User talk:SandyGeorgia/arch116

flowers

Prayer for Ukraine

thinking of you, with thanks for article quality scrutiny --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:18, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the tumblr blog on the Jabba the Hut article...

Tumblr is listed on User:Headbomb/unreliable.js. This script, like many of the things listed at WP:RSP, is written under the assumption that one can determine reliability solely from the website name/publisher. Such classifications cannot generally be very granular, which is why I never use them for anything. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 21:59, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree that one has to take Headbomb unreliable flags with a large grain of salt, and each needs to be checked, but I think this one got it right. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:01, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

I see the script as a good signpost for making me think twice about a source -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 12:56, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Minneapolis Article Lead

Hello SandyGeorgia. I saw the comment you have posted to the Minneapolis article talk page about crafting a better lead. You listed some topics you thought the new lead should cover. I have taken some time and worked to create a better lead for this article. I would appreciate it if you could review what I have written, make any and all edits you see as necessary, and put it into the article as as soon as you are available. Please see the draft at Talk: Minneapolis. -- Marshens (talk) 19:58, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I saw that, it is much better, but I will have to respond at length when on a real computer (iPad typing now). The main, quick thing is to inquire whether all of that proposed lead content is now in the article, and cited in the article (the lead should only be summarizing text already in the article). If you and Susan can get that part addressed, then some prose tightening is in order. One example (there is more):

• The current Mayor of Minneapolis is Jacob Frey, who has held the position since 2018.

to

• Jacob Frey (DFL) has been mayor since 2018.

I will get over there a bit later, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:15, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia. Yes, everything is in order when it comes to summarizing material that is mentioned below in the article body. I will make the change you have stated. Once you get over there, please make the others. Once done, then feel free to insert into the article. Thank you.--Marshens (talk) 20:25, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Got it, thx! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:32, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I left a draft on talk, but I won't be the one installing it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:30, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for you considerate feedback. As I wrote on the article talk page, I really appreciated the new version. I made a few changes to the draft which I have added. If you would do the favor of looking it briefly over once more then I think it will be good to go. I will be the one adding it in. Thanks. -- Marshens (talk) 00:22, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Multiple Sclerosis

SandyGeorgia, I just thought that the new large study on EBV in MS was groundbreaking in implicating this virus in MS and therefore needed some explanation on its findings. It is a good study. Great to converse with you. Thanks, (Talk) 13:37, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Glasgow

I think I'm done with the first pass of replies - it took some time due to being busy and me needing to wait for a chance to dig into what Sinisi has to say about that tin-clad boat. I'm still not sure I've handled it the best way, but when the source puts "tin-clad boat" in quotation marks itself, that makes things a bit wonky. Hog Farm _Talk 03:11, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Will look in first thing tomorrow when not on iPad, Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:48, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Winding down

I am going to be winding down my editing as I am planning to be semi-retired. I plan to maintain the work I have already done (which will take a while to complete) and finish whatever projects I am currently working on, but I don't intend to start anything new. I am reaching the point where I don't have tons of time and I have a lot of RL things to worry about. For the Cirrus cloud, I don't think the coverage is lacking, but you are right that other areas need improvement. Noah^Talk 15:50, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I am sorry to hear that, Hurricane Noah, and hope that life is being good to you. Will it be OK if I continue to ping you for queries like that one at cirrus cloud, or would you rather we let you go in peace ? :) Best regards and good luck, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:55, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

That would be fine. Noah^Talk 16:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	For forcing FACs to get a through copyedit as well as highlighting how poor we are enforcing Criterion 1a, thank you for inspiring me to do just that with my FAC and hopefully others do that as well. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 15:00, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Cacti! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:31, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

In further appreciation

		The Reviewers Award
		By the authority vested in me by myself it gives me great pleasure to present you with this award in recognition of the thorough, detailed and actionable reviews you have carried out at FAC. This work is very much appreciated. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:49, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Seconded 100%! (t · c) buidhe 15:51, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild and Buidhe: it was most pleasant to wake up this morning and find this. Considering on another editor talk page I am being positioned as an editor who gets articles delisted at FAR over one comma (an argument not worth having), your kind words are timely and appreciated. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:02, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

TFA blurb

Hi Sandy, I know you're busy lately but I wonder if you'd mind looking over Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/March_28,_2022 before it goes live and seeing if everything is in order. I haven't written a TFA blurb before. Thanks, Spicy (talk) 22:36, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi, Spicy best I can tell, it looks all set (but then, I did not anticipate the objections that came up with the Buruli ulcer image, so for whatever it's worth :). Good luck on mainpage day; I'll be watching and helping, and still so appreciative that you saved that article at FAR. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:09, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Don't remind me about the Buruli ulcer debacle :p... I had thought about changing the image to File:Early_signs_of_BU.png before it ran, but I figured people would scream WP:NOTCENSORED at me. Maybe that's illustrative of the difference between readers and editors - or maybe people would have complained either way. Spicy (talk) 08:01, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

TFA blurb 2

Re your edit to March 18, looks fine to me, but then American sports like baseball, basketball and American football are basically English as a foreign language to a Brit anyway. Count is 996, so that's OK too, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:46, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Jimfbleak: not sure why it is always Minnesota articles popping up in the TFA issues I uncover as I am going through checking article history. That one stood out to me because of a funny family anecdote. I got my father to travel to UConn once to see a medical specialist, and his secretary (speaking on the phone, so hearing rather than reading) asked me why I was sending him to Alaska. D'oh; not everyone knows what UConn/Yukon is, and how can we have an article about a college basketball player that never names her University ? I have started a review on talk; still reading. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:53, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Nice story. Like most of April's TFAs, this was a TFAR blurb, and although I checked them, including one with no wikilinks(!), I missed that Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:14, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Article history query

So I just opened Wikipedia:Featured article review/National emblem of Belarus/archive2. But Wikipedia:Featured article review/National emblem of Belarus/archive1 exists, but is not reflected in the article history. Does it not belong there because it was malformed and procedurally closed, or should it be in article history. Or should it just have been G6 all those years ago? Hog Farm _Talk 17:39, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Hang on, looking now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:42, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Hog Farm OK, we could fix this one of two ways. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:45, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

1. Add archive1 to articlehistory as a Keep (which isn't technically correct), but less work.
2. Edit copy, edit paste everything you did at archive 2 to archive1, overwriting archive1, and then you db-author archive2. And re-do the notifications, talk page, and FAR transclusion to link to archive1. That eliminates 1, and you can delete 2 as you are the only editor. More work, but more correct. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:45, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Or 3, G6 archive 1, and move 2 to 1 over it ... if you are comfortable G6ing something with two editors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:48, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I've gone with option 2, and have moved the old FAR content onto the talk page. I don't think the ~2008 one belongs in article history, and while I think the G6 would be acceptable, I would've had to clean up the links anyway because having /archive2 around as a page move redirect would have just caused this problem all over again if there's ever another FAR. Hog Farm _Talk 18:53, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Yep ... more work, but best solution. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:58, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Time to maybe learn this

You made a comment recently about bad writers using the word "however" wrong. I used it in History_of_Minnesota#Civil_rights to add a half-sentence book summary. Can you please tell me if this is right or wrong? I'm sensitive to this word because I misread Fowler's years ago, maybe dooming me to never learn it. Hope you can help.

On its third attempt in 1868, Minnesota was the first state in the nation to give Black men the right to vote, however, true opportunities for Blacks remained illusory.

-SusanLesch (talk) 22:44, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) If I were writing this using the word however, I think the grammatically correct way would be: "On its third attempt in 1868, Minnesota was the first state in the nation to give Black men the right to vote; however, true opportunities for Blacks remained illusory." But I would consider rephrasing: "In 1868, Minnesota was the first state to grant Black men the right to vote after two failed attempts." I'm skeptical of "True opportunities for Blacks remained illusory" this seems like a really vague statement. Can anything more concrete be said about the opportunities Black people had in Minnesota at this time? (t · c) buidhe 22:50, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, nice rewording of the first phrase. But my question was not answered. -SusanLesch (talk) 15:24, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Will get there when not ipad typing ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Heavens, your health comes first. Sorry for the inopportune timing. For now we're using buidhe's wording. -SusanLesch (talk) 17:22, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

SusanLesch my apologies for the delay; home for the day now. I hesitated to give a quick answer to this, as it is complicated, and I suspect what you are after is a thorough answer.

I am by no means a prose heavyweight; here is helpful information:

• Overuse of however and User:John/however.

One of the reasons I always scan articles at FAC and FAR for overuse of however, also, in addition to, total of, subsequently, and the like is that they can be tipoffs to poor writing, and a suggestion that a deeper look is in order. (Kind of like MOS:SANDWICH providing a very good tipoff to articles that are not being watched and maintained.)

• User:Tony1/How to improve your writing has good information on these plagues of Wikipedia.
  • And Graham Beards sums up Tony on the problems with additive terms and why people tend to use them: [1]

With however, there are usually three problems: 1) there is no contradiction, hence no need for the however, which is redundant--the sentence is the same without it; 2) the word but suffices in many cases (keep it simple), and 3) the use of however in complicated cases invokes Words to Avoid and subtle POV.

In the case of the History of Minnesota#Civil rights sentence, I, too, prefer the way Buidhe writes it, but I would also ask why the word but can't be used instead. No biggie either way, but however is supposed to signal "strong contradiction ahead". If the sources support what is written, there does seem to be a contradiction implied. The bigger question is always whether the sources support the contradiction. Look under MOS:EDITORIAL for problems that can occur with however:

QUOTE from MOS:EDITORIAL:

This kind of persuasive writing approach is also against the Wikipedia:No original research policy (Wikipedia does not try to steer the reader to a particular interpretation or conclusion) ...

Words to watch: but, despite, however, though, although, furthermore, while ...

More subtly, editorializing can produce implications that are not supported by the sources. When used to link two statements, words such as but, despite, however, and although may imply a relationship where none exists, possibly unduly calling the validity of the first statement into question while giving undue weight to the credibility of the second.

UNQUOTE

In some Minnesota articles, one detects a subtle sense of wanting to atone for the murder of George Floyd and cast Minnesota/Minnesotans in the best light possible with respect to current and historical civil rights. (With the frequent mention of Blacks, women's issues, and Native Americans, noticeably often absent are hispanics, but I digress to a pet peeve.) There is an emphasis on African-American issues that may not reflect due weight in sources, but rather is related to the recent tragic events.

Both parts of the sentence at History of Minnesota come from the same source, but the first clause is well separated in the book from the second:

• In 1868, Minnesota was the first state to grant Black men the right to vote after two failed attempts;(from Green|2015|p=42) however, true opportunities for Blacks remained illusory.(from|Green|2015|p=xii).

