Once you find an editor that you notice having things to say and advice to give, you add that user to your watchlist and when something new pops up you just read it. I'm also fairly new here and I've really learned a lot this way. There is even a userbox that you can hang on your user page if you want to "warn" others that you may be listening in: {{WP:TPS/userbox}} Best, - W.carter (talk) 10:32, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi W.carter, pleased to make your acquaintance. Thanks for the advice, and I'll start trying to work some TPS into my Wikidays. If I may ask, who are some of the more interesting people you stalk (aside from Philg88 of course)? Mandruss (talk) 10:43, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Hello again Mandruss. As a general rule any senior editor leaving good and intelligible advice at the Teahouse is worth stalking. (I cant't believe I'm writing a sentence like that! IRL that would be awful.^^) Here are some that I find useful to follow (pardon me if I don't write their names in brackets, shhh... stalker business...): User:Rhododendrites, User:Demiurge1000, User:Anne Delong, User:Crisco 1492, User:Yunshui, User:Technical 13. Good hunting! - W.carter (talk) 11:29, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Teahouse talkback: you've got messages!
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hello Mandruss,
On the talk page discussion about removing the majors in Isla Vista. You asked me what I meant by 'i would have preferred a bold.' I meant that I would have preffered a bold edit i.e. removing them and then discussing them.
Thought I'd reply here, as the discussion on that page proceeded much further. PS. like talked about here: Wikipedia:Be_bold
Oh ok, thanks for the explanation. Yeah, I generally agree, and that's what WP:BOLD says. In cases where (1) the edit stands a good chance of being contested, and (2) the edit is relatively large and/or complex (e.g., also involving changes to the reflist, as in this case), then I go with the talk-first approach. The reason is that edits can become un-undoable, and in that case such an edit would be somewhat time-consuming to revert. Out of consideration for my fellow man, I talk first. I like it when people show me the same consideration, so I appreciate that WWGB did that. Mandruss (talk) 19:29, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Not sure if we've interacted before - but I do feel that, in some ways at least, we both appreciate the difficulties associated with civility policy. All the best, DuncanHill (talk) 04:30, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
No, we haven't, I never forget a signature. Yeah, DuncanHill, I think getting along is probably beyond the capacity of most groups of ordinary people like us, especially in an online community. In the real world we can, to a large extent at least, avoid people who aren't like us; not so here. What we need are some good psychologists and philosophers. It's a tough nut to crack, for sure. Thanks for the comment! Mandruss |talk05:01, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
about your comment on jimbo's page about "f* off and die"
Latest comment: 10 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion
About this. I am guessing you looked at the ANI post I linked to, and described as " typically messy and ugly example from the archives". There are many, many things going on there. Probably the most important one for ongoing discussion about taking "bright line" action on civility, is the reactions of the various editors. If you take some time and actually and carefully read the initial post, and then stop and really take some time and go read the back and forth that led to the events described in the original posting.... you will be troubled. Imagine yourself actually actively involved in that conversation in the midst of your own real life, and ask yourself what you would have done. Now go back to the ANI and start reading comments. It becomes very clear that very few commenters took the time to delve into what happened, think about it, and give a considered response. You have some considered responses, but you have tons of knee-jerk responses where it is clear that people grabbed onto some piece of what happened - something important to them - and reacted to that, and, importantly, called for action based on what that grabbed and how they judged it. Quite often people even forget about the initial posting all together and start reacting to each other (old feuds/alliances played out, new feuds/alliances being formed ... all kinds of meta-things going on). Many things could have been handled differently and better - both in the initial dispute and in the community's discussion. But WP unfolds in real time and anybody, wise or foolish, diligent or knee-jerky, is free to chime in. It is the nature of this place. Setting up high-level authorities and bright-lines - taking some kind of swift, seemingly-satisfying actions - is just going to crumble in the face of the real world messiness of this amazing, profoundly democratic space... that so well reflects the messiness of being human and the ways different people live and think and feel and interact with each other. anyway, just wanted to respond to you. I do agree that we need to work on civility. For sure. Jytdog (talk) 13:27, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
btw, i am still not sure what the right answer was, for that ANI. It would have made sense to me, for all the parties involved to have received at least a day-long block to remind them not to let things get that out of hand and that we have dispute resolution processes to help with disagreements.Jytdog (talk) 13:39, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Jytdog Thanks for the considered response. I think you inadvertently supported my position. That debacle of an ANI never would have gotten started (with respect to ATG's behavior, that is) if there had been a bright-line policy. When ATG felt the "fuck off and die" coming on, he would have asked himself, is that worth the involuntary break that I know I'll get? If he decided that it was, the break would have been imposed without a discussion, and ATG would have taken it like a man. IIRC, Meowy was indeffed as a result of that ANI, and that would have happened even if ATG hadn't told him to fuck off and die. Therefore ATG's outburst accomplished nothing except to help perpetuate and reinforce the acrimonious climate that is driving so many people off and giving WP a bad rep. The current situation is like a room full of people all screaming QUIET!!! at the top of their lungs—just as illogical, and every bit as futile. Mandruss |talk20:17, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
What I see there are heated discussions resulting from political diversity, which is what article talk is for. I also see a lot of Meowy being told, in complete disregard for WP principles, and often double- or triple-teamed, that he's a worthless piece of shit scumbag for holding his views. I see no material difference between that and some middle school girl asking another on Facebook, "Why don't you just kill yourself?". At least that girl has youth for an excuse—not a very good excuse, but more than what ATG and company had.
It seems to me that there have to be some absolute standards of behavior, lines that people just don't cross, no matter what, period, end of story. Clearly, the people in those discussions didn't feel constrained by Wikipedia behavior guidelines, so I assume that, in the right circumstances, they can rationalize saying pretty much anything short of exposing themselves to criminal charges. That's unacceptable in my book.
I was already aware of Meowy's bizarre statement that he was essentially an anti-WP terrorist, bizarre because it was Wikisuicidal. I haven't seen anything yet that changes what I've said, so maybe you could help me out and point me in the right directions. Mandruss |talk23:09, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
Congrats on getting ~some~ far. To catch it all, you have to follow the edits made to the article itself, and in parallel follow the discussions on the Talk page of the article as well as the discussions that are referenced on various users' Talk pages, to see how this all actually unfolded in the lived-time among the editors involved. And on something "hot" in the news like this, you have to be aware of what was unfolding the real world in August 2012 when all this broke out, and see what else was going on even prior to this in the article editing, with IP address editors coming through and making all kinds of changes (it was in the news) It is exhausting to actually try to understand the real context. Things can get really hot on articles like this one. There are some real heroes on Wikipedia (!) that hang out at difficult articles and keep them reasonable in the face of pretty relentless onslaughts by vandals and POV editors. That is really hard work. Sometimes those people ... go wrong, especially when things get hot. I am not saying this to excuse anyone's behavior. But we have a responsibility to one another to to make informed judgements about one another. Until I have really walk in another editor's shoes, I hesitate to make "bright line" judgements about them. Like I said, from what I read, it seems to me that they should have asked for help at DR or another board, and I don't see that they did (yet). I have not investigated that far yet, to see if they tried to get other editors to help them at WP:NPOVN or WP:ANI or some other board..... judging these things is hard and who wants to slog through so much ugly stuff?? Not you even! That is kind of my point....Jytdog (talk) 02:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Jytdog Points taken, and thanks for taking the time to educate me when there was nothing in it for you. It's true that I've never been tested by such a situation, and when I am I'll probably just sit back and let someone else deal with it. I'm too idealistic, I know, which makes me a bad fit for Wikipedia (and for the rest of the world, for that matter). No encyclopedia or social experiment is worth a ton of (unpaid) added stress in my life. That said, I'm not quitting just yet. Mandruss |talk03:43, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Just my perspective. Lots of folks, have lots of others. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me! Jytdog (talk) 03:45, 7 August 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 10 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
You indicated that you will be on a break for a few days. Therefore, the following discussion will likely be removed from the relevant Talk Page and archived before you see it. But, I wanted you to see my reply to you. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:33, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
No, I am unaware of that. I have no idea how to do that. How do I do so, with Mozilla Firefox? Thanks. Also, is Holder in here or not yet? I can't find it. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:41, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I am on the article page (using Mozilla Firefox). I hit "Control F". It does absolutely nothing? What exactly am I supposed to be doing? Also: is Holder in here or not yet? I can't find it. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:22, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
After you press Ctrl-F, look at the bottom of the screen. You should see a search box, followed by up and down arrows, followed by "Highlight All" and "Match Case". Enter holder in the search box. This will scroll you to the first occurrence of Holder and highlight it. To see the next occurrence, click the down arrow. You can toggle "Highlight All" to highlight all occurrences on the page. You can toggle "Match Case" if you want a search to be case-sensitive (no need for that in this case, since there are no lower-case holder's in the article to get in your way). Let me know if that helps. I'm ignoring your last question since answering it yourself will give you actual real-life experience using Find in Firefox. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)18:18, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I figured it out. But, it had nothing to do with "Control F". It was a different process altogether. Nonetheless, I was able to figure it out. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:31, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
I note that your talk comment of 17:18, 18 August 2014 contained:
Every new ref requires (1) a change to the References section, to add the ref, and (2) a change to the body where you want to invoke the ref. In a busy article like this one, where edit conflicts are more common, I do this by editing sections rather than the entire article.
