User talk:SMcCandlish/Archive 204

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November 2023

Notice

Hello SMcCandlish, the arbitration case request in which you were named as a party has been declined. For the Arbitration Committee, –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 22:41, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Request

BTW, I didn't mean to trigger that regurgitating debate over at WT:VER. Sorry 'bout that.

On a brighter note...

I've started a revamp of Wikipedia:Tools/Optimum tool set.

Please take a look and let me know if there are any essential techniques or must have tools that you think should be included.

Thank you.

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   06:21, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: No worries. I agree with your summary "the policy is in a stalemate between deletionists and inclusionists. The current wording is a form of détente, and has been that way for decades".

That optimum tool set page looks great (and your ease-of-use notes over at Valjean's talk probably worth integrating in some form). I'll have to pore over it in more detail; it covers a lot of stuff I have not used. I'm not actually using wikEd (I forget exactly why, but I'm sure it was compatibility issues with something). As for other stuff, I might have recommended by own monospace font stuff at https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:SMcCandlish/codefont.css but something changed in the code-editing interface (for pages like that .css page itself, and users' .js pages, but somehow not module pages), making them grey and hard to read, and I haven't gotten into poring over the CSS cascade at such pages to fix it yet. You might find some other minor bit of advisable usefulness in User:SMcCandlish/global.css, User:SMcCandlish/global.js, meta:User:SMcCandlish/global.css, meta:User:SMcCandlish/global.js, though honestly I keep these much simpler than various other power users do.

Will take a walk through your list of optimum tools in more detail, though, and see if I think of anything in particular to add there.

PS: Maybe you know the answer to this. Not using wikEd, but using lots and lots of the gadgets and such, when I edit a page like this one, on the toolbar above the edting box, the one with "Heading, Format, ...", on the far right of that is a search feature with magnifying glass icon, and this search supports both regex, and distinguishing glyphs that the browser's built-in page search function treat as the same, like " and “. But I have no idea where this special search feature is coming from. It doesn't have any identifying text in it. If I log out, and go edit a page, that feature is not present, so it does seem to be coming from an add-on tool of some kind and is not part of the default editing tools. Anyway, it's very helpful, and probably the main reason I haven't switched to wikEd, aside from whatever script incompatibility I ran into way back when.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:20, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I look forward to your further comments. Is the search/replace thing the one in the advanced edit toolbar? You have to click on "advanced" at the top of the edit box, and once clicked, it should be persistent. It includes a regex feature. And it shows up when not logged in, as long as the advanced tab is clicked. Honestly, I never knew that was there. It seems odd and rather inappropriate to hide the search/replace under "Advanced". Bad UI/UX design. Yet, this feature warrants further investigation. Maybe wikEd is obsolete.    — The Transhumanist   22:18, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

P.S.: I'm concerned that Valjean hasn't accepted what he's been warned about: that any RfC or discussion on changing "verifiable" to "verified" will result in another lengthy debate that remains in stalemate throughout, essentially being a waste of time. I fear that he's stuck in trial by error mode. That he hasn't ascertained the lesson from that very discussion on the very page that any further discussion would normally be carried out on, is beyond me. WP:BRD, here we come.    — The Transhumanist   22:26, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: You might want to check out the discussion involving Valjean at Whatamidoing's user-talk page (the "Red is a color" thread). As for the search/replace feature, yes, that's it! I didn't realize it was a built-in part of the "Advanced" section of the default editing tools. Glat to have it's origin nailed down.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:56, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

It's kind of cludgy, but it works! So, I've added it to the tools list. If you come across any tools or techniques that blow your mind, let me know. In the meantime, I highly recommend you mess around with perplexity.ai. It's a mind blower.    — The Transhumanist   14:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

It's on my check-it-out list. I have some non-WP ideas in mind for something like that, like the family history and name etymology research I've been doing tediously and manually over at Cuindlis.org. But if something like this would be helpful and largely hallucination-free for WP would, that would be amazing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I noticed something

While researching tools for the optimum set, I went looking at the contributions of the editors at the top of the WP:NOE list. I've come to the conclusion, based on the average small delay time between so many of their edits, that they are likely running their user accounts as bots. It's so obvious it looks like an open secret. I can't imagine them sitting there hitting the enter key over and over, hour after hour, day after day, year after year. That would be absolutely mind-numbing, reducing them to zombies, if not meat-bots. It is almost as if they have been awarded the bot flag (though using a paper clamp on the return key hypothetically may have the same effect ).    — The Transhumanist   23:26, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

AWB/JWB might have something to do with this, and some of them might actually have some bot permissions, but if that can't account for these timing stats, then maybe this is evidence worth presenting somewhere, but I don't know much about that stuff. I stay away from the dramaboards as much as I can.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

It was just an observation, not an investigation.    — The Transhumanist   14:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Response to the edit summary for your second revert

"Changes to policy pages are expect to get consensus first, and can be reverted at will when they don't."

Not according to WP:PGBOLD: "you should not remove any change solely on the grounds that there was no formal discussion indicating consensus for the change before it was made."

"BRD has already been invoked."

BRD is an optional process, not a substantive rationale for a revert.

"And edit summaries are not the place for detailed rationales, that's what the talk page is for."

Then what are edit summaries for? I'd say brief substantive rationales. For example, "There is no consensus for this change. See the thread open on the talk page." The reference to the current discussion on talk would have been a great substantive reason for your first revert.

- Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 22:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Butwhatdoiknow, I know how you feel. The same thing happened to me over 15 years ago as I was learning the ropes. In may be a surprise to you, but, SMcCandlish was acting according to the norm.

The standard practice on our oldest mainstream policies, established by actual conduct over decades, is to discuss it on the talk page first. Not to do so, while not explicitly against any rules, may be considered disruptive by those who watch these pages.

There is one exception to this AFAIK: If you exhibit "the clue" and describe accepted practice that everybody already inherently agrees to. Though, that is rare on long-established policy, but it does happen.

Accepted diplomacy on these pages, is to reach consensus on the talk page. That's because, the status quo on each of these policies has more often than not been reached by painstaking edit wars and intense debate over many years, often between opposing factions (such as deletionists versus inclusionists), and the accepted prose is the result of a carefully balanced compromise between them. Any deviation from that is likely to get an immediate response, and reverted back to the consensus-established status quo, even by editors considered neutral.

The most blatant example of this would be at WP:VER and WT:VER, where you can practically see physical lines drawn out between sides in the edit histories and discussions over the years.

I hope this explanation helps. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   00:31, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, but what you describe as "the norm" is not reflected in policy. And there are several reasons why reverting with the sole rationale of "no consensus" is far from diplomatic.

In this case there was evidently a discussion taking place. But you wouldn't know that from the first revert edit summary. SMcCandlish could have - and I would say "should have" - taken a moment to include "See discussion at talk" in that summary. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 02:42, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm going cover a lot of actually pretty crucial points, so this will be fairly detailed. The fact of the matter is, per WP:EDITING policy, every user is alrealdy empowered to revert something they don't believe is an improvement (or to make any other good-faith edit they want to, aside from a handful of rare exceptions, like reverting what ArbCom is doing in ArbCom's own pages, or changing the substantive meaning of a WP:OFFICE-action policy that was forced on the community by WMF, or injecting copyright infringements or libel, or adding potentially controversial claims to a BLP without a source – I think we all understand what the exceptions are). Reverting reflexively and without a clear rationale – which is demonstrably not what I did – is loosely discouraged (e.g. here and here) but is not against policy. So even if Butwhatdoiknow thought that's what was happening, it was not sensible grounds for a counter-revert; that was just the beginning of a pointless editwar.

Next, WP:BRD establishes a consensus-accepted procedure whereby if someone disagrees with someone's bold edit[1], they may revert it at will, and what was reverted[2] should not be restored[3] without a discussion concluding in favor of the change/addition. While the BRD page is categorized as an essay for some reason, it has overwhelming community buy-in and is treated in practice as if it had the force of policy; I've even seen people blocked or topic-banned for exhibiting a pattern of failing to abide by it (the underlying true policy reason for such restrictions is WP:DE: they were being disruptive by not participating in the process the community has established).

Next, from WP:P&G, which seems to be a policy Butwhatdoiknow only skimmed and did not read in detail: "Proposals for new guidelines and policies require discussion and a high level of consensus from the entire community for promotion to guideline or policy status" Note that it does not say "Proposals for new guideline and policy stand-alone pages". Adding a rule at WP:NOT to prohibit an entire class of userspace content is absolutely a proposal for a new policy, and quite a sweeping one, whether that was the actual intent or not and desite that the change only injected one word; changes that small can often have sweeping policy effects (in real-world laws, too, not just on WP). And various policies and guidelines have been split and merged over time; whether an item of P&G material exists as a stand-alone page or as sectional content is completely irrelevant to its nature as policy material. So, anyone could and arguably should revert such a change until consensus is established that it is a good idea.

More narrowly pertinent to this new change at WP:NOT is probably this: "because policies and guidelines are sensitive and complex, users should take care over any edits, to be sure they are faithfully reflecting the community's view and to be sure they are not accidentally introducing new sources of error or confusion. ... the purpose of policies and guidelines is to state what most Wikipedians agree upon, and should be phrased to reflect the present consensus on a subject". The inserter of the "profiles" language clearly did not do any of this, and was attempting to address only the convenience of two wikiprojects; not only was no input sought to see whether such a change was reflecting the community's consensus view, at least two of us have pointed out how that change accidentally introduced a new source of error or confusion.

But there's more: "Talk first. Talk page discussion typically precedes substantive changes to a policy. Changes may be made if there are no objections or if the discussion shows there is consensus for the change." Talking first did not happen, and there already are objections. "Major changes should also be publicized to the community in general; announcements similar to the proposal process may be appropriate." This didn't happen, either, yet a change that probably affects every detailed "User:Foo" page on the system is unmistakably a "major change".

Butwhatdoiknow is under the mistaken impression that all they have to do is skim edit summaries to figure out what is going on. This editor did not bother looking at the talk page, and objected to my revert on the false basis that it wasn't explained. Not only is there no actual requirement to explain it in the first place (just a recommendation: "you should give a substantive reason for challenging it either in your edit summary or on the talk page"), it was in fact explained in the edit summary, obviously referring to a talk page discussion that was already open, in which an even more detailed rationale was provided. The two editors who appear to be in favor of this "profile" change (who have so far not engaged in any way on the talk page or otherwise) also need to review this in the P&G policy: "Editing a policy to support your own argument in an active discussion may be seen as gaming the system". When they added a shortcut referring to the change they wanted to make[4], they were transgressing that, because discussion was already open about whether to make such a change at all, and it so far is not in favor, with zero concerns about it addressed by the proponents.

Butwhatdoiknow's edit-warry and kneejerk counter-revert's edit summary verged on senseless: "'multiple editors have concerns' - Are you one of them? If so, what is your concern? Or, if you are reverting for others, where have they expressed their concerns?" It is utterly immaterial who raised the concern; the fact that there is dispute about it in evidence on the talk page (or in edit summaries for that matter) is entirely sufficient for anyone to revert a change as something that is being disputed. Happens every single day. Once a change has been challenged, the burden of proof of consensus lies on the shoulders of the proponent(s) of the change; that applies to project pages just as much as in mainspace, and especially at policy pages. When someone says that concerns have already been raised, the utterly obvious thing to do is take a few seconds to look for them on the talk page. It's why we have talk pages in the first place ("The purpose of a [page]'s talk page ... is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated [page]".

Finally, Butwhatdoiknow hasn't expressed any rationale or even just opinion in favor of the change in question, but is just going around counter-reverting people on the faulty basis of not being satisfied with their revert edit summaries and seeming to also cast vague aspersions about their motives. If there is any kind of revert that is not constructive and should never happen, this is that kind. It is not anyone's job to go around "policing" other people's reverts and edit summaries out of a subjective personal sense of whether they are adequate or not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:44, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

• Good analysis. I concur.    — The Transhumanist   14:25, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
• @SMcCandlish, thank you so much for taking the time to give me extensive and meaningful feedback. A bit of background: I have no dog in the "profile" hunt. My concern is reverts that lack meaningful edit summaries. Compare wp:EW: "When reverting, be sure to indicate your reasons." In this case, you and I disagree regarding whether the edit summary for your first revert included a meaningful rationale.

►REGARDING YOUR FIRST REVERT

Here is the edit summary that accompanied your first revert -

Not actually a big fan of WP:BRD reverting, but this is a policy page, and multiple editors have concerns about that change, so it needs to come back out unless a consensus is established for it.

This summary -

> Does not provide a substantive rationale. I agree that your summary contains a clear rationale ("multiple editors have concerns about that change"). However, that rationale isn't meaningful because it doesn't tell the reverted editor - or other editors reviewing the edit history - what those concerns are (or, foreshadowing my next point) where where they can go to find them). Compare wp:ES (bold in original): "It is a good practice to provide a meaningful summary for every edit, especially when reverting (undoing) the actions of other editors or deleting existing text; otherwise, people may question your motives for the edit."

> Does not point to where the unnamed editors have expressed their concerns. You say your summary was "obviously referring to a talk page discussion that was already open." Well, it was not obvious to me. Perhaps it was a discussion elsewhere, perhaps it was a discussion that had been archived, or perhaps - if I was an editor unfamiliar with you and the quality of your work - I might think that it was a made up "many people say" argument and there was no discussion at all.

I respectfully suggest that, due to the lack of clarity, the burden does not shift to the editor reading the summary to "go fish" for the many editors' unidentified concerns about the reverted text.

