User talk:Marchjuly/Archives/2021/October

Image removals

I'm not entirely sure why you commented on someone else's talk page in response to my comment about images being removed or why you thought my comment timestamped 18:24 had anything to do with an edit I made over an hour later[1] but since I've belatedly noticed your comment i will attempt to clarify.

My comment was about about the edit I had made about 10 minutes before I commented on the Bot page, an edit which restored the poster image to an older film article.[2]

I stated "If this continues a lot of older articles will soon lose their images" because I was worried about the effects of the bot on older less active articles. Perhaps did not state the problem clearly enough. One bot aggressively removing images from articles might not seem like a problem by itself because in theory that can "easily" be undone, but that is only true if you have forgotten about the fact that there is another bot which deletes orphaned images from Wikipedia. (In theory a determined editor can still probably undo that too or upload another image, but it's creating unnecessary extra work either way.)

For older lower activity articles the orphaned images will be gone long before anyone even thinks of trying to resolve what were simple cut and paste errors in the Fair use rationale. This undoes the good faith efforts of editors past, and makes the encyclopedia worse. The perfect is the enemy of the good. It is easy to forget but we are all in our own different ways trying to make this a better encyclopedia. -- 109.78.193.127 (talk) 15:12, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Watching the talk pages of other editors is not uncommon on Wikipedia as explained here. Many editors do such a thing and often these editors will comment if they think they can help resolve an issue. JJMC89 seems to welcome comments from those watching his talk page, but he can remove any comments he thinks are unhelpful or otherwise discruptive. I responded in that thread almost a day prior to your comment and you added your response below mine. So, in a sense, you joined an already ongoing discussion involving three other individuals; so, I responded to what you posted. I don't think that doing so was inappropriate any more that I think it was inappropriate for you to add your input. JJMC89 is an administrator who does lots of work in the file namespace, and I also try to help out there: so, I have his user talk page on my watchlist since alot of what we do overlaps.

Atrributing an characteristic like "aggressive" to a bot seems misplaced since a bot is only going to do what it has been told to do. This bot was developed and approved in good faith to look for non-free files that violate WP:NFCC#9 and WP:NFCC#10c and perhaps a few other things. It finds and removes files that do not satisfy these two non-free content use criteria. I don't believe the bot makes the decision on whether to remove a file on how long an image might've been used in a non-compliant way; it simply looks for such images and removes them. The bot leaves an edit summary explaining why it did what it did which contains links to more detailed and relevant Wikipedia pages. There are a number of other bots working in the filename space that have also been tasked for various things, but they don't actually delete files. There are almost 900,000 files uploaded locally to English Wikipedia and most of these are non-free files; so, bots are pretty much essential to try and keep things under control. There is a bot that does find non-free files that don't meet WP:NFCC#7 and it does tag such files for speedy deletion per WP:F5; that bot, however, doesn't delete such files. It's assumed that the administrators reviewing files tagged for F5 deletion will do at least a cursory check to try and catch any possible errors. Often a file tagged for F5 deletion is re-added to an article before it even gets to the adminsitrator and this is usually because an editor who works in the file namespace sees that the file has been tagged for deletion and figures out a way to resolve the problem that doesn't involve deletion. Just for reference, it makes no difference as to whether JJMC89's bot removes a file or a human editor removes the file per WP:NFCCE when it comes to orphaned non-free use. The F5 bot doesn't look only files removed by other bots; it simply looks for orphaned non-free files and tags them accordingly.

The comment you posted on JJMC89's user talk has a time stamp of "3:24 am, 13 September 2021" and the edit I was actually meaning to refer to in my response has a time stamp of "11:08, 11 September 2021". I mixed the diffs up, and apologize for any confusion that caused. In either of the two cases you've mentioned above, though, the bot doesn't appear to have been incorrect in removing either file. File:Kiss of death ver2.jpg had a non-free use rationale for Delta of Venus (film) and not Kiss of Death (1995 film); so, the bot removed the file. The bot has not removed the file since you addressed the issue with the file's rationale. I'm not sure exactly why the bot or another editor didn't notice the problem with the rationale before, but that doesn't make it any less of a problem. The bot found the file and removed it, you saw the edit the bot made and figured out how to address the issue by fixing the rationale problem. It's great that you did that, but it doesn't mean the bot was wrong for removing the file. Most likely the file would've been tagged for F5 deletion if you hadn't fixed the issue. There are edtiors who watch Category:Orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files just like there are editors who watch other types of maintenance catogories. My experience has been that one of these editors woould've noticed what you noticed and fixed the rationale just like you did before it reached the administrator review stage. If by chance nobody caught the error and the file ended up deleted, it could be easily restored per WP:REFUND since F5 deletions are for the most part considered ot be non-contentious. So, I'm not seeing the same issue you're seeing and don't think the bot is a problem. If you do still, however, feel there are real concerns, then you can follow the advice give in WP:BOTISSUE and seek further input from others.