But having to edit two sections for every addition with a citation isn't mentioned in WP:LDRHOW.
You bring up a very good point and I think it should be added to the help documentation, probably in WP:LDRHOW#Usage Notes. I'd do it myself but I'm brand new to LDR's and I feel you could deal with consensus issues (if any) better than I could. This is only a suggestion and doesn't have to be dealt with immediately, certainly not while you're on vacation. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 18:02, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi RoyGoldsmith, I'm on vacation, but I don't mind communicating on my talk page. I even couldn't resist posting a couple of times on the article talk page. I should know by now, if I'm serious about a break I can't even read article talk pages!
As for LDR, are we talking about the requirement to modify two sections, or to do two separate edits? If the latter, that's not a requirement, it was just something I suggested because of the increased probability of edit conflicts in such a busy article. LDRHOW has the following passage in its Usage notes. Does this help at all?
A drawback of the approach is that these references can be harder to insert into the source, because
they are separated from the text. The editor must either open the entire document to see the source
for both the text and the reference list, or alternatively use a two-step procedure, first entering
the identifier <ref name=name /> in the main text and then opening the reference listing section
to enter the source or footnote as <ref name=name>content</ref>.
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
Regarding this, I made the change 42 minutes before you even said you were leaving. I hope you liked the DVD, and hope you notice the part where I said I do compromises. InedibleHulk(talk) 09:16, August 29, 2014 (UTC)
InedibleHulk That is a patently disingenuous response. The time of my departure changes nothing about the fact that WE WERE FAR FROM CONSENSUS WHEN YOU MADE THE CHANGE, AND YOU KNEW THAT. Please don't play games with me. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)12:01, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
I made a bold edit, discussed it, you came back and reverted it. Typical BRD. Not sure why you're getting upset. But yeah, I'll get off your talk page. InedibleHulk(talk) 12:09, August 29, 2014 (UTC)
InedibleHulk Again, you play games. Please point me to the policy page that says it's ok to boldly make a change WHILE IT'S UNDER DISCUSSION. I haven't asked you stay off my talk page. I am asking you to show some respect for process while you're working on this article. Thank you. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)12:16, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Be bold. If I'd reverted you after you reverted me, during the discussion, then I'd be wrong. Anyway, sorry you had to undo an edit. It wasn't intended as any sort of game. InedibleHulk(talk) 12:29, August 29, 2014 (UTC)
list references
Latest comment: 10 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Thanks for fixing my bare refs. Are you using a particular gadget or script to do that, or just doing it by hand? Gaijin42 (talk) 18:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
By hand, starting with an empty template copied from Notepad. And you're welcome, I'd much rather do this and give you more time for the hard stuff. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)18:41, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
When I'm in the mood to use full refs, I use the ProveIt gadget (which you can turn on in preferences) but I do not know how well it works well for List ReferencesGaijin42 (talk) 18:45, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
I will use refs as recommended in future. Thank you for your diligence. I may revisit the page again after others contribute further just to ensure I follow the correct format in future & will also add an edit summary in future edits. Tikihouse (talk) 17:15, 30 August 2014 (UTC)Tikihouse
Re: coordinates and roads
Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Thank you for all your suggestions. I have the tools to create such maps (it seems to me that Open office will suffice), but the problem has been finding base maps that are in the one that are licence compatible. I have now found a source I can use https://www.openstreetmap.org.
To give you an example of where the information comes from see talk:Trench warfare#Even larger scale in the American Civil War and the second quotation box there. On that talk page I plotted a crude line using goggle maps to show the length of the entrenchments. In this case I am interested in the article Lines of Wissembourg, which is an easy one to do because the entrenchments ran along what was then and is now the the international border. But that is not really the point I was making at Template talk:Coord, which is that we need a mechanism for giving at least two coordinate in the top right-hand corner of an article for linear objects which have different start and end coordinates, because for such objects the current arrangement is far less beneficial than giving two. It is as if we insisted in the first line of a biography that only the DOB or DOD was given because to include both would be too complicated for a template to handle.
Putting in a map of the item is OK as far as it goes but even so people may want to feed in the co-ordinates to their own choice of maps/satellite imagry through the very convenient use of the coord template. Taking the Lines of Wissembourg as an example. Yes one could put in the coord template inline next to the two towns mentioned in the text, but that would look clunky. The alternative that the reader has is to click on the Wissembourg article and then the coordinates but again that is clunky. I think it much more useful to present the start and end in the top right-hand corner. -- PBS (talk) 13:11, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
In my experience, coord is good for locating points, but terrible for describing anything in two dimensions. For example, it can't describe a circle that encloses all of the elements of an "event", such as in 2014 Isla Vista killings. In that case, the best we could do was to identify the approximate center of said circle, and then use the precision of the coordinates to imply the very approximate diameter of the circle, using information at WP:OPCOORD (scroll down to the colored tables). Of course that technique is lost on readers who haven't read WP:OPCOORD and understood it, which is virtually all of them. So in practice the coordinates just allow readers to quickly get an interactive map where they can find all of the locations named in the article.
In the above case, a coordinates-pair would probably only confuse the reader, as it could only identify two opposite points of the circle, without any explanation of what was being conveyed.
You could use the same technique to describe the center and very approximate size of a trench system, with the same shortcomings as above.
Coordinate pairs don't seem very useful for anything other than straight lines (and perhaps close-to-straight lines, as in your example). I can understand their resistance to making that enhancement for such a relatively small benefit, especially given the technical reasons not to do so which they mentioned. I understand that the cost/benefit looks very different to you, but you're not looking at the big picture that they are—nor are you the one who would have to do the work.
If it were me, I would resign myself to Wikipedia's limitations for this sort of thing, as I did at 2014 IVK. I would use the title coordinates for the approximate center of the trench system, and set their precision according to WP:OPCOORD. I would make this the midpoint of a straight line drawn between the two endpoints. I make this to be about a mile to the northeast of your line, at, say, 43.35°N 1.59°W (I might hedge that a little to the southwest, to get closer to the actual line; there's no hard rule on this). Then I would do one or both of the following:
Create a map and include it as an image. If that's allowed by converting your Google map to an image on Commons, I think that would work great. Failing that, the map in Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is the one created by the user I mentioned on your talk page, and your needs don't seem substantially different from that. Its basis is OpenStreetMap, which I see you have already found.
In the body, use prose text and inline coords to describe the endpoints, as "The trench system extended from {{coord}}, in Ascain, to {{coord}}, in Saint-Jean-De-Luz." These coords would use a higher precision than those in the title, since they would describe "objects" much smaller than the entire trench system. Unlike putting a coordinates pair up at the top, this would at least give the reader some explanation of what they refer to. Clunky? Maybe. But functional.