Now, that leads one to suspect or wonder if the second clause, from the book's preface, is really intending to negate what the author wrote on page 42. But the source is not freely available, so quotes would be needed to know if there are problems with however here. Did the author intend a contradiction, and if so, about what? "Opportunities for Blacks remained illusory" ... how? In relation to the rest of the US? In relation to specifics like jobs, housing, what? It is combined with a sentence about voting, but surely they could vote, so it's not clear what the sentence is trying to do. Were they somehow denied voting rights? Are we connecting two clauses in ways the author/source did not intend? Quotes needed ... in this case, the grammatical construction is correct if and only if the source supports it, and if not, it's synth. Hope this helps. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:21, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

PS, I also wonder about this "first". Iowa was in there in the same time frame, same year, and Wisconsin also has bragging rights, along with multiple East Coast states. Sample here, but found in many sources, (another sample here). Minnesotans are proud of their state, and sometimes superlatives are over-emphasized or stated without context. I have seen this in the claim about per capita theatre seats, over-emphasis of Prince in articles, and "greatest orchestra in the world" (taken out of context-- applied to "his ears", one performance, one night); when it comes to the Civil War, though, Minnesota deserves its legend. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:55, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much, SandyGeorgia. I can copy this essay to my user space, to study Tony1 who I can't read in one sitting. You may be right about Iowa, because both states may have had a referendum the same year. I wish we could ask Professor Green to write a sentence himself. Over the years I have asked the authors of various other bills and books to inspect parts of Minneapolis, and think only one ever took the time to copyedit. Your work on these articles is probably the best we've got. Much obliged. -SusanLesch (talk) 22:55, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Concerning edit summary, there

" update, doctor app't tomorrow, will start transgender proposal on Tuesday)" Johnbod (talk) 03:40, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Not to worry ... just routine thyroid stuff, which has gotten out of whack since doctor rather arbitrarily adjusted my levothyroxine, but I've combined the app't out of town with multiple other errands, so that I'll be out a good part of the day, just as I have lots of pending work and things on hold, so wanted to let others know of delay ... I can do easy things on iPad, but not a proposal for all of transgender issues at JKR ... thanks for the concern! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:57, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

PS: you had me worried there for a moment that I had used the word darn or something dreadful in edit summary. Also, my gender identity is firmly entrenched and not changing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:35, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Query

In this comment, what were you referring to as all this ideology? By a plain reading, it seems that you were referring to my comment as "ideology". I hope that was not the case; if it was your intended meaning, then I am afraid you have already left civil discourse behind, which would be an unfortunate development on a FAR page as I hope you will agree. (My comment was not intended as, nor do I think it comes across as, "ideology" - the latter is one of the topics I studied at some length in University, so I like to think I recognize it when it appears.) Newimpartial (talk) 21:43, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

No, that's not what I meant at all. I'm referring to Victoria's NYT article which for me was dense reading of ... ideology. Newimpartial, after how upset Bastun's post left me, might you just accept that, just as my prose sucks, sometimes the way I express things in writing is imprecise, particularly with my iPad typing constraints, and just try to read my post with more AGF ? When I have something unpleasant to say, I'm usually pretty direct about it; when I'm not, try looking for the other meaning. We were/are having a perfectly fine discussion and making progress (I see what is needed now); why would I suddenly switch gears and accuse you of something? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:51, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

PS, I studied math and engineering and linear programming and stochastic processes and queuing theory and strategic planning, if that provides more context for what the word ideology might mean to you, compared to me. For example, most of what three other editors put so much effort into at the article (literary analysis) is complete gibberish to me, but I usually know better than to use that word when describing something that has a lot of meaning to those who wrote it  :) The word ideology may be loaded to you; it's not to me, just as I doubt that stochastic processes or linear programming have a lot of meaning for you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:58, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

That's all fair; being open about what you might have meant is why I took my reaction here in particular, rather than dwelling on it or arguing from (potentially) false assumptions. I suspect that Victoria's intention - and certainly mine in echoing her suggestion - is that the NYT piece helps us, as editors, understand the context out of which the different reception of Rowling's tweets happens. That isn't something to include in Rowling's article, but it is something worth knowing in making judgements about weight and balance, since we will have readers with many perspectives and assumptions on this. Newimpartial (talk) 22:11, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I don't mean to imply Victoria's article isn't very helpful; re-reading it helped me understand the framing and the issue, even though we can't use that source in the article. It was just frustrating to try and sort that when I was already fretting about the implications of Bastun's query. I recognize my prose limits and try to take care not to leave misunderstandings, but it can still happen, particularly if I'm juggling too much when my back hurts or I'm frustrated with iPad typing, and I'm sorry for that. Really, if I have something unpleasant to say, I am direct, for future reference. I think we've made great progress; will hope others weigh in soon. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:23, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Very sorry after having been absent for such a long time to parachute back in upset the applecart, so to speak. I only posted because that article went a long way to put things into perspective when I first read it and thought it might help. Unfortunately I have to post when I can or it won't happen at all (which is probably fine, since in this case I caused edit conflicts and upset). I am hoping to be able to be active here again at some point, to weigh in on the other issues as well, and will try not to cause issues. Fwiw, I think enormous progress has been made and you all should be patting yourselves on the shoulder. In my view, the best part of Wikipedia is the collaboration and this FAR has garnered an enormous amount of collaberative spirit. Best to all, Victoria (tk) 03:08, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Miss you and hope your health isn't giving you too much of a hard time. Yes, the collaborations are where the real fun is on Wikipedia, and I hope this one can make it; too soon to tell if Ealdgyth will prove to be right, or if this can become one of the great achievements in FA-land. Regardless, we have made a huge improvement already. Victoria, by no means did you upset the applecart. I was extremely frustrated yesterday at the point you helpfully re-pointed me to that article, not by that discussion, but by my concern over the "hidden discussion on an archived page" postulated by Bastun. When you first showed me that NYT article months ago, it was all lingo and gibberish to me. After spending three days in sources, trying to figure out what we could do about a faulty lead imposed on us by a really deficient RFC, and finding it was a women's rights issue to Rowling but having no idea that carried insinuations or implications, I had a better command of the jargon, but failed to make the connection with the NYT article you showed me so long ago. It was absolutely reassuring to realize that you were following, could see I wasn't getting it, and provided "just what the doctor ordered" at just the right time to help me understand the context. I had no idea what Newimpartial was saying, you could see that, and you gave me what I needed. This time, it made sense, even though it's all still ideology to me :) So thanks for being there at the right time :). All the best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Comment - to elaborate on this, I really do believe that questions of balance and tone on sensitive issues are better settled by considering a larger number of sources (while taking quality into account) than by jumping prematurely to the "best" handful of sources. Whether the NYT is better than the Guardian or The Scotsman is better than Kirkus is seldom, in my view, the best way either of identifying the small number of descriptions we might want to choose from or to select among them (or to make decisions about inclusion and exclusion, for that matter). Yes, the sources we cite in the article need to be of impeccable quality, but that doesn't mean that the context of the rest of the RS doesn't matter - being subject to demonstrably arbitrary editorial decisions at The Guardian or the NYT would be a bug, not a feature, and isn't what policy tells us to do. Newimpartial (talk) 17:29, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think we're making distinctions at that level, when suggesting that Metro UK or People magazine or Newsweek would clearly be questioned at FAC or FAR for a contentious BLP.

WHile you're here, I want to request again that you refrain from bringing the issues between you and Crossroads to the FAR page. If it continues to happen, it opens the page to WP:BATTLEGROUND-type concerns. This is another example of content that could have been perfectly well understood without mentioning Crossroads by name. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:38, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

If there were no further replies to my parenthesis I could edit it now but there are, so I can't, and I can't think of a way that strikethrough wouldn't make it worse.

As an aside, I don't see how collaborative work would be aided by not drawing attention to consistent patterns expressed in arguments made by other editors. I understand that you feel that pointing these things out somehow undermines collaboration, but I really don't see how - these are all comments about the contribution, not the contributor, to use the stock phrase.

And if you don't think the BATTLEGROUND on that page started with Crossroads' attempt to swat away the sources I offered that he didn't like - without making the effort either to understand what I was basing on these source or to examine the sourcing more globally - well, I envy you your innocence, I think. I attempted to respond with some equanimity with my long list of even better sources, presented in direct quotation and without distortion, but that shouldn't lead you to misconstrue what had already happened there.

As far as pop culture sources go, my reading on this topic confirms my view that many of them (shout out to NME, for example) just do a a better job of reporting on these topics than most of the broadsheets. I'm not pretending that my source list contained only the best of these sources, but the better ones are, in my view, a damn sight better than the NYT or The Guardian, say, on any issue in internet culture (which this one certainly is). Newimpartial (talk) 17:58, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Not hard: you simply strike everything beginning with "an argument I have seen ... ". Your point about sources is made without the personalization.

Au contraire, I think anytime one focuses on the contributor rather than content, trouble is likely to ensue. In this case, for example, I haven't seen Crossroads respond in kind. If Crossroads were to respond in kind, what would that do to the page? I suspect we'd find ourselves in battleground territory, which has so far been avoided.

NME looks like it's probably a good source for music articles, although their website inspires little confidence for a contentious BLP. All I have said is sources like that would be questioned if used in a contentious BLP at FAC, and would likely also be questioned when/if we get to the point of proposing the article is in Keep territory at FAR. If we want the FAR to last forever, or the article to be delisted after all the work done, introducing less than high quality sources is the way to assure that. Is it worth it over one word ??? If we have to resort to finding sources like that to introduce the word widely, then we end up opening the article to charges of cherrypicking. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:30, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should source a contentious term to NME. As a philosophical realist, though, I'm saying that on internet/pop culture issues, NME and its ilk are more likely to reflect "reality" than the NYT or the Guardian. My reading of the creation of internet culture "beats" in mainstream, broadsheet newsrooms is not that they herald the end of civilization - as I have heard some editors opine - but that the broadsheets are trying to catch up with what other RS are doing better. I am not at all convinced that they have yet caught up.

As far as I suspect we'd find ourselves in battleground territory, which has so far been avoided - I disagree. What I see already is tendentious editing from one "side" in particular, and the civil veneer on top doesn't change the (not at all hidden) BATTLEGROUND mentality reflected in the pattern of edits. Newimpartial (talk) 19:53, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Um, ok, please do not further charges (eg tendentious editing) about another editor, particularly one who has not been notified of this conversation, on my talk page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:31, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

This is your Talk page; you can remove this discussion at any time. I would remind you though that you were the one raising the issue (and the name of the other editor) in this comment. If you think you have found a way to fruitfully discuss how to keep the issues between myself and the other editor off the FAR page without actually discussing the contributions of the other editor - well, I really don't think you have. I'd rather not discuss that interaction with you at all, frankly, and to the best of my knowledge, the only reason we do so is that you keep bringing it up, both there and here. Newimpartial (talk) 20:45, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

If you stop personalizing discussions on the FAR page, I won't need to bring it up at all :) :) Deal ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:50, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Article history ... bug or feature?

So this fixed a wonky output where it was showing that a 2007 GA promotion was promoted in July 2022. I'm assuming that the template is only coded to accept mdy dates, but the previous incorrect output just seemed ... strange ... to me. Hog Farm _Talk 17:37, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Hog Farm I have seen similar problems before in Template:Article history, and have just kept fiddling with the date format until I get it sorted. Prob is, I relied on Gimmetrow and Drpda for stuff like that, they are both long gone, and I really don't know who might look at the code to sort the problem. Perhaps Sdkb or SD0001 would know who could identify and fix the problem. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Looking again, the problem there was a wayward comma: [2] Nonetheless, I've seen wonky problems with dates in the past, but don't have an example offhand. If we can figure out who can fix them, I'll keep an eye out for a new example. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:33, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, that would presumably be stemming from something at Module:Article history. I don't know Lua, but the place to ask for help would be Wikipedia talk:Lua. Best, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:03, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

The Core Contest

A while ago you said I could give you a heads-up when WP:the Core Contest was launched again, as there may be some medical editors interested. Well, we're on again :). The contest will take place between April 15 and May 31 this year. Femke (talk) 13:50, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Issues...