> Does not indicate that you have a substantive objection to the change. Compare wp:DRNC: "Don't assert 'no consensus' because you believe others might object to an edit. Let those editors do their own reverting, then the original contributor will know who disagrees with the edit and why."

The bottom line: I encourage you to take a moment to add "see talk" to edit summaries when reverting on the basis of ongoing talk page discussions.

►REGARDING MY REVERT OF YOUR REVERT

Before almost admitting to engaging in less than best practices behavior - which I am about to do - I want to point out that your second edit summary, prompted by my revert, did provide a meaningful rationale for your first revert. So, based solely on "the ends justify the means," my revert did have a beneficial outcome for all the editors who review the NOT edit history after your second revert.

That said, I suppose the best practice would have been for me to express my objection to your "multiple editors have concerns" rationale on your talk page. On the other hand, that would have been a lot of work* and would not have resulted in the NOT edit history showing the improved rationale. *The fact that I didn't do this work reflects poorly on me. Compare wp:DRNC: "An editor with a valid objection who reverts with a 'no consensus' edit summary is just plain lazy." - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 18:21, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Will try to keep it shorter this time, but there's still a lot to unpack here. The end point of what I said above (and our esteemed WP:JAGUAR The Transhumanist seems to concur), is that "My concern is reverts that lack meaningful edit summaries" is not an encyclopedically useful pursuit. Even admins don't go around trying to "police" that, and they are basically our police. You not finding a revert rationale explanatory enough for your preferences is not a rationale to do a counter-revert; that's basically WP:POINT-leaning behavior, most especially when you don't even have your dog in the hunt, as you put it. If you don't have a content-facing rationale to undo something, don't undo it; otherwise you're just trying to "punish" an editor personally for something you don't like about their behavior. You really do seem to be wanting to make reverts based on a behavioral notion, but the behavior in question was not wrong in any way to begin with.

I'll repeat that when someone says that editors have raised concerns about an edit and this is the reason for the revert, this pretty much automatically and always means "see the discussion on the talk page". There is no reason anyone needs to specify this. I would normally just chalk up your action and argument for it to relative inexperience, but you've been here 16 years, so I find it rather inexplicable. Regardless, it's important to remember that no one is obligated to satisfy you; your own personal view that a particular edit summary wasn't as explanatory as you would have liked isn't anyone else's issue.

I think also there's a bit of a WP:COMMONSENSE issue happening here, that leans toward WP:WIKILAWYER and WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY matters. It is not useful to pick and choose out-of-context quotations that you like from policies or guidelines and use them contrary to their intent and scope, in light of what all the rest of our P&G pages have to say that is relevant, to go around picking pointless revert-fights with people, especially when it is not on the principle of anything to do with the content at all but only about your personal perception of how well the person communicated in an edit summary. See also WP:REVTALK; edit summaries are not intended for long-winded explanations, or back-and-forth discussion, though people tend to misuse them that way. If your concern is reverts that you don't feel are fully justified, then doing other reverts that basically cannot be justified at all, having no connection to the content but just intended as behavioral enforcement, is self-contradictory as well as disruptive.

Your ends did not justify the means at all. Everyone but you already understood that the talk page was where to go, since it always where to go, and the end result of this has been a non-trivial amount of animosity/stress (maybe not personal animosity, like "I don't like you", but certainly "this is a pointless ass-pain" situational animosity), and a quite signficant expenditure of time trying to bringing you more up to speed on related policy matters. This is a real cost. "I got a result I wanted" does not equate to "The results were good", much less "The results were worth it." Yes, taking your concern to my talk page would have been more constructive, but the base answer "See the thread already open on the policy's talk page, where everyone would automatically expect to find it" would have been the same.

PS: You're also misinterpreting WP:DRNC (an essay with rather iffy community buy-in to start with). "Do not assert 'no consensus' because you believe others might object to an edit" (emphasis added) is about trying to foretell the future and guess what's someone might think; it is not applicable to a situation in which editors already have objected; they are qualitatively different. In the latter case, it does not matter at all who raised the objection; the fact that it already exists is sufficient.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:07, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you again for taking the time to provide a thoughtful reply. I am disappointed that my comments have not resulted in you seeing that you would benefit other editors - including at least one with 16 years of experience - by following this recommendation in DRNC: "If, in fact, the original text was the result of a consensus reached in a prior discussion (or is the subject of a current dispute) then include a link to that discussion in your edit summary." - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 22:55, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Sometimes I do, but there is no requirement to do it, and someone not doing it is not an edit-warring excuse. You have been around long enough to have figured that out by now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

"Taking it to the talk page" is a much better option than a mindless back and forth in the the edit summaries.    — The Transhumanist   20:25, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Maintaining our legacy...

Here's a thread (about a slightly disturbing essay) you might find interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:WhatamIdoing&oldid=1183688681#Your_essay_is_good_and_I_want_to_publish_it

Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   00:47, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. That is some interesting number-crunching. And it ties in with organizational lifecycle observations I've made before. I strongly agree with the "We need new editors more than we need the endorphin rush of insta-reverting an uncited but probably accurate contribution" part (something I was saying myself over at WP:V and in some side discussion at Whatamidoing's user-talk page. I'm bit less thrilled with the inclusionism angle in the essay. And I feel a little bit chastized in the part about just fixing things instead of getting on newer editors' cases to do it right the first time; while some editors create a river of problems for other editors to fix, and in this case I did do a lot of the needed cleanup work, I could probably have been more "friendly" when addressing one such editor here; my "do not suffer fools lightly" tendency needs to be moderated more, even if I've moderated it a whole lot over the years already.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:39, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Considering we are in a couple major relevant technological revolutions right now—robotics and artificial intelligence—both of which are subject to accelerating change, and based on various forecasts on when AGI will likely be here based on the progression of Moore's Law and its derivatives, there may well be another source of next generation editors at Wikipedia (or at its successor) in the not so distant future.

Meanwhile, some futurists are arguing pretty loudly that we have achieved longevity escape velocity so we might be around longer than we think, delaying the inevitable.    — The Transhumanist   14:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, that is a pretty interesting idea, though the results so far in having AIs write stuff on their own have been rather less than encouraging ([5], etc.). One assumes that it will improve, though the whole idea of an AGI having a viewpoint to push raises issues on it own. As for the last part, well, at 54, I really hope they get on with it or that it doesn't happen within my lifetime. I don't want to achieve near-immortality in some aged ricketty shell for centuries of additional but increasingly miserable lifespan. Medical science still has a long way to go in dealing with poor quality of life. So many people I know in my age bracket are already dealing with severe chronic pain, malfunctional organs, recurrent cancers, etc., etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

The Timeline of artificial intelligence is a good place to share developments and failings in the AI field. It also tracks legislative efforts.

One thing I find alarming is that James Burke's observations about change in his documentary series Connections back in the 1970s, are coming to the fore: basically, his concern of what might happen when innovation progresses so rapidly that people can't keep up with it or understand it. Scientists or inventors working on a little piece of the future have no idea what will become of their work, because it is almost unpredictable how it will impact others' work. For example, Burke traced the impact of the use of slate by ancient Phoenician merchants to compare the purity of gold used in trade, and showed how that contributed and led to the development of the atomic bomb. How many "atomic bomb"-impact technologies will emerge from seemingly innocuous development threads started in our past or in our present?

The amount and types of new technologies make the head spin. Danish scientists have become expert in the collection of DNA. They've recovered 2.4 million year old prehistoric DNA out of a glacial ice sheet from over 130 species, and to determine what and how many species live in or near a particular ecosystem, they vacuum DNA samples out of the air. Meanwhile, other scientists are using CRISPR-based technologies to induce genetic mutations within the current generation by modifying the DNA of specific individuals. That's almost like it came right out of comic books or movies.

While it may be true that "they have a long way to go", it's not on a linear progression, but on an acceleration curve. So, as we move forward we are moving much further ahead each year than we did the year before. In computer tech, computer capacity is doubling about every year, so if you use the current year's technological capacity as a base, the progress would be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128—or 64 years'-worth of progress in the 7th-year, or 128 years' worth over a 7-year period. A similar progression is taking place in the medical field, where the time it takes for medical knowledge to double is shrinking.

So, we might cover the distance to rejuvenation technologies in much less time than you think. But maybe not before computers say, "Hello, Mr. McCandlish", and really mean it.    — The Transhumanist   22:30, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Never did see that show, but it sounds interesting. As for the rest of it, I'm aware of these sorts of analyses, but similar predictions were made about a lot of other things (people on the old Extropians mailing list were certain that the singularity would happen by the early 2010s), and most medical tech, that the average person needs, doesn't seem much better now than it was when I was a kid. We're even losing ground on some of it (antibacterials and antifungals, for instance, or marginally improved painkillers leading to an opioid-addiction epidemic). I really want a new medical renaissance to happen, and for a lot of other great stuff to happen, like fixing the climate crisis, colonizing the solar system, not being killed off by the AI we create, and for something like fascism to not ultimately sweep the globe and lead to a permanent panopticon society of perpetual totalitarianism. I guess the fact that I keep on keepin' on is evidence of considerable hope within, but I don't really feel concious hope about all these things on the daily.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:52, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

In the meantime, we can attempt to train the next generation of Wikipedians how to responsibly develop and maintain the encyclopedia.    — The Transhumanist   01:18, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Emergent capabilities

One of the most interesting (if not scary) phenomena that has occurred with the introduction of LLM chatbots, is that of emergent abilities.

Here's a link: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-unpredictable-abilities-emerging-from-large-ai-models-20230316/

The bigger the training data sets, the more abilities that seem to come out of the blue. The latest chatbots can do things that nobody expected, not even the developers.

And because of the huge surge in the popularity of chatbots, tech companies are scrambling to enhance them further, including combining them with other forms of AI, such as reasoning engines, to produce chatbot hybrids.

That opens the emergent ability issue into even more unknown territory. What will these things be able to do next that neither we nor the developers expected?

The class of generative AI that I find most interesting is iterative. They write their own prompts based on a project you've assigned them, and they keep going until the job is done. One of those is AutoGPT. But, something happened that should give us pause. Using a model based on AutoGPT called ChaosGPT, some idiot told it to destroy the human race, and it started working on it. Fortunately, it did not succeed. Perhaps that guy never heard the old adage "Be careful what you wish for".

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kw7p/someone-asked-an-autonomous-ai-to-destroy-humanity-this-is-what-happened

Grasping at metaphors I'm thinking how gun control applies here. You wouldn't want to hand out machine guns to everybody. But future AIs may be more like the Big Red Button. If everybody had the ability to launch nukes, somebody probably would. Well, the same principle might apply to AIs which may be more capable than we assume they are, and somebody repeats the request of that guy mentioned above.

So, one thing the future is likely to be, is interesting.    — The Transhumanist   00:33, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I was aware of that "destroy the human race" thing. And I think if we get an AI apocalypse (which is honestly very likely), it won't be because of a Terminator-style scenario where the AI wakes up one day and goes on a murderous rampage, it'll be because of something exactly like what you're talking about, some "let's just combine all the AIs and let them talk to each other without any real constraints, and let them interact with people without any oversight" setup (this is already happening, and I've seen a fair amount of evidence of AIs lying their asses off to real people to social-engineer them into doing stuff, like solve captchas for them). So, all it takes is any one of the millions of freakazoid religious nuts out there convinced that we are in the End Times and the Messiah is coming and all they have to do is start the end of the world to trigger the Rapture. They'll do it without hesitation, and the AI will "gladly" help, doing whatever it has to do to get humans to take the necessary steps that the AI can't control directly. It will hack for launch codes. It will social-engineer its way into access to air-gapped systems. It will write and publish fake news to start wars, with such perfectly faked evidence that it can't be detected, and so on. Were not just already heading in this direction, we're sprinting toward it like it's a prize.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:01, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Like a mining operation, run amuck. I wonder what it could do with all the iron in the planet's core? Iron doesn't rust in the vacuum of space, and they've designed batteries using iron cores. That's 2 applications, right there. So, instead of helping us with our mines, it could mine the whole world. Almost as bad as removing the planet to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Are you ready to hitchhike off this rock?    — The Transhumanist   00:12, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

A look under chatbot hoods

The weird thing about chatbots used in third-party apps, as that the third-parties can't reprogram them. Instead, they prep them with instructions (called preprompts or system prompts) that the chatbots receive before the users get a crack at it. However, from time to time, clever users somehow coax the chatbots into sharing what their system prompts are. So, the developers can influence their chatbots' behavior, but they don't have full control. I don't know whether to be relieved, or alarmed.

Here's an article that provides a look at the configuration instructions the major chatbats were running on last Spring. How much they have changed since then, I know a little about for perplexity, just by its behavior since then. It is no longer limited to 80-word responses, and I got around that most of the time, anyways. The tricky part is that ChatGPT uses its LLM to follow perplexity's system prompts, so the training data is engaged and can be accessed as an epiphenomenon (such as talking in the style of John Wayne - the chatbot doesn't get "Howdy, pardner" from the search results.). But, it is not easy to tap into the training data for answers, and specific methods are disabled as soon as the developers discover them. And, keep in mind that your discussions on the Web, such as this one, will probably be included in the next version's training data set.

https://matt-rickard.com/a-list-of-leaked-system-prompts

It does provide some insight into how these things work.

I hope you find it interesting. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   23:48, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I will check it out. Have a wicked cold right now, though. Lots of coughing and headache. Not COVID; I tested.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:18, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Hope you are feeling better. Takin' lots of vitamin C?    — The Transhumanist   00:38, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm kind of addicted to mandarins. I go through about 5 pounds a week. I will definitely never get scurvy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:09, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

This writer's sense of humor, reminded me or yours...