Add: My ADD mind prevents me from absorbing too much at one time. Upon reviewing what you wrote, I see you're working on a different trench system, so my specifics won't be very useful. I'm too lazy to rewrite, so hopefully the general ideas will be of some help. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)14:37, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
I appreciate what you are saying (although the programming issue could be addressed by breaking the functionality and the interface into two), and just to emphasise a point AFAICT Google Maps can not be used as they carry copyright, but https://www.openstreetmap.org has a copyleft licence that can be used for the purposes of creating maps of the sort I need. -- PBS (talk) 19:23, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
Commenting our references
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Thanks for the tip about commenting out references. I'm still relatively new and appreciate a helpful nudge every now and then
See my subsequent edit. Apparently there's no such thing as a physical altercation, per all dictionaries I could find online. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)16:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
CrowderLake University Park
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
In response to your query on the subject talk page, I think it would be more appropriate to apply the coordinates of the lake. Adding coordinates for the park would be useful if the two sets are significantly different. Thanks for catching this.Bruin2 (talk) 14:58, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 10 years ago31 comments2 people in discussion
Hi. I'm curious why you would say "began to flee" instead of saying "fled" It's a minor point, but why use three words instead of one? Individually it's not a big deal, but collectively the words add up. More an academic question than one I would contest the article. --Kevin Murray (talk) 11:58, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
It's a fair question. I felt "began to flee" better describes the fact that they didn't get very far. To me, "fled" conjures images of them making it a hundred yards or more. And we've all seen very long foot pursuits on COPS and in the movies—they're a deeply ingrained part of pop culture—so it wouldn't take much to conjure one in the reader's imagination. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)12:07, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Good point. My wife and I laugh at the Hollywood vehicle to pedestrian chases where the runner seems to perpetually outrun the vehicle. --Kevin Murray (talk) 12:31, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Also, I have a personal pet peeve about over using "and" Though in some cases it can eliminate several words. I frequently try to eliminate all "ands" then judicially put them back in where needed. --Kevin Murray (talk) 12:31, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Kevin Murray ping in case you're not watching. I took a shot at removing one "and", and (oops!) didn't like the result. Can you suggest exact wording here? We can use this as the sandbox. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)12:38, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Witnesses report that Wilson drove up to Brown AND a friend, Dorian Johnson, AND, from inside the vehicle, ordered them to move from the street to the sidewalk. Brown AND Wilson struggled through the open window of the police car. A shot was fired from within the vehicle, AND Brown and Johnson began to flee. Wilson pursued on foot, firing multiple shots at Brown AND fatally wounding him. Witness reports differ as to whether Brown was standing with his hands up or moving toward Wilson when he was shot.--Kevin Murray (talk) 12:53, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Witnesses report that Wilson drove up to Brown AND a friend, Dorian Johnson, THEN from inside the vehicle, ordered them to move from the street to the sidewalk. Brown AND Wilson struggled through the open window of the police car. A shot was fired from within the vehicle, AFTER WHICH Brown and Johnson began to flee. Wilson pursued on foot, firing multiple shots at Brown, fatally wounding him. Witness reports differ as to whether Brown was standing with his hands up or moving toward Wilson when he was shot. --Kevin Murray (talk) 12:53, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
Kevin Murray ping in case you're not watching. Are you watching?
We have a language difference, I think. Are you outside the U.S.?
Last night people objected to me saying specifically that Wilson shot Brown inside the car. Was there a third person in the car? Is it unclear that the shot fired from inside the car hit Brown? --Kevin Murray (talk) 12:59, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
I'd have to look into that, I don't recall reading it before. My own personal take would be that it should say that a shot was fired from inside the car, since that's all we know for sure. I don't think we know that Brown was hit then. We don't know the circumstances of the gunshot. The gun could have gone off accidentally while they were struggling for it.
Interesting points. To me as a first reader, it looked a bit like cover-up double-speak. But I see why now.
You should understand that I may not be the best person for a conversation like this, except maybe about the grammar questions. About 90% of my focus has been on two things: 1. copyedit. 2. refs: converting to list-defined refs, filling in and standardizing existing refs. That's kept me too busy to follow the story at a detail level. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)13:11, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
But you are clearly neutral and out for the best interest of the WP project. That and good grammar are key to credibility. This article may be many readers first interaction with WP. --Kevin Murray (talk) 13:24, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
These other guys are just as neutral as I am. Trust me, I've been watching them for weeks and I know POV-pushing when I see it. They're every bit as "out for the best interest of the WP project" as I am. Only one of them has a clear bias that he can't seem to check at the door, and he's not one of the seniors. The rest of us keep him in check, and he seems to prefer talking to editing anyway, so he's at least harmless in that respect.
I think that there is too much desire to be journalistic, along with buying into using journalistic language which is not objective and encyclopedic. --Kevin Murray (talk) 14:41, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
I may seem more benign to you, for lack of a better word, because I mostly stayed out of last night's discussion. I hadn't put weeks of effort into the existing consensus, for working in other areas, so I had less invested.
So I took some time off, thought about what was bugging me here, and took your suggestion (and others) to try a sandbox. It's a bit radical, and different from how I would normally structure a lede, but this is a special circumstance.
Among my concerns in the lead have been:
lack of precision and ambiguity in the lede
A subtle sensationalism and anti establishment bias
The use of jingoistic media-typical adjectives and verbs (encyclopedic)
Despite my preference for short leading sections, I think that efforts to be brief are leaving me with a feeling of cover-up and euphemism in the lede. And I don't think it is intentional, just the result of trying to be brief and neutral, but vague.
There are certain words and frequency of use of words, terms, and concepts which serve to prejudice the article, by the weight they are given by placement and emphasis.
I think that forcing the first sentence into a backward, syntax to accommodate a MOS guideline of including the title in the first sentence is silly with this title. It's not a rule, and in my mind it's rarely a preferred practice. I also think that people will figure out that Missouri is in the US, and the Brits will forgive us for making this US-centric ;-)
SAMPLE DRAFT:
On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St Louis, an experienced white police officer killed Michael Brown, a black teenager. The circumstances surrounding the death of the unarmed 18 year old, are disputed, controversial, and have received national recognition by the media, politicians, and interest groups.
According to witnesses and official reports, Officer Darren Wilson, 28, who was driving alone, drove up to two black males walking in the street, blocked them with his car, then ordered Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson to move from the street to the sidewalk. It is unclear how this started, but a struggle ensued between Brown and Wilson through the window of the police car. A pistol was fired in the vehicle and Brown and Johnson began to flee. Wilson pursued on foot while firing his pistol several times, after which Brown stopped running. Wilson then shot Brown several more times, killing him. Witness reports differ as to whether Brown was standing with his hands up or moving towards Wilson when he was killed.
Brown, had recently graduated from high school, was enrolled for college in the fall, and had no criminal record. Wilson has been a policeman for six years, has a family, and has no record of disciplinary action.
Concerns have been expressed over whether Brown should have been shot at least six times, whether Brown had surrendered prior to being killed, and whether Brown represented a threat to Officer Wilson when he was killed. The media has also questioned whether local police departments should use military-style weapons when dealing with unrest. The police have been accused of insensitivity in handling the crime scene and street-memorials. In the aftermath, these issues became a catalyst for unrest and increased friction between the majority-black community and the white dominated city government and police force. Protests, riots, and other forms of social unrest continued for more than a week, with escalating violence and the implementation curfews throughout the city.
Kevin Murray Just in case you're not watching. My suggestion for sandboxing was in the context of rewording to eliminate excessive "ands". That's purely a grammar thing, which I feel qualified to discuss. I don't feel qualified to discuss the wording of the lead—at my experience level, I need to be watching and learning in that area, not doing—which is why I've mostly stayed out of that discussion. One needs to know one's limits, while trying to expand them.
Further, you apparently want to sell the above to me first, so I can help you sell it the rest of the group. I can't do that, for the same reason as above.