I know you'd love for me to help out at FAR, but ... I'll be honest. I'm not sure I want to put major efforts at anything to do with FA - I'm increasingly coming to the view of Iridescent on the silliness of the various rating systems. At least GA doesn't eat my time up (well, mostly - Talk:Frithegod/GA1 is severely trying my paitence) ... and I've got a lot of actual article writing I want to do. I know you hate the wikicup, but I use it to get me motivated to actually settle into an article-writing mindset - my current plans are at User:Ealdgyth/2022 Wikicup ideas and User:Ealdgyth#Things at GAN. To be honest, I think FAR is getting as bogged down as FAC is. The goal is admirable, but too often too much time is being allowed so folks aren't working on it with any urgency - which, frankly, is just a way of disrespecting the nominators who are trying to improve the articles too. And of course, I'm still firmly convinced there's too MUCH emphasis on prose and not enough on sources at both FAC and FAR - but the problem is that there isn't community support for it. It's just not worth the stress to me to deal with the nastiness I get when I try to push for better sourcing and less primary sourcing. There's entire subject areas i won't touch any more with a review because ... it's just giving me headaches when I do. I wish I knew a way out of the problem... i really do. Ealdgyth (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm still firmly convinced there's too MUCH emphasis on prose and not enough on sources at both FAC and FAR I agree 100%, but the issue is that many people working at FAC would rather focus on prose. (t · c) buidhe 20:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree as well about the prose/sourcing emphasis. There's subjects I only tackle the sourcing on if I'm feeling very energetic, which as a married auditor with cats and depression isn't often. As an FAC coordinator, I can only really work with what others give us; I frankly don't have the ability, the time, or the energy to tackle more than a couple sourcing-deficient ones at a time. Sourcing is harder than prose from both a content writing and content reviewing perspective, and it's difficult to get people to voluntarily do stuff the hard way, even if it's the correct one. Hog Farm _Talk 20:36, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I just ... don't feel like fighting that hard. It really doesn't seem like anyone cares about the sourcing so I just .. gave up. I'll just keep plugging along on my own articles, doing some GA reviews (I've reviewed for both HF and Buidhe recently, which is always a joy) and do reasonably easy source reviews as I can at FAC. I'm not even sure I have the energy to take anything I've worked on TO FAC - I'm sitting on four articles that are pretty much ready for FAC except that I'm sure that someone will spend ages picking the prose to bits over things that aren't really "errors" ... while totally ignoring any thought of looking at the sources. And this is when I miss Eric badly - I do best when someone else does the "prose polish" for me and I'm lacking that someone to do a final copyedit for my stuff. The folks I've asked ... well, they say they'll do it but I don't want it to be AT FAC, I'd prefer before... and it never gets done. I'm a tired, cranky, old woman ... heh. Weather sucks today too... that's not helping. (The four are: Reginald de Warenne, Peter de Maulay, George Wilkes, and William Pantulf. The last two are not as finished as the first two, but all are very close.) That doesn't even begin to touch on the Holocaust stuff I know I SHOULD be working on, but talk about a snake-pit. Hey, HF, wanna learn a new subject area??? Ealdgyth (talk) 21:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Lots to respond to here!

I completely understand your feelings, as they completely sync with how I feel about the deterioration at medical editing, where we used to be leaders in FA production, and now even GA has no meaning, while many FAs aren't. I have lost all interest in keeping up with the amount of utter garbage in so much medical content, particularly because so many deny how bad it is.

Re the stuff at Iridescent's talk, I had my typical happen. There is so much I want to respond to there, but I fell behind because of two days of being busy, and now to go back and respond feels like it would be overwhelming and hard to catch up, I would have to write a book, and I end up going, meh, who wants to read a book of my lousy prose and rambling thoughts, and I give up. I disagree with most of what is written there, but finally figured that when I refer to "prose nitpicks", I am referring to something much different from what others (perhaps Iri and Mike Christie and others) are reading. And all of that just becomes too much to type up once I've fallen several days behind. Strong prose review of the type Tony1 did is lacking, and there's nothing to fault in a superb copyedit being done at FAC--that's not what I criticize. (On that front, have a look at Mike Christie's substantive comments after my support at HF's Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Glasgow, Missouri/archive1, and the work Ovinus has done at Indy beetle's Hamlet chicken fire, putting my support almost in the premature category. That kind of work is a joy to behold; that's not what I criticize.) FACs like this and this are problems (and those aren't rare). It's one thing to comb through the prose to improve the writing of an editor with a well-established reputation for source-to-text reliability; quite another for any other FAC, where source-to-text integrity better be the first thing one looks at, before addressing prose nitpicks.

The rating systems may be silly and dated, as Iri says, but they're all we've got and no credible alternative is ever advanced in those discussions. An FA still has some meaning, it still serves some purpose at TFA, and with WP:URFA/2020 doing its job, the meaning of an FA could be restored if FAC would stop turning out Socrates Nelson's and the like. (I think there's more of a cart-horse problem in TFA views than Iri suggests-- I think readers lost interest when TFAs became so boring.) I understand why GA is growing in popularity, as it's so easy to round up a quid-pro-quo pass; the problem there is that not all (not many?) reviewers are Mally, Gguy or Ealdgyth caliber, so we still have mostly meaningless GAs. I can't think of many medical GAs worth anything; this may not matter as Iri says in most content areas, but it does in medical, and if we're going to give up on assessments (someone routinely goes through medical article and assesses even those with maintenance tags as B-class), I'd like to consider really pushing for a big fat disclaimer on all medical content again.

I appreciate hearing why you participate in Wikicup; it has always been a mystery to me why functioning adults would care about imaginary points in an internet contest, and you've provided an explanation that makes sense! I don't hate the Wikicup; I dislike what FAC has allowed it to do to the overall FA process, and in fact in the past year, it even bled over on at least two occasions to FAR. Remember, in "our day" (meaning Laser, Karanacs, Moni, Nikki, Maralia, you, me ... when the women ran the FA process along with Mally and Laser), we didn't let that happen. As soon as Wikicup starting running FAC, we put the brakes on. This year saw egregious examples of behavior that should not be tolerated that left me wondering how Tony1 got chased off of FAC while others could revert Coord decisions, prevent critical discussion at FAC talk, and disrespect Coords when they felt the timing of FAC promotions/archivals affected Wikicup points. I thought that shocking and without precedent. The problem is FAC failing to reign in Wikicup's effect on FAC in the very ways we did last decade.

I pretty much strongly disagree that FAR is becoming bogged down as FAC is. The biggest difference in tone and environment is people working to save work that isn't their own; the absence of "climbing the greasepole" or in it for contest points. You may see us (or, generally me) complaining a lot when we feel stalled, but it's not so much FAR stalling (it's FAR doing its job) as it is some of us (me) wanting things to move faster as we want to see more WP:URFA/2020A progress. Both are working, though! The numbers tell the story. And ... Compare FA to GA, which seems to have no mechanism for delisting, and in fact, no way of counting what is delisted. With 6,000 FAs, there are usually around 30 at FAR, and more than 150 noticed and waiting. With 36,000 GAs (of which I'd wager at least 25,000 aren't), there is never more than a handful being reassessed; there's a six-fold difference in reassessment ratio between FA and GA. Once a GA always a GA is true; at least FA has a functioning mechanism. For as much as I complain when I can't put up a new nomination at FAR because of the five-nom limit when a FAR is stalled, I am very happy that the FAR Coords don't allow FAR to become a place of automatic or easy delisting, as that would bring consequences. I think FAR is working overall as intended, and I can't say the same of late for FAC. I'm pleased that high-pageview articles get improved at FAR (speed of light, climate change, Earth, J. K. Rowling examples). We aren't seeing "important" (however one defines them, whether "core" "vital" or by pageviews) articles routinely at FAC anymore in relation to the niche articles that are consuming a disproportionate amount of the resources there, so to get/keep those kinds of FAs in the pool means working on them at FAR. What was the most recent "important" article at FAC? Maybe The Sirens and Ulysses, Ted Kaczynski and Buidhe's work. It's not the bulk of what is coming out of FAC, and I think Iri has the horse before the cart; there's a reason no one wants to work at FAC or read our TFAs anymore. And the nastiness on FAC talk was allowed to get out of hand. You and I paid the price, but we weren't the only ones. I think our newer Coords recognize that, and have recently jumped in more quickly to deal with it, but we'll see what FAC talk is like this Fall, when WikiCup agida sets in again and contestants get desperate for their points.

It's troubling that the collaborations that we used to count on are gone these days; how would I get an FA with my stinky prose if not for wikicollaborations? And those non-quid-pro-quo relationships are being built up at FAR. Consider J. K. Rowling as an example; I had never encountered AleatoryPonderings or Olivaw-Daneel before, and they have tackled a monster with aplomb. Cheer up, Ealdgyth; it's almost nice weather again! So, in the good news department from two cranky old women, maybe you can entice Ovinus to review your four; their work at the chicken plant has been what you seek, and they don't seem to be in it for the greasepole factor. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:30, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Sandy, you're being much too complimentary about my reviews; thank you! I agree that sourcing is much more important to check with new editors; I've been lucky recently and haven't run into serious problems, but I know FAC will miss things occasionally. I dream about getting actual subject matter experts to review, but that only ever happens by chance. Without real subject area knowledge, how is a reviewer to know that a comment by Eliot Curwen about a Neolithic site might be more relevant to the subject matter than one by Reginald Musson, even though Curwen was an amateur from the 1920s and 1930s and Musson a professional after World War II? I think the example of good reviews is the best way to teach new nominators and other reviewers, and we do have a lot of very good reviewers. Ealdgyth, I don't know if my prose is good enough for the final polish level that you're looking for, but I'd be happy to work on anything you're considering taking to FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:48, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Give authority back to the Coords, and encourage them to a) build a network of topic experts, and b) ping them in for an opinion before promoting. Two Minnesota FAs in a row with issues, and there are literally gobs of MN editors who can be called in. Reminder: every FAC needs uninvolved reviewers, as well as content experts. The problem at Nelson was a failure to seek a) uninvolved, and b) Minnesota reviewers. We stripped the Coords of too much authority in the Raul debacle. And on "build a network", this was why I was critical of having too many Coords with the same editing emphasis. As much as I like our new Coords, it would be good for the process to have a science type, and a literary type, in the mix. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:52, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I've been summoned.... You make many incisive points, Sandy. I know no FAC history (or really much Wikipedia history, for that matter) beyond the general increase in stringency circa 2007 (?), but the overemphasis on prose is bothering me too. Even though I often feel like I'm the cause! You've seen a hundred times the history, so I can't really say much in terms of FAC's trajectory. So on a subset of your points: Basically, I'm always happy to take an article (that I consider at least somewhat important) and fix the writing up according to my own tastes, which is often in line with, or at least approaching, what people like to see. But there are inevitably times when I can't edit a sentence or rearrange a paragraph without either 1. risking source-to-text integrity or 2. causing more general concern over whether I'm being heavyhanded. Ideally, as I think Sandy has brought up before, that stuff should happen at the peer review stage (and perhaps a bit at GAN, if the nominator expresses an intent to take to FAC), but that doesn't seem likely any time soon. Anyway, the result is that I put the sentence in question on the review, which often results in 85% of my comments being "suboptimal word choice?" instead of the more important "does this content make sense? Are there gaps?" I think in the plant fire review I tried to be content-focused—asking why certain info should be included—so hopefully that style will continue. Looking back at the few FACs I've participated in, I do think I've also looked into sources. Huey Long is probably a fair example, and maybe Ted Kaczynski iirc. But I only did those because I was thoroughly interested in the subject, so examining sources and doing spot checks is just part of digging deeper, and there were materials on hand for me to verify comprehensiveness, esp because they're genuinely important. (I don't live near a large library, sadly.) On some random [Redacted name of sport] championship article in which I have little interest, I just don't have the patience. Thankfully those articles are reviewed quickly by more enthusiastic folks. But I always enjoy copyediting, maybe to a fault, and my talk page is certainly open for requests. Cheers, Ovinus (talk) 22:54, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

