User talk:SMcCandlish/Archive 38

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January 2010

Ping

Resolved

 – Just a note.

Have you checked your email recently?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:21, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I have not! Will do so. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:11, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

CSDs

Resolved

 – Just a note.

I deleted all of your user space deletion requests. I also deleted these two user talk pages, User talk:SMcCandlish/Infobox and User talk:SMcCandlish/Sandbox7, that you didn't tag, but had tagged their user space counterparts. If you want them back, just drop me a note and I'll restore it. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 08:47, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks; I didn't figure I'd need to tag the talks; they were just there for testing the non-talk variants. :-) I think I just flagged a few more for nuking. Its funny how much junk can accumulate. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 08:49, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I figured you didn't need them, but I just wanted to double check. I deleted the other two for you. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 08:51, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Huzzah! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 09:36, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Gosh

Resolved

 – RfA posted.

Blast from the past. --Dweller (talk) 11:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeedy! I was finishing my degree after 15 years or so out of school and in the workforce, so I didn't really have time to go for the mop. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

How would you respond to the criticisms of you at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/SMcCandlish? Did you withdraw your nomination? --Dweller (talk) 11:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

That's all such old news. I did withdraw my original nomination back in early 2007. It wasn't going hugely well, even if more + than -, and I was going to let it play out. Then a sock puppet generated a false but apparently credible-to-some accusation that caused a negative "me too" snowball to start rolling, so I just yanked the whole thing, and forgot about adminship for a long time. I've had a bunch of nomination offers (one even went and created the 2nd RfA page!), but I've been holding off until certain I have the time and attention to do useful stuff. Anyway, the COI thing was a noob blunder in 2006. The civility thing is something I've worked on a lot. I do not suffer total fools lightly, but I think people at WT:MOS and other hot-tempered forums I'm a regular at can vouch for my ability to deal with disputes calmly. I expect to be gnawed at in RfA by a few people who have been particularly fierce debate opponents in the past, including the recent past (e.g. the RfC at WT:NCP, but I have thick skin, and I can't keep everyone happy all the time. I've come a long way in the intervening years. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:50, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

PS: Anyway, I wasn't certain if your quiz was part of some larger process or just for your own curiosity. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Answering your last questions first, I had no specific agenda in mind, but your positive responses above and most notably your honesty (honesty, I think, is a really good thing in an admin and at RfA) especially combined with your humility (gosh, you admin you've got things wrong in the past) make me happy to nominate you today, if you'll accept the nom. --Dweller (talk) 12:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd be honored! Fuhghettaboutit's also doing one, and several others have offered to co-nom over the last few years. Not sure what to do with that many co-noms, but I'd love to have yours because of your depth of experience, and Fughettaboutit's because of our long collaboration and his, in my view, completely unimpeachable admin record, even if it's not tremendously long. At User:SMcCandlish/RfA draft there's a draft RfA with two co-noms on it that are probably too old to keep, but I've been working on answers to the stock 3 questions. They are far too long in this draft, but the gist is all there. :-) I've also been looking over User:Malinaccier/The four phase system and realize that I don't know the answer to some of the questions (especially the blocking ones - I don't plan to do much if any blocking other than for outright intransigent vandalism). So I still have some research to do and am not in a huge hurry. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:21, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

More good responses. OK, well read through the manual (WP:ADMIN is a good place to (re?)start, as is WP:PREP) and drop me a line when you're ready. --Dweller (talk) 13:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey guys. Unimpeachable, huh? I'll drop Cheney a note and tell him we got away with it all. Just so you know, I have posted my nomination to the live page (not the draft).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:48, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Cool beans. I've added the Malinaccier stuff to my User:SMcCandlish/Coaching page and am working through it. Dweller, do you want to just add a co-nom with Fughettaboutit's, at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/SMcCandlish 2? I'll continue working on the stuff at the /Coaching page and look into paring down my "default 3" answers at my User:SMcCandlish/RfA draft page and then add them to the real RfA at some point quasi-soon (i.e. not February :-) I have a lot of reading to catch up on. I actually did read oodles and oodles of this stuff before my first RfA, but it's mostly all changed years later, so I'm starting over with a lot of it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:04, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Resolved

 – Replied there; don't need more talkbacks, as I watch list that page.

Hello. You have a new message at Talk:2009 Championship League's talk page. Armbrust (talk) 23:52, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Admin stuff

Resolved

 – RfA posted.

Don't be in a hurry, and don't hang around RfA (it's a tangent/distraction).

If you'd like to be an admin (janitor), then...

1) Start doing non-sysop administrative activities. Things like...

Close non-controversial deletion discussions (XfDs). See WP:DPR#NAC.

Clean up vandalism, and patrol recent changes.

Mediation

Participate in RfC's

Respond to Wikiquette alerts

Help fulfill Wikipedian requests, and/or participate in the corresponding discussions. See WP:RQ.

2) Read all of Wikipedia's policies, guidelines, and policy-related essays.

3) Read (and when you get the gist of it, participate in) admin discussions regularly (every time you log in). The main ones are at WP:AN and WP:ANI, but there are many others.

4) Read everything pertaining to admin duties, starting with:

• Administrators
• Administrators' how-to guide
• Administrators' reading list

Take your time, help Wikipedians, and adminship will find you.

The Transhumanist 22:22, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Doing a lot of this stuff already, and you're right about RfA as a "hang out". I really don't go there! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:05, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

An open proposal for a WikiProject Talk Pages

Resolved

 – Supported, at nom page.

I noticed some edits you recently made to Talk:electronic cigarette and would like to inform you that I have proposed a WikiProject that would do those same kinds of talk page clean-up edits. If you are interested, I would appreciate you adding your support to the proposal page. Thanks.
-Garrett W. {☎ ✍} 08:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Account creation request interface

Resolved

 – Just an FYI.

This message is to confirm to ACRI admins that I did indeed request access to the account creation request interface. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:43, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for applying to access the account creation tool. I have approved your request so welcome to the team. You may now access the tool here. Before you do so, please read the tool's guide to familiarize yourself with the process. You may also want to join #wikipedia-en-accounts on IRC where a bot informs us when new account requests come in as well as the mailing list.