You're wasting your time with this approach. If you want to continue your efforts with this article, I'd suggest trying to mend some fences in article talk. You've gotten yourself on a lot of bad sides—not just with your initial approach, which you admitted could have been handled better, but by doing things like (1) accusing at least one person of SPA with extremely scant evidence, and (2) referring to the cabal, which could easily have been interpreted as a veiled accusation of some of those present. I'm not sure those fences are mendable at this point, but it's up to you whether you want to try. That's my take. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)16:36, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I agree. I shook the tree to get to the root of some issues. I'm not trying to be popular or be directly involved in the process -- just want to get facts out in the light and get people thinking in alternate directions. That's where I'm feeding some ideas to you. But based on what you are saying that's not your bag. No worries. If you see some merit in this approach run with it, share it etc.
It's admirable that you are cautious and concerned about your experience level, but based on my review of background and demeanor, you're among the best and most WP-dedicated editors I've seen at the page.
BTW, on the SPA issue, an SPA is not a state of mind, it is an action of only working on one or a narrow group of articles see: WP:SPA If you look at the join dates and edit records of several participants, they are undeniably (A) brand new to the project, and (B) only edit in a narrow band of articles. Yes, assume good faith, but also look below the surface. I assumed goof faith but also verified and found clear. You may think I'm a crank, but if I've got you thinking a bit ..... Anyway I won't bother you at your page unless you reachout and invite me back. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:57, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Kevin Murray Just in case you're not watching. I don't know why you don't take the hint and tell me whether you're watching. If you are, that would save me a little extra trouble pinging you.
I like the pings, but if it's extra work, I'll try to be more diligent in checking your page.
You're not bothering me. I enjoy conversing with intelligent people. Usually I talk so much that people stop responding to me.
If you look at my "top edited pages", or whatever that's called, you'll see that the vast majority of my edits have been at Shooting of Michael Brown and 2014 Isla Vista killings. No percentages are shown, but I'm guessing around 95% between those two. Another, say, 2% was spread across various articles in the same category as those two. So you're saying that the remaining 3%, being spread across maybe a few dozen articles of other types, absolves me of SPA suspicion?
Some people—including me—are just attracted to articles like this, for whatever human reason, and that doesn't mean SPA unless we push POV. I think it's more useful just to attack POV-pushing when you think you see it, with solid reasoning of course, and throw away the SPA term. SPA may describe the person's motivation, but his motivation is beside the point and irrelevant. What matters is what he does. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)17:28, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
You are right, your focus is narrow, meeting the SPA criteria (I looked at it yesterday), and you are a bit of the cabal that follows the tragedies. That's not all bad, because it counterbalances. If you were involved in an AfD or applying for Admin status this might hurt you. That's not to say that you are not a great wikipedian; I think that you've paid your dues and proved your commitment.
I sense that you are about where I was seven years ago, before the economy tanked I was semi-retired and spent a huge amount of time on WP, much of which was spent fighting against policy creep and rampant deletionism (don't know if that is still happening). Unfortunately if you want to be effective in some of these venues you have to be a thick skinned prick and know how to wiki-lawyer and walk fine lines. Most people don't read sandboxes, long explanations, or even short poignant comments buried in the lines of chatter. --Kevin Murray (talk) 18:11, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Kevin Murray When I've said, "in case you're not watching", I've meant, "in case you haven't added this page to your watchlist so you can monitor your watchlist for changes to it." Surely that's as easy as being pinged?
I suspect I'll always be happy working almost exclusively at the article level, and there's still a ton of room for growth there. I'm not the type for the big-picture issues, and I lack the stomach for the politics. Being somewhere on the autism spectrum, I find fine lines very difficult to see, let alone navigate. There's a reason I never had the slightest interest in being in management. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)18:24, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
If a person works exclusively with art history articles, are they a SPA? If so, then I misunderstood the definition of SPA. I thought it was something negative, and surely you wouldn't fault someone for simply sticking to art history. ‑‑Mandruss(talk)18:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Like anything there are degrees. I wouldn't say that someone who works only in art history is an SPA. I would say that someone who makes 95% of their edits on one article and sub topics is SPA. I would say that a person who only works on art history articles and has no experience in AfDs, dispute resolution, etc. would not be a candidate for Admin. --Kevin Murray (talk) 18:57, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
A combination of: SPA, new editor, working at a highly charged article, being welcomed to WP by a cohort at the charged article, and reverting over a section undergoing much work add up to me questioning good faith.
And could have been just a clumsy newbie mistake, driven by an eagerness to actively participate. I'd be looking for a pattern of behavior, as well as attitude in talk (and willingness to participate in talk in the first place). ‑‑Mandruss(talk)19:07, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
You are the better man for your understanding an patience. I don't want to hurt the newbie, just make a point, and not just him/her, but to the group. And I'm sure you will be attentive and looking for the pattern.
The article that I cited to answer your question at the Brown talk page (Florida shooting of unarmed teenager), may be a good template for Brown. The first sentence is similar to what I proposed; direct action At A, B shot C. And the mention of "unarmed" comes in the second paragraph where I think it should be. I'm probably going to go away for a while, but it has been a pleasure chatting and learning from you. My direct email is kevinmurraycan@gmail.com if you ever need anything. Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 22:41, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Cwobeel and I have agreed to a truce and to remove the unfortunate banter from the MB talk page. In the process one of your comments was removed. I doubt that you care, but I want to give your the courtesy of letting you know that I removed your comment along with the whole section. Hopefully we a can all be more productive. Best regards. --Kevin Murray (talk) 22:00, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Hi Mandruss, It looks like the lede at Michael Brown is staying pretty neutral. I hope that all is well. I've been pretty busy, but just looking in on the article from time to time. Best regards. Kevin --Kevin Murray (talk) 08:03, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
Glad to hear you say that, not that I've had anything to do with that. I've decided that it's a bad idea to spend all of my Wikipedia time at one article, so I've been spending a good part of mine on working on error tracking categories, etc. Cheers, ‑‑Mandruss(talk)08:09, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your edits
Latest comment: 10 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
I am the major contributor to Washington Redskins name controversy, and worry about that. Everyone needs an editor/reviewer but I could also use real discussion on the topic. My interest is doing research, but I am a bad speller, and rely on spell-check. I also appreciate not being the only one dealing with vandalism.FriendlyFred (talk) 05:16, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
You're welcome for the help. As for real discussion on the topic, I can't say I know a lot about it, or have a strong opinion about it. While that helps me be a good editor for it, it wouldn't seem to make me a good discusser about it. I'm sure there are other places where you could find discussion, albeit probably none that is moderated and protected from the crazies. You have to pass a driving test to get a driver license, but there's no maturity or mental health test for the Internet.
I do have a weak opinion about it. I think the Redskins should be allowed to use whatever name they want, and people could individually boycott or not, without being activists on the subject, trying to influence (and even dishonestly manipulate) the opinions of others, waging Internet-organized campaigns against sponsors, etc. I think a Native American could ignore the Redskins name and go about his business, as many of them appear to do, rather than looking for another reason to complain. While I think we should all respect each other, it doesn't make us respect Native Americans more to go around stamping out anything that some of them consider disrespectful. (I think more political correctness produces more of this cultural hypersensitivity, and vice versa, without end. It's no joke to imagine us having to change the names of all animal-related team names because animal rights activists have waged a sophisticated political campaign against them funded by two or three hyperliberal rich guys. This is madness.) I think there's bound to be racial discrimination against Native Americans, but this is the wrong way to address it, and I honestly doubt the name and logo of a football team are contributing much to it. If I were the Redskins owner, I would want to see a peer-reviewed scientifically-proven causal connection between the name and the discrimination. All the rest is speculative noise, and that applies to many, many other controversial topics as well. I think critical thinking should be required curriculum in middle school, if not earlier.
Now that I've written that, it seems I have a lot of opinion about something I don't know much about. Shame on me, and I guess I should learn more. Anyway, my opinions are beside the point when I'm editing.