Found an article that explains tech bubbles pretty well:

https://tylerhogge.com/2023/10/02/sardines-and-a-magic-box/

Enjoy,    — The Transhumanist   00:27, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Good piece. I learned some things from it (not a business major!).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:23, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

please explain

please explain to me why the image of Momo on the Turkish Van page isn't "encyclopedia quality" when there are several other images on there that are just as unprofessional 132.205.229.24 (talk) 21:52, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

It does nothing to illustrate the subject of the article in an enyclopedic manner, and is just a picture of a hairy cat belly, which could be of any kind of cat (other than a hairless one). And Wikipedia is not a memorial site, including for pets.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:57, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

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Walk This Way!

(FYI: inaccessible news articles are often archived, and become accessible, on the Wayback Machine soon after they are published, sometimes even on the same day).

Here's an article I came across explaining Wikipedia's role and impact on AI, and the ongoing relationship between the two into the future:

Archived article, from the New York Times...

Wikipedia’s Moment of Truth: Can the online encyclopedia help teach A.I. chatbots to get their facts right — without destroying itself in the process?

What the article is referring to is article-like formatted AI chatbot search engine responses. To see one for yourself, pick a general topic, and type this into perplexity.ai: "Please write at least 3000 words on *topic*, with multiple headings and bullet points." (Replace *topic* with the topic you chose).

What's going to happen regarding this is dependent in part on whether WP is more passive vs more active in this development space.    — The Transhumanist   16:09, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I think I would also add "and without using Wikipedia as a source" to avoid WP:CIRCULAR issues. I'm not sure what one would add to such a prompt to get it to cite sources/references, much less ones we'd consider reliable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:26, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Read that piece. Good article. Raised a few points I wasn't aware of it (particularly in relation ito WP/WMF).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:57, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: You might be in'erested in: Wikipedia talk:Image use policy#AI-generated images.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:26, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

"In the phonetics"

Well it's idiomatic if you start writing "In IPA" then change it to "In the International Phonetic Alphabet" and then decide to generalise it by replacing International Phonetic Alphabet with Phonetics and fail to notice the residual the. That's how language evolves . 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:28, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

It thevolves.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:08, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

IA

IA = "Internet Archive"

I'm planning on including the IA in the WP:OTS.

And there's a pair of bookmarklets that make use of the IA easy.

But, before putting those in there, I need to make sure the instructions are clear and easy to follow, for users who have never placed bookmarklets on their browser's bookmark toolbar.

javascript:void(window.open('https://web.archive.org/save/'+location.href));

javascript:location.href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/'+location.href

So, if you wouldn't mind, try dragging each of the above bookmarklets to your bookmarks toolbar. To keep things standardized, use the title "Archiv" for the first one, and "Wybck" for the second.

Now they should be available to click on from any webpage. Click on each one while on a news page, to test them. The first bookmark saves the current page you are on. The second bookmark jumps you to the IA's archived copies of the current page.

Were my instructions easy to follow, and did they work?

I look forward to your reply. Sincerely,    — The Transhumanist   22:06, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

My workflow for this was:

1. Select the entire string with the mouse as if to copy-paste it, from "javascript:" through "));" – if you don't do that first, the draggable material is just the "https:// ..." URL inside the string.
2. Drag that selection to the toolbar and get something unhelpfully named something like ".href));"
3. Right-click on it and pick edit, and rename it to "Archiv".
4. Repeat the above for the other bookmarklet, and call it "Wybck".
5. Go to a news site; I picked https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67390366
6. Click the Archiv bookmarklet. Something happened momentarily top-right; it appeared to be one of my anti-spam/anti-popup extensions nuking the bookmarklet as a threat.
7. Tried another page, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67387475
8. This time I got a subscribe bother-box from BBC, but nothing else.
9. Tried a third page, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67356581.
10. This time I got nothing.
11. At same page, tried with Wybck link; that one worked and took me to https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67356581
12. Poper Blocker is my main pop-up blocker. I found it in my browser extensions, got into its advanced settings, added "web.archive.org" to its whitelist.
13. Tried the first of the bookmarklets again, and another news page, this time at a Reuters page.
14. It worked this time (slowly), and took me to: https://web.archive.org/web/20231112001130/https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fighting-rages-israel-says-ready-evacuate-babies-gazas-main-hospital-2023-11-11/
15. Went back to BBC, and it worked this time (again slowly, since it's doing a new page save): https://web.archive.org/web/20231112001322/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67387827

So, the manual stuff to do can be summed up as:

A. Mouse-select the entire javascript code line before dragging it to toolbar.

B. Right-click it for the option to rename it something short and sensible.

C. If it doesn't work, whitelist web.archive.org in any pop-up blocker you have. This might be a stand-alone extension/add-on, part of a general anti-spam one, a feature built into a browser, or even a stand-alone app; everyone's system is configured differently.

PS: It would help to use <nowiki> so that MediaWiki doesn't interpret the URL strings in the javascript lines as URLs to parse and make clickable/draggable and show link icons for: javascript:location.href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/'+location.href

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: Possible error: If the intent of the first tool, the "Archiv" one, is to generate (no matter what) a new IA archival with the current date as the archive-date, this sometimes fails if IA already has any archives of the page. E.g., I went to https://www.tica.org/highlander-breeders?view=article&id=890:highlander-breed&catid=79 and clicked on "Archiv", and instead of it making a new one, it took me to whatever the most recent one it already had (in this case a capture from May 26, 2022, that was missing the information I was citing it for [6]). It did this repeatedly; I tried again, since I wasn't sure I didn't click "Wybck" by accident the first time. Since I've manually already generated a new one [7] in that case, you won't get that result now at that page. If I run into the issue again, I'll try to get the details and not generate a newer archive of it manually, so it remains a valid test case.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:32, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Redirect

I've just added a red link to Open letter#Problems. Do you know of an article that can be redirected to? I want something close to the subject (explained briefly, and full text in ProQuest if you need it), not just a "kids these days" like Snowflake (slang) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Do you mean the safetyism red link?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:30, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

If so, my top Google hit for that term is our own article on The Coddling of the American Mind. There's a lot of other material out there about the concept, and if there's enough good material, it might make an article in its own right, especially if usage of the term has spread and altered from Lukianoff & Haidt's original coinage in 2015 (assuming they didn't actually lift the term from somewhere else).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:33, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's the link. It might be possible to sustain a separate article.

There appears to be two unrelated ideas using that name. One is "Why is everyone wearing bike helmets?" (Hygiene theater, perhaps, or the idea that provable harms [kids fall off swings and get hurt] are more important than provable benefits [health benefits of playing outdoors in general; vestibular system effects for swings in particular]) and the other is "Why are other people's feelings suddenly the most important thing in the [moral] world?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:08, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, we're clearly talking about the latter here, as the former is a silly false dilemma fallacy (wearing a bike helmet in no way impedes the health and enjoyment benefits of bike riding; it's a safety measure without any cost other than the price of the helmet and the seconds to put it on) and probably not an encyclopedic topic. The former sounds more like something a cantankerous stand-up comic like Bill Burr would come up with, because it's funny in being exaggeratory/overreactive. (I'm strongly reminded of George Carlin's routine of faux outrage about everyone having their own water bottle these days, which segued into his story of swimming in raw sewage in the Hudson River as a child and how that must have been good training for his immune system.) The latter topic, though, is the subject of a major book and is provably a force in at least current Western socio-political discourse, though I'm not certain there aren't other names for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:23, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

The former isn't just a false dilemma. It's also short-sighted. Imagine:

• The city tells the playground designer that the #1 goal is to minimize injuries.
• Result: It's kind of boring, because you can't do anything there that makes you think that you might fall.
• Consequence: Older kids don't want to play there.
• Consequence: Older kids play in an unregulated, unsafe space (e.g., climbing trees in the vacant lot).
• Evaluation: Success! The (mostly empty) playground has an admirable safety record, especially compared to the rather high level of injuries elsewhere in town.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, we needn't really get into that stuff, since it's not the "safetyism" you're contemplating an article about. The kind addressed at Open letter is the "protect everyone's sensibilities from anything that might somehow offend them in any way" stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:48, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Have a look: User:WhatamIdoing/Safetyism

The ref for the second paragraph under ==Development== isn't the one I originally got that material from. Unfortunately, I closed all the tabs and can't remember which one it was. (It might be one of the ones cited for another statement.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Looks like a reasonable start, other than the cite fix you mention above needing to be done. The "Proponents" section really covers more criticism mostly, and is very bare. I think that the central argument that the proponents make needs to be outlined, on its own merits without any editorial interpolations, and then counterargument(s) provided after.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:35, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

PS: It's not clear to me that proponents actually call it "safetyism"; this may be a term that only the opponents use. Need to be clear on that, from the lead onward.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:37, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I haven't (yet) seen a source giving it another name, or saying that only critics use it. I suspect it's one of those things that feels like "just how the world is" to people who hold that view.

I had Alternative cancer treatments#People who choose alternative treatments in mind for the ==Proponents== section, i.e., to name some of the traits that are associated with this. I didn't find much beyond what's there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, guess you gotta work with what's there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Additional doppelgängers

So I stumble upon thy page, and I definitely see some sort of hybrid RDJ/Rachel Maddow/Colin Farrell genetic swirl.

But I was actually getting some Gary Oldman vibes too. Plus a tinge of Robert Carlyle. Do you just go around, plucking celebrity DNA samples, and refueling every now and then? Brilliant. I should go collect some Tom Hardy.... --Cinemaniac86^Talk_Stalk 20:59, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Huzzah, I scored profile dopplestats!--Cinemaniac86^Talk_Stalk 00:08, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Mua-ha-HAAA. It is part of my Internet Vampire power. But I got a foot shorter by accident the other day when I accidentally vampirated from a Twitter/X post by Tom Cruise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:19, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Oh no, that's not very effective....That blood has an additional 2.5" shrinkage hit ratio every 6 months! Better go and suckle on Shaq's Instagram page. --Cinemaniac86^Talk_Stalk 00:05, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:29, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Kelly Fisher

Hi, please check the documentation at {{Use dmy dates}}. Cheers, Dawnseeker2000 01:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

@Dawnseeker2000: Read it youself: the month and year that an editor or bot last checked the article for inconsistent date formatting and fixed any found. Note "and" not "or". You didn't "fix any found", not then[8], and not in an earlier pass last month[9]. All you're doing is making a pointless change for no reason. If no date-fixing work has been done, the date in the template should be left as-is, since it indicates the last time that the page was changed to have a consistent date format.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:00, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) SM: I think the phrasing of that statement is intended as a logic statement. In this case, "fix any found" evaluates to "true" because no date inconsistencies were found. If you walk through your house with the intention of emptying any trash cans that have trash in them, and you find that all of the trash cans are already empty, and then your roommate asks you if you emptied any trash cans with trash in them, you could reasonably say "yes". (Not a perfect example.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:23, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Nope. It cannot mean that, because of WP:MEATBOT. It is not okay at all to go around "touching" dozens, hundreds, thousands of pages in a way that results in an edit at each that triggers people's watchlists yet does nothing constructive to the article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:32, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't get it. The first edit you linked above correctly changed some hyphens to dashes. The second edit you linked to fixed curly quotes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:46, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Sure, those two specific edits were not quite a meatbot issue. But it was misleading and pointless to change the template's date, because no dates were fixed; Dawnseeker2000's interpretation of the template documentation is demonstrably wrong. The template doc's the month and year that an editor or bot last checked the article for inconsistent date formatting AND fixed any found (emphasis added) literally cannot mean the month and year that an editor or bot last checked the article for inconsistent date formatting OR fixed any found, because first it does not say that, and willy-nilly confusion of "and" and "or" is a basic English competence failure (we could not have any functional rules of much of any kind if people could just randomly swap these words to get the meaning they preferred; if done intentionally, it's a form of gaming the system); and because if people or bots went around updating that date every time they examined the page but made no date corrections (or other substantive changes), they would necessarily be violating WP:MEATBOT or WP:COSMETICBOT (depending on whether they were human or software). Template documentation doesn't have the authority to override a policy, so the /doc page cannot be interpreted as enabling changing the date any time the formats were examined but not changed, because that by definition would be MEATBOT/COSMETICBOT.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:12, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Logic is tricky, but I'm pretty sure it's OK (although pointless, I agree) per the documentation to change the date value if the editor checked all of the dates (condition one) AND fixed any found (condition two) in the case where "any" equals "zero", i.e. "fixed zero" evaluates as "true". It's not really English; it's more like programming logic. It seems like suggesting a change to the documentation should be your next step, if you care enough. As for bots updating the |date= value, I don't see how that would be possible, since I don't think a bot could be smart enough to find and check all possible date formats in an article. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:27, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Nothing tricky about this logic at all. There is no place anywhere in our policies, guidelines or other procedural materials where there is a requirement that something be done but it can evaluate as true if nothing is done, so that would obviously not be the meaning here, or it would not have been written anything like the way it was written. Our P&G material, and our template documentation, is written for humans using English, not for software agents configured to treat 0 as equivalent to a positive. More the point, though, such an interpretation would be patent wikilawyering in clear contravention of the intent of policy. MEATBOT is very clearly written. Any time one is somehow in doubt between what a policy says, and a far-fetched interpretation of template documentation that would result in conflicting with the policy, the answer is always that the policy is correct and means what it says, since there is no power of random template documentation to override policies. There are bots and AWB/JWB tasks, and user scripts that parse and alter dates for specific purposes (e.g. User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates); it's not all that complex a set of regexp tasks to detect and write the formats one is likely to encounter here. But there is no reason to change the template documentation, since what it says is crystal clear, except apparently to two editors.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:11, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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Pecorino sardo