Currently you are allowed to create up to six accounts per day (a day being from 0:00 UTC to 23:59 UTC), although you won't be able to create an account with a similar name to that of another user; these requests are marked "Account Creator Needed". However, if you reach the limit frequently, you can request the account creator permission at WP:PERM.

Please keep in mind that the ACC tool is a powerful program, and misuse may result in your access being suspended by a tool administrator. Don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions. Thank you for participating in the account creation process. Again welcome! ---- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 14:20, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I will and watch a lot before I touch anything. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Your autoreviewer request

Resolved

 – Just an FYI.

Hi, just wanted to let you know that I have granted autoreviewer rights on your account, as you have created numerous valid articles. This will have little or no effect on your editing, and is intended mainly to reduce the workload on new page patrollers. For more information see Wikipedia:Autoreviewer, and feel free to ask if you have any questions. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 14:08, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I would have done this ages ago if I'd thought about it (I didn't because I always NPP'd with redirs turned off, so I didn't realize what a mess that is when it's turned on!) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:12, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

No problemo! Take care, Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 14:43, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Not the right David Gottlieb

Resolved

 – Just a note.

Hello SMcCandlish

In Article Baffle_Ball we better do not interwiki link David Gottlieb, the link would lead to an othe Davis wich is not the creator of pinball machines. I think the creator David Gottlieb deserves his own article. Please make one if you have information about him, I dont. --Netpi (talk) 09:29, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Good catch! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:39, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Your RfA

Resolved

 – Done.

My nom is there. Go ahead and finish it all off. I wish you luck. Remember that RfA can be a rough ride, but that's for good reasons. I know you'll be open to genuine constructive criticism. Go for it. --Dweller (talk) 10:32, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Pls let me know when you transclude it. --Dweller (talk) 12:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Will do. Was thinking this afternoon, actually. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Elegant variation

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

In this Elegant variation article it had:

• Fowler also quoted: "At the sixth round, there were almost as many fellows shouting out 'Go it, Figs', as there were youths exclaiming 'Go it, Cuff'. — Thackeray." Were older men supporting Figs and teenagers supporting Cuff? Or not?

You cut the "Or not". My difficulty here is that I don't know if the "Or not" was from Fowler or from an editor here. If from Fowler, probably best left, if not, best cut, but we are not quoting the whole of Fowler, nor should we, so it could be just to cut it even if it is in Fowler (and it would be odd for Fowler to write a sentence "Or not" just like that).

I don't mind it being cut, but I checked in my Fowler second edition and I can't find it at all. (I hate the third edition but I have one somewhere propping up a table or something.) Either I am losing sanity and it is in the second edition and I just can't see it, or this quotation is not from Modern English Usage at all or is in a different article. I think it would be good if we could clarify this. More than likely it is my own stupidity, but the fact that it is unclear and I spotted it and it confused me does, to my mind, indicate that its provenance needs to be made clearer.

Thanks and best wishes Si Trew (talk) 10:46, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Also "teenagers" was not a word when the second edition was published. So, is this in Birchfields third edition (ugh)? Or is the comment added by an editor here, in which case I think it should not be shown to be a quote when it is outside the quote. That really is my point, which part of this is quoted text and which is comment by another editor? Si Trew (talk) 10:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Fowler wrote more than MEU, so it could be in something else, or as you suggest another edition. As the "Or not?" is utterly redundant, as well as a sentence fragment, I have a hard time believing it is Fowler's; if it is, it should be cut anyway; and if it is, the entire passage needs to be quoted and cited properly. Given all that, I stand by my cut. >;-)

I hadn't realized there was that much difference between later editions. I guess I'll have to scare up a copy of the 2nd and 3rd then, since all I've got are the 4th and a reprint of the 1st.

My rede was that none of it is a quote of Fowler per se, but a mention that Fowler quoted someone else, a copy of that quotation (probably whole), and why Fowler quoted it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 10:56, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Templates on redirect page Jimmy White's 2: Cue Ball

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

Howdy. I notice you've un-done a few changes I made to the redirect Jimmy White's 2: Cue Ball and suspect we are editing at cross-purposes. The template you are reinstating (Template:Redir from misspelling) does not currently exist. Do you intend to create this template, or is your intention to link to an existing redirect template (see Category:Redirect templates for a list of the main ones) ? Cheers - TB (talk) 16:41, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Obvious typo for {{R from misspelling}}; fixed. The issue at that redir is that Jimmy White's 2: Cue Ball is a misspelling of, not alternative spelling for, the title of a published work, Jimmy White's 2: Cueball. This is completely different from a case where an a article topic, such as fnordball, a type of ball game (hypothetically) is attestably spelled fnord ball and fnord-ball frequently enough that they are legitimate variations and not rare typographical errors, in which case the latter two titles would be a {{R from alternative spelling}} and {{R from alternative punctuation}}, respectively [the latter presently redirs to {{R from modification}}, but specificity is good]. If Fnordball, however, were the title of a work, such as a sequel to Thunderball, both the 2nd and 3rd spellings would be {{R from misspelling}} since they would not be "alternatives" at all but errors. PS: If, say, the cover of the Canadian or whatever version of the game uses a "Cue Ball" spelling, then definitely {{R from alternative spelling}}. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 16:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand the distinction you are making between an alternate spelling and a mis-spelling. Myself, I would consider mis-spelling to be a subclass of alternate spelling. The 'correctness' of any given alternate spelling (and therefore the applicability of the mis-spelling tag) depends not only on its origin (per your examples above) but on its general use and acceptability. Consider trendy spellings of traditional names, or the use of the letter 'u' instead of the word 'you' - these make me wince and I'd love to call them mis-spellings ;). So basically, I've generally tended to reserve mis-spelling class for obvious cases and used the more general class where doubt exists. Thanks for fixing the link to the missing template, I'm more than happy to defer to your judgment here. - TB (talk) 20:44, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I know what you mean about all that LOLSPEAK. Drives me nuts. I even made a userbox about it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 20:46, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Editintro vs. Editnotice

Resolved

 – Fine by me, as long as it's consistent.