Thanks again for your help. You are basically in the same place I was when I started doing research two years ago. I was born about 4 miles from were FedEx Field is now and have remained in the DC area, hearing the name of the Washington team all my life (65 years). I heard about the 1992 protests at the old stadium in DC, but not being a football fan did not think anything about it. That is the problem, common sense says it is just the name of a sports team, so changing it is only "political correctness". However I am a social scientist, and began reading the journal articles and books written by other social scientists. The personal insult that may be felt by Native Americans has nothing to do with the reason the Washington team, and all other teams, should change. It is a basic finding of scientific studies that all stereotypes about people are harmful when those people are in a minority or have less power than those doing the stereotyping. Native Americans are a tiny minority that suffered actual and cultural genocide. At about the same that the native population was at its lowest, white teams began giving themselves Indian names. Unlike other races, Indians had ambivalent stereotypes, the noble savage and the bloodthirsty savage, and the appeal of these mascots played upon both. Now that they are being challenged, owners and fans try to claim only the noble image, not aware that this makes no difference. Mainstream culture continues to say, not only in sports but in movies and advertizing, that Indians are primitive peoples of the past, and their history, identity, and sacred cultural artifacts are playthings for white entertainment. The small minority within the minority of surviving Native Americans who retain a connection to their culture, when they see white people playing Indian say "We are insulted, this should stop..." are ignored. (White people took a poll, so protesters must be self-serving activists, or not real Indians.) Native Americans know quite well that similar representations of black, Hispanic, and Asian people largely disappeared from popular culture long ago, and are only asking for the same respect. Young Native Americans growing up in America today continue be stereotyped, which depresses the development of their identity, already fragile due to poverty. When your ethnicity is portrayed as a cartoon, how can it be otherwise? This leads to the highest youth suicide rate in the country. Those that survive cope by saying "it does not bother me", but have the highest rate of alcoholism. Is this trivial? Just a game? Am I being a patronizing white liberal? No, my consciousness has been raised by what Native Americans have been saying since the 1960s. It has only been since about 1990s that mainstream social science has caught up. Many of the researchers are themselves Native American.
Yes, businesses have rights and individuals have free speech; but there are existing laws that are enforced for everyone except Native Americans. Anti-Bullying programs that would prevent mocking any other ethnicity do not eliminate mascots that legitimate sports fans playing Indian, and for their opponents from using scalping and drunkenness to attack Indian themed teams. The mildest racially charged word would be regulated by the FCC, yet the r-word, defined in dictionaries as a slur, is broadcast everywhere. Sponsors claim corporate responsibility in their diversity and human rights policies, yet sponsor this slur.
Not at all, POV rant away. I assume you're able to check your POV at the door when editing.
I should mention that I have a much higher opinion of past NA culture (as I perceive it) than modern Western culture, which I think stands a good chance of collapsing civilization within a century or so, plunging us into Dark Ages II. Some of my perception is probably idealized, but I note that it didn't change much after I watched documentaries by Ken Burns, for whom I have a lot of respect.
You make good points, and there's a lot there I didn't know. Unless I missed it, you didn't mention the quality scientific study that I wanted—the one that definitively links the names and logos to discrimination. I'm not an academic, but I know the difference between a book by a scientist and a well-designed, peer-reviewed scientific study. The book is essentially an educated opinion.
I'm strongly opposed to the use of political and financial pressure to coerce social change NOW. People need to be given time for their minds to change, and it's human nature to react negatively to being forced, to dig in your heels (I think they've invented a scientific term for that now, but I can't remember what it is). So this strategy inevitably backfires; the logo may change, but the minds are locked up tighter than they were when you started.
We need to increase awareness—gently, with a spirit of trust and cooperation, without the us-versus-them mentality. We should do this even if the other side is attacking us and baiting us. What would Jesus do? What would Dr. King do? That's how we need to be thinking if we want real social change.
A case in point is the feminist movement. In my view, the extreme acrimony and distrust that exists today between the sexes didn't exist 50-60 years ago, and it was caused largely by the impatient, confrontational methods of the movement. The progress they've made for their cause has been at a tremendous cost to society as a whole. It's unfortunate.
Of course it's absurd to disagree with a social scientist about sociology, but it's my talk page and I can do what I want. :D ‑‑Mandruss(talk)17:30, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
I have been married once, for almost 40 years, and have little experience with acrimony, but generally the opposite. Social justice movements have always had a range of advocates from gentle persuaders to bomb throwers (literal or figurative). I think all have had a role in moving society in a positive direction, but moderation is usually the best course. But what can we do when people are actually DYING? I cannot now be moderate on this issue, but hope I have kept my opinions out of this article. What I actually believe is that the professional sports teams with Indian identities are violating civil rights laws and should be forced to stop, particularly in the NFL which has a tax exempt status based upon its value as a "public good". The end of discrimination against black people sometimes needed armed troops, so being forced to change the branding of an entertainment company is trivial by comparison. It is often pointed out that no one could give a new team such a name today, so why are these teams "grandfathered" in their racism? It is also pointed out that if it were any other race or ethnicity legal force would be applied.
The studies that show the need for this are not are not definitive? There are studies cited in the article that say that mascots promote negative stereotypes even when presented in the most positive terms. I mentioned the connection between stereotyping and damaged identities. Not seeing this as racism means applying the strict legal definition of discrimination which requires intent by individuals to deny equal benefits. The social sciences look at outcomes and often trace the cause back to institutions, not individuals. Institutional racism has been given only limited recognition by the law, but it is the cause of continued unequal treatment of Native Americans in the US, and should be recognized. Many localities have done so, which has resulted in the steady decline in mascots in schools. FriendlyFred (talk) 19:23, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
Ok, I'll grant that your arguments are far better "sourced" than mine, and I'm a firm believer in science. Give me a year or so to rewire a few million synapses. That's just as to this one issue, the rest of what I said stands.
I'll note that team names and logos don't seem to have had any effect on my perception of Native Americans. I would challenge anyone to point to any evidence of that in my behavior or thinking. So I guess the studies didn't study people like me.
I could play psychologist and say that most of what determines behaviors and conscious thoughts are unconscious and subconscious mental processes, but does this need to be said? It is the basis for maintaining a NPOV, knowing that ones own POV is not neutral. I can say that, unless you grew up with substantial contact with Native Americans, what you know about them is stereotypical, from movies and ads if not sports. Studies show that these stereotypes negatively influence how Native Americans unconsciously think about themselves, so how can anyone be exempt? (I am not.) As far as needing discussion, I am working in a vacuum, which is bad for writing in general, and for me I have little experience writing for a general audience.FriendlyFred (talk) 20:53, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
PS. Thanks for the talk page comments. However I worry that the article is too extensive and intimidates potential contributors.FriendlyFred (talk) 20:56, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
Sentence boundary disambiguation, and sentence segmentation (each sentence on a new line) – search and replace
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I know what you mean. I sometimes want paragraph breaks to improve readability, and it's cumbersome to indent each paragraph.
3 possible Chrome extensions for reading**
I struggled with reading throughout high school and university.
Sentence boundary disambiguation, and sentence segmentation (each sentence on a new line) – search and replace**
To aid me in reading very long and difficult pieces of text, I sometimes segment the text by sentence boundaries (put each sentence on a new line).
This can be done with a text replacement of “period” “space” with “period” “manual line break” or “new line”.
i.e. Search for: . Replace: .\n
or
“period” “^l”.
This is mainly for more difficult material that requires re-reading, as your eyes immediately find the start of the sentence.
Ditto (open-source clipboard manager) can be used to gather multiple clipboard copies, and then you can paste all the text collected in Ditto to a word processor.
(I eventually want to find a piece of JavaScript to do this.
I’ve already seen a couple scripts that do simple word replacements. e.g. github/com/lazerwalker/literally - chrome.google/com/webstore/detail/literally/odlbpehkpefnmehgdofblnagjpimaanh?hl=en
“Replaces occurrences of the word 'literally' with 'figuratively'”.).