Finally, your edits at File:Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie.jpeg and Sophia Di Martino were certainly made in good faith, but they weren't in accordance with relevant Wikipedia policy and were correctly reverted. Their reversion by other editors wasn't anymore "aggressive" than the edits made by JJMC89's bot. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:34, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Josef Josten

Dear MarchJuly and Hammersoft,

Once again, thank you for your advice on 11th Sept. re the article [3].

I agree that I have an interest in the subject of the article. I made a declaration of interest when I submitted it: I'm not sure if this is still visible.

I accept Hammersoft's comment about the citation: I have now removed it and "toned down" the highlighted text. I am looking for a more appropriate (independent) citation - preferably one that is accessible on the internet.

I shall also look into the possibility of a "non-free" image to upload. I appreciate your patience - this is still work in progress!

Best regards, Honza Giles (talk) 08:18, 4 October 2021 (UTC)Honza Giles

thank you for your advice

I will adhere to all of your feedback moving forward. I am new to this so this help is really appreciated. Apologies and thanks again. --MariaPass (talk) 00:40, 27 October 2021 (UTC)MariaPass

Hi MariaPass. No need to apologize. Just try and follow the guidance given in WP:PSCOI from here on. If you have any specific questions about what types of edits it's OK for you to make, you can always find someone at WP:TEAHOUSE or WP:HELPDESK who might be able to help you out. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:27, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

"250 thousand"

You referred me to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. Show me where this odd combination of numbers and "thousand" is stated to be preferable to either all numbers of all words in that article, because I did a search throughout the article for "thousand" and found no such advice. And when I said I've never seen this odd combination, I mean anywhere. I didn't do a search through Wikipedia; I simply have never seen this with thousands, as opposed to millions and higher numbers. Maybe it's standard somewhere outside the U.S., but I also spent two years in school in Malaysia and don't remember seeing this combination there, either. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:05, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Also, your edit summary seemed to be arguing for the edit I made! "Probably best to follow the guidance in MOS:NUMNOTES here and either keep them all as words or change them all to numerals." What did I do, and what did you do? Looks like you should follow your own advice and revert your edit. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:07, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Your edit changed content the from "a total population estimated to be between 250 thousand and 2.5 million" to "a total population estimated to be between 250,000 and 2.5 million". You changed thousand to ",000", but left "million" spelled out. That seemed odd to me and what is I was trying point out. I probably could've made that more clear in my edit summary instead of trying to use a short-cut link; so, my apologies for that. The first time such content was added to the article seems to have been here in 2014 as "250,000 to 2,500,000 individuals", but it's first appearance in the lead seems to have been made a few hours later by the same editor here as "250 thousand and 2.5 million individuals".

Anyway, my comment about searching Wikipedia was simply to add "250 thousand" to the "Search Wikipedia" box at the top of the page to see that "250 thousand" is used in quite a number of articles. I've got no idea as to what standard is followed in Malaysia or anywhere else outside the US states, but I don't necessarily agree with your assessment that it's uncommon, at least not in the US. I may be wrong, however, and will ask for clarification at WT:DATE. I will self-revert back to your version while things are being sorted. The current Eurasian eagle-owl#Status reads as "250,000 to 2,500,000 individual birds" and maybe that's how the lead should read as well. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:57, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

I have no problem with using the number 2,500,000 if that's what people want to do, but I would strongly assert that the weird "consistency" of "250 thousand and 2.5 million" is the worst possible solution and that there's nothing at all weird about "between 250,000 and 2.5 million". You see that kind of phrase all the time in publications like the New York Times. Their Manual of Style is not easily available for free online, but this is from AP's Style Guide. Find an example of "[digit] thousand" in it. Abbreviating the number "250K" is another matter but not for encyclopedia articles. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:28, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

As I posted above, it seemed odd to me, but I self-reverted because there are lots of things that seem a bit odd to me but aren't wrong per se. The discussion I started at WT:DATE clarified things a bit, which is fine. At least now, there will be something to link to which shows that there's a consensus against this type of usage if it ever comes up again. Thank you for the link to the AP guide. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:58, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

• There's complete agreement at WT:MOS that forms such as 250 thousand have no place, even when juxtaposed to 2.5 million. It's not worth adding something to MOS because it's an odd issue, but experienced editors are clear on the point. EEng 17:22, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
  • I was aware of the discussion, but thanks for the update. I was just asking for clarification on the usage; I wasn't really asking for an addition to be made to the MOS one way or another. I've got no problem with the outcome of the discussion. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:01, 31 October 2021 (UTC)