Hi,
I've moved {{Editintro documentation}} back, since edit intros work very differently than edit notices; concerning documentation, the most important difference is that the <noinclude> tag doesn't work if an editintro is displayed, which is why we can't just use {{documentation}} there. We can, however, use that on edit notices, so we don't need a special template for that (or at least not one that complicated).
I believe that this was your only reason to request the move, which is why I moved it right back. If I'm wrong, please say so. :)
Cheers, Amalthea 19:04, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Two edit intros where this is used: {{BLP editintro}} and {{Disambig editintro}}. Amalthea 19:07, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I must have misunderstood something then, because the template in question was mostly using the term "editintro" but then later "editnotice". It needs to make up its mind. I was just trying to make it consistent (in one direction; looks like it needed to be made consistent in the other). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:11, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I've added a disclaimer that edit notices are a different concept. Cheers, Amalthea 19:16, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Talkback (2)

Resolved

 – Just an FYI.

Hello. You have a new message at SchuminWeb's talk page. Message added 19:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC). SchuminWeb (Talk) 19:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 20:34, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:Whisperback

Resolved

 – Misc. notices and chat.

Hello. You have a new message at Fuhghettaboutit's talk page. Not only is the above true (that you have new messages at my talk page), but were you aware of the above template ({{talkbacktiny}}) when you made {{whisperback}}?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Yarp. Wanted something more plain-texty. It's the blue swath effect I was unhappy with. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 02:02, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thought I would try this out. Well done!

Hello, SMcCandlish. You have new messages at MalnadachBot's talk page.

I like this MUCH better than those gaudy blue talkback bars. – ClockworkSoul 02:05, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 02:33, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, me too! Thanks for the idea!
-Garrett W. {☎ ✍} 02:58, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Glad it is liked. I afeared it would be TfDed instantly as redundant (I'd actually nuke {{Message2}} first; it is huge and hideous). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:19, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. It's much too colorful and large and bold and such.
-Garrett W. {☎ ✍} 09:11, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Darts proposal

Resolved

 – In progress.

Thanks for flagging that up to me. You may want to get some of the other editors, who occasionally edit on such articles, to comment on the proposal. I can't remember such names at 5:20am, so have a look through recent darts articles such as 2010 PDC World Darts Championship, 2010 BDO World Darts Championship, and also the main championship pages. Regards. Cs-wolves(talk) 05:22, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm already on it! :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 05:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Good stuff! Your query about the length of time to load my talk page has also been resolved! Cs-wolves(talk) 05:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Keen-o. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 09:42, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Re: "the idea that Jesus and God are separate persons" (your recent edit summary)

Resolved

 – Redirected back to Talk:Triple deities.

According to mainstream traditional "Athanasian" Christian understanding of the Trinity, Jesus and God the Father are separate "persons" of the Trinity (in a special Latin sense of the word "person", which is not the same as the most often-used modern English sense of this word), but Jesus and God are not separate... AnonMoos (talk) 20:54, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't matter. There are non-mainstream Christians and that is not an article on Christianity. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:51, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, the issue of what to do with the text at that article should be discussed at that article's talk page; there are multiple viewpoints in the debate, so just us two talking about it here won't fix anything. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 20:41, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Userspace draft template

Resolved

 – Wrong venue.

I noticed you added the {{Userspace draft}} template to User:SMcCandlish/Chinese eight-ball, User:SMcCandlish/Comparison of cue sports, User:SMcCandlish/List of World Blackball Champions, User:SMcCandlish/Russian pyramid, and User:Betodd/XSMotion. This template was created in September 2009. You used it for dates preceding this, thus causing an error message. I don't think it is a good idea to retroactively create those monthly maintenance categories. I do not know of another equivalent template, so perhaps we should just not tag articles created before September 2009. Debresser (talk) 13:45, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a template code issue not user behavior (template usage) issue, really. Took it up at Template talk:Userspace draft#Date categorization code. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 20:38, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

See you there. Debresser (talk) 21:18, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Endorsed as author

Resolved

 – Just an FYI.

re:

Template:Interwiki links table has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. — SMcCandlish... " 08:06, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

• Speedy it if rules allow. Happy new year, btw. // FrankB 23:03, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

You'd have to put {{db-author}} on it yourself, I think. Happy new one to you as well. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 03:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

RfA notifications

Resolved

 – Moot; RfA closed 23 January 2010.

Hey there. Saw your post on Tony1's talk page, and I wish you the best of luck with your RfA. I just wanted to let you know that some voters at RfA will oppose for the type of post you made to Noetica, Pmanderson, and Tony1's talk pages. I would advise you to undo your edits so that your RfA won't be distracted by accusations of canvassing. NW (Talk) 22:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that would look "guilty" or "sneaky". I notified Pmanderson/Septentrionalis and Tony1 because I have interacted, both pro and con, with them more than any other editors on the system other than Fuhghettaboutit (my co-nominator), so they are both in a position to accurately judge me, and have reason to be neutral, since we have vehemently disagreed (I think I've even been at loggerheads with Pmanderson at WP:ANI before!) as well as fruitfully collaborated. Noetica was notified because he is mentioned by name, with a claim about our interaction, and should be in a position to confirm it or not. I have also notified Radiant, as my original RfA's chief opponent. If I were really going to canvas, it would be easy to churn out all sorts of e-mails, off-wiki, selectively targeting only people I get along with really well here. What I have actually done is notified these 4 parties for the reasons given, and a few other parties who either offered to nominate me or expressed a desire to be kept informed of my RfA status, and I've been entirely above-board about it, including publicly stating that I would notify Noetica in e-mail. I stand by these as perfectly appropriate WP:CANVAS#Friendly notices, and will point to this explanation if anyone raises the issue. I see where you're coming from about what some voters might do, but I have not violated WP:CANVAS and if someone wants to oppose me on a bogus basis, oh well. I'm offering to serve WP as a janitor because I have time to do so finally; if I were really a power-hungry, sneaky type I would have RfA'd again in late 2007 with the two nominators that offered then, and worked hard, honestly and otherwise for acceptance. But it's 2010 now, and I haven't done anything to engineer my way into "power". If people can't see that, then I'm not sure I want the bucket. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 22:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Bong

Resolved

 – Just an FYI.