(In the "Google I/O 2013 - Cognitive Science and Design" talk, the speaker says that experiments show that you can be faster with reading longer lines, but a lot of people prefer, and are more comfortable with reading shorter and more narrow lines: www.youtube/com/watch?v=z2exxj4COhU#t=1409.
Sentence segmentation also narrows some rows.).
It's similar to how people use things like the pprint (“pretty-print”) Python module to help read longer, nested data structures, or the jsonpickle Python library for serialization and deserialization of complex Python objects to and from JSON.
When I want to fully understand a long and difficult piece of text in a word document, I sometimes like to delete sections that I comprehend already.
If I need to reread the text, I don’t need to see those understood sections again.
I was looking for a way to save web edits so that they wouldn’t revert when I refreshed pages.
Two extensions might allow that:
Page Archiver
>Once a page has been archived, you can also edit the page with the integrated WYSIWYG editor.
StyleBot
>You can change the font, colors, margin, padding, hide elements or even write your own CSS manually. Your custom CSS styles will be preserved and automatically applied the next time you visit that site.".
Independent clause boundary disambiguation**
For independent clause boundary disambiguation, and independent clause segmentation you need natural language processing tools like NLTK.
e.g. "Sentence boundary disambiguation (SBD), also known as sentence breaking, is the problem in natural language processing of deciding where
sentences begin and end".
(2 independent clauses in 1 sentence - "disambiguation is the problem", and "sentences begin and end".)
"Often, natural language processing tools
require their input to be divided into sentences for a number of reasons".
(starting from the end of a sentence, and moving left, once an independent clause is found, split at the left of where it starts - 1 independent clause in 1 sentence - "require their input"). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bboyjkang2 (talk • contribs) 09:37, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
bulletin board
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Glad you liked my post. Just FYI, I stole most of it from WP:THETRUTH and things that have been shoved down my throat at various times. WP:TIGER may also be appropriate for this particular article. 02:58, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Major wisdom there, which has fallen on dozens of deaf ears, just in my limited experience. I'll meditate upon TIGER for my own self-improvement. Thank you. ‑‑Mandruss(t)03:04, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 10 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Although spadaro's comment was more extreme than mine or cwobeels, I don't think it was so bad as to need removal, especially in the middle of a conversation that had gone forum already without him. I'd revert to avoid the drama. Just let the thread die. Gaijin42 (talk) 21:58, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
Gaijin42 For efficiency's sake, you could have just reverted me with a condensed form of the above. I respect your judgment. But thanks for the consideration. ‑‑Mandruss☎22:03, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
Like many Wikipedia articles on scientific topics, the article is not very accessible to people like me, who know a little about each of a broad range of scientific topics, and seek to deepen that knowledge a little in selected areas of interest as we move through life. I feel this is a waste of much of Wikipedia's enormous potential. I felt that problem was worsened by showing the reader nothing but text on the initial screen, and the image I chose made the article a little less intimidating by connecting it to popular culture. It was also just aesthetically bland and unappealing, as I expressed in my editsum. I felt that these things, combined, were more important than a strict and serious assessment of applicability.
But I know it would be tilting at windmills to try to make any real change as to making Wikipedia accessible to a wider audience on scientific topics, so I'll leave it there. Thanks for taking the time to provide an explanation beyond a terse editsum. ‑‑Mandruss☎15:55, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
Halloween cheer!
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Send Halloween cheer by adding {{subst:Happy Halloween}} to user talk pages with a friendly message.
Merry Christmas!
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Did you know that hatting something doesn't make something go away to a reader with Javascript disabled? It just highlights the box in green or red trim, making Medeis' (presumably) drunken singing all the more festive and eye-catching.
Thanks for the comment. I've considered it, and I still think the statement needed to be made. Perhaps I should have deleted it instead. ‑‑Mandruss☎04:30, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can no longer use the insource: keyword for text searches. It caused issues with the new search tool. It will come back later. [2][3]
Problems
There was a bug in VisualEditor with Internet Explorer. It hid tools like the link editor when you opened them. The bug was fixed on Monday. [4]
Issues with the new search tool caused geo data code to show up on pages on Monday and Friday. The mobile "nearby" tool was also broken. The problem is now fixed. [5][6][7]
HHVM caused server issues on Thursday. They are now fixed.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4, and on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).
Some wikis have icons at the top of a page to show if it is protected or featured. Icons show up using CSS. You can now use the <indicator> tag in these templates instead to add the icons. [8][9]
VisualEditor now tells you if you're editing a re-used reference. This helps you avoid changing it if you just want to add a new one. [10]
The icons in VisualEditor's template editor tool for adding more fields are back, along with other fixes. [11][12][13][14][15]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
You may see a new tool on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [20][21]
You can join two IRC chats this week to learn more about the file cleanup project. One will be on Wednesday at 18:00 (UTC) and the other on Thursday at 04:00 (UTC). You can ask questions during the chat if you need help to fix files on your wiki.
You can see a list of files to fix on the Labs tool. You can report bugs and ask questions on the talk page.
Problems
Wikimedia Labs was broken for a few hours on Thursday. It was due to a hardware problem. [23]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf7) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11, and on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
You can now use more editing tools for tables in VisualEditor. You can add rows and columns, merge cells, and edit table captions. [24][25]
The style and insert menus in the toolbar of VisualEditor now show fewer tools. This helps you see the most common tasks. You can see all items by clicking "More". [26]
The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs. [27]
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I give you an invisible award cos I don't know what an award is, but u defo deserve one.
Cheers mate. You are a star. I just can't be bothered to get reverted after all the work, cross referencing and careful consideration I spent not interferring with the original article. Much obliged and it was a pleasure meeting you.
@Dalotos: Wikipedia would not be worth much if they simply took people's word for it. I accept that you did the research and provided quality information, but you are in a small minority. That's why Wikipedia wants citations for anything of significance, and history is very significant.
So, if one wants to contribute beyond correction of spelling and grammar, they have to be willing to put in the time to find the sources and cite them correctly. Citation isn't that hard once you get the hang of it, but it does require some learning.
My hope is that you will take a break and then try again, taking it slower. Wikipedia needs more people like you. Whatever you do, best wishes. ‑‑Mandruss☎00:28, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
Sometimes my humor is too subtle. That was my way of saying that the full disclosure was completely unnecessary, that it didn't matter even a little where you happened on the story, since you weren't using that as a source. The sources you did use are all fairly good ones. Will try to be less subtle in the future. ‑‑Mandruss☎20:10, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Refdesk probably isn't the ideal place for it, but for what it's worth, I tend to check Slickdeals.net for anything like that (I'm not affiliated/benefitting by recommending them, and in fact they don't sell anything -- just an active message board of people looking for deals). Type in 256gb in the search, look for the flash drives. Two on the first page: One super cheap at Amazon with horrible reviews and one for just under $100 at TigerDirect with very good reviews. --— Rhododendritestalk \\ 18:58, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Really curious as to why you would delete the text containing Officer Wilson's negative pedestrian video recording but keep up his positive accolades/mentions from the department? Your description for the event is somewhat confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doveryat (talk • contribs) 17:29, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
Doveryat, thanks for the comment. First, let me assure you I'm not a pro-Wilson POV pusher, as anyone who has worked on this article for months will tell you. Most of the time I'm not even aware of which side I'm benefiting with an edit, I just don't think in terms of sides. My agenda is Wikipedia's principles.
As my editsum stated, my reason was WP:NPOV. I didn't feel we should be using an incident from Wilson's past, something that had nothing to do with the subject of the article, to shed a negative light on Wilson. I have no doubt that there are things in Brown's past that would tend to support the thug image. Maybe he once punched a guy or shoved a girl. If some "reliable source" reported that, I would be opposed to including it, for the same reason.
Yes, we have a nice thing or two to say about Wilson. We also say that Brown "didn't cause trouble", was "a gentle giant", and was scheduled to start a tech school in a few days. There's a balance there.