With Eric (and with John) I always trusted them to NOT disturb the source-text integrity. If they were unsure, they asked on the talk page. Otherwise, I'm usually not that bothered by someone tinkering with my prose - for me, the important thing is the information ... is it correct, does it reflect the bulk of the sources, and is the sourcing up to snuff? So if anyone wants to take a crack at the four I listed (especially the first two), and are willing to not jink around with the sources ... I'm always open to questions on the talk page. Just know that I don't get something to the point of "prose polish before FAC" without having set the citation style (so no playing with that - that can drive me bonkers fast...) and that I've likely spent way too long hunting for sources... I'm happy if someone can find something new I missed, but the attitude being displayed at Talk:Middle Ages is why I unwatched that page and am no longer maintaining it. It was just too much to deal with ... the "gotcha" attitude of scoring points rather than trying to collaborate ... puts me off. (And boy, I have a good idea what "redacted name of sport" is... heh. Orvinus, have you investigated the Wiki Library card thing? It's AMAZING what sources you can get a hold of through there! JSTOR, Oxford UP, Cambridge UP, etc. etc... it's been a GREAT help. Ealdgyth (talk) 23:03, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Ovinus ... That you enjoy the work shows, and is appreciated. By the way, because I often see misstatements about when what changed at FAC, a record of the history can always be found footnoted in this chart. The dates are:

• a) March 2008 User:Ealdgyth began checking every source on every FAC
• b) March 2009 Sourcing requirements tightened
• c) February 2010 Nominations instructions tightened (partly in response to WikiCup issues)
• d) November 2010 Copyvio reviews tightened following October 31, 2010 TFA of Grace Sherwood (Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism and copyright concerns on the main page)
• e) October 2011 Debate on "vital articles" and "high page view" FAs begins. [3]
• f) February 2012 Wikipedia:Featured articles/2012 RfC on FA leadership
• g) July 2013 FA Director position eliminated
• h) March 2021 1f, compliant with copyright policy added

Observations: notice a void between Raul being forced out and anything substantial changing? The overall FA process was left without a leader, who would watch trends and put forward proposals or suggestions for improvement with the goal of making sure all pieces (FAC, FAR, TFA) were working together. And "sourcing requirements tightened" is relative; during the same period there was considerable debate re sourcing requirements were topic dependent, such that sourcing was actually pretty relaxed on some niche topics. That has changed recently, such that some older FAs look shocking, but that was the consensus then. (Along with a consensus that some types up content did not require citations, which has also changed.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:12, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Fascinating. Indeed some older FAs are quite shocking. The words "thorough and representative survey of relevant literature on the topic" never really sunk in. How is that even possible on most important subjects? I guess it's all subject to interpretation. Dunno who Raul is, sorry. But I had no clue there used to be an FAC head honcho. One thing I saw that I can comment on was in the "vital article" discussion: what the average pageview experience is like. I asked myself that question about a year and a half ago and wrote a user script to take a statistically average view from August 2020 (I could certainly update the data). Maybe someone's already done that, it's not a terribly original idea. It's surprising how often you get an FA or GA, although I haven't yet quantified it. There's a really interesting spread of quality that is perhaps more illuminating than the Top 10 Report. Ovinus (talk) 00:11, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Raul is User:Raul654 (actually, Mark). He was the FA director until July 2013. He was often (unfairly) accused of being a "dictator", yet when he completely delegated work to others (like me, before Coords we were called Delegates, because someone else was in charge of the big picture, but "delegated" authority to others subject to community agreement), he was then accused of abandoning his post. Ironic. Anyway, there was a place then where the buck stopped-- a person ultimately responsible for the functioning of the overall FA process (FAC, FAR, TFA, and the FA page). We've lost that completely. And by going to system where we have basically four times as many people processing one-third of the volume we used to process, we've spread "the buck stops here" even thinner. We've lost accountability (although FAR still functions well, through the strength of the Coords), and there is no longer any person who initiates change or suggests trends that should be addressed, etc. The "thorough and representative survey of the literature" was pushed through by Awadewit, and is something that Iri has always railed against. It made little sense then and little now, but it does come in handy when someone clearly "hasn't" done that-- that is, it works better in the negative than the affirmative. The ultimate irony of Raul being "fired" is that Tony1 launched the surprise RFC (without prior discussion of how to formulate the RFC), and Tony1 came to be on the receiving end of what a leaderless FAC looks like, as he was chased out. Raul would not have supported that; all voiced, particularly critical ones, should be heard at FAC. (Long story short: don't believe most of what you read about Raul :) He was the reason FA used to work. Here's a history if you're interested (it was also Raul who encouraged the {{FCDW}} initiative; now we have nothing of the sort. Should not a part of Wikipedia as important as the FA process have at least a newsletter or quarterly report or some sort of ongoing information ... I digress ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:46, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

• @SandyGeorgia: Forgive me if you were just being hyperbolic, but GA does have a review and delist process at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment. It is however, one of the most ignored processes on Wikipedia. Also I've always found WikiCup and contests of the like to be counter to writing FAs and GAs, since the whole point is that those things shouldn't be rushed. -Indy beetle (talk) 23:30, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

  Me, hyperbolic? Never !!  :) :) There's a GA process that isn't working, and the reason it doesn't work is probably because few people take GA seriously. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:39, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

  Indy, humor aside, what I was really referring to, though, is that there is no data and no way to find data. There are six-fold times as many FAs being reviewed as GAs proportionally. Where can I find a page that tells me what GAs have been reviewed, what the results were, how many are reviewed and kept or delisted, etc? That is what meant by FA having a process that GA doesn't have, best I can tell ... Accountability. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:48, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

  • Fair enough, GANs themselves I've always found highly variable, since it's all up to the reviewer doing them. Also RE "niche" FAs, what exactly are the types that concern you? I can see how this is a problem with some video games and whatnot but I wouldn't want the baby to get thrown out with the bathwater. Marcel Lihau] and Louis Rwagasore (mine) are two people of great significance in their countries of origin but practically unknown outside of them, I hope that doesn't make them niche. Battle of Hayes Pond is pretty niche and doesn't get many views daily, but as a TFA it got over 100,000, probably because it was so strange and by virtue of that had an intriguing hook. -Indy beetle (talk) 23:45, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

    Röhm scandal is another article, that while not really a "core" topic, got a ton of views at FAC. Worth putting it through imo. Still, recently I've been focusing on high-importance, high-pageviews articles such as Nuremberg trials. (t · c) buidhe 23:53, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

    I don't know what the solution is but it can be frustrating that some relatively minor, routine topics are put through FAC especially by nominators who don't review so much. (t · c) buidhe 23:54, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

    I hope I'm not part of the problem ... pageviews for my last 10 FAs are pretty embarrassing, and aside from a couple good DYK days, the last 10 GAs are pretty sad, too. Hog Farm _Talk 00:06, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

    Well, I started out with fairly minor topics too—Siegfried Lederer's escape from Auschwitz is not a highly viewed article. You could expand your horizons by working on larger-scale civil war articles too—the pageviews can be really motivating :) And you do lots of reviewing and promoting so you're hardly a drag on the system! (t · c) buidhe 00:23, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

    Back to Indy's question ... niche FAs do not concern me at all, and I have always supported what was once referred to as "short FAs". My concern is that a) Wikicup promotes FAC being taken over (and using resources) on shorter FAs to garner points quickly, and b) when one tries to talk about broader issues impacting FAC, FAR, TFA and the overall process, some of the editors responsible for these "niches" get quickly offensive and basically prevent discussion of trends, problems, issues, potential improvements from happening. In very nasty ways.

    Back to other issues, though. Have a look at today's TFA. Uninvolved reviewers and topic area experts should look at every FAC. Did an attorney look at that article? Because it has faulty legal terminology, and there it is, on the main page, in all its glory. Let's encourage the Coords to not promote on support from less-than-topnotch reviewers, and ping in topic area experts when an article hasn't been reviewed by same. Civil lawsuits don't have "charges". The idea that three supports = promotion has been bullied in a bit. It's instructive to pull up diffs of TFAs and see the kinds of things we're missing. We don't seem to be tracking who are quality reviewers and who aren't. Mike Christie's data tried to get at that, but can't do what we did in 2008, which was a retrospective look at every FAC to quantify who gave good v faulty reviews, which gave the Coords data to weight faulty supports lower. My gut sense is that we have a lot of child reviewers at FAC these days, giving us gifts like Socrates Nelson. And if the "community" doesn't push back and empower the Coords to be more proactive (as they once were), then there's nothing they can do about it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:58, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

    PS, what Buidhe said. I have no problems with Hog Farm's articles. And besides that, he's a net positive across FAC, FAR, and URFA (meaning TFA). "Short" or low page view is not a problem; it's the inability to talk about broader issues, like is TFA still relevant and interesting to readers? If not, how can we make it more so? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:00, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

    I hoped that the facstats review ratio numbers would nudge some of those reviewers into reviewing more, but I don't think that's really happened. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:01, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

    Human nature, Mike. Are you familiar with that exercise that many non-profits run where they throw out a bunch of poker chips onto a table, each representing a volunteer, and give each executive one minute to gather as many volunteers as they can? The smart ones pick out the blue chips, while the dumb ones just grab as many as they can. One blue chip is worth considerably more in a volunteer effort than 10 white chips and it's not that hard to get the overall gist of individuals in the FA process wrt blue, red or white chips. I applaud your effort for generating that data, but I never thought it would a) change editor behaviors, or b) tell us more than we already knew from observation. We know who the blue chips are, but we've kind of hamstrung the FAC Coords into considering all reviews equally. We can't even discuss the issues without being maligned and attacked. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:05, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I hope you'll forgive my intrusion, but one of the reasons I personally don't engage with FAC reviews is I don't feel confident enough in my skills. Honestly, I'm leery of writing a review / supporting / opposing when I have only written one FA myself, although I'm hoping to make that two soon. (Thanks again for your help in the FAR, by the way!) Furthermore, my prose is only so-so—I'm a mechanical engineer by trade, not a literary expert. On an entirely separate note, why don't the FAC coordinators have full control of the FAC process similar to the way checkusers (like myself) have full control over the SPI process? Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:50, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello fellow engineer :) My prose stinks; if I'm unsure of an article, I enter my comments, say I'm leaning support pending other reviews, and wait to support until those with strengths that complement mine have weighed in. As to why the Coords choose to no longer exercise the authority they were always given by the process, 'tis a mystery to me, and you'll have to ask them. We certainly used to, and never let FACs get so far out of control as they do now. I've only seen a Coord exercise their "authoritah" once lately, and that was to revert me when I was following the FAC instructions (and that Coord chose to not even explain the action after asked), so I really have no idea what's going on over there. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:11, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

I usually only comment on just one thing at a FAC, often the images or sourcing. Even if you don't feel confident enough to evaluate all aspects of an article, any constructive feedback helps! I'm not really sure how FAC coords is so different from SPI. In both cases, usually it's a non-coord who files the nomination, anyone can comment on it, only a coord can close it. (t · c) buidhe 21:45, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Re ping and JKR

Heroic work on the transgender section and I will try to get to that soon. If this stays FA you definitely should receive the save award. Sorry I've been MIA. On top of IRL things (final term of law school wrapping up so much to do there) I also have covid (feels milder than a cold now but I don't want to jinx it) so my mental state and energy levels are ... not fantastic. I thought I had escaped the plague but, grimly, was finally caught by it about two years after it became a pandemic. Just my luck! AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 16:15, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh my gosh, AleatoryPonderings, I am so sorry and hope it doesn't affect your final work in law school !!! If I get COVID now I will be devastated, as I have a Very Important Wedding to attend in one month (I SOOOOO wish we could wrap this up before I have to take a week off).