As you rightly said, "This and the other ones added into the discussion are Italians phrases, not English ones. They may appear in some English-language works about cheeses and products/commerce, but they are not widely-assimilated loan-phrases in English (like "cul-de-sac" from French is). Being Italian, they should be italicized (actually should be in {{lang|it}}, which takes care of the italicizing as well as the language markup), and should follow the case convention of Italian, which is not to capitalize adjectives derived from proper nouns. There's nothing unusual or special about this case; it is entirely routine." (precisely what I wrote, but you explained it much better, as well as summarised it very well), the page should be renamed without further discussion. Do you want to apply for renaming? They won't listen to me. JackkBrown (talk) 18:23, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

@JackkBrown: Might add it to my to-do list, but I have a lot of fish to fry, and in my experience it's best to let tempers cool a little. This could wait a few days, or a week, or a month and it wouldn't be a big deal. If you want to proceed immediately anyway, see Template:Rm instructions, and you could borrow from my wording if you like it. A key to getting an RM like this to go forward smoothly is to base it primarily on WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, showing that independent reliable sources do not near-uniformly capitalize this. The Italian-language argument is actually rather secondary. However, this looks like it will take a lot of source research, primarily in news and books results. My skim through Google Scholar shows most usage in that kind of publication, in English, to be capitalized, because it's almost entirely material about PDO stuff and habitually [over-]capitalizing any term that is subject to a PDO. It's a bad habit that WP should not emulate, but it "poisons" the search results considerably. It would be necessary to tool through a large number of journalistic and other non-PDO-specific sources a build up a list of high-quality sources that do not do the capitalization. However, this ngram is not encouraging. My initial feeling is that this will be a losing case, despite general principles being applicable in the abstract. This is looking like another Spider-Man: Far From Home case (inappropriately capitalized from), where a large number of sources all of one particular type and style (in that case, entertainment journalism mimicking trademark stylization) drown out most other usage, at least for the foreseeable future. I was able to get Harris tweed (another PDO product) moved away from Harris Tweed, but there was much better evidence available of lower-case usage in English-language sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:43, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

If I try it is a lost cause regardless, but if you try it is victory, in my opinion. And in any case, if the title is not corrected, I will continue to write the lower case on the other pages, so the result will be a very serious inconsistency. Thank you very much, and have a very good day :). JackkBrown (talk) 18:52, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

For me, this is one of those "Is this the hill I want to die on?" matters. I know from years and years of doing RMs that if I were to RM this one right now, with the evidence that I so far have available, that it would not succeed. It's something that is going to take a lot of in-depth source research, and even then still might flop. As for using proper Italian in other articles, have at it. MoS is not particularly concerned about cross-article consistency, but intra-article consistency.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:06, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

So who am I to rely on? The lesson I have to learn from "en.wiki" is that when I'm right (and especially about my language), I'm not actually right? Honestly, after more than 28,000 edits, I'm getting the urge to leave this project for good. I don't feel included at all. All the changes I have made to this encyclopaedia I have not done for my own benefit, but, being the good volunteer that I am, to improve this encyclopaedia, and I have done my part. Getting back to what we were talking about, if I try, I have lost (because users like "Maliner" (I have nothing against him, if anything he has something against me), even if they are wrong, want to be right even when they are not); if if you try, on the other hand, in my opinion, we have won. However, don't do it if you don't want to. JackkBrown (talk) 19:12, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that this is not something to try to tackle right now. It is okay for Wikipedia to over-capitalize something for a time, even a pretty long time, until there is sufficient evidence to sucessfully have it moved to lowercase over the objection of topical fanbois. Sometimes this takes years. I can understand your frustration with regard to Italian in particular. But we have a principle to follow the English-language source usage. E.g., the French name for a particular art movement is art nouveau, lowercase. English borrowed this term, but almost uniformly capitalizes it, so our article is at Art Nouveau, despite arguments by me and by French-speakers, and by various others to lowercase it to agree with French orthography. Sometimes these things just do not go the way we want them to. "Style" on Wikipedia is a constant consensus dance, and in the end no one is 100% satisfied; that is the nature of compromise. There are zero line-items in our Manual of Style that have agreement from every editor, and there are zero editors who agree with every line-item in MoS. Consequently, every rule will have people resisting its application to some particular case, and every editor will be unhappy about the style treatment of certain topics. In the end, very few of our readers care at all about capitalization or italics in any cases, so it's best not to get too agitated about it.

PS: If you are aware of someone with the Page Mover rights (PMR) level who is misusing that power to "win" content disputes about what the proper article title of something should be (either by going around doing a bunch of WP:FAITACCOMPLI moves on their own to suit their preferences instead of using WP:RM process, or thwarting RM process by manually making moves in the middle of RM discussions or pre-emptively to try to prevent them from being opened) that would be an abuse of PMR (see in particular Wikipedia:Page mover#Criteria for revocation), and should be reported. It's not entirely clear where to report that. I think either WP:Requests for permissions/Page mover, as request to de-permission someone, or at WP:Administrators' noticeboard. The documentation with regard to this is not entirely clear, and I've asked for clarification at Wikipedia talk:Requests for permissions#Where to file a request for removal of Page Mover rights? Regardless what the proper venue is, be aware that it would be a pretty serious accusation, so you would be expected to diff strong evidence of misuse of the tools. I have not looked into the activity of anyone you're in a dispute with, so I don't have any view or advice about whether any of them are misusing PMR. Tread with caution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:41, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Should the initial of the word "Episkyros" (or "Episcyrus") also be lowercase? However, from what I have read in your answers to my questions you seem to be, indeed, are, a very, very, reliable, professional, technical and knowledgeable Wikipedia user.JackkBrown (talk) 23:57, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that should be lower-cased per MOS:SPORTCAPS. It is not a proper name. We don't write "Baseball" or "Cricket", either, nor even "Pankration" or "Kerētízein" with initial capitals, if we want to get Greek about it. As for me, I don't think I'm necessarily more "reliable" than other editors, though I try to do good work (and spend a lot of money obtaining reliable-source materials when I need them). And we're all volunteers here. I'm pretty technical and knowledgeable in some topics, and a complete neophyte at others. But I've been here 17 years or so, and I know a lot about Wikipedia policy and especially our Manual of Style and the WP:Article titles policy, and a fair amount about our template code (though not so much the newer Lua module code; it's a different coding language.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Italics

Hi, should the terms Epinetron, Megaron, Andron, Gynaeceum, Symposium, Antahpura, Pyxis, Epinetron, Harpastum, Episkyros, Trigon and Calcio storico fiorentino be put in italics? If I have made any mistakes or forgotten anything on these pages could you kindly correct or add? I am always at a loss when it comes to italics. JackkBrown (talk) 03:16, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

All of these should be in italics (or, rather, they should be in {{lang}} markup, not just bare italics), per MOS:FOREIGN, because they are not everyday terms in English at all, with one exception. Symposium is that case; while it's about the ancient Greek subject, a topic virtually unknown to English-language users, not what the word "symposium" means in English as an assimilated loanword (academic conference), "symposium" even in this original sense is an anglicization, of συμπόσιον symposion, which should be italicized in {{lang}}, along with symposio and sympínein in that article. The "symposium" case is like "legion" even in the ancient Roman context. We use this word in reference to the Roman military unit (and later things inspired by it), but it is also an anglicization, of Latin legio.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:31, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

So "Symposium" should not be put in italics? And one last question: should Abacus, Phallus, Thyrsus, Maenad, Thiasus, Rhyton, Psykter, Krater, Pteron, Peripteros, Cella, Peristasis, Kylix and patio also be written in italics? If they are really all to be put in italics, why do I have to think about it and nobody else has thought about it? JackkBrown (talk) 13:18, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, "symposium" would not be italicized, since it's not a foreign word but an English word loosely based on a foreign word. You keep coming back to change the question and what it's asking so fast and so frequently it's hard to answer. Phallus and patio are clearly absorbed into mainstream English, so no italics. Maenad and other figures from Greek mythology would not be italicized, since they're commonly known in English (and most of them are proper names so wouldn't be italicized anyway). I think I would use {{lang|grc-Latn}} to italicize thrysus, thiasus, rhyton, psykter, pteron, peripteros, cella, peristasis, and kylix (unless any of them are significantly altered anglicizations like Greek "symposion" → English "symposium". Krater is a maybe; it's fairly commonly known to English-speakers (certainly much more so than kylix), but arguably is still a non-English term. Abacus in this particular sense is another maybe; in reference to the counting device, it has become an English word, but in reference to the architectural feature arguably not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:26, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Done! I also put the "Tainia (costume)" page in italics. JackkBrown (talk) 20:54, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

If you end up getting reverted on ones pertaining to architecture, I would not worry about it. There may be people who will argue that various architectural terms are assimilated enough, within the field of architecture, to not italicize them, the way various Latin and Greek terms used in medicine, and Latin and French terms used in law, in English are not usually treated as foreignisms within those disciplines. It would not be worth getting in a battle over.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:01, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

"Krater is a maybe; it's fairly commonly known to English-speakers (certainly much more so than kylix)", so I was wrong to italicise "Krater"? JackkBrown (talk) 23:00, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't say it was wrong, but someone might revert it as unnecessary. I would just leave it alone. It's arguably more consistent to have it italicized along with other similar terms, but if someone insists on de-italicizing it, it wouldn't be worth getting in a big argument over it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:12, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

I hope I am not bothering you too much; should "Pentathlon" and "Scholia" be written in italics? JackkBrown (talk) 00:29, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

"Pentathlon" is everyday English, so no. "Scholia" isn't everyday English, but appears to be well-assimilated within scholarly English, like "folio" and "appendices", so I would leave it unitalicized.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:36, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

It's complicated to decide what to make italicised and what not. Without you I would definitely have got something wrong, thank you! I still have doubts about "krater", from 1 to 10 what is your score for making this word italicised? I can always remodify the page (not tonight). JackkBrown (talk) 00:43, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it can be complicated. If English is not your native language, "italics correction" may not be the best activity for you to pursue. And keep in mind that from me, you're just getting one editor's personal opinion, which is no guarantee that other editors are going to agree with all of these changes. I'm not sure I would really approach this from a numeric-scale perspective. In the case of "krater", I lean toward the italics because it's not a word commonly used in English outside of archaeology (unlike the derived word "crater" which is an astronomy and geophysics and geography term but one with very wide use in everyday language), and putting {{lang|grc-Latn}} markup around "krater" would be more consistent with treatment of other ancient Greek terms, albeit ones with even less usage in English. But if someone reverted with a claim that it was used enough in English to not be italicized, I wouldn't get in an argument with them about it. (But I would be more inclined to argue if they wanted to de-italicize at Pyxis (vessel), a term with nearly no use in English outside of specialist literature.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:56, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Should the Italian word prosciutto be written in italics? I think not ("in English often shortened to prosciutto"), but I would not like to bias your answer. JackkBrown (talk) 4:34, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

No, it's an everyday term in English for a type of meat. I'm going to repeat that if you are not fully fluent in English that trying to "police" what is italicized as non-English, or not italicized as an assimilated loan-word, is probably not a good role for you here. Especially if it's simply going to lead to a constant stream of questions like this. I have 10,000 pages on my watchlist here and a lot of stuff to do with my limited volunteer time that is of higher encyclopedic importance than tweaking italicization of phrases most people don't care about the italicization of. If you want to continue with this anyway, a good rule of thumb is that if a term appears in multiple major English-language dictionaries, it probably should not be italicized.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:47, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

"Ragù" and "panettone" are common words in English? I would never have guessed that! Update: sorry to come back to the subject of "italics". JackkBrown (talk) 22:47, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Ragu and ragout are common enough in English among chefs, I suppose, but usually rendered without diacritics in English when used, and they tend to be used interchageably. Panettone is regularly available in the US, primarily as an end-of-year holiday dessert. Anyway, lots of French and Italian culinary terms are found in English (probably a bit more Italian in American English, especially East Coat, and a bit more French in British English and Southern American English, especially around Louisiana, and of course in Quebec, the French-speaking part of Canada).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:52, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

So I suppose "ragù" goes in italics and "panettone" doesn't, or am I wrong? Anyway, I am trying to create uniformity between the various pages, as far as I can. JackkBrown (talk) 15:28, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

You could try it, but someone might revert you. For my part, another rule of thumb I apply is that if it has diacritics, I put it in a {{lang}} template to italicize it, unless it is one of the ultra-rare foreignisms that has been assimilated into English with a diacritic (the only ones I can think of right off-hand are façade and naïve, and even the latter is often spelled naive in English).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:59, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi, sorry to bother you again. Do the words "shtetl" "mitzvah", "tzedakah", "prost", "yeshiva", "qahal", "kahal", "miasteczko" and "Kehilla" go in italics? It takes me too long to work out which ones to put in italics and which ones not. Unfortunately, if I notice a page that should be italicised, I am left with the thought and have to sort it out, but I don't go looking for them. JackkBrown (talk) 17:21, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Probably, but some might argue about shtetl and mitzvah and yeshiva, especially if they are from the US northeast where the Jewish population is higher and Yiddish has had more influence on the local English. And Kehilla might not be italicized if it really is a proper name. If you see anything like this in Italics, just leave it and you don't need to ask anyone about it; it will be something other editors have already done some analysis of and decided to italicize. Lack of italics on something that maybe needs it is more iffy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:21, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