I'm not 100% sure I'm right, or even 80% sure—I still have things to learn. That's why I encouraged the editor to take it to talk. If the majority disagrees with me, I have no problem letting that in. ‑‑Mandruss☎18:04, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf8) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 12. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18, and on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
The new search tool ("CirrusSearch") will be on the English Wikipedia from November 19. [28]
Move from Bugzilla to Phabricator
The tool to track bugs will change on November 21.
You won't be able to add or edit bugs between November 21 and November 24.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
The move from Bugzilla to Phabricator is done. You can now report bugs in Phabricator. [30]
Problems
There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the colspan or rowspan option. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17. [31]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf9) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 19. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 25, and on all Wikipedias from November 26 (calendar).
You will be able to try VisualEditor on many new wikis for the first time. After November 26, VisualEditor will become available on Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews wikis. You can find it in your Beta options. [32]
VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved. [33]
You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window. [34]
VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages. [35][36]
Latest comment: 10 years ago12 comments3 people in discussion
Hey, I saw your message on the talk page at Michael Brown about saving these grand jury documents at archive.org, so I thought I'd give it a try to see what happen. Here's what I found, I saved the url from CNN first here, then if you click on the individual links to the documents, it will open up in a new window and ask if you want to save that individual document as a page, here's the result from Volume 5. The only way I was able to read them though was by clicking on the buttons on the far upper hand left corner that say "Document" - "Pages" - "Text". They never loaded under the document button, but if you click on the pages button, then select a page and then click on the text button, you could read it. If you use the arrow buttons on the far right, it clicks through the numerical pages. I experimented with a few using the same technique and it seemed to work. I use IE 11 as my browser, so I'm not sure about how it would render in Firefox.Isaidnoway(talk)17:05, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
Chrome shows blank pages for me under pages, I can see the correct # of pages I think, but if I go to look at one it stays blank with a grey "loading" in the upper corner that never resolves. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:09, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
Did you try clicking on the "text" button to try and read them. I get the same blank page with the "loading" as well, but if I click on the "pages" and then select one and then click on "text", it renders as a html document that I can read.Isaidnoway(talk)18:08, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
Isaidnoway, Gaijin42 - Not sure why we moved to my talk page for something that might have interested others, but here we are (oh it's not about improving the article, very strictly speaking).
I archived and viewed Volume 10 using Isaid's instructions, but I'm not very confident it was archive.org content that I was viewing. There's nothing to prevent content at archive.org from successfully linking to stuff elsewhere, as far as I know, and as I indicated earlier the "save" completed too quickly for a PDF file, especially considering the site's general slowness when saving things. I guess there's no way to find out for sure.
In any case, it's unlikely many future readers would figure out the technique that you did, so the archive wouldn't be worth a whole lot anyway. I'm inclined to just hope that Documentcloud keeps the files forever, or until no one cares anymore, whichever comes first.
Not quite, that still crawls it from the original site. You can upload directly. Alternatively, these documents are probably eligible for Wikisource which would avoid the middleman all together, and remove a dependency on an external site. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:22, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
Gaijin42 - Wikisource tells you to upload to Commons, and its upload links to Commons's upload wizard. I don't get why one would want to involve Wikisource at all, in that case. Have you ever worked with Wikisource? Any advice on which way to go? Also I could use some guidance on handling the copyright stuff, as I've never put anything on Commons except my own photos. ‑‑Mandruss☎19:10, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
I have not. I only suggested wikisource instead of commons because Wikipedia:Creation_and_usage_of_media_files says thats where PDFs go (end of first paragraph). Perhaps that is outdated, or just poorly written, and commons is the actual holding tank for such files. Regarding copyright, there should be a choice in the dropdown lists saying that this is public domain, and then a secondary dropdown saying because it was a government document. Gaijin42 (talk) 19:19, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I just noticed at Shooting of Trayvon Martin there are a pair of infoboxes with Trayvon Martin's ethnicity listed as "African-American". Interestingly, when I did my random survey, the only other person I found with an ethnicity listing was Emmett Till... and his was African-American as well. Sort of made me think that a black person becomes African-American here only when they get killed by a white(ish) person. If some white guy were to knock off Oprah... POOF! ...she'll become African-American too. – JBarta (talk) 22:26, 28 November 2014 (UTC) (all in fun, no need to take seriously)
LOL. Good observations. George Carlin would have approved, since he understood that words alone mean pretty much nothing. ‑‑Mandruss☎23:13, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
A barnstar for you
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I read in the Computing refdesk that you were having problems with random bad sectors. I'm noticing that as well, getting items like "\Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block" in Event Viewer. Is this similar to what you are getting? What was causing your overheating problem, and how did you fix it? -- 143.85.169.27 (talk) 20:05, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
My symptoms vary depending on where the bad sector is (what is on it). Sometimes an application suddenly runs incredibly slowly, sometimes appearing to hang completely. During this time the "disk activity" light on my laptop stays on without so much as a flicker. Usually a restart is the only way out, and sometimes a hard power-off is necessary. A couple of times the bad sector(s) were low on the disk, where the really critical stuff is, and the computer would refuse to restart. I don't think I've ever gotten an on-screen error message specifically about a disk error, but I haven't looked at Event Viewer.
Anyway, whenever something like this happens, I know it's time to run SpinRite again, and it always gets me running again. Sometimes it's unable to recover all of the sector, but that has never resulted in anything worse than say a damaged JPEG that I could afford to lose.
I use my laptop almost exclusively on my bed. I have a blanket covering my legs, and at that time I didn't have a laptop "cooling pad". I was being careless about keeping the folds of the blanket clear of the fan vent. And I probably failed to keep stuff away from the fan vent when the laptop was sitting unused (but still up) on the bed. The result was that it spontaneously powered off multiple times, apparently due to high internal temp, before I figured out what was wrong. My guess is that it waited a little too long before the power-offs, and some tiny part of the HDD was slightly damaged by heat—just enough to make it damage a sector from time to time. At least that's the best explanation I can think of. ‑‑Mandruss☎20:38, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
Links and Citations on Page
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello I would highly appreciate your feedback on the below if possible:
Hello, I have linked this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lama_Salam to this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammam_Salam As Lama Salam is the wife of Tammam Salam. I keep getting this notice "This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles; try the Find link tool for suggestions. (June 2014)" I use the find link tool but nothing there.
I also am having a problem with the links, all the links are well referenced and none are just links, but I keep getting this notice "This article uses bare URLs for citations, which may be threatened by link rot. (June 2014)"
How to solve this, is there anywhere where I went wrong?
Thank you,
MyaBell117 — Preceding unsigned comment added by MyaBell117 (talk • contribs) 21:43, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
@MyaBell117: I see you have asked this question at Help desk, which is what I was going to suggest. I do not feel qualified to give you the best answer to this question. Good luck. ‑‑Mandruss☎21:57, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [37]
You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues. [38]
Problems
There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue. [39]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf11) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 10 (calendar). [40]
You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key. [41]
It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better. [42][43]
The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs. [44][45][46]
For a bookmarklet that allows you to manually archive a page you are visiting, store the following code in a bookmark on your browser's toolbar, with a name such as Wayback Save (e.g. Wayback Save):
@Cwobeel: Thanks. I set that up, and it works, but I don't know how much use I'll have for it. Most of what I do with archiving is adding it to refs that others like you have previously created. In that situation, I want an archive version that's as close as possible to the existing accessdate, which means I have to check for an existing version. If I'm already there, it's just as easy to click Wayback's link to request a new archive version, if necessary. ‑‑Mandruss☎04:34, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
Hey thanks good buddy. Unused references are a way of life in an article that uses list-defined references and is constantly in a state of flux. We don't consider those "reference errors", exactly, and we do keep an eye on unused refs and eventually comment them out. I won't say mind your own botness, but rather thanks for looking out for me! ‑‑Mandruss☎00:38, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
Brown and BLP
Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I'm trying to go slow, since I know we all have off-wiki lives to deal with, but pardon me for asking this on your talk page: Is Cwobeel a long term editor of the area? This diff attacks the prosecutor. An anti-Wilson opinion piece used as an attack. Another POV-pushing addition and another. More poor sources being used with a singular POV [50][51][52][53] One of the most shocking is this attack on the prosecutor directly by copying all the negativity right to his biography page.[54] Though I see why I am at odds with this editor, he added the Huffington Post source making the false claims that I am now trying to remove.[55] Some others. [56][57][58] The problem is that these are all very recent and entirely of a single view and many are really against WP:BLP. I just started selecting all high number additions to the pages and it seems that Cwobeel pushing, and hard, a single anti-police POV and using questionable sources or misinformation to do so. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:06, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
@ChrisGualtieri: Yes, Cwobeel is long term. He (if I may be forgiven the gender assumption) virtually never makes an edit that happens to favor the pro-Wilson view, which in my opinion makes him a POV pusher by definition. I don't know of anyone here who would claim that he's not (except perhaps him). He also has a short fuse. There are editors (none of those you have seen today) who come down hard on him, apparently trying to drive him off, resulting in some very acrimonious, counterproductive "discussions" of Wagnerian proportions, barely short of "fuck off and die". It's not the ideal environment for collaborative editing, but I'm not sure what could be done about it and that ideal environment is probably very rare anyway. It's not like he rarely makes a contribution.