Mail. Got. You've. --Dweller (talk) 23:23, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Noted. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Kevin Trudeau

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

Not sure if you were referencing the edits I made, but I didn't make any biased positive comments about Kevin Trudeau's occupation. All I did was delete the negative ones. I personally happen to think the guy is a fraud and a con artist of the worst kind, but as I said in my edit description, it's not neutral or necessary to list as part of a description of who he is "convicted felon". That's what the section on his legal disputes is for. 72.85.193.72 (talk) 07:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I was responding to someone's addition of a claim that Trudeau was a "consumer protection advocate" and something else, too, contradicted by the evidence. I'm not fan of Trudeau's either. I side with you on moving the legal material to the legal section, other than that the lead must at least summarize it per WP:LEAD, as it is frankly the principal source of his notability. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 08:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

RfA comment removal

Resolved

 – Repaired; probably a temporary Db glitch.

Hello SMcCandlish, I was reviewing the history of your RfA, and noticed that you removed my and another user's comments here. May I ask why you decided to do this? If you wished me to retract my comment to Ret.Prof, I would have been happy to do so; however, unilaterally removing it yourself might be viewed as a little rude. Further, leaving yourself as the only person to reply to your opposers might further any views that you are "badgering." Looking forward to your reply, GlassCobra 15:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I would certainly never do that on purpose! Lemme go look... I wouldn't touch anything of anyone else's in an RfA other than to fix the numbering of the entries or something like that. I was probably a copy-paste error on my part. I don't remember seeing your note at all. At this point I don't care if I'm seen as "badgering". The RfA is a lost cause and I'm not going to have blatant falsehoods told about me to my face without responding to them. I'm perfectly fine with criticism, just not with being gored to pieces for things I didn't even do. RfA is supposed to be a constructive, analytical process of community consensus-forming, not a suspension of WP:NPA and WP:LIBEL for the amusement of WP:MASTODONS. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixed! I think it was as database error. Something like that happens to me about 3 or 4 times per month. Something that should show up as an edit conflict doesn't. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your prompt reply. :) Best of luck in the coming days, GlassCobra 15:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'll probably withdraw it after it turns into a more boring pile-on. Some of the incoming comments are still interesting and aren't entirely "me too" posts yet. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

RfA

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

Hello. I think this RfA will be a clear fail. I think you have been unwittingly your own worst enemy. You are a very enthusiastic editor who wants to get things exactly right. That appears to me to be the reason why the hesitation in initiating the RfA, the reason for the possible canvassing, the reason for the possibly "bitey" comments etc. Also because you have made so many responses to the opposes does not look good and some people will oppose just based on this. It is best to only correct factual errors in oppose rationales and let others argue your case. Also your huge bold signature all over the page draws far too much attention to yourself, this gets people annoyed. I happen to think you would be a great admin but RfA appears to have become a game of populartity/know the right people/never upset anyone. Polargeo (talk) 15:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I strongly advise you to do something about that signature. :-) Polargeo (talk) 15:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yep, I believe you, on every point. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I was going to say go for it, but it doesn't seem you'll make it. Hopefully it will work out next time. –BuickCenturyDriver 21:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

No biggie either way. If I "wanted" adminship, like for "power" and stuff, I would have RfA'd in in Nov. 2007 or so. Thanks, though. If there is a next time (it would take quite a bit of convincing...), I think it would have to go better, since this must be one of the worst RfAs of all time, on the level of how much of it is nonsense, 3-4 year old grudges and outright falsehoods. <shrug> I've never seen anything quite like it, other than an RfA that had a bunch of sockpuppet attacks in it. Definitely a weird one. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Just thought I'd stop by to say hello

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

Hi, I wish we could have bumped into each other under slightly happier circumstances, but I though I'd introduce myself anyway. I hope you won't take my comments in your RfA personally and use them to build yourself up a bit more and I'd genuinely like to see you back there in a few months. I liked your comment in response to SilkTork's oppose. I always like editors who keep their RfAs open as long as possible to gain feedback and I think some of the opposers have genuinely good advice to offer and, if it would make the slightest bit of difference, it might tempt me to move to neutral but it wouldn't affect the outcome. Anyhow, try building on the criticism you've received, show the community you can take it and use it to make yourself a better editor and try getting involved in areas where you can make useful suggestions or closing XfDs and proving you can give a nice, succinct rationale. I'm around if you should want to chat or you can email me if you feel the need to rant (I have a failed RfA of my own- I now it's not easy). All the best, HJMitchell You rang? 16:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. That means a lot, actually. My skin's pretty thick, and I don't mind genuinely constructive criticism, but outright hate from 3 or 4 years ago, and blatantly false accusations are a bit hard to swallow, so it hasn't been a happy morning for me. :-) I was skeptical about accepting a nomination again, at all, anyway, but after several years of people bugging me to ask for the mop again, I figured it was worth a try since I actually have time to do some admin work. <shrug> Anyway, have a good one. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 16:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

My "controversial" question

Resolved

 – Done.

I have withdrawn my question, following advice from an admin! I had withdrawn it from another open RfA, and was going to do so on your when my browser crashed. When I got back, I then saw that you'd answered it a bit ago. If you want the question and your answer to remain, feel free to revert it, but as it is a bit of an unfair question in hindsight, I'm happy for it to be withdrawn. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 22:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I took it off, at your suggestion. The question didn't bother me any, but if you don't like it, away it goes! :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Article Rescue Squadron Newsletter

Resolved

 – Projectspam.

Extended content
The Article Rescue Squadron Newsletter Issue 2 (January 2010) Previous issue | Next issue Content The community is currently deciding whether 60,000 articles should be deleted. background News items and announcements Contest Featured editor: Teeninvestor Featured administrator: WereSpielChequers Want ads Feature: FeydHuxtable: Search Techniques

From WP:CHU/SUL: Not a rename user request, but something different

Resolved

 – Noted.

In the process of looking over all the pages of stats generatable by the tool box in my RfA page, I noticed on that listed off my accounts across the project and their relationship. All of them seemed normal (either created by SUL or created independently before that), with the sole exception of user SMcCandlish at ru.wikipedia which was said to be not connected to the rest. This seems like an error, as it's unlikely that some other S[omething] McCandlish is a ruwiki editor. I'm not either for that matter, just mystified as to the reasons behind this lone SUL system glitch. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 13:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Please remember that WP:CHU/SUL is not for discussing SUL or problems with your SUL account that cannot be resolved on this Wikipedia. I just checked on sulutil:SMcCandlish but it says that the ruwiki account was autocreated as well. The tool has had some problems these past days, so you might have seen this incorrect information during one of those problem times when some servers were offline. In future, if you have any such questions, please use the relevant talk pages or noticeboards instead to allow the changing username boards to work smoothly. Regards SoWhy 14:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry; wasn't aware what the correct place was. I have had no interaction with SUL or bureaucrats for any reason before now. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

No problem. In general, if you have questions about things that concern crat tasks, you can do so at the relevant noticeboard, which will usually both be quicker and generate better answers. :-) Regards SoWhy 14:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

RFA

Resolved

 – Answered at RfA.