While I'm at it, I'll complete the work on all these terms and leave all the ones I find in the future (I hope) alone, concentrating on something else, because I risk getting confused. However, before your reply I put "shtetl" in italics (the others I left as they are); in conclusion, is this correct or should I change something? I will only finish the work on these pages, then that's it, because I am fed up with italics. JackkBrown (talk) 20:46, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

It should be fine. It's a Yiddish term that has a little bit of use in English, but is not an English term.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:50, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Are all the other terms I listed OK? I am always in time to edit them (tomorrow I will deal with other Wikipedia issues, leaving italics in second or third place). JackkBrown (talk) 20:57, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Seem fine to me. But all this application by you of bare ''...'' italics is not particularly useful; I've said several times (as does MOS:FOREIGN itself) that this should be done with the {{lang}} template. I just overhauled Shtetl in this regard.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:52, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the help on the page (howsoever, perfect, "Kehilla" and "yeshiva" should not be written in italics, thank you). JackkBrown (talk) 22:20, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I had already found "sunnah" (the first line) in italics. Why isn't "hadith" italicised, whereas I had already found "sunnah" (the First line) italicised before I arrived? Also, shouldn't "sunnah" be capitalised? JackkBrown (talk) 22:30, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Because "sunnah" is not assimilated into English. "Hadith" really isn't either, but some people might argue otherwise. I don't know why you de-italicized "sunnah", but I put the language markup back because it belongs there. I'm going to suggest for at least the third time that your knowledge of English (in particular, what is and is not a fully assimilated loanword in it) isn't sufficient for you to go around acting as the italics police. I'm not poring over your edits, but I suspect you've de-italicized a bunch of other things that properly should have the italics (well, really properly should have {{lang}} or an equivalent like {{transliteration}}). I really think you should find something else to do here at which you will be less error prone and need to ask fewer questions, or focus on it.wikipedia.org where you'll be 100% fluent already. PS: "Sunnah" isn't capitalized because, like "hadith" it is not capitalized in the overwhelming majority of English-language sources that are independent of the subject. See intro text of MOS:CAPS, and also MOS:DOCTCAPS in particular.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:38, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

If "sunnah" was never italicised in the article, like "hadith", and was only italicised in the first line of the article, it should not be italicised in the first line either. If you see that I have removed many words in italics, I had put them in italics myself; the page was completely devoid of it before my intervention, only the first line had italics. JackkBrown (talk) 12:50, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Maybe I broke something; I'll go look again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I didn't break anything. I changed nothing from your last version other than restoring the language markup in the lead. Which I have restored again, and done a bunch of other cleanup work there. That article needs {{lang|ar-Latn}} applied to a whole bunch of stuff in it, including bare-italicized instances of sunnah and non-italicized instances of "sunnah", and various other italicized and non-italicized Arabic terms. In an article like that, hadith should also be italicized for consistency with the rest of such terms, even if in some other articles it is not (on the very questionable assertion that it is English-assimilated). At any rate, your urge to de-italicize something in the lead because it is not italicized in the rest of the article is a mistake. If the term is not assimilated English, it should be italicized (actually in {{lang}} markup), from the lead on down.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:26, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Could you kindly put "sunnah" and "sunna" in italics in the other articles too? If you prefer, I will send you the titles here; three are Koran, Sharia and salah. JackkBrown (talk) 15:36, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I really don't have time for this. I have 10,000 pages on my watchlist, as well as new articles I'm trying to write, and I'm also one of the main shepherds of the WP:MOS and all of its subpages. You can do this yourself by applying {{lang|ar-Latn|sunnah}} (and use {{lang|ar}} around any actual examples of Arabic script, though watch out for Farsi, Urdu, and other languages that use the same or related script; not every single term and name pertaining to Islam is in Arabic).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:20, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Change Contents in Islam and cats

Moved to Talk:Islam and cats

I edited the passage "Muezza" in Islam and cats. You removed it and archived it in the page history. I think you should re-add it or remove it altogether.

The phrasing of the passage is misleading. It should be emphasized that the story has no relation to Muhammad. It is a source of misinformation and many people quote this passage online without providing the entire context, especially since what should be at the top of the passage is written shortly in the last two lines. I mean the fact that the story of Muezza has no mention in hadith, the second-most reliable source of stories regarding Muhammad, and where most stories of Muhammad are narrated.

I think that the reason many Muslims believe in it, is writing such as this one.

You said, "In particular, you cannot go around changing material cited to particular sources to say the opposite of what it did originally and thus contradict the sources cited for it." Yes, I am a beginner, but I felt that there was no need to cite anything other than what had already been cited. I did not add anything new. I just rephrased it. I did not write anything that contradicted the sources cited for the story. The last two references, reference 7 and 8, agree with my change in material. Reference 5 does not claim the story as fact but rather a "legend", which is in line with what I had written, and it can be used as a citation for the story itself. Reference 6 simply relates the story, mentioning "tales" and "stories" as the basis of the story, without mentioning where these stories were taken from. This citation should also only be used for the story itself. In my edit of the passage, I did not remove any citations.

Again, I feel that no additional citations need be made, but simply a rephrasing of the passage to add emphasis on parts that are factual, while still giving an account of the legend of Muezza. However, it is currently the other way around.

My request is for you to allow me to rephrase the passage or for you to remove it altogether. Aesaibn (talk) 12:08, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

This is better discussed at Talk:Islam and cats, where I put a copy of your message here. It's not going to be resolved on my personal talk page where no one with subject-matter expertise is going to notice it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:06, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Mathbot's Tool

Just as a heads up, the link to the tool on your userpage is dead. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:A57D:3366:1B62:B12C (talk) 22:46, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I have removed it. I did find a newer version at toolserver, but it is malfunctional (just downloads you a copy of its source code as a .cgi file), and I haven't found an alternative tool yet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:13, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Renaming pages

Good evening. Since you are a mover there is not much point in me asking the help page to rename the pages; I would like to ask you, kindly, if you could rename the pages "Siana Cup" and "Lip Cup" to "Siana cup" and "Lip cup"; there is no discussion of this, as in "pecorino sardo", so there is no problem in changing these titles. Thank you very much in advance for your availability. JackkBrown (talk) 22:57, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Both of those appear to be proper moves and unlikely to be controversial, but the moves are blocked by edited redirects. In such a case, the thing to do is list them at WP:RM/TR, which I have done for you. In a case where the move might be controverted, the proper process is to use Template:Rm on the article's talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:33, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! JackkBrown (talk) 00:44, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

"Caffè Americano", in "Caffè americano"; the same thing on this page, could you rename it? JackkBrown (talk) 19:59, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Nope. This is a case like Art Nouveau, in which the phrase in the original language is usually lower-case, but the borrowing in English is often upper-case, so this would be a controversial move. The proper procedure in such a case is to use Template:Rm on the article's talk page and provide a clear rationale for moving. The rationale here would arguably be that this is an Italian phrase that should follow Italian orthography (adjectives derived from proper names are not capitalized), because this phrase is not fully assimilated into English, even though it can be found in some English publications. The ngram evidence [10] strongly suggests that even in English-language sources, this is usually rendered as caffè americano, with a lower-case americano. PS: It is pointless to use {{ping}} when posting on the editor's own talk page. They are automatically notified that you post there and the ping just creates a duplicate notification. Ping is for when you are trying to draw someone's attention to a page outside their own user-space.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:41, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps I am asking too much, but could you request the move? Ever since that "pecorino sardo" and "pecorino romano" thing happened, I no longer have the courage to do so. JackkBrown (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Done, but you really need to familiarize yourself with these tools and get used to using them. Pretty much all you needed to do was copy-paste the rationale I already provided into the that template (or come up with your own, if you don't think mine's good enough). I don't really have time to process a long string of moves for another editor who has already been told what the proper processes are for controverial (Template:Rm) and uncontroversial (WP:RM/TR) moves. You'll find that no every move idea you have is accepted; this is just how it goes, and you can't be afraid to use the processes because you don't always "win".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:03, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Moving the ISBN RFC

What's your sense about the state of the ISBN RFC? WP:VPP is approaching a million bytes in size. There are 165 comments in that RFC, and while it's by no means the biggest discussion on the page, if you expect it to get much more attention, perhaps we should move it to a subpage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Fine by me. I thought that page was getting rather large. I guess just leave behind a pointer to where it moved to.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:55, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually, the page is down to about 450K now, which is smaller than a lot of JPGs (I guess the archive bot is doing its job), so I would just leave it as-is.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:06, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I manually split off the huge thread. I don't know what the current external recommendations are for page size (e.g., in terms of loading on a smartphone), but I suspect that the current size, which is probably three or four times the length of The Old Man and the Sea, exceeds them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:44, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Help W/ Page Reference

Morning!! Wanted to see if you’d be able to assist with a possible issue on the following page -Balderdash.

The Review section provides a URL to an active Wiki page but no addtl info or context is provided. It directs to a live Wiki page but doesn't contain anything related to the original article. Also seemed odd the text/URL are formatted like a reference source.

However the corresponding reference directs to an archived page with an actual review of the product. The media source also match with the aforementioned Wiki page.

The user who added this this appears to be credible. Maybe the review section was just a paste mistake? In any case it still feels like a single review from an unfamiliar source doesn’t fit the standard for article reviews.

Given the sources legitimacy I wasn’t sure what the appropriate action was, figured I’d see if someone with more experience could clarify.

I was initially going to post in the articles talk page but haven’t had much luck getting feedback on pages with limited traffic. Herenow44 (talk) 17:26, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

This should resolve it, until someone wants to build a proper section there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:54, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Axiom

Moved from User:SMcCandlish/

 – posted to wrong page

So first: I wanted to write you about my editing and share some additional thoughts with you and after at least an hour of intensive reading all of your page, I still not have a plan where to write you legitimate but what I, at least, thought that I understood is that it is ok to write you at all so I sincerely apologize if this the wrong place sorry🙂❤️

Second: I love reading wikipedia articles and sometimes I love editing, thats my main motivation so if some editing from me isn't good enough for wikipedia standarts it is absolutely ok for me, so don't worry my editing on the Axiom page is dead I won't consider further fighting for my edits my thoughts sharing with you on your talk page are the very last breath I do don't worry 🙂❤️ What I also want to say real quick is that I am german so Im not a native english speaker and, sure, in a grammatical/ortographical view I don't have a 100% native level but I see editing in english as an aditionall competition, so this, maybe viewed as this is not ok, as for english editing, you need a native level (what is for sure propably a basic claim and Im really arrogant breaking that), please believe me that I don't have vandalist intentions at all that is what I can say with all of my heart🙂 Regarding valid sources, I studied the wikipedia standarts a bit, but until know I feel to dumb to understand all of this😢 so sure, maybe cause of this I am simply to dumb for wikipedia, well, it is not the nicest thought but maybe its true but what I can at least say regarding this is that in the last time I try to make an edit for wikipedia maybe once all three months so it isn't that much Work for other users to delete my editings😁❤️ so this long message to you, I also just write because I read on your page that it is ok writing to you (if it is not ok writing to you or at the wrong place I apologize, sorry 🙂❤️ regardless of this, this edit really will be my very last breath regarding all of this after finished this message to you I am done with all of this). Regarding the talk page, Ive done this in past regarding a pharmalogical theme, meaning discussing a try for an edit with other users before posting and from this I got the notion that this is ok but, well, if it isn't I won't make this again.

Third: You see, I explained my lacking knowledge of detecting reliable sources, for sure, I should improve that real quick or not editing, in this regard I, again, want to say that I make maybe one edit in three months and keep quite when deleted. However, what I wanted to say at last is, like I said before, I love reading wikipedia articles. That is the major point for my love of Wikipedia😁✌️ Rarely, I want to edit for myself but really, at least in the last time, maybe once in three months, however, the last I want to say that when reading articles I sometimes get the notion that, for example, for scientific themes, the harder and more advanced they get, the more one individual sentence will extend, regarding its source, to provide logical, well, I think the right word is cohaerance or consistence. An other example is to make an explicit statement in a antifascist/ethical view to provide wikipedia standarts in this regard. Now see, I don't think Im the next Einstein, Im highly schizophrenic but Im not that level of insane 😁✌️❤️ but to come to an end with this message, regarding my edit, see, I really often think, as a german with an antifascist soul, about the third reich and after a long time of thinking I came to that theory that this is a theme where it is somehow, like I felt, relatively easy to generate a statement in ones mind which is true when generating with empathic context so for example:

"Hitler was god for the german economy and he was a good artist"- is complete bullshit

But: "If I had a time machine, I would encourage the young homeless hitler to stay with his feets in art, improve, making a stable income with that, as regarding this time before his dictatorship or first violent actions in this intend, you can really say he is really skilled in art with all this said in a time machine context to safe his pour soul" which both statements are a bit similar but just the second is OK, because performed with empathy.

So what I learned regarding this theme, that, even really extreme simplified arguments like "Every in the shoah killed jew should deserve heaven in any religion" are ok to say because its in an empathic context.

So with this in mind, I came to the axiom theme with: A first statement is easy to generate as If performed with proper empathy it is somehow nearly forced to be true, so you have a more inclusive opportunity creating a first statement. My second thought of more inclusivity was formed by the notion that further reasoning ending in new statements ultimately, are a core point of axioms, and, because this theme is not highly mathematical, it is much much more easier to generate a second sentence, based on the first statement, which if it also fits honest empathy is true and serves as a second statement.

The core point I wanted to make is for normal people like me it is nearly impossible to generate statements in mind which work with the needs of an axiomata properly and it is even more impossible to generate a second statement for further reasoning if you are not highly educated but with this aproach maybe it is.