I haven't yet felt competent to wade too far into waters like NPOV and BLP, so while taking baby steps I've mostly left that to others. So I'm probably not the best person to talk to about such things. I'd suggest Gaijin42 who, as you said, you already know. ‑‑Mandruss☎07:36, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
I understand. I am familiar with the process in a way, but I do not get such issues with historic properties, parks or bridges. Just having someone drop an idea or a new source is actually really rare and helpful, so its peaceful there. Anyone claiming I am a POV pusher would not enjoy reading my historic property pages because they are as dull as dirt and typically devoid of anything political. Division Street Bridge (Rhode Island) is a typical one. Liberty Arming the Patriot is a statue of note and Joseph Carpenter Silversmith Shop a typical building. Even by my own standards I write POV lines like "Carpenter was noted to be one of the "most successful of the Norwich silversmiths, clockmakers and pewterers..." even though it is undisputed it is still opinion. I think about 30 sources of the current Michael Brown page need to be removed through irrelevance or improper sourcing as we move to a more reliable format. It will be some time before textbooks appear on the matter so we have to manage without them until such a time. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 07:54, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the help!
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Glad we could be of some actual use. Rather, they, since my contribution consisted of asking one question that it turned out didn't need an answer anyway. ‑‑Mandruss☎21:02, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
You may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [59]
You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [60]
You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf12) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar). [61]
You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. [62]
VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [63]
The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [64]
Future changes
The star image of the watchlist may change soon. [65][66]
@Jbarta: I rarely edit on whims. The section is clearly in chronological sequence. It states a.m. once, and p.m. once, which provides adequate context and makes any additional a.m.'s or p.m.'s superfluous and redundant. There's little room, for example, for a misunderstanding that the crime scene investigation continued past midnight. ‑‑Mandruss☎00:39, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
I understand. Though for the sake of unmistakable clarity, I for one would prefer the am & pm. Removing them is a completely unnecessary shortcut in my opinion that has no real benefit and does have a possible downside (the unmistakable clarity bit). And just imagine if on some later date someone removes the first instance of am or pm. Then what? The reader has to figure it out, the future editors have to figure it out and ordinary working people will get confused. Sometimes a little redundancy is a good thing. – JBarta (talk) 00:50, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
@Jbarta: That treament stood for a number of weeks, probably months, until the two new paragraphs were added. But do as you wish, I've had enough conflict for awhile and wouldn't have made those changes if I expected anyone to object. ‑‑Mandruss☎00:54, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
You're welcome. You also reverted "St. Louis County" to "St. Louis county". Same reaction: wrong but I don't care. ‑‑Mandruss☎01:06, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
You seem a little "spent". And believe me when I say that I feel a little bad that I contributed to it. Not really bad... but a little... – JBarta (talk) 01:19, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The Hard Worker's Barnstar
For all your hard work on citations
Every time I check the revision history at Shooting of Michael Brown, I see that you have been busy keeping the citations and references up to date. Your hard work in this area is greatly appreciated. Thanks!!--Isaidnoway(talk)14:36, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The Technical Operations team is now using Phabricator to track their tasks. The Operations team manages the Wikimedia servers. In the future you will be able to see the tasks that are not private. [69]
Software changes this week
There will be no software changes this week and next week. This is because of the end-of-year holidays. The next update of MediaWiki will be on January 6. [70]
Future changes
The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations. [71]
A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis. [72]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes
There are no technical changes this week.
Feedback about Tech News in 2014
The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2014? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us at m:Talk:Tech/News. You can write in your language. Thank you!
Latest comment: 9 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
hi. Of course I agree with your reversion of User:Brounk on QZ8501, but just to ensure you're aware, if you're using the Google Chrome browser, it immediately offers its translation of any foreign language web page, and it's output is good enough to be useful, even from Indonesian, although decoding it can present a puzzle for some types of material. I read Der Speigel every day this way—it's better than most sources. Layzeeboi (talk) 15:33, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi Layzeeboi. I wasn't aware of that about Chrome, but I'm sure you know that Chrome has a fairly small share of the browser market. Perhaps "not helpful to 90% of readers" would have been more accurate, I don't know, but that wouldn't change much. The source language was a minor point compared to the others, which is why I noted it last. ‑‑Mandruss☎15:44, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Layzeeboi Wow, I had no idea, I thought Chrome was still 3rd behind IE and Firefox. In that case I should have said, "not helpful to 48% of readers" (assuming that 100% of Chrome users know about its translation facility and know how to use it). So the language point is more minor than I thought, maybe even minor enough that I could have omitted it. (Although it's extremely significant to me personally, since I use Firefox.) ‑‑Mandruss☎16:03, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
Rotated PDF files in landscape format used to show too small. They will now display correctly. You may need to purge older files. [73]
You can now use the {{!}}magic word instead of Template:!. Many wikis used the template to create a pipe (|) in tables and templates. You can delete the template. [74]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf14) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from January 13. It will be on all Wikipedias from January 14 (calendar).
A bug in VisualEditor sometimes added a ☀ (Sun) character. This is now fixed. [75]
The search and replace tool in VisualEditor is now much faster in long pages. [76]
The TemplateData editor now uses the same design as VisualEditor. [77][78][79]
The thumb option is now shown in your language in the help of the classic editor toolbar. [80]
Future changes
You can sign up to answer questions from designers. It will help them make editing easier. [81]
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:73 (number). Should you wish to respond, your contribution to this discussion will be appreciated.
Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Mentioned you in the ANI thread. I don't think he's going to be any use to the site, and suspect that we sooner we're rid of him, the better. If that can be done by some admins getting across "you don't do that here," fine. If it's a block, fine. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:16, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
@Ian.thomson: I'll do my best to stay out of it, as I have nothing to contribute there and he's doing a great job of hanging himself. Thanks for the heads up. ―Mandruss☎23:31, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can download the new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. The new version shows lead images, better galleries and content from Wikidata. It also has many other new features.[82][83]
Programs and bots still can't read information about images on many wikis. You can see the list of wikis with the most files to fix. Wikipedia in Italian, Indonesian and Japanese language have the most files to fix. On the biggest wikis you should use bots. Bots can add information templates to groups of files. You can ask other tech users to help you.
Problems
All JavaScript on Commons was broken for a few minutes on Tuesday. It was because of old code in the HotCat tool. The same problem happened on some Wikipedias on Wednesday. It is now fixed. [84]
Software changes this week
There are no software changes this week and next week due to annual meetings. [85]
Best, - W.carter (talk) 10:32, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
_by_Ron.jpg)
Hello and a belated welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. The following links will help your editing on Wikipedia:
Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is User:ChrisGualtieri's behavior at Shooting of Michael Brown. Thank you. --RAN1 (talk) 03:11, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