Hi SMcCandlish, I've asked an RFA question. If you had a moment to answer it, that would be much appreciated. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 15:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Done! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Post-RfA notes

Resolved

 – Just chats.

Caring

I wanted to state for the record that I think you are a great editor. However, I believe you care deeply about issues (as do I) and that this is a difficulty for Admins. What I am saying should be taken as a compliment. Keep up the good work. - Ret.Prof (talk) 13:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

That may well be the case! It's not a big deal to me, really, or my 2nd RfA would have been in like Nov. 2007 or so. Heh. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I just wanted to say that I'm impressed with your withdrawal statement. Too often, editors doing this want to blame other editors or groups of editors, whereas you didn't. Hopefully you will pay attention to what people said, and use this as an opportunity to improve yourself as an editor. Regards, -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 14:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I will. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Your RfA

Sorry with the way it went. I'd really like to see you run again soon, because I think you'd be a valuable addition to the team. I like the way you see truth in some of the opposes and seem happy to respond to them in a positive manner. Good luck with that and if you go to WP:ER in say, six months' time, please drop me a line and let me know. --Dweller (talk) 11:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Okey dokey! Thanks. And I'm not in any huge hurry. I've done fine without admin tools for years. I could be more efficient and useful with them, but it's not like my to-do list is empty and I'm just sitting here picking my nose or anything. ;-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Flag of Japan/archive2

Resolved

 – Didn't get around to it in time, and many non-copyediting issues had already been raised anyway.

I saw your name at the copyeditors guild page. I was wondering if you would like to copyedit this article for FAC. The lead has already been done, so everything after that needs checking. Thanks for your help. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 03:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to have a look at it in the morning (my time; it's about 11:20ish p.m. now). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:21, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion invitation

Resolved

 – Declined; responded at RfC already.

WikiProject new user welcome invitation

Click here to automatically add this project to your watchlist Hi SMcCandlish/Archive 38, I would like to invite you and anyone watching who shares an interest in moving forward constructively to a discussion about Biographies of Living People New editors' lack of understanding of Wikipedia processes has resulted in thousands of BLPs being created over the last few years that do not meet BLP requirements. We are currently seeking constructive proposals on how to help newcomers better understand what is expected, and how to improve some 48,000 articles about living people as created by those 17,500 editors, through our proper cleanup, expansion, and sourcing. These constructive proposals might then be considered by the community as a whole at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people. Please help us: >> User:Ikip/Discussion about creation of possible Wikiproject:New Users and BLPs <<

Ikip 05:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm loath to get involved in userspaced quasi-projects, especially when they are partisan on an issue I've already taken a position on, as I have at the RfC in question. I'd rather see what comes out of the RfC than devote pre-emptive energy in a direction that may not prove viable. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

(refactored invitation) sorry about that, I was naive, and made a mistakeIkip 04:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Image links

Resolved

 – Will participate in discussion/comment on proposal at an appropriate forum

Hi SMcCandlish. Today you edited template {{caution}}. You added "link=" which made it so that images fed to that template would not be linked. I had to revert your edit.

Most image licenses require author attribution and that the full license text is sent along or linked to. So we have to have links to the image pages where we state the authors name, type of license and link on to the full license text. We may only unlink images that are public domain and with some other licenses. Unlinking other images is illegal (copyright crime) and means the image authors can sue you and/or Wikimedia Foundation and win in most courts in most countries. Sorry about that, copyright is a hassle.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:51, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about that. I don't actually agree with that legal analysis at all, but I do recall that it is the one that consensus has settled on. I don't agree because simply providing the location of attribution and licensing information is sufficient; there is nothing at all in copyright law to suggest that one must provide an actively clickable link to that information. If that were the case, the entire Internet would collapse, since all the free software in the world would be illegal for using code comments to provide attrib. and lic. info instead of having the end-product applications provide links to it. I guess we'd have to get rid of books and stuff too, since they don't have links (but do note that when they provide photo attribution and licensing they very frequently do not do it right where the image is but somewhere else in the volume).

Not something I care to argue about, though I think the community needs to get wise on this, as linking to every image is a completely dirt-stupid thing to do from a accessibility and usability point of view. Its one of the absolute worst interface "features" of MediaWiki, as a default. It should only happen (and would be good) when the editor intends to create a link to a bigger, better version of a thumbnailed image. In other cases, iconic images should act as buttons, just as they do in, well, every other machine-human interface on the entire planet. And when neither case applies (i.e. the image is just fluff) nothing should happen at all. This has been basic Web usability and accessibility horse sense since the mid 1990s, and based on user interface studies going back to the late 1960s. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

"Free" Software licenses like GPL usually don't require that the attribution and license is showed to every end user, but instead only to those that install and run the software. And you might have noticed that during installation such software often show a lot of stuff.

In books we know we can first look around the image, if the attribution isn't there, then we look at the first and last pages of the book. Also, the images in books usually are not GFDL or CS-BY-SA, instead the publishers have commercial agreements with the image owners, agreements that allow the books and newspapers etc to use less attribution.

The same goes for most commercial web sites: They have (or are at least required by law to have) agreements with the image owners that let them use the images the way they do.