Re the Save Award, the reason I don't accept them is that I feel doing so could open me to charges that my integrity/neutrality as a FAR regular is compromised, and insist that (should we get there), it goes to you, Olivaw-Daneel and Vanamonde93. We wouldn't be where we are at all if you had not put up the initial literary analysis, and I do not have either the command of prose or the literary knowledge to do what you three have accomplished. I'm just wrangling the cats, and starting to feel optimistic that we can get there, but then ... I'm a Boston Red Sox fan, so prefer we not count our chickens before they hatch :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:30, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

My proposed changes to draft 4 implemented in your Sandbox VII, The Force Awakens. One change that may be substantive (reality -> "lived reality"), which I thought was clearer than the original but may arouse some controversy. Amazing work on this while I've been MIA. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 13:30, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm so glad you're recovered, well and back! I enjoy coordinating and herding cats, but was nervous about my wordsmithing. I have time before we leave this am to deal with the archiving and bring it to the page, but then will be iPad editing for up to eight hours, depending on how many iterations of the excisions are needed. (By the way, now that we've both edited the text, we have to be mindful of WP:CWW when going to and fro.) Thanks so much !! Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:18, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

PS, not sure why MS Word gives a slightly different word count, so I'll stick with mine for consistency ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

FAR

Hey Sandy. I know we're still a ways off finishing the trans section, but I wanted to say I've enjoyed working alongside you. If you think I may be able to contribute to any other FARs in the future, feel free to ping me or drop me a talk page message. It's a very different but definitely enjoyable way of working to what I usually run into. Though I normally edit gender and sexuality content on Wiki, my interests are pretty eclectic. I'm a pretty big sci-fi and fantasy nerd off wiki, and my day job is as a video game developer. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:08, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

In a meeting and should not be editing Wikipedia, but this post made my year ... more later ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Sideswipe9th back home now; thanks so much for the inspiring words.

J. K. Rowling has been a long haul, but the collaboration has been rewarding regardless of outcome, as even if one section prevents it from remaining featured, the rest of the article is now featured caliber, and I've met great new editors along the way. I was motivated to take on the WP:FAR for several reasons; your comments made my day per "mission accomplished". First, I was troubled that the FA criteria were being misstated with respect to 1e stable. We shouldn't be rewarding disruptive editing by stripping an article of its star, which will only open the door to even more disruptive editing, and the problems there were disruptive editing-- we've seen no instability since it's been at FAR (other than disruptive editors instantly blocked). We should deal with the disruption, rather than strip an article of its FA status. I didn't want to allow a precedent that an article could be defeatured because of disruption and because people misunderstand 1e-- better to deal with the disruption. Second, JKR is a very high-pageview BLP, and we should be saving those kinds of articles at FAR, even more so because difficult and high page view articles are no longer coming out of WP:FAC-- FAR is the place where we can assure that the overall pool of featured articles retains some high profile articles that are of interest to readers and make for good WP:TFAs, as interest in TFAs has fallen dramatically in the last five or eight years. Third, if Wikipedians can't collaborate, compromise and come to consensus on a high-profile biography of a living person with contentious issues that affect many other living souls, we really are pitiful and should all go find a new hobby. What's the point in fighting with strangers on the internet ? FAR provides a structured environment where shenanigans don't succeed, and good things and fun collaborations can happen, resulting in article improvement. That we now have a lot of new editors met along the way at JKR who can be called on to help in future FARs is just the cherry on the cake, so thanks for the feedback.

If you're interested in greater involvement at FAR, we need all the hands on deck we can get. Here's some reading:

• User:SandyGeorgia/Achieving excellence through featured content why FAs matter ... they provide other editors an example of how articles should be written and how things like collaboration and consensus are supposed to work. That's why I've been so determined since the beginning of this FAR to keep the approach very methodical and structured ... keep focus, and keep the FAR from spinning outta control. FAR is conducive to slow, deliberative and very structured work.
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-01-30/WikiProject report how to help. The regulars at FAR (Buidhe, Hog Farm, Z1720 and quite a few others) have our hands full. There are many very old featured articles that have not been reviewed in 15 years and are no longer at FA status, but each of us is limited to one nomination per week, and no more than five on the page at once. If we had other people to nominate (along with !voting) that would be a huge help. We are finding the page growing because more and more articles are being restored to featured status, but the longer a FAR is on the page, the more we hit our nominations limit and can't bring forward others.

Thanks again for the kind words, best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:56, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the links! I will get to reading those as soon as I can. I'll likely not start contributing at FAC or FAR until we're wrapping up the Rowling article. But I did look at the candidates and spotted one (Total Recall 1990) that I may be able to eventually take on, with some help. It'd being a classic Schwarzenegger sci-fi action flick, and one I've watched countless times. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:42, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Sideswipe9th you might also be interested in getting connected with Mike Christie (along with Olivaw-Daneel and Vanamonde93, who you've seen on the JKR FAR) ... all are also sci-fi editors. Look forward to pinging you in for help at FAR! Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Yeah that sounds like a very good suggestion! Thanks. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:14, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Shortening FACs

Based on this discussion you've started on FAC talk page, I have made two very bold attempts to do just that. (1 and 2). What do you think? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 04:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I would really not advise that, especially considering that you didn't move the comments to talk but rather deleted them.

I think in the long run the only counters against growing FACs are 1) opposing and archival and 2) nominating well prepared articles. (t · c) buidhe 04:29, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

What do you mean by you didn't move the comments to talk but rather deleted them? I think that I have moved all the comments to talk, as well as just leave support/general comments and a {{further}} link on the FAC. Sandy in the discussion also highlighted other concerns which in my opinion do matter:

• Some supports are sketchy (Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Socrates Nelson/archive1 somehow get 3 supports and promoted)
• Discourages review of long FACs
• Slow loading time -> make it harder for editors with poor connections
• Accessibility issues (imagine using a screen reader to read many FAC...)
• etc. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 04:39, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

On the Battle of Poitiers FAC you removed −45,279 but Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Battle of Poitiers/archive1 is still a redlink.

I agree with you that long FACs are bad, but removing or moving other editors' comments is hard to defend in light of the talk page guidelines. (t · c) buidhe 05:02, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I moved to the article's talk page, sorry for being a bit vague in my response. I actually don't think that my moves has violated the guidelines as I preserved the meaning of their comments, but I'll see whether reviewers like it or not. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 05:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, I don't think they like it, as evident by User:Gog the Mild reverts. I won't do anything more about this issue then. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:42, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

You've introduced a "Further" template, which adds to the template limits; you can make a straight wikilink to the FAC talk page instead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Alright, fixed. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "fixed"; Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Time in Finland/archive1 for example has four "further" templates. All you have to do is use a straight link like this: Comments moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:20, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Done, sorry for the wait. What do you think about my proposal then? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:27, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

It was done that way in the past; since it's hard for me to understand the resistance, it's hard to know what the opposition's case is. Putting comments on talk completely solves the templates problem, which is another solution the current FAC community has resisted, so I've been unable to understand what is going on with FAC. Good luck proposing change. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:30, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Hamlet fire

The bot hasn't process it yet, but Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hamlet chicken processing plant fire/archive1 closed as promote, so you can add it to that list of repromoted former FAs you mentioned pretty soon. Thank you for your help with the med material! -Indy beetle (talk) 23:19, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Got it, thx and congrats! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:17, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

"Ike for President"

Hi SandyGeorgia! Happy to inform you that an independent copy-editor has taken a look and copy-edited the article. Per your request, I'm just informing you to take a look at the article at its peer review page whenever you get time. – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 19:55, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Kavyansh.Singh I am sorry for the delay; I had every good intention of helping out but it just doesn't look like I am going to be able to carve out the time to get there. Good luck, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Nonmetal PR

Hi SandyGeorgia

Graham Beards, Double sharp and I reached agreement on our differences wrt aspects of this article. There's a mini-summary here. I courtesy pinged you at the same time; judging from your talk page :) you may have missed it. Or you may be otherwise occupied.

I hope you'll now be in position to resume your interest in the prose.

Earlier, in the Always, sometimes, frequently, section you commented:

"You may need to rejig that to get it to work right, but for me, something along those lines would solve the whole dilemma of this article at FAC. That's all I have for this section. When I start on the General properties, I'll expect more detailed language and a higher level of knowledge, but still generally decipherable to anon-chemist, and after that, I'll be less worried about what I don't understand :)"

thank you, Sandbh (talk) 01:07, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, Sandbh; sick from my COVID booster (as always), and falling behind. Will get there when I can. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:28, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

PS: During the intermission I've been working on noble metal, not with an FAC in mind but just to get the article into some kind of decent shape. The subject matter is rather a mess in the literature so that makes the work challenging and exasperating at the same time. Fortunately a few other editors have taken an interest and that has helped.

PPS: I read some more about you, including the "wanna-be-a-killer" tree =8o, so now I get why you use an iPad. I trust you're well.

Thanks SandyGeorgia. I trust you'll get better. I look forward to your return when you can get there. Sandbh (talk) 05:19, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Sandbh my apologies for the delay. I had every good intention of seeing this one through and to helping make the prose more digestible, but it just doesn't look like I will be able to carve out the time to continue. It's a bit discouraging that I want to help with prose, but each time I revisit, I find there are still disagreements on content, so I feel I'm in over my head. I hope that at least some of the re-formatting and re-arrangement we were able to accomplish helped make the article more digestible. Good luck! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:41, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks SandyGeorgia. That is fine by me. All the disagreements were resolved by 1 Apr. DePiep lodged a further concern on 23 Apr, which I expect and hope will be easily addressed. The re-formatting and re-arrangement that you suggested were tremendous helpful to me and I learnt a lot. I recall you were particularly concerned about the digestibility of the article at least up until the end of the general properties section. I further recall we got up to most of the first subsection of that section. From here I think I get the hang of the digestibility concern and will look again at the rest of the general properties section and ce as appropriate. After that, and addressing DePiep's concerns do you feel it would be OK for me to seek FAC reconsideration? Sandbh (talk) 08:10, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Pinging me this way, Sandbh, while not responding to the OP at the WP page where it is about, does not count as "commmunication". -DePiep (talk) 11:10, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

DePiep DePiep, it was courtesy ping which I usually do whenever I refer to another editor. At that time I didn't have the time to also respond to you at the PR page. I expect to be able to do so shortly. Sandbh (talk) 01:53, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Sandbh I am on the road going cross country to a wedding, hotspot editing from car on iPad, so can't really revisit, but when I looked a few days ago, I still felt like the FAC would be a hard slog unless a non-Chemist reads through and helps make adjustments. I recall that the lead started with a redundancy of In chemistry ... chemical ... not sure why it starts with "In chemistry", unless there is a nonmetal that is not in chemistry. Some of the prose was still unnecessarily dense. For an easier FAC, you should first make sure you are squared away with Graham Beards, DePiep and DoubleSharp, but besides that, round up a non-science person to read through. Good luck, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:00, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks SandyGeorgia, will do. Sandbh (talk) 01:53, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

PS. Physicists have their own (narrower) definition of a nonmetal. Without going into the details, this can result in elements viewed as nonmetals in chemistry not being regarded as nonmetals in physics. I'll take this up with the others. Sandbh (talk) 02:02, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Asking for a quick check-over

Greetings,

I am not sure if I already asked, but can I ask for a quick look-over at Mount Melbourne? I am thinking of sending it to FAC next but I'd like a double check that it's ready to go. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:14, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I'll look in today, Jo-Jo ... Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:27, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, that's done. Now the only other thing is TRAPPIST-1 which I already posted about. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:52, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

That one scares me! But I'll get to it ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:20, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Well done!