So to come to an end, please note that Im left and a antifascist by all of my heart!!! So maybe all this stuff can contain extreme formal mistakes but the ABSOLUTE last thing I wanted to communicate are any populistic thoughts.

So now Im done and like I said this is my ultimately last edit/message regarding all of this, so, have a great day, bye🙂🙂❤️ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Materie34 (talk • contribs) 10:31, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

@Materie34: I don't think you have vandalistic intent, but you seem to have intent that isn't compliant with WP:NOT#FORUM and WP:NOR policies. I.e., you seem to be here to talk about your own ideas and perceptions, and this not what Wikipedia is for. In short, you don't seem to be here to work on an encyclopedia. It is fine to use an article's talk page to suggest improvements to the article, when they are backed by reliable sources, but the sources you proposed using at Talk:Axiom were self-published opinion in two cases and something off-topic and from a highly questionable source in the third. German Wikipedia (de.wikipedia.org) has similar sourcing and other policies to ours, and that would be the place for someone who is a native German speaker to learn how to do Wikipedia properly. PS: An advocacy position of anti-fascism is probably a good thing to have, in going about your life, but it does not permit injecting anti-fascist messaging into articles like Axiom which don't have anything to do with fascism; it is a subject that pertains to mathematics and other forms of formal logic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:50, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, at the end of the day, I thought of my editings encasing the statement "Jews deserve heaven", as, I mean, you know as somehow a really cool thing. At least, I read the Axiom article sometimes and found it cool thinking loosely as a beginner about this and other things. But the notion that if you keep empathy in your mind it is much more easier to create "statements" or, to not overestimate my thinking, at least having strong arguments for the next discussion with, for example, a libertäre.

Believe me thinking more and more about this thinks in that way you begin to think that empathy creates much better statements regarding the third reich automatically or, you see here, encasing all statements with the aspekt "true" if your empathy is good enough, even with not thinking about axioms.

But sometimes I get hooked on editing articles at all costs, which, I know isn't healthy, simple reading is pure love🙂 but in recent times, when reading the axiom article, I got hooked on editing thought on transforming sentences to true are the same, doesn't matter If empathy to the third reich or assumptions for axioms. I mean Im a beginner in axioms but the article somehow states that you can work with different formal topics but history/society are maybe a too dramatically switch, and, when you think about it a one word aspekt like empathy is not able to replace a complete assumption, ok with that, at least you can generate an assumption: "Rightous Empathy creates statements considered true regarding the third reich", see, at least with time, I think Im not that wrong, but sure through all this writing I gained a more sharpened view so my very first writing, which was the edit aproach, was a package of such dramatically oversized claimes, like, I don't know wanting to outperform all your opponents at a pokertable with a pair or some shit like that😶 And to be honest I don't want to violate wikipedia guidelines but when reading, you see this large, extreme extending articles explaining so much information, also when reaching more and more advanced sciences like crazy math, this big editings changing more and more into what I so desperatly wanted to create😶 but this are straight professionals or hobbylike savants😃 I get the feeling that my english breaks down more and more, if thats a sentence😂 Its late, I will quit writing know, if you read past this (my english😤😁) I wish you a wonderfull day tomorrow🙂❤️ bye Materie34 (talk) 01:13, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the place to "create" anything. You need to start a blog or something. This site has nothing to do with ideas about who deserves empathy, what "truths" empathy may create for someone, who gets into "heaven" or whether there is any such thing, or any of the other stuff you are talking about. This is simply not the right kind of site for you.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:49, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

November thanks

November songs

my story today

Thank you for improving article quality in November! - Vacation pictures offered if you click on songs, and my story today is a DYK hook from 13 years ago OTD: about the great music at one of my churches. Mozart's Requiem to come on Sunday, coupled with Arvo Pärt's Da pacem Domine, - I guess you might come if it was a bit closer. Perhaps watch the video of our last production, our first on yt, ever. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:26, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

A beer for you!

For teaching me something. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Btw, in your example, is there any reason not to do it |ref=Grant (2020) and <ref>[[#Grant (2022)]], p. 234.</ref> (without piping)? Since at least atm there is only one Grant. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:32, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: The reason would be that "#Grant (2022)" would be displayed with an extraneous # symbol. You could do |ref=Grant 2022 and <ref>[[#Grant 2022|Grant (2022)]], p. 234.</ref> if there were two grant sources to distinguish. Or |ref=Grant (2022) and <ref>[[#Grant (2022)|Grant (2022)]], p. 234.</ref> if you wanted to be longwinded about it. If you were confident that there would only ever be one Grant source then |ref=Grant and <ref>[[#Grant|Grant (2022)]], p. 234.</ref> would be more minimal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:40, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Tortelloni

Was I right to use the "Plainlist" template on this page? JackkBrown (talk) 22:47, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Sure. {{Unbulleted list}} is an alternative with a different syntax. {{Flatlist}} or {{Hlist}} would also work, but {{Plainlist}} (or {{Unbulleted list}}) is arguably better here, because of the length of one of the names (both names would be unlikely to fit on one line in the infobox, and might wrap awkwardly).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:56, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Semantic doppelgänger list

CSS for an unordered list supports arbitrary bullet symbols, but our modules don't propagate it (oops). But it seems like the ordered list can be given a non-counter character to get that effect. Similar result, but cleaner wiki source.

I keep being told I look like various celebrities: ☐ Matthew Rhys ☐ Robert Downey Jr. ☐ Steve Buscemi ☐ Rachel Maddow ☐ Jeffrey Dean Morgan ☐ Steven Tyler ☐ Colin Farrell ☐ The Edge (like 20 years ago) ☐ Robert Carlyle ☐ Gary Oldman ☐ ...

I keep being told I look like various celebrities: Matthew Rhys Robert Downey Jr. Steve Buscemi Rachel Maddow Jeffrey Dean Morgan Steven Tyler Colin Farrell The Edge (like 20 years ago) Robert Carlyle Gary Oldman ...

Though to be honest, you look most like a guy I went to college with than any of those other people:) DMacks (talk) 08:26, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Neat idea. Definitely more efficient. I tried that with some additional spacing tweaks (I found that a regular space or an nbsp after the box character didn't work, but a three-per-em space char did; and I used negative margin to fix the huge indentation). However, <ol>...</ol> is arguably semantically wrong for this, but the corresponding <ul>...</ul> template doesn't support |list_style_type= for some reason (despite being an invocation of the same list module). I filed a bug report about it at Template talk:Bulleted list#Style problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:15, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Disregard

 – No such RfC when I got there. Seems to have been part of the "#Reduce WP:ADVOCACY in Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources" thread, which is still in the thrashing/drafting stage.

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

 Done

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Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

Disregard

 – RfC closed as improper by the time I got there.

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Two questions

Hi, in the "Controversies" paragraph of the "Songkran (Thailand)" page, within the quote the dash seems wrong to me. What do you think is wrong? Also I would like, to not send too many notifications, to ask you how I can trace back all the pages I have edited, for example I have made about 30,100 edits, but I will have edited no more than 15,000 pages; I would like to trace back the number of pages, not the number of edits. Thank you very much in advance. JackkBrown (talk) 17:07, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

The quote was fixed this way, though it is generally better to use an introductory sentence than in-template attribution, which may draw WP:UNDUE attention to the quoted party. But that quote wasn't of encyclopedic usefulness anyway, so I removed it. On the stats question, see https://xtools.wmcloud.org/ec/en.wikipedia/JackkBrown for all sorts of stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:06, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Doubt

A help desk user said that bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah are common words in English and should not be written in italics, but since these terms have been in italics for a really long time, I would leave them that way. What do you think? JackkBrown (talk) 12:54, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Leave them that way. Editorial consensus at a particular article is worth 1000% more than some random whoever's personal opinion at WP:HD.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much for all the help you have given me so far (about two weeks)! You have been very patient :) JackkBrown (talk) 18:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

br / is not needed by the syntax highlighter any longer

Re this edit, it is no longer necessary. See these instructions on the syntax highlighter page. They have changed my life for the better. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Kinda-sorta. Read the full text there: "This will affect performance; the author recommends using the explicitly closed forms <br/> and <hr/> instead." And the explicitly closed tags are handled properly by more parsers in general, so better for WP:REUSE purposes (though that doesn't matter for talk pages).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:07, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I have been using this new setting for many moons now and have not noticed a performance difference. I think I have an overall editing speed and visual parsing speed improvement, because the syntax highlighting works better. In any event, I am amused that you were concerned above about alleged "MEATBOT" edits that were non-cosmetic but did not seem to have a problem doing this on a page watched by 480 editors. As Maude famously said, "consistency is not really a human trait", so I don't have a problem with it. I just thought you might find this tweak helpful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:32, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm trying it out myself. We'll see how it goes. I honestly would prefer not to need to make such tweaks on talk pages, because they're not part of the encyclopedia content, though it would be better if the markup were changed to <br /> in actual articles because it is properly parsed by more parsers. The trick at the doc you linked to will hide every instance of <br>, regardless of namespace, and I don't know enough JS tricks to limit it to particular (talk) namespaces.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:48, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Editor trying to mass-scale make captions screen reader-only

Hi SMcCandlish. You might already see it as it appears you have the talk page watchlisted, but I'd really appreciate your input at WT:ACCESS#Editor trying to mass-scale make captions screen reader-only. Not sure what to make of editors wanting to hide captions merely because they're redundant to sighted readers three years after they became a requirement for all tables so I really want other editors' input, and I value yours. Thanks. Ss112 05:42, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

I normally agree with most of what you say and do, so I find it very disappointing that you're now refactoring my heading at WT:ACCESS and even then inserting your POV that table captions are "redundant" when they outline what is in tables after section headers. Please also don't characterize my comment, which was prompted by an editor changing 40+ articles (which I consider fairly mass-scale) as "alarmist" and "misleading". It simply isn't. It's how I saw the situation. I've removed your POV from the heading change and the anchor. I don't care if you disagree with me in the discussion but it's not a formal RfC, which is when I would have aimed for neutrality in my initial comment and heading. I didn't want to sway you nor anybody else's opinion so how you think that might influence anybody else in apparently being "alarmist" I don't know. (I understand now you probably changed it because you listed it at current discussions concerning the MOS, but I still feel "redundant" is your POV and was unnecessary to insert. I feel that the neutral way to describe it is "the caption repeats what is in the table header".) Ss112 09:42, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Been over most of this at your talk page. Again, there is no "POV" in observing that redundant captions (the only ones to which the template under discussion was applied) are in fact redundant. Your repetitive bending of the discussion toward an imaginary scenario of hiding all of them with that template, whether redundant or not, which is not something anyone anywhere has done or proposed be done, is much of why I think your original heading was alarmist (though at your user-talk I identified three others reasons it was). Look, disagreements and disputes happen. Don't take it personally. FWIW, I generally just ignore usernames to the extent I possibly can, and respond to every argument presented as if it was coming from an anonymous IP editor. I take it on its own merits, without any regard for personal feelings (if any) about the editor posting it, and I mostly don't have such feelings because of my cultivated habit of ignoring user names. The only user names I remember are editors I have a really long history with (positive or otherwise), and in some of the more negative interactions I've actually forgotten the usernames anyway because I'm not a grudge holder. Between WP, and Facebook, and a bunch of topical boards I'm on, and various other social media sites, and e-mail, and gaming communities I'm in, I'm bombarded with fanciful usernames on a daily basis, and they are almost all just alphabet soup to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:44, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

You tell me not to take it personally, then accuse me of "edit warring" because I removed a word from a heading you already refactored at WT:ACCESS. Please stop accusing me of things I did not do. If anybody is, you are trainwrecking that discussion with long paragraphs and bad-faith accusations at me. I did not edit war whatsoever (I removed a word from a heading you refactored—that's not "edit warring" by ANY stretch of the imagination), I entirely disagree I am being "alarmist" or "misleading" in anything I said (just because you say it and argue it doesn't make it so), and I would very much prefer in future that if I come to your talk page or we are having a discussion/argument at a general talk page that you not then open a third thread on my talk page. Ss112 01:55, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

When an editor, in edit summaries and on three different talk pages, objects, with very clear rationales, to you mischaracterizing the discussion as being about all table captions rather than ones that are redundant with the table headers, and you go out of your way to re-edit the material to give that blatantly false impression again, then yes, as a clear matter of fact, you are editwarring. "I disagree" is not a meaningful response. You have provided no explanation, no rationale, for such disagreement, just a stubborn opinion of refusing to acknowledge any concerns or criticism. I provided four reasons why your original heading was alarmist and misleading and you have addressed zero of them, and instead bee "playing victim". That's just meangingless handwaving. Your behavior in this matter has been so awful, I have seriously been considering a WP:ANI about it, because you are trying really, really pointedly to steer that discussion to a false sense of alarm about sweeping mass changes to all table captions, when nothing remotely like that has happened or has been proposed by anyone, you have derailed the thread with repetitive "proof by assertion" (simply repeating your arguments over and over without acknowledging any rebuttal of them), and then editwarred to keep it as misleading as you can. It's utterly inappropriate. So, yes, that matter belongs at your talk page, because it's about your behavior.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

For the record: previous threads at User talk:Ss112: [11][12]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:48, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Three different talk pages? You came to my talk page, so you made it three when it could have been kept to two. Please stop posting on my talk page. You came there; I don't want it there. It's really not serious. Secondly, I started the WT:ACCESS discussion. I don't know how I could be "steering" it in any direction other than I how I started it. I did not edit war anywhere, and I categorically refute that assertion. I didn't revert you whatsoever. I refactored you refactoring my heading on that talk page—I do not see that as "edit warring" by any definition. You are acting as if I am being deliberately "misleading" when I am not at all attempting to be misleading. Do you really think an ANI thread about a talk page discussion regarding table captions is worth it? I don't. I think your behaviour has been inappropriate, as you're claiming I'm edit warring and being deliberately misleading when from what I can see I am doing nothing of the sort, but I don't think ANI would sort any of that out. Sorry to say it, but I am done speaking to you on this matter. Ss112 04:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

How many rounds of this bickering do you want to engage in? Why should I stop posting on your talk page when you're still posting on mine, when the issues are about your behavior not mine, and you keep baiting me back into discussion with you at your own talk page with WP:REVTALK making claims and arguments that clearly want to be answered? You even did it again [13], directly asking me questions yet also acting like you don't want me to not respond. You can't have it both ways. I don't have time for this silly game-playing. WT:MOSACCESS: Yes, you created the discussion, and you steered it with a very misleading heading, and then editwarred to keep it misleading. What is there to somehow not undestand about this? You say you are not attempting to be misleading, but you changed the heading back to a misleading claim after it has been objected to multiple times, with a great deal of explanation as to what is misleading about it, but none of which you have refuted. You can't say you're not being "deliberate" about this, unless your mind is possessed and you are acting against your own will. I've already demonstrated that what you did is editwarring (read the first sentence of WP:EW, and recognize that you "repeatedly overr[o]de [my] contributions", which had a clear rationale that you have not refuted in anyway, just engaged in childish "not it's not!" denialism about), so continuing to deny you were editwarring is senseless. "Revertwar" and "editwar" are not synonymous; ask any of the people blocked or T-banned for editwarring by going out of their way to get "their version" by changing text to suit their PoV instead of literally reverting it. That kind of WP:Gaming the system doesn't fly here.