While here at Wikipedia we mostly use images with GFDL and CS-BY-SA licenses or similar. We don't have special commercial agreements with the authors who made the images. We don't pay the image authors anything. So we have to obey by the requirement to attribute those authors and make the licenses readily available. If we don't link to the image page it takes specialised technical knowledge to find the image page. Thus that means we are hiding away the attribution and license. Copyright law says we must abide by what the image license says, even if it says we should jump on one leg and scream "I am a monkey", or we may not use the image. So if we don't like the license, then our only other option is to not use the image at all.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

As I said, I don't want to get into an argument about this. :-) I have given it a great deal of thought, and the general Wikipedian perspective on the matter appears to be legally flawed. I know more about online copyright law than most lawyers who aren't specialists in the matter. I worked with WikiMedia's own Mike Godwin for about 8 years. I understand why many Wikipedians come to the conclusion that they do on this issue; I just believe it to be an incorrect, and "paranoid", conclusion. Just to be clear: The reason that the rationale is wrong is that the licenses are already "readily available" simply by being on the system and attached to the image pages at all. There's nothing in copyright law that would require an active hypertext link to that page. That said, and my usability and accessibility gripes aside, I don't really care, because it's fine for the foundation and its userbase to be legally over-protective, as long as the cost is just annoyances like this. "Better safe than sorry", as the saying goes. It's like looking both ways 10 times before crossing the street: It's annoying, but theoretically it actually is safer. If your concern is that I'm going to ignore you and continue putting link= in templates, don't worry about it; I won't. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:36, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Could you be convinced to care about it a bit? And maybe get this settled once and for all? It also came up at Template talk:Asbox#Image alt text. We should maybe consult with Godwin and come up with a determination one way or the other. –xeno^talk 18:50, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay. My stance is that the issue hasn't been important to me personally (I even have bigger usability/accessibility/standards compliance issues here than that one), but if multiple people want to have a discussion about it, I'll be happy to participate. I'm not in a position to champion one side or the other. Where would you like to take this? WT:COPYRIGHT? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, or maybe WT:Attribution would be better. –xeno^talk 19:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, its name sounds good, but WP:ATT is just a munged summary of WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:RS, and doesn't really relate much to copyright. If this issue is only about files (usually images, but also videos), then it might be better to discuss it somewhere pertaining to that instead of the general WT:COPYRIGHT page, but honestly I spend so little time dealing with images here instead of at commons that I'm not sure what the right venue is. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Copyrights seems to be a good place to discuss this. Feel free to move this discussion there, including copying anything I have written here.

But as Xeno said, this should be referred to the lawyers of the Wikimedia Foundation. As long as Wikimedia Foundation hasn't issued a formal decision on this, I think it is our duty to "better be safe than sorry".

And since I edit from Sweden I also have to take into account what the copyright law in my country says. Thankfully I know a bit about how the law works in my country, I've won all my legal actions so far.:)) I am pretty sure that our courts over here wouldn't accept this excuse: "Sure, the author name and license for that image are available here. We got 866,849 image pages here at Wikipedia, and another 5,818,319 over at Wikimedia Commons, you are free to search through them to find that author name and license. And you are free to hire some computer geek that can help you find the right page in a quicker way. So what's the problem?"

That's the actual number of files at the time I write this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Number of files isn't relevant, since that's not the rationale at all. The rationale is that the file name doubles as a file page, with attr./lic. info, which is given in every case of use of that image. No "searching" is necessary. If this system was one in which the attr./lic. information was in a page completely different from the image (i.e., the image was at File:FooBarBaz123, but the attribution was at Attrib:843lsFFx9dP, or even Attrib:FooBarBaz123, I would agree with you. But that's not the case here. Again, there's nothing at all in any copyright laws I'm aware of, anywhere, requiring active hypertext links, and again I've already said that I agree its okay for Wikipedians to be safer than sorrier on the issue, even if the results are a bit annoying. And en.wp doesn't care about .se laws, since the servers aren't hosted there. It's utterly impossible for the foundation to attempt to comply with every legal regime in the world, since they conflict is tens of thousands of ways. Anyway, I don't see why we're arguing about it at all. I've already agreed not to change any more templates to use a blank |link=. Just want to get back to my coding. And to have problems with {{Notice}} fixed. >;-) If Xeno or whoever wants to raise the issue elsewhere, that's fine, but my user page is for collaborating with me or raising issues with my editing, not policy debates, which can't possibly be resolved here, right? Heh. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 20:18, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Subst

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

Thanks for the tip on when not to use subst. I have trouble knowing when to use it and when not. Sometimes it is supposed to be used and template instructions take it for granted folks like me already know. Is there a simple way to know when to use it and when not? --KenWalker | Talk 16:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Generally, never unless the template's documentation says to do so, or if the template spits up an error message usually in big red text if you try to use it without subst. Any user-warning templates like {{uw-vandal1}} are substituted. So are user welcome templates like {{welcome2}}. Most of the rest aren't. Some of the XfD templates are (others aren't, for some reason). It's complicated. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 16:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, will tread carefully. --KenWalker | Talk 16:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Categorization of User Sandbox

Resolved

 – Just a chat.

Thanks for this. I had brought it into my user namespace while I was working on it and its accompanying template and had forgotten to turn off the cats. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 21:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

No worries; I do it sometimes too! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:58, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:Reference necessary

Resolved

 – Centralizing discussion at Template talk:Citation needed#Merge from Template:Reference necessary.

I just saw what you did to the template and I must say that I am shocked. Some of the work was necessary and good. But, overall you do not understand the purpose of the template. The way you have made it, it is now no different than {{Citation needed}}. But, the purpose of this template is meant to be fundamentally different than {{Citation needed}}. Whereas {{Citation needed}} is for indicating one sentence that needs references, this template is for indicating more than one contiguous sentence (i.e., a block) that needs references. Otherwise, you have to put {{Citation needed}} at the end of each sentence. Before making such dramatic changes, you should have read the talk page and made your proposals there. This particular template has already been vastly improved from its original and you have essentially come along and gutted it. You have all but deleted it. — SpikeToronto 06:40, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are getting at. All I did is remove code redundancy. It already looked exactly like {{Fact}}. The only functional differences that were actually in use were (and still are) 1) it took the challenged text as a variable (i.e. "surrounded" the unsourced statements), and 2) faintly underlined that text. None of that has changed. Can you explain what you see the issue as? It certainly has not stopped working for more than one contiguous sentence. I'm not sure why you are focused on sentences anyway. It's facts that are the issue. {{fact}} is useful for flagging one fact (often just a clause, not a sentence) as unsourced, and {{cfact}} is useful for flagging more than one of them, whether in one sentence or not. It's also, entirely incidentally, useful for flagging one specific one where it might be unclear to what extent multiple facts in one sentence are unsourced. Anyway, I'm not going to go on until I hear back from you on what the issue is. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

First off, all that matters to me is the multiple-sentence wrapper component, the gap that the template fills between {{Fact}} and {{Refimprove section}}. So, I was editing this article, and an otherwise well-referenced section had a paragraph devoid of references. So, I went to use the {{Reference necessary}} template, hit preview, saw the “citation needed” at the end of the last sentence wrapped, but no subtle dotted line. That’s what took me to the template page and its revision history. But, after I read your response above, I went and tried it again and it worked! So, what was that all about? A one-time only glitch drawing the page?