		The BLP Barnstar
		If you'd told me 6 months ago that it was possible to have a substantial rewrite of the JK Rowling article, including the controversial areas, largely done and dusted without any major acrimony or multiple RFCs, I wouldn't have believed you - but that's exactly what you've achieved. Well done! BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 11:56, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Writer's Barnstar
		Sandy, you've more than earned this barnstar your amazing work on J.K. Rowling: reading the biographies and rewriting that section; working throughout to keep the article compliant with MoS; organizing the talk pages; bringing focus and best-practice processes throughout. I've learned a lot just from watching your work. You and the entire crew should be proud of the work there. It's a great achievement. Congrats! Victoria (tk) 23:03, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

P.s I went to add my keep !vote but it was already closed! Well done all. Victoria (tk) 23:03, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Me too! Fantastic work, sorry I couldn't keep up. Now all you have to do is read the books! Johnbod (talk) 23:14, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

To celebrate, I went and ate the ears off my chocolate Easter bunny two days early! Thank you, both. Ealdgyth owes me more chocolate bunnies! The best part was interacting with two editors I scarcely knew, AleatoryPonderings and Olivaw-Daneel. Ha, if they only knew what awaits ... the endless pinging to future FARs :). A wonderful save for all involved. Slow and steady wins the race. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:17, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I hope the ears were yummy and I await the pings—can't promise I'll always be ready for heavy lifting but rescue projects are always something special. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 04:38, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

This is very well deserved. One of FAR's finest moments. Hog Farm _Talk 05:00, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Eating the ears of your chocolate bunny two days early?? Tsk, tsk!! Sorry for the crankiness on my end and for not even being able to get here in time to cast the !keep I'd intended. Anyway, very impressive effort. Victoria (tk) 15:43, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I was so tired when that finished that even my feet hurt. Starting to recover ... thanks for the support, Victoria! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:33, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

I also endorse this barnstar. May your feet recoverable and thrive! Ceoil (talk) 01:27, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Ceoil (and Victoria again ... I suspect we'd have a bit of a different article if Victoria had been able to stay with us!) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:43, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words on my talk; and I had thought the block fell flat on its face because I said "unsupported insulations" instead of "insinuations". Thank you also for your work on the Rowling article, it is a seriously impressive feat. I had been aware of disruptive editing from that user for a while, and the recent edits where they were actively impeding work at the Rowling page meant it was time for me to take action. I've thought a lot about copyright backlogs and issues with main space and dealing with disruptive editing, and I realized they are directly connected. I see things like this and this that deeply concern me, and I realized that the same great burnout I have felt recently from working at CCI is the same burnout that those who keep our best and most important articles up to shape feel. I have my own seemingly impossible task to conquer, so if I see someone else faced with an extreme task, and it is my power to do so it is my duty to help. I have the article watchlisted and will be keeping a good eye on it for when it graces the Main page... Moneytrees^🏝️Talk 02:14, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Moneytrees re insulations, you're talking to the Queen of Typos! If only it were always the case that helpful admins were quietly in the background watching out for the messes that become so discouraging as we try to build content; I was seriously impressed by your awareness of that editor's history, which I completely missed while just trying to build the article. Similar to the links you indicated above, I have pretty much given up on building medical content for similar reasons; it's just no longer a good use of my time, since no one else cares, those who try to maintain content at FA-level are mocked, and we have to constantly deal with the effects of POV pushers and student editing, which are equally time consuming and destructive. I try to limit my Wikipedia time now to that which feels rewarding, even if those rewards often evaporate! Thanks again, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Howdy

Thank you for your comments on the Saint Vincent Beer peer review. Sorry about the months long delay on getting to your comments. I was wedding planning. Unrelated, The Minute Man is the TFA on the 19th. While you might not be interested, I was wondering if one of your talk page watchers would help me by keeping an eye on it that day.

I am in awe of your ability to save J. K. Rowling. I understand it was a team effort, but martialing such a controversial article through consensus building deserves more barnstars than we can ever give you. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 21:41, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Guerillero! I hope the Beer project is coming along ... good luck there, Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Mazel tov

Enjoy your big day. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:24, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Hawkeye! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:41, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Don't get carsick!

Parking meter and Employee Free Choice Act both look fine. I skipped over Harry Potter. I'll check their top contrib pages first, so next up are Dobby Walker and Jessica Mitford, as Disputes over the Harry Potter series was BLARed in 2007. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:54, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

thanks, this stinks ... I cannot advance because of iPad editing, but am glad to hear that ... I have found a lot of quoting and poor editing, but so far no more copyvio, but to really check, I need archive.org, and my connection is too spotty ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:58, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry SG. Yes, I would describe the state of the politics article, at least the last time I edited it, as "intimidatingly bad". Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:00, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

I was hoping to at least get it better organized, but alas and alack ... we arrive today for the wedding festivities, and my time for the next week will be very limited ... did what I could from the car. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:03, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Happy times! The Walker and Mitford articles were fine, as was Legal disputes over the Harry Potter series. I'm going to stop here for now, as there's a chunk of evidence that the one you spotted was and isolated incident. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:13, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Wonderful, thanks so much. I will check a few of the larger edits from Politics of Harry Potter that need to compared to archive.org when I next get a break from the festivities, but am now much less concerned ... most grateful for your help! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:21, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Hey

You've probably seen my talk page message that I'll be more lurking than actively editing for a few days to a week for the sake of my sanity, but I noticed that Template:Older med refs has been nominated for deletion and it doesn't look like WT:MED has bee notified. Is this something that can go, or does it have use for the medical project? After the lay-url incident, I try to keep an eye out for potentially breaking changes that would affect WT:MED or MEDRS. Hog Farm _Talk 13:34, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi, HF ... no, I hadn't seen your talk yet ... having a hard time catching up as I have suddenly so much to do in the garden and have to make hay when the weather allows.

I appreciate you keeping an eye on WP:MED issues! I had never before encountered that template, so it's probably not very useful, but will ping WT:MED.

Before you go for a few days, do you have a sense of where my input is most needed at FAR as I slowly catch up? I know it's needed everywhere, but a priority list would help me chip away at a few sooner. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:40, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll take a look at this. Hog Farm _Talk 13:45, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

I think Barney is nearing the line. XOReaster retired so it looks like we'll have to triage to 5 astronomy FARS and figured out what can be kept and what needs to move on the FARC, I guess. Woolpit is making progress. I don't know where enzyme inhibitor is, but it looks savable. Someone needs to check in with Ceoil about where they are with HD. All the ones in FARC are looking like they're head for delist except for Clinkscales which Z1720 was recently unleashed on, Joan which had SN54129 leave some comments earlier, and Selwood which has been in deep deep hibernation since February. Hog Farm _Talk 13:53, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

WHAT ??? Yikes on XOR !! What a loss :( :( Firefangledfeathers is still chipping away at Natalie. Will do what I can later, but very busy day, catching up with household stuff still ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:57, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

:( Hog Farm _Talk 14:04, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

I understand the sentiment ... I forcefully restrict my activity now to only that which I enjoy, and aggressively unwatch everything else, which means I am no longer active on the two pages where I spent most of my Wikipedia career (FAC and WP:MED), as neither of them are enjoyable now. Let's hope XOR finds their way back eventually ... but I won't go say anything on their talk, only because I so understand the need. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:14, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Hurricane Ophelia (2005) CCI reminder

Just a friendly reminder about the CCI for Hurricane Ophelia at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hurricane Ophelia (2005)/archive1 as you requested :) ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 18:08, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Just a note that I've seen this. I'll try and help out with a check after I wake up later today. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 04:43, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

@Cyclonebiskit, Gog the Mild, and Moneytrees: apologies for the delay; real life does not cooperate. I will start in today; depending on how many sub-articles there are, the work could take me between six and ten hours ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:26, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you

May songs

... for your work checking the quality of old FAs, and helping to rescue, such as for Geology of the Lassen volcanic area! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 04:50, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

	I want to second Gerda's thanks re Geology of the Lassen volcanic area. Your edits back in January made this a very nice article. — hike395 (talk) 16:22, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Sandy! Joan of Arc

Hi Sandy, if you are on the road and may not be able to respond to my concerns, I understand. And I really understand that there are real-life issues that have change how you see things (e.g., the tree). That said, you still seem to like a challange and take on tough issues, the Joan of Arc article may be trivial. But I will share my personal concerns. But I've done my best to create a fair, but admittedly positive model of Joan of Arc. But it seems that the FAR review is just stuck. I will admit that my style may be too wordy, redundant, or not what what is expected. What I have struggled for is to ensure that citations are clean, available and present. Some Wikipedians may question a few of my sources (MA dissertations, minor authors from minor presses), but I try to ensure that these are not vital points: thus, I could remove sock puppet issues with a few key presses. My issue is that I don't feel comfortable moving to another article until I took care of the major concerns, which is reliability. One of my own issues is that I want to be fair, so as you saw, I'll even accomodate a sock puppet if the sock puppet has a point that can be supported by reliable source. I'd love to move to George Fox, or some other biography, but won't move until FAR is over. I very much disliked FA review because it seemed arbitrary, and FAR review seemed more fun and interesting because I just fixed the criticisms, and could move on to the next. But FAR seems to be different. Though issues are raised, and I address them, it seems it is not sufficient. Please let me know what the expectations are, so I can figure where I can be most effective with Wikipedia. Thanks! (p.s. If you choose to respond, please ping me, as I try to keep my Watch list minimal) Wtfiv (talk) 05:28, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Wtfiv I think you are doing amazing work on Joan of Arc; I've watched as you trimmed away at the wordiness and am quite impressed at how you kept your cool with a sockmaster. My travel, now the final wedding preparations, and issues that keep popping up re the JKR TFA blurb, have prevented me from finishing up a complete read-through. I just won't have the undivided attention for a full read-through until Monday or Tuesday. I'm able to pick away at JKR and topics I know better with piecemeal iPad editing while I'm on the road, but Joan of Arc requires more undivided attention for me to read through, as I don't know the topic at all. I hope I am not the hold up there, as the Coords know I'm busy ... your work at FAR has been much better than sufficient, amazingly effective, and as far as I know, everyone is quite impressed, as I am !! I apologize for not having been able to fully re-visit yet ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:05, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

(Apologies for the notification, Sandy) @Wtfiv: If you move on to George Fox can you ping me. I am a practicing Quaker -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 08:37, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Sandy! In my opinion, weddings are so fun! My March was tied up with one of those other life phases, loved one's having children. For me, those are some of the joys of life. Wtfiv (talk) 17:00, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Wtfiv! Would be nice to be in my own home with my own things, and the travel has added a layer of complication, but things are looking good! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:18, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Sock Puppet Process?

Hi Sandy, A user, Chantepleure, has started posting on Joan of Arc. Because the user's style seemed similar to GBRV, I took a look at the account details. It was created in 2007, posted on two days back then and went dormant until today. It may be too early to report anything. It may just be accidental, but if you could point me toward the appropriate process or guidelines for monitoring and reporting a potential sock puppet issue, I'd be grateful. Wtfiv (talk) 03:30, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Wtfiv If there is evidence of sockpuppetry the place to report is WP:SPI (t · c) buidhe 03:35, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, Buidhe. Wtfiv my apologies again for being so absent ... I should be able to start catching up by Saturday.

Filing an SPI is no easy feat ... you will need these pages:

• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ryn78
• User:Durova/Complex vandalism at Joan of Arc
• Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/AWilliamson

I will try to pitch in after I get through some personal stuff Friday; I hope others will also help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:44, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I looked at the edits; they are not an improvement, and this is problematic as you note. We are going to need a better long-term solution to the Joan of Arc situation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:51, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Wtfiv if you can find the diff you mention at Talk:Joan of Arc of when GBRV made the similar edit,[4] the block can likely be made on behavioral evidence alone, without the need for yet another SPI ... evidence is key in an SPI or for a sock block without an SPI ... the diff should do the job, if you can find it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:55, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the lead on SPIs, Sandy and buidhe. And Sandy, it's good you took a look. Here's version where GBRV made the change, (which was kept until after GBRV's SPI): 12:11 24 December 2021.

• Chantepleure 2022-05-26
• GBRV 2021-12-24

Wtfiv if no one has helped by Sat morning when I am free, I will tune in ... you will need the two diffs above and the past cases ... it would probably be good, unfortunately, for you to learn how to file SPIs, but hopefully someone can start this one for you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:49, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Wtfiv: I will take a gander this afternoon. (Apologies for the notification, Sandy) -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 08:59, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Based on a mixture of behavioral and checkuser evidence, I blocked them and increased the protection of the article to ECP. They are  Unrelated to the other group of socks. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 10:20, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for jumping in, Guerillero. Wtfiv if you have email enabled, I would like to send you some private tips for dealing with WP:LTA and managing WP:SPI; please let me know if that's OK. Also, once you let me know you have repaired the damage to the article, I will get on with my full read-through so we can get that FAR closed. I think I'll try to catch up on all the rest of FAR first, so I can more fully focus at Joan. Once the FAR is closed, you will also be able to use WP:FAOWN to remind editors to discuss on talk and gain consensus for changes; hopefully the extended protection added by Guerillero will solve the problems for a short while at least. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:00, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi Sandy. Yes, My email is enabled, so please send me an email, I'd appreciate it. Most of the other changes seemed minor choices of style, so I left them. And yes, I think Guerillo's solution is the best. No hurry on the Joan of Arc article. Besides monitoring it, I'm just leaving the article alone for now. Again, I do want to thank you so much for your help and guidance with these processes. The Joan of Arc article has been quite a learning experience. Wtfiv (talk) 17:16, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Wtfiv I am still having quite a time keeping up because of real life issues, but please expect an LTA-educational email from me as soon as I can get it together. Thanks for all you do, and with such a steady hand. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:54, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Saving Joan of Arc Vandal information

• Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/AWilliamson

Also note:

• User:Durova/Complex vandalism at Joan of Arc
• Wikipedia:Long term abuse/Page 2#Joan of Arc vandal
• User:Highest-Authority-on-Joan-of-Arc-Related-Scholarship/AWilliamson_sock_puppets

Possibly related:

• Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Ryn78, User:GBRV, and User:Chantepleure, from Wikipedia:Featured article review/Joan of Arc/archive2

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:58, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Rowling TFA

Where have we left the question of the blurb? Also, I see she's in the news again.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:16, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Wehwalt As far as I know, everyone is now satisfied with the blurb ... nothing new has come up for quite some time now. There is one remaining (new) issue about the lead, raised on talk at least a week ago and mostly resolved, but it seems no one will respond to the remaining niggles unless I ping them, which I have grown tired of doing ... some concern that the lead spends too much time on Harry rather than Joanne, which I have always been concerned about, but no one is weighing in, so whatevs. Yikes, I have been so busy, I haven't news.google'd her for a few days ... will go check now ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:25, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Checked the new news, should not affect the main article, although someone will likely add the kerfuffle to the sub-article ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:32, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Dmitri Shostakovich FARC?

Greetings. I read in the talk page for Dmitri Shostakovich that you moved it into the "FARC phrase." Please, I hope I don't sound like an utterly clueless dork by asking you this—but may you please explain to me what FARC means and how the FA can still be salvaged? I've long been aware of the deficient state of the Shostakovich article, have long wanted to make some drastic improvements to it, but have so far opted for a more measured (if still ineffective) approach. Supposing its FA status could be saved in the near future, how long would I have to do that? I appreciate any help and pointers you can give me. Thank you very much. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 18:40, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

CurryTime7-24 I have not moved Wikipedia:Featured article review/Dmitri Shostakovich/archive2 to the FARC phase, nor is that something I am able to do. I entered a declaration of my opinion that it should be moved to the FARC phase. Have you looked over the instructions at the top of WP:FAR? The FAR Coords are the ones who determine consensus on FARs, based on feedback from other editors.

Whether a nomination is in the FAR or the FARC phase, the Coords are amenable to leaving the nomination open as long as substantive progress is being made. There are no time limits; just the expectation that steady progress is being made. My opinion (which is only one editor's take) is that this particular article is unlikely to be saved at FAR, as there is too much to be done, and there don't seem to be enough hands to the task; others may disagree. Any time an article is de-featured, it can always be re-submitted to WP:FAC to regain the star. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Venezuela Colombia military defections

Template:Venezuela Colombia military defections has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Izno (talk) 17:33, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Followup at Plastikspork talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:26, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Acute myeloid leukemia FAR

I have nominated Acute myeloid leukemia for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm _Talk 04:23, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

JK Rowling error

Just letting you know that in between all your hard work on the article it was another editor who introduced the nonsense that J's mother was " in the WREN" on 1 Feb. ( I thought I'd copied the diff but am on phone and lost it). I'm surprised it lasted this long! She was "a Wren" or "in the WRNS" - and I see that since I changed it to the latter someone else has expanded it as a "little-known abbreviation". Ah well. First time I've edited a TFA, I think. Happy Editing! PamD 05:58, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

PamD, thanks for letting me know; since I wrote that portion, I knew I didn't write "in the WREN", but I apparently did not notice when it got changed. I wrote "as a WREN", which was correct :) Will probably just go back to that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:02, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

PS, the good thing about people finding and correcting issues beyond the lead is that it shows that people are reading the article! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:10, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

PamD I just read your user page; there is a British English question at the bottom of Talk:J. K. Rowling; might you have time to look at it? I am so sorry about your mother :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:12, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

JK Rowling FAR archive

Hey. I was just looking through the archives to link some relevant parts in a concurrent discussion that's ongoing at BLPN. A couple of the wikilinks in Archive 5, the archive which contains the workshop for the transgender section, weren't updated to point to the other archives when the content was moved. Is it OK if I go through and fix those wikilinks as it should help for anyone reviewing the archive. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:44, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Please do ... I will follow your edits to correct anything if needed ... much appreciated ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:45, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I've fixed all the obvious ones I could find in Archive 5, which should help with the immediate issues. When today is over, and assuming there isn't any major changes or surprise RfCs dropped on us I'll try and work Archive 5 and some of the complaints about today into an FAQ that can be included in the talk page lead. Which should help with any ongoing issues. And when I get a chance I'll take a look at the other FAR archives for this for any broken relative wikilinks there too, just so that if anyone's interested they can see exactly how discussion and consensus evolved. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:59, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I am most grateful ... and thanks for pointing me to the BLPN discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:00, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

No worries at all! I wouldn't have noticed the BLPN discussion myself if I hadn't had that noticeboard on my watchlist. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Humpback whale

Can you recheck it, thanks. 2001:4455:620:F00:D0E2:E123:E7C8:F2FD (talk) 12:35, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

I won't be able to get back there for quite some time now; how do you feel it is progressing? It's possible that others can look in if you spell out any concerns, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Apparently someone's been dicking around with the citation templates again

See [5]. Took me forever to figure out what "generic name" is. At least for some, it's because editor, (ed), or ed. is put somewhere into the author's name parameter of the template. But I've also seen one where the author literally had the first name Ed and it flagged it as an "error". I personally sometimes think that the people who do this to us content editors should be required to write 2 FAs for every mostly useless change they make. Hog Farm _Talk 21:59, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

<groan> ... I will have to look at this another day, as I'm already trying to get out of a foul mood. Maybe we can get Nikkimaria after it; she loves that sort of thing just as much as I do. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:03, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I've raised a concern at VPT, maybe someone there can fix this. For some reason, it doesn't always make the red error flag (O. G. S. Crawford is one, I think it's flagging that (revised) is in the author parameter instead of an edition parameter). Hog Farm _Talk 22:10, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Yep. After this "RfC" [6] the CS1 templates were updated to detect a whole swath of "generic" names in author parameters. There's an incomplete list at Category:CS1 errors: generic name of what is considered "generic", and a proposed "fix". Nikkimaria (talk) 22:21, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm also drafting in my mind a proposal to suggest creation of some sort of noticeboard where major citation template changes can be posted ahead of time, rather than be discussed on an obscure talk page somewhere and then suddenly unleashed on everyone like a Kraken. Hog Farm _Talk 22:12, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Been down that road before ... I seem to recall having left Wikipedia in a huff over this sort of thing more than once ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:18, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

With that in mind, you might want to take a look at the VP thread I linked in combination with this response. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:21, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

How is there enough consensus on that "RFC" for changes (like this, which happen often) with such wide-ranging impact. Will it never end. Rhetorical; it won't. A couple of editors own us. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I just ran into this at Chagas disease. Apparently it is meant to catch newbies doing things like adding "Facebook" as the author of an article, but it seems to flag any organization name, even when it's entirely appropriate to list an organization as an author... Spicy (talk) 22:23, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, looking at the page Nikkimaria linked I suppose it's the 'collaborator' in 'Global Burden of Disease Collaborators'. Not sure why this is worth adding a big red error message to 30,000 pages, even when there actually is an error... Spicy (talk) 22:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Worse bug testing that even Microsoft. Hog Farm _Talk 22:30, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I have lost track already of what threads to follow where. If I do this today, I will likely walk away again, so am going to ignore until in a better frame of mind. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:32, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I need to step off, too. I left a few "extracurricular" sentences on one of the comments that probably fall under the "think but don't say" category. Hog Farm _Talk 22:36, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Extracurricular, huh; so that's what you call it ? Just don't say the word darn, or you could end up ANI :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:37, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

After reading over that bug report area, it apparently flagged "Hauser" because it contained the string "user" ... Hog Farm _Talk 22:50, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I went through and fixed mine. (grumps) I think I got all of them? Ealdgyth (talk) 22:53, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

{{Cite book}} also now treats the volume param differently, which seems like unnecessary churn to me although less disruptive than the above. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 22:34, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Lay-source and lay-url are now deprecated, so I have to go fixing, all over creation, for one of the most useful parameters cite journal provide. Why do we put up with this? RexxS stood up to them. I don’t know why we don’t, except that one never knows where. Where did they get consensus to remove lay-url ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:43, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, the discussion linked from the update notes is this one... Nikkimaria (talk) 04:15, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

So, two or three editors, discussing in a backroom, get to remove something that affects … how many articles and other editors? I Do Not Know Why Wikipedia Continues To Let This Happen. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:19, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Might be time to start a larger community discussion -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 16:45, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Because "two or three editors discussing on a talk page" is the normal, everyday practice for Wikipedia?

@Hog Farm, the designated noticeboard is Help talk:Citation Style 1. There are 130 active editors watching that page, which is only slightly fewer than the number of people watching Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

When WAID thinks this is "normal", something's gotta give. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:36, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

The problem, WAID, is that there is definitely such a thing as noticeboard overload. At this point I've got so many user talk pages, noticeboards, etc watchlisted that it drowns out the actual content edits and makes it difficult to see changes to the content - you know, that stuff we're here to build/currate/etc. I shouldn't have to watch yet MORE obscure pages off in the middle of nowhere so I can keep up with changes that affect such a basic widely used template - and as an aside - are we sure those are 130 ACTIVE editors that have it watchlisted? I've never been sure that the count of "watchlisting editors" is confined to active editors and doesn't include any editors who have ever watchlisted the article. (I mean, gods, surely 268 ACTIVE editors aren't watchlisting my talk page, surely?) Ealdgyth (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I have 685 watchers; that 130 number is meaningless. The fact is, all of these issues, going back about ten years, all relate to ownership of templates that affect tens of thousands of articles (hundreds of thousands? who knows? At least 300 Featured articles is all we know). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:25, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

And probably at least 2/3's of the 767 new GAs on the issues report for that project. Hog Farm _Talk 18:32, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

And WP:MEDRS has 389 page watchers, is a widely respected and used guideline, and has included the text about the lay source parameter, with text completely untouched since at least the end of 2008 (that's a lot of years on a highly used guideline for a couple of editors to be undoing). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:40, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

There are 81 (eighty-one) active editors watching this page. There are now two counts for watchlists. One counts how many watchlists it's on, including people who haven't logged in for years. The other counts only the editors who have gone to Special:Watchlist during the last 30 days. I find that smaller number a much more functional metric.

Ealdgyth, I agree that it is impossible to know everything. It helps to have a network of folks, so that you can tell me about what you see, and I can tell you about what I see. In this case, though, it feels like the Wikipedia:You don't own Wikipedia story: I don't like the change, so we should have had an RFC! A big one! At a village pump! That RFC already happened, and not one editor there objected to the proposed changes to |lay-url= and its companions. The primary source of opposition was editors unhappy that |chapterurl= was going to be spelled |chapter-url= (with a human-readable hyphen between the two words) from here out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:55, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

WAID, are you seriously, with your best straight face on, seeing some consensus in that “RFC”? I hope so, since you appear to be here mocking those of us who don’t. Who closed it? Who judged this consensus? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:00, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

It says right there at the top that ProcrastinatingReader provided the closing summary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

There was opposition on that point, but the primary source of opposition was that that was not a valid approach to an RfC. And as one commenter put it: it will (and now has) "falsely establish consensus for controversial changes by making them a rider to clearly-supported changes when they failed on their own merits". Nikkimaria (talk) 04:04, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Ealdgyth here’s a keeper just for you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:14, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

WAID, you also have to think about it this way: the sort of average Wikipedia process that involves two or three editors generally doesn't effect thousands or tens of thousands of pages like these do. Hog Farm _Talk 18:03, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I could name some counterexamples, but you're right: CS1 changes have far-reaching consequences. They even affect non-English Wikipedias, since we don't have a decent global templates system, so every change we make here increases the trouble for article translators and template copiers.

I think we can find a way to work with this. It won't be the same, but it needn't be worse. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:02, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

You’re missing the bigger point, in mocking the need for a broad RFC, which is They Just Keep Doing This, and we keep getting stuck with the fait accompli. It’s not just this instance; it’s the need to address the root problem, of editors running technical aspects who are not responsive to the community, and that Those Who Do This are insulated from the needs of content writers while holding the power to broadly affect all of us with their personal preferences. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:08, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

You imply here that these "editors running technical aspects" are not part of The Community™, that none of them are content writers themselves, and that these changes are driven by their personal preferences. I don't think that any of these claims hold up to scrutiny. They're not "others"; they're us, and "they" are doing this, to the best of their human ability, because "we" have asked them to solve some problems.

Remember when WT:FAC broke a little while ago? It's because some templates, especially citation templates, are "expensive". They are trying to make the templates a little bit less "expensive", but now we're yelling that it's all happening just because of their invalid personal preferences. This type of change could make a big difference; it could make it possible to re-transclude FAR at the FAC pages.

I like consistency. Either we yell at them because heavy templates break things, and suck it up when we have to slowly change a few hundred articles to make that breakage less likely, or we suck it up when the heavy templates break high-traffic and high-importance pages like WT:FAC and the large COVID pages (at least one had more than 1,000 refs at one point). We can't have it both ways. The option of "keep everything the same but have it not break large pages" is not on the table. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

The citation templates are not used or barely used at FAC or FAR, so they are not causing the problems there. The proposed workarounds for the lay= parameters take up even more characters so I do not see how they are "cheaper". (t · c) buidhe 20:15, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

It's about what happens on the server when it's sorting out what needs to be displayed on a page, not about how many letters it takes you to type in the wikitext. Every parameter and every alias costs. A parameter for me here, an alias for you there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I don’t accept your characterization of my post; sorry you to choose to read it as you do.

The FAC issue is unrelated to this one, and had/has its own set of easy solutions, which have been ignored, just as the COVID issue with thousands of citations had/has its own solution, which is also ignored. The solution to neither of these problems is to remove a parameter that has not been demonstrated to be a problem, and was just what the Dr ordered in terms of not citing the lay press in medical content while occasionally providing only an adjunct for reading highly technical journal sources. Will Eubulides’ helpful vauthors parameters be next, so we have to edit around ten-line-long strings of first1 last1 … first32 last32 in the quest to prioritize building databanks of citation parameters over ease of building content? The reason sorta/kinda/halfway presented for removing the lay parameter is that it was only used a few thousand times (which is a testament to MEDRS more than anything else— we don’t take lightly citing the lay press). How much was it costing? More than the now convoluted ten-line-long strings of parameters encouraged by how the citation templates have evolved over the last decade?

Explaining for others what they won’t for themselves, or can’t without personal attacks, is enabling the kind of conduct that at least RexxS had the guts to stand up to by being willing to block those who operated scripts, bots and the such without responding to the concerns of the broader community. Is there no one with any gumption left? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:54, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

CS1 (whatever that even means) has always been the domain of pretty much one editor, who gets to change things that broadly affect all of us without so much as a prior notice anywhere. Nikkimaria this has been going on forever, but I don't know where to find all the pieces. Are you able to come up with a list of past examples? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:38, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd say the whole Monkbot 18 (|access-date vs |accessdate mainly) would count as one, but I don't know where to find it. Hog Farm _Talk 18:32, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 179#RFC: Citation Style 1 parameter naming convention (and multiple related discussions, eg

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1065#User:Citation bot "fixing" non-deprecated parameters).

A couple more examples:

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive313#Is there a semi-automated tool_ hat could fix these annoying "Cite_Web" errors?,

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive884#Trappist the monk and Monkbot. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Nikkimaria; OK, all, where do we go next? Are we going to huff and puff but continue to let this happen? Do we need a community-wide RFC? (I'm an abject failure at those.) Do we go to AN and ask for some restrictions to be put on any change to CS1 sans community notifications, eg via WP:CENTRAL? This long-standing ownership has been one of three reasons that I won't ever write a "real" medical article again (this, plus the way ERRORS treated TFAs, plus the blatant plagiarizing of all of my work at DLB, for profit, with nothing to be done about it). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:30, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Effect on medical content

The effect on medical content citation vis-a-vis WP:MEDRS is probably more serious than perhaps other areas: see discussion at this awkwardly named section of WT:MEDRS: Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable_sources (medicine)#lay-url= etc. (I am fairly certain the lay parameters were designed by Eubulides for the specific reasons I mentioned, to comply with MEDRS, and for them to be removed, a note to WT:MED would have been wise.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:13, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Ignored again. I think there’s some fear driving these discussions (the fear that no one will do the programming work if we don’t heel to what the few demand and force through). Just another stripe for the tiger as to how content contributors are viewed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:23, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

What’s really amazing is that all of us are beholding to a few who write pages of gobbledeegook like this. How’s that for clear and simple and user-friendly? Precisely why, for years, I wrote all of my citations manually— a change I now regret. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:13, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I remember that the CS1/2 formatting causes disputes from time to time. I think the underlying issue is that many many editors depend on these templates but don't work directly with them, while only a few editors maintain them but work with them a lot. So you have this situation described by Ealdgyth that the first group cannot follow everything the second group is doing, while the second group does things without much consideration of the first group's preferences. I don't know how one would go around to fix this. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:34, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Lets lower the temperature a bit. The template folks think they are doing what is best for the encyclopedia as well. But, they are more focused on metadata and microformats. I am going to ping Izno about this. I have found that he has been easy to work with over the past month on arb-related things. There is a good chance that a workable compromise can be found through informal discussions. If not, at least putting our feelings on his radar should be helpful for future changes since I know he works on this class of templates. If something informal can't break the log jam, an RfC in a more public place advertised on CENT would be the next step. --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 10:39, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Guerillero, part of this issue is that I ask a nicely-worded reasonable question and can't even get a response. Hog Farm _Talk 14:32, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@Hog Farm, let me answer it for him, then. Your question was "Could you please point me to the discussion where consensus to deprecate this was reached?"

I will point you to the locations of the two most relevant discussions. The first was an RFC was at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). It began on 28 November 2021. The RFC contained a list of proposed changes. The proposed changes said one result would be that they "deprecated |lay-date=, |lay-format=, |lay-source=, |lay-url=;"

The RFC pointed to a previous small discussion of this. That is the second relevant discussion. That previous small discussion involved six editors, including one who is active specifically in medicine-related sourcing problems.

Now the question is whether consensus was reached. The closing statement of the RFC at the Village pump indicates that consensus was in favor of this change. The closing statement said that a different change, about removing other parameter names completely, did not apparently have consensus. About the rest of the proposal, including the part of the proposal to add a red warning message about these specific parameters, the RFC's closing statement says "There is support for most changes proposed, and they may be rolled out" (emphasis added).

Now, any good editor knows that consensus is only a true consensus if I personally agree with the result, but perhaps it is not unreasonable of me to hope that this fully answers your question about where the discussion happened and why some editors might believe that an RFC happened and that the result of that RFC was a consensus to deprecate (but not remove) these particular parameters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

WAID, thank you for pointing this out, since apparently Trappist doesn't care enough to do so. I'm strongly unconvinced by the claim in the RFC header This is an all or nothing rfc. In the event of a draw, cs1/2 shall be updated as "no consensus" on Wikipediadoes not mean "change the status quo even if we couldn't get consensus to do so". My suggestion for this would be to go less the "all or nothing rfc". There's no reason why this has to all be bundled into Monk Trappist's Patented Citation Slurry. Why can't the uncontroversial stuff like "added 'Usurped title' to generic titles" be split out from and leave the |lay-url or making the template scream at us everytime we cite someone named Ed which Trappist isn't responding to me either, despite being active on that same page since for a separate one? An AFD with that degree of variance in effects would be closed quickly per WP:TRAINWRECK. Why can't there be separate discussions for the ones that have major effects and the standard dust removal? Hog Farm _Talk 20:32, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I guess this is an example of what we'll need to do from here on out. It's quite a bit more complicated, but I guess follows the letter of the parameter laws better. The one thing I would really call for is that those who maintain the citation templates keep in mind is that the primary purposes of these templates are for 1) ease of adding citations and 2) standardization of output and 3) allowing readers to see easily where content is sourced to. The recent changes run against 1), have no real effect on 3), and produce only slight difference on 2). Hog Farm _Talk 15:05, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