The impression I'm getting is that you simply cannot brook any disagreement much less criticism, and will just use argumentum ad nauseam and proof by assertion endlesslessly in hopes that anyone disagreeing with you will just give up and run away, and failing that, you'll "take your ball and leave" (or at least make a bunch of noise about doing so without actually leaving) rather than have to compromise. And all the while you'll play butt-hurt victim. It's disingenuous, disruptive, and anti-collaborative nonsense. If it continues, I definitely do think it will be worth an ANI, because it needs to stop happening, and in particular I'm concerned that if the original matter, using a template to hide some (namely, redundant) table captions from non-screen-reader users, comes up for a proper RfC, that you'll go out of your way to mire that discussion in confusing, alarming noise, too. If you're "done speaking" then actually stop speaking. If you think you can make a bunch of bogus claims and take a bunch of silly stances and not be answered, you are mistaken.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:07, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Final reply as I felt it was worth it: "Why should I stop posting on your talk page when you're still posting on mine". Because you haven't forbidden me from posting here in the way that I asked you not to do on mine because I didn't think you needed to go there in the first place. I understand why you did, but I don't think it's that serious. I still disagree on the content, but I understand now what you mean by "edit war" and "repeatedly" but I simply thought I was making it more neutral, not reinstating an apparent stance that you thought was misleading. I am not trying to play victim at all. If a proper RfC happened I would simply state my position, as this has proven to me that if I argued in a proper RfC, you would claim a bunch of things about what I've written with paragraph after paragraph. By all means, start a "neutral" RfC below my thread with "redundant" included in the wording if you wish, but I won't be arguing with you there, only state my position and leave it. Consider that invitation to start a neutral RfC worded how you wish my final stance. Ss112 05:22, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

"you haven't forbidden me from posting here", yeah, because it seems to me to be petty, possessive, passive-aggressive stuff (and isn't supported by policy anyway, just as a qualified recommendation in a guideline: "If an editor asks you not to edit their user pages, such requests should, within reason, be respected. However, editors should not make such requests lightly, especially concerning their talk pages, as doing so can impede the ordinary communication which is important for the improvement and smooth running of the project. Also, a user cannot avoid ... notices and communications that policies or guidelines require to be posted merely by demanding their talk page not be posted to.") At most, I'll ask someone to stay off my talk page unless they have something to discuss that actually pertains to working on the encyclopedia, when I occasionally get someone ranting about weird off-topic b.s. or just pursuing a pure personality dispute. It's worth mentioning that "get off my user-talk page!" antics actually make noticeboard actions more likely, because they shortciruit the ability to try to reason with the editor in question, and leave most with the feeling that they have no choice but to open a noticeboard thread. If you have a habit of doing "talk page bans", then you are just setting yourself up for avoidable trouble.

How could you be making it "more neutral" by hiding the fact that the discussion is entirely and only about redundant captions that repeat the wording of the table headers, and making it misleadingly seem to be about every table caption? I cannot believe for even half a second that you can't actually understand this distiction, quite fully, so I am thus still left with the impression that you are aruing to death and beyond, deaf to any reasoning, just out of some "how dare you challenge me?" habit.

Yes, an RfC would be wise, but (as I said at WT:MOSACCESS) probably at VPPRO, not buried on one of the least-watched MoS talk pages (and where it is technically off-topic anyway, because the {{sronly}} markup has no implications for accessibilty at all, by design). I have no reason to write a bunch of paragraphs in response to you in an RfC as long as you don't keep prevaricating about what is actually under discussion, which is hiding from non-screen-reader users the table captions that are redundant with table headers, not hiding every single table caption, which is an idea no one ever raised anywhere, much less enacted; it came directly out of your imagination, yet you keep insisting on trying to make everyone think that is the topic of discussion, an appeal to fear tactic. It's one of the most inexplicable things I've seen on WP in months.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:09, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I didn't feel it was necessary to needlessly specify all of that in the heading. Of course it could be very specific, like "Regarding making table captions where they substantially repeat what is in section headers on music articles screen reader-only", but that's far too wordy for a heading. In no way did I ever say or want to imply that what was happening—two editors hiding table captions that repeat what is in section headers on music articles—seem like it was happening or applies everywhere. I don't even think that's what the heading implies now. I only meant music articles because that's the topic area I edit in, and I at least specified music by saying "K-pop articles" in my original message. I agree my initial message is not neutral but that's because I didn't aim for it to be an RfC and therefore didn't aim for neutrality. You are accusing me of deliberately trying to be vague to elicit defensive reactions from editors so they would be on my side or something, and that is simply not what I was aiming for. I anticipated and expected people to support the opposing view, of hiding these specific table captions. Damn, if I really wanted to get people on side by using fear tactics, well I certainly failed in that department, did I not? I just wanted a variety of editors to comment to gauge what most thought about the issue. That's it. There's no hidden motives. As I told you, I hardly ever post let alone argue on MoS talk pages, so I am not there or anywhere trying to "appeal to fear" to get people on side. You are misconstruing and speculating on the reasons why I am doing things, which, again, I really wish you would stop doing. Unless I have explicitly said these things, I don't think they should be attributed to me. Ss112 06:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

The heading as I rendered it was perfectly fine, and nowhere near that long: "Making redundant table captions screen-reader-only". The only reason you objected to this is because you mistakenly thought "redundant" was a PoV, biased term, but every dictionary of English that exists demonstrates otherwise. Here are a bunch for you: [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], and so on. Not one of them implies anywhere that this is a judgmental opinion, simply (in the language-usage sense; there are also employment and engineering meanings, etc.) unnecessary due to repetition of or similarity of wording. Rather than just concede your interpretation error and put the heading back to the actually neutral and non-confusing title, you have resisted tooth and nail, and generated a day-long dispute for no damned reason but apparent stubbornness. If you are not "deliberately trying to be vague to elicit defensive reactions from editors so they would be on [your] side", there is no way to discern this, because no matter how many times it is pointed out to you that your versions of the heading, including current one, badly mislead anyone reading it into thinking this is about hiding every table caption, you keep deafly circling back to your insistence that your version is better and somehow more neutral, without ever addressing in any way the clear explanation of what is not neutral about it. This is pure, unadulterated WP:ICANTHEARYOU behavior. It doesn't matter what your actual intent is (stubborness, steering of results, or an rather implausible inability to comprehend the misleading nature of the wording). The very fact that it is misleading about the scope of the discussion and likely to confuse editors into thinking it's about hiding all table captions is reason enough, no matter what your intent, to not word it that way. Anyone else would have probably understood this yesterday, and certainly understood it several hours ago, yet you persist in not understanding it, or feigning an inability to understand it just to keep the argument perpetual, or whateverTF is actually going on here. You don't get to do unhelpful things, and get really, really insistent and defensive about your righteousness in doing the unhelpful things no matter what is said to you, and yet escape anyone wondering why the hell you are doing it. In the end, though it was written primarily with WP:Sockpuppetry in mind, the WP:DUCK test applies to anything. If, after a whole day's worth of good faith has been extended, your behavior still cannot be distinguished from either someone trying to get a false consensus on purpose, or someone termperamentally incapable of compromise, both of which are seriously problematic, then that behavior should be interpreted as one or the other and addressed accordingly unless and until some other explanation appears and is more plausible.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

So your idea of me compromising is my agreeing with the way you reworded my heading? Fine, I'll restore "redundant", SMcCandlish, on both WT:ACCESS and the MOS talk, but not all of the content of this thread, the ones you started on my talk page and what I replied at WT:ACCESS with was all over a "heading". I addressed other things too. I don't think that needs a 3KB response this time. Ss112 07:26, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, because the version I wrote, between your two versions, is not misleading as to the scope (it's not the only version that could achieve that, of course). Your version of the nutshell description of the thread, in the list at WT:MOS, was fine (you'll notice I didn't change it), since it correctly identifies that it's only about the redundant captions (just using longer wording than "redundant"). I appreciate that you seem to be reconsidering the heading wording. And I'm sorry that this turned into such a tedious and testy discussion; I did not get up today thinking "who can I have an interminable, loud argument with?". This seems to have been generated by a possessive sense that if you wrote it, it's "your" heading. No one "owns" headings outside their own talk pages, and anyone is free to refactor them at any time to make them clearer, more neutral, more accurate, more concise, as needed. It's not akin to changing someone's !vote to make a different point. Improving a heading you wrote is not some kind of attack on your reputational dignity. Reacting like it is, for a whole day, isn't exactly dignified, and may be reputationally harmful in that leads to wondering what has you fighting to keep a misleading heading, even after it's pointed out that it looks like trying to steer the discussion to a predetermined result, or just unwillingness to budge when challenged. "All over a heading" is rather dismissive; good thread headings are the means by which editors can coolly enter a discussion and start to evaluate, without confusion or misdirection or undue alarm. They matter, especially when they're about policy/guideline application and potential changes that could affect large numbers of articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:07, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Additionally, I just want to clarify: do you believe the sorts of tables I am talking about (as shown in the diffs on WT:ACCESS) need captions in the first place, hidden or not? I'm not intending to prolong my staying here after I said I was done, but do you think screen reader users are being inconvenienced by those table captions not being present at all? I am seeking clarification as, in one of the messages at WT:ACCESS you seemed to imply(?) that merely making edits to articles to add table captions (when plenty of users, not even including myself, do this) was MEATBOT-like. Ss112 07:42, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

According to MOS:ACCESS, we do need table captions as navigation targets for screen readers. I haven't heard/seen anything to the contrary from our actual users of screen readers, but am especially interested in eventual responses to the technical question asked in the subthread about aria-description (I honestly don't know whether that can serve a nav-target function). I'm not an accessibility-for-the-blind expert, and my concerns in the matter have mostly been about the possibility of reducing redundant text for the majority of our readers, as long as it is without doing any accessibility harm. Oh, and I did not mean at all to imply that adding missing table captions would be MEATBOT; if it's required by the guideline and is a genuine accessibility help then it can't qualify as "cosmetic". Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. I meant only that changing existing captions to have {{sronly}}, in a really mass-scale and robotic fashion, without doing anything more reader-experience-constructive, might raise MEATBOT concerns, even if it's technically not cosmetic because is produces a visual change in the output. That is to say, I'm not opposing such changes happening (if we come to a consensus that hiding the redundant ones is good); I'm just warning that there may be negative reactions to it if it's done a zillion times a day with something like WP:AWB, especially if someone doing it is incautious and ends up hiding captions that are informative for everyone and are not redundant cases.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:07, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I agree it would be MEATBOT-like to add sr-only in that fashion. Ss112 08:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Once in a while there seem to be community acceptance of an outright bot-like approach to something like this, but only when it is to comply with actual firm recommendations in a guideline or policy. E.g. when MOS:LIFE, after multiple RfCs and other actions, finally settled out in favor of lower-casing the common (vernacular) names of species, the work to de-capitalize all the ones that had been capitalized (zealously at bird articles, and spottily all over the place in other articles in imitation of the style of bird articles) this was done largely through AWB sweeps across large numbers of articles, surprisingly with minimal post-RfC drama. Similar with MOS:JR, after a WP:VPPOL RfC concluded to drop the unnecessary and complicating comma in names like "Sammy Davis[,] Jr."; that was also done mostly in an AWB sweep (with some sporadic squabbles about what to do in cases where the title of a work as something like The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., with the result that the comma is kept, unless sources are broadly inconsistent in using it for the work in question, usually only when it has been published multiple times with conflicting styles). But if we just came to the conclusion that {{sronly}}'ing redundant table captions was "permissible" without it being an actual recommendation in MoS, then the reaction would be more likely to be along "WTF is all this MEATBOT stuff?" lines.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:47, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 59

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 59, September – October 2023

• Spotlight: Introducing a repository of anti-disinformation projects
• Tech tip: Library access methods

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:15, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Doubt