No matter what, it means I owe you an apology, since now it is appearing fine on the kiddie actor stub I was just editing. By the way, why does the sample display at the top of the template page no longer show the dotted line example? Could that be something that could be restored so that anyone wanting to see how it will look before applying it can do so? Also, now that it is working on my screen, the documentary re-write was a good one. Again, sorry that I thought it was screwed up. (Scroll down ↓ for more.) — SpikeToronto 07:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It was probably just database lag. Sometimes you have to force templates and template documentation and anything else transcluded to purge (open it in edit mode, but change &action=edit to &action=purge and reload the page) after it has changed before its transclusions will reflect the change (or wait a while, sometimes several minutes). No apologies! I'm sure it was quite alarming! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 08:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It was very alarming inasmuch as this is one of my favorite templates. (Scroll down ↓ for more.) — SpikeToronto 08:43, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

P.S. All the parameters you removed were optional. This was stated in the documentation. If it was not stated clearly, why not fix the doc? If they are left out, the thing works. So why would you remove the option? I went to use one of them when applying {{Reference necessary}} and noticed nothing was working any more. So how do I indicate a paragraph that needs sourcing in an otherwise sourced section? I cannot use {{Citation needed}}, it is insufficient. I cannot use {{Refimprove section}}, it overstates the situation. {{Reference necessary}} filled the gap perfectly. — SpikeToronto 06:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Already explained in edit summaries. 1) Having options to make the text say anything and refer to anything makes it a meaningless rehash of {{fix}}, and 2) actively encouraging *a template that exists for a specific purpose* to be completely randomly re-tasked to do and say anything is literally begging for abuse by vandals and clueless people. If this is the code you're upset about the removal of, then I don't know what to tell you, other than that I will have little choice but to return this template to WP:TFD with many more reasons for deletion than were brought last time. The only *useful* functionality of this template is the "surrounding" function - which is very, very, useful - and which should be merged into {{fact}}, and should have been there years ago. An argument can be made that the underlining highlighting is useful to, but I have already made a case elsewhere that it's a blatant transgression against en.wiki guidelines, specifically at WP:NODISCLAIMERS, and is also a subtle ignoring of important rationales as WP:SELFREF, among other problems. That I can actually live with. Having a template say it is for purpose "X" when in reality it can be repurposed to mean and say anything is completely pointless. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, I only recently discovered that there were optional parameters to it. I had always used it thusly:{{Reference necessary|Passage to be sourced}}. The only thing I had been doing recently was to change where it referred to WP:V. However, your arguments against having such an ability are put well. Also, having read your comments above, I agree completely. I think that so long as the bots will come by later and add the date, there is no reason to have any parameters. My only confusion with the above is that I do not see how the subtle underlining violates either of WP:NODISCLAIMERS or WP:SELFREF. Why would it not fit under the last exception to WP:NODISCLAIMERS, “pointing to deficiencies in the article that should be corrected promptly?” And, as for WP:SELFREF, I could not find the violation; but then, I am not as familiar with it as are you. Again, now that the template is working on my screen, and not looking identical to {{Fact}} (i.e., wrapping sentences with subtle underlining), I am happy. And, I am secretly glad to see the end of those options. I think I was trying to force myself to make use of them since I had recently discovered that they existed.

Again, I apologize for the confusion. I just cannot figure out why it did not show up on my screen correctly … This template is one of my favorites and I would hate to see it go to TfD again. Thanks Stanton! — SpikeToronto 07:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

No worries. The highlighting/underlining: See the TfD for some of it. Doing stuff that gets the reader's attention specifically, not the editors', really torques off a lot of people on en.wiki (I have noticed that some other-language Wikipedias don't feel that strongly about it). And having the template visible at all is more than enough "pointing to deficiencies in the article". Make a redundant selfref isn't "avoiding selfrefs", basically. Some might ask "What selfref?", the answer to which is that anything that takes the reader out of reading mode and into thinking "I wonder what this means, in Wikipedianese?" mode is in fact a selfref, per "if it walks like a duck..." logic. This is one reason our inline templates are so succinct and plain-English (with a few exceptions that need fixing). I.e. they say things like "citation needed" or "dubious" instead of "fix per V & RS" or "NPOV/NOR issue", because the cognitive disturbance to the reader is lower-impact and more quickly dispelled. An argument can be made that the underlining helps to distinguish between the two templates, but the NODISCLAIMERS/SELFREF response is that we don't want to do that for readers, only for editors, and the source code being different in obvious ways is enough to accomplish this for editors. Then again I may be full of it. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 08:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

PS: What I hope is that it will simply be merged into {{Citation needed}}. Some of the edits I've made to {{cfact}} are to make this as easy as possible. There's no reason at all that

Sourced material. {{fact|1=Several sentences with a total of 4 unsourced claims}}. Lots more sourced material. Unsourced claim.{{fact}} More sourced material.

shouldn't work. Cf. {{sic}} for very similar multi-functionality. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 08:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

But, merging it with {{cn}} and eliminating the subtle underlining is effectively deleting {{cfact}} without the bother of a TfD. I mean what will be left of it? If I have — again — misunderstood, please clarify it for me. Afterall it is that wrapping that makes this template singularly different from {{cn}}. I mean, I see your formatting above

{{fact|1=Several sentences with a total of 4 unsourced claims}}

but do not see, with the subtle underlining removed, how the necessity for a citation for the multiple sentences/phrases will be made clear and not just thought to apply only to the last one that has the words “citation needed” attached. If you can make it clearer for me me how the editor will know what is in need of referencing, that it is not just the last sentence/phrase, I would glady change to support the merger.

Finally, isn’t there just a touch of the bureaucratic doublespeak to the justification that it should be eliminated because of WP:NODISCLAIMERS and WP:SELFREF? I love the idea of merger, but would hope that when it is used as a wrapper, the the subtle underlining would appear.<sigh> Thanks Stanton! — SpikeToronto 08:43, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

What I'm saying is: Port the wrapping function to {{cn}} (and every other inline template of this sort for that matter!). It shouldn't be singularly different. The functionality is so useful and so simple it should be ubiquitous. It actually amazes me that, even something like a year after {{sic}} went this direction, virtually no one thought about doing this any further and applying it to everything based on {{fix}}. Like, why on earth is {{clarify}} only something one applies after a problematic passage, and without any way to be really clear about precisely what needs clarifying (the last two words? the last three sentences?) As for the underlining, maybe it stays, maybe it goes. My money is on "goes" just because of my memory of innumerable reader-bugging templates that have been nuked. Editors will still use the wrapping functionality because it's useful to editors. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to flag this topic as "resolved" here (unless a user-specific issue needs to be raised) and redirect discussion to Template talk:Citation needed#Merge from Template:Reference necessary; it's too hard to have this discussion in three different places. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed! Going here and going there was keeping me up way, Way, WAY past my bedtime. — SpikeToronto 20:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Reference necessary

What Tfd for this template? And where did you see a conclusion to merge? Debresser (talk) 16:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean; I never said anything had any conclusion to merge. I have proposed one. See the talk page of any previously TfD'd template for a link to its TfD[s]. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:01, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I must have misunderstood you. Debresser (talk) 18:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Talkbacks

Two: Hello. You have a new message at Template talk:Citation needed's talk page. Hello. You have a new message at Template talk:Reference necessary's talk page. – SpikeToronto (talk · contribs), 20:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Mentorship

Resolved

 – Decline.

I write because you participated in editing Teachable moment. In the months since I created this article, the topic has taken on an unanticipated personal relevance. I wonder if you might consider joining other co-mentors in a mentorship committee for me?

Perhaps you might consider taking a look at an old edit at Wikipedia:Mentorship#Unintended consequences? In the search for a mentor deemed acceptable by ArbCom, I cite this as a plausible context for discussing what I have in mind.

Please contact me by e-mail or on my talk page. --Tenmei (talk) 02:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but I had only very tangential contact with that article or anything else you've been involved with, and your case looks like a tar baby to me. You are spending way too much time coming up with allegedly clever little diagrams about mentorship and thinking outside boxes, and creating user sub pages about mentorship, and editing essays about mentorship, and so on, when the purpose of the ArbCom requiring you to have a mentor or be indefinitely blocked is for you to listen and follow some guidance on how to be a constructive editor here. Becoming absorbed with the process of finding and having mentor is inimical to that. Looks like several have accepted already anyway, so best of luck. Try to remember that this is encyclopedia-bulding project, not an experiment in virtual governance (not intentionally, anyway). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:23, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you is my knee-jerk response, but the unexpected reaction needs a little explanation. These comments are frustrating, on-point, ironic -- and also welcome.

You identify the very things which I complained about in e-mails last week. I don't know about the tar baby, but the rest of his critical commentary resonated as comforting, reassuring and supportive.

A little background may help. In the the past year or so, ArbCom and others have vastly altered the fundamentals of mentorship without adequately anticipating the unintended consequences. The remedies ArbCom crafted for Mattisse illustrate a case-in-point, serving to explain why I'm investigating outside the box alternatives.

Your examples of misplaced activity include creating subpages -- see here; but this is not a novelty. Rather, it mirrors an approach which seems to be proving useful in other cases -- see here.

You question the efficacy of time invested in essay writing, but these exercises were proposed by tentative co-mentors whose ideas I am encouraged to make my own. Also, this was informed by a similar strategy which seems to have worked well enough for another mentorship group -- see here. This writing has helped re-focus and refine my thinking about what I need, and yet, I felt impatient for the very same reasons you articulate crisply.

In this instance, you misconstrues something like blame for what was in fact cooperation. The irony is bitter, but not wrong. I reject the tone, but I accept the accuracy and timeliness of words I could have written myself. What I need now is a kind of alchemy which converts it all into something better?

Your reasoning and your writing were very welcome. Like other diffs you have written, the nature of your "decline" encourages me to hope you might reconsider -- if not now, then perhaps at some other point in the future?--Tenmei (talk) 21:00, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I may have misinterpreted some of what I was seeing. If the essay stuff has been helpful for you, then that is a good thing. I have a great many "fish to fry" as the saying goes, and you already have a number of mentoring volunteers so I think you'll be fine. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 03:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Ping

I sent you an e-mail. Follow-up actions become the proof that constructive criticism is well-received. --Tenmei (talk) 20:55, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

As I said, I'm going to decline involvement in this situation, so please don't send any more messages about it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:20, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Template merges

Resolved

 – Just an FYI.

Hello. You have a new message at Template_talk:Userspace_draft#Merge_two_tags's talk page.

BTW, are you aware that there exists a {{Tfm}} template? I notice you used {{Merge}} templates both here and on {{Citation needed}}. Debresser (talk) 11:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Hadn't noticed. Thanks. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, actually, that one's for merges being discussed at WP:TFD, which I don't think these are. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That's right. I wanted to make sure you were aware that WP:TFD discusses template merges as well. Debresser (talk) 20:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Right. Didn't seem to me to be contentious enough for that, but I'm happy either way, as long as we end up with one unified template. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 20:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

DELSORT queue names

Stale

 – My response was never replied to, and I don't care about the issue any further.

Do not make changes to WP:DELSORT queue names without prior discussion. You messed up the delsort tool. In particular, you must update WP:DS/C after any change. Thank you. Pcap ping 16:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I assume it's all fine now? NB: You don't own the queue names. I'm sorry that the incomplete renaming process caused you some consternation, but neither I nor anyone else need permission to fix or improve things, like bad page names and vague page rationales, two problems that page suffered. Just so you know and are not alarmed by it, the video game DELSORT page has been proposed for a rename, because it is over in the VG project instead of under DELSORT. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:07, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

PS: I have also informed the move discussion over there that WP:DS/C needs to be updated. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 20:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)