Why is the term "forum" not capitalised here and in the French language Wikipedia? I quote a sentence from the Italian language Wikipedia page: "Il Foro Romano (in latino Forum Romanum, sebbene i Romani si riferissero ad esso più spesso come Forum Magnum o semplicemente Forum) è..."; https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foro_Romano. JackkBrown (talk) 21:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Because it's a common noun like "dog" or "teacup" with multiple referents. "A forum ... was a public square in a Roman municipium, or any civitas, reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls." Contrast with the Roman Forum, a proper name of a specific place (though I think "Forum of Rome" would be better, since "Roman forum" with a lower-case f refers to the former, generic-subject article).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

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Request for feedback about old dispute

Hello SMcCandlish. I noticed that I had a dispute some time ago with one of the candidates that is running for Arbitration. Could you check it and tell me your objective opinion about it? The context without the candidate is Talk:Discord#Semi-protected edit request on 19 August 2022. The dispute starts with Pending changes reviewer#Thinker78. It continues with User talk:ToBeFree#Regarding your accusations and concerns against me. It's a long read so I understand if you decline. But if you take it, I can take both the positive and the negative. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 01:26, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

@Thinker78: I was idle enough to actually pore over all this material, so you get the long version! Going through this in chron. order:

• The first bit, about "Semi-protected edit request on 19 August 2022" at Talk:Discord: I generally agree with ferret that the software itself is a valid primary source for its own current version number. I've cited software before for similar things, though it's not all that common. It wasn't nuts for you to revert the change as being unsourced, and someone immediately after you in that thread explicitly declined the edit request on the same basis. The fact that a source did turn out to be available (which the requester didn't even mention) in the form of the version number showing in the app doesn't equate to a source being cited in the material. That said, I have to disagree with your take that "It is not reasonable to require editors to install software to verify information in Wikipedia articles." That's directly counter to WP:SOURCEACCESS: a source does not have to be easily and freely accessible (though installing Discord for a test is both); a source can be quite rare and expensive and require hoops to jump through to get access, but still be a valid source as long as a determined reader could in fact get access to it eventually, especially since the editorial community as a whole almost certainly already has someone that can verify it. Verifiable doesn't mean "verifiable easily by me in particular". The general view there that for this application the version number was useless anyway and should be removed seems sensible to me, and I see that you concurred with it. Some of your points, though, seemed to lean toward WP:WIKILAWYER territory (which probably explains much of the testiness from others), especially in bringing up whether someone is an admin or not. Ultimately I think you are correct that if the version number is included it needs the source actually cited, even if citing software interfaces isn't super-obvious (though it is not hard; see, e.g., this one at Tartan: Urquhart, Blair; Cruickshank, Kris (2006). Textile32 (Windows software) (v3.2 ed.). Comrie, Perthshire: Tartan Software / Scottish Tartans Authority International Tartan Index. "Ticket" menu.
• The second link (WP:Pending changes reviewer), at which ToBeFree finally makes an appearance: I agree that creating a userpage for Markbassett (claimed to be after he said he intentionally didn't want one, though you later disputed this) was arguably a poor idea. I saw your rationale for doing it, but creating other users' userpages at all seems invasive and is not a normal practice. If someone had done that with me, I probably also would have objected. However, I don't see how this relates in any way to PCR permissions; it was weird that TBF brought it up. TBF then more pertinently brought up the first of these threads, but does not have appeared to have read the Talk:Discord thread about it, only the edit summaries. I agree with the feeling behind your objection to "[TBF]'s baseless accusation that Im inflating my edit count" by updating an online-status indicator widget (though these things are not of much actual use, and you seem to have realized that and abandoned it the same month). And this was also not pertinent to PCR, either, so it's unclear why TBF would bring it up. However, I think you kind of flew off the handle about it, with stuff like "I reserve my right to bring this issue to a proper venue", and various other lines of similar "butt-hurt" material. It would have been sufficient to say something like "I'm using an online status indicator widget in the way it was designed to be used, I don't care about edit-count stats. It seems a little assumptive of bad faith accuse me of editcountitis. More importantly, it just seem off-topic, since it has no relevance for the PCR bit." Your material about ADMINACCT wasn't helpful either. The fact that you were reverted by an admin is basically immaterial; it would have been better to go with something like "I reverted because a source wasn't provided for the changed claim, and someone else also declined an edit request on the talk page for the same claim. A source has since been mentioned on the talk page (citing part of the app's own user interface as a primary source), but that is not citing a source in the article, and there seems to be a consensus anyway to just remove the version number from the article as irrelevant, so it's all a moot point, a very short-term dispute that has been resolved perfect well. I can see how my judgment in this matter might be relevant to PCR, but I stand by requiring a reliable source (even if it's primary) for new claims being added to an article." In short, I think you kind of "mooned the jury" by reacting angrily to someone reivewing a permissions request. Protonk then also objected to your combative tone, and then ferret chimed in what what amounts also to a WIKILAWYERing complaint about citing P&G material that doesn't seem pertinent to the actual discussion but aimed at "WP:WINNING". However, I personally don't think it was right for TBF to close the request as declined, since they were already INVOLVED in a small-scale dispute with you at that point. Some other admin should have closed the request, but it almost certainly would have closed with the same result. When seeking permissions of any kind, from admin (or bureacrat) on down to PCR and PageMover and TemplateEditor, one has to be calmly responsive and reflective when presented with critical diffs (even if some of the criticism attached to them seems unreasonable) or the answer will always be "No". A consistent theme from several of these editors is that thumping WP:FOO shortcuts as if they are holy writ is not conducive to dispute resolution.
• The third bit (TBF's user-talk): This largely seemed repetitive of previous discussion, other than the clarification about when and under what conditions the Markbassett user page was created. I can see why you posted it, because it was probably correct to question that admin's closure of the permissions request after getting involved in an accusatory debate with you. But the overall tone of it was BATTLEGROUNDy. It would probably have been better to post something like "I ask that you revert your closure of my PCR request and let some other admin close it, because you have become WP:INVOLVED with me in a personalized way, namely accusing me of WP:EDITCOUNTITIS simply for using a template the way it was intended to be used, of de-redliking someone's user page against their will (which is not correct; the user did not indicate to me that this would be unwelcome until later [diffs here]), and of doing something wrong in reverting an article change that was made without a source (which is clearly not wrong, and which was all resolved by talk page discussion just the way it should be).", and left it at that. When dealing with ADMINCOND and INVOLVED matters, it is best to state what you want to happen (revert the permission denial), and lay out reasons why without getting emotive. Write about it as if it happened to someone else a long time ago. I think TBF's response would have been very different than the sarcastic and dismissive one you got (though it is correct in what it said about NOBAN and editing other people's userspace; the wording has since changed a bit and now reads "In general, one should avoid substantially editing another's user and user talk pages, except when it is likely edits are expected and/or will be helpful. If unsure, ask." Which is still something of a contradindication against going around de-redlinking random user's pages). An unspoken thing that happens is that admins pay attention to what other admins are doing, and they have a culture of "Hell yeah!" when an admin gets vented at and then responds dismissively, because all the admins are tired of being vented at. But when an editor calmly raises a rather incontrovertible INVOLVED issue and points out that an admin action was taken which should not have have been (by that admin), the admin in question knows other admins are going to see this and maybe look into it, and is more likely to do what they actually need to do, because the "Hell yeah!" element of sticking it to a rude, venty editor is missing, leaving only the possibly legitimate and well-reasoned complaint. (However, in this exact case, it is all rather moot, because another admin would also have rejected your PCR request. It would have been getting one admin to self-revert on principle only to have another uninvolved one impose the same verdict. So, arguably not worth the drama.)

My overall view of this disputation is that TBF was in the wrong in bringing up dubious and poorly supported accusations that were mostly simply irrelevant to the PCR request in the first place, and acted in an INVOLVED manner in closing it with a denial against you. But also that you reacted throughout (including in the original Discord article discussion) in a "let's fight!" manner, tossing around WP:FOO acronyms as thought-terminaters, and did not approach any of these discussions in a "How can this have the best result?" way. That was a while ago, but not ages ago, so there may be a defensiveness and even a "the best defense is a good offense" overreactive habit to moderate. Even if you have been wrongly accused of something and improperly denied a request, going all ballistic about it isn't the best strategy. (I speak from experience, having had to moderate such tendencies of my own, and I wrote WP:HOTHEADS about this, some which you may find useful. :-) Anyway, I'm not sure this would affect my opinion of TBF as an ArbCom candidate, since it's just one incident. Not an editor whose admin work I've followed in any detail.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:04, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

You may be interested also in Protonk's very colorful reply to me. I was so completely vexxed at the time that I did not respond (although I did went through the civility policy wondering about taking it to ANI). But now that I see it again, it's a mix of crass rudeness with an epic cyberpunk metaphor and a hillarious ending.

I appreciate the detailed analysis and response. As usual, you are objective and go above and beyond in the quality of your responses. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 04:41, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Commedia dell'arte

I put Innamorati and Vecchio in italics. I was thinking of putting it for il Capitano, il Dottore and la Signora as well, but they are non-secondary characters. What do you think? Did I do a good job? (I wasn't able to put the "it" lang inside the commedia dell'arte page, if you can pop in I thank you). JackkBrown (talk) 17:09, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

You are still using bare italics in the form ''innamorati'' when what is needed is {{lang|it|innamorati}}, and I've told you that at least four times. What you are doing is not really helping, it is just creating more work for someone else to do later in cleaning up after you. The specific characters like Il Capitano should not be italicized, since they are proper names, like names of people and places, but they arguably should get {{lang|it|italic=unset|Il Capitano}} so they are properly pronounced by screen readers. The commedia dell'arte article already has language markup (except around such proper names). I've done cleanup passes at both Innamorati and Vecchio, but I can't keep doing this. Please study the cleanup I do after you, so should already know what to do and just do it yourself the first time. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:11, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: OK, but it's strange that on about 95 per cent of all Wikipedia articles there is no "lang" but only normal italics. Anyway, was I right to put "Innamorati" and "Vecchio" in italics? JackkBrown (talk) 22:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

It's not "strange", it's just that a) the {{lang}} template was created years after Wikipedia came into existence (with basic italics alreay built in), the template didn't auto-apply italics until several years later, and the Manual of Style didn't say to use the template until maybe two years ago; and b) editors are lazy, especially about applying markup templates to old articles that visually look okay to sighted readers. The average editor here is clueless about accessibility and about metadata like language information. Innamorati and vecchio belong in {{lang|it}} markup, which applies the italics. Proper names like Il Dottore need {{lang|it|italic=unset|Il Dottore}} markup (or the new shorthand markup {{langr|it|Il Dottore}} (note langr for "lang roman") – I'd forgotten about that until a moment ago, but just applied it to proper names in the Innamorati and Vecchio articles) so they are not italicized but have the language information to be pronounced properly by screen readers. We don't italicize proper names (of persons, of places, of companies, or of fictional characters in this case). But general classes of stock characters like innamorati and vecchio are not proper names; they are common nouns by defintion, and should not be capitalized.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Template portal

How do I go back to all the changes where I have put the template "Portal"? I cannot manually check all my changes. JackkBrown (talk) 14:20, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't know of any tool that enables that kind of search (e.g. for username in the edit history and a particular block of template code in the edit). You could ask at WP:HELPDESK; someone there may be aware of some external script or other tool that can do this. But you may really have to go back through hundreds or thousands of edits. I hate to say it, but you were warned on your talk page to use fully descriptive edit summaries, and your failure to do so has bit you in the butt. If you had, then it would be a simple matter to do in-page keyword searching for "portal" at Special:Contributions/JackkBrown.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:42, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

No longer necessary, I did it all manually (the valuable List of Italian dishes page helped me a lot); lists are so underrated, but they are so useful. JackkBrown (talk) 02:30, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Southern Italy

What rules do you have? "Southern Italy" or "southern Italy"? If you want, you can take a look at the article Southern Italy. I capitalized "Southern Italy", but I didn't do it all over the art. Unfortunately I don't have any more time and yes, I should have not changed anything, but now there is no point in undoing my changes JackkBrown (talk) 20:35, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

There is always a point in undoing (and not making in the first place) changes that you are uncertain of and did not apply consistently. As for whether to capitalize this, it's the same as everything else: see the lead section of MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. In English, capitalization is primarily needed for proper names, acronyms, and for the first letter of a sentence. Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. If most reliable sources (in English) treat "Southern Italy" as a proper name of a defined region with its own character, like Southern United States, and Northern England, and Eastern Region, Nigeria, and South China, then Wikipedia would also capitalize it. If it's simply a descriptive term of a vaguely defined geographical region like "southern Mexico" or "south-eastern Scotland" or "eastern Australia" (but contrast Western Australia), which are usually things we don't have an article about, then they would not be captalized since most sources in English don't capitalize them. We do have an article at Southern Italy. Whether that term should be capitalized is a question to pose at Talk:Southern Italy and will be a matter of source research; it's not something you should be unilaterally changing on your own.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:55, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: you are absolutely right! I have just posted a new thread on the page, and will now undo all my changes. JackkBrown (talk) 01:13, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Category:Essays about Wikipedian fallacies has been nominated for renaming

 Done

Category:Essays about Wikipedian fallacies has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 20:43, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Afd

 Done

Should take this to AFD. Your reason is convincing enough. The creator is treating an encyclopedia as their personal blog. The Doom Patrol (talk) 07:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@The Doom Patrol: Yeps. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Internet meme trolls in Kerala.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:48, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Special Barnstar
		For all your help (especially with regard to cursive) and patience. JackkBrown (talk) 15:55, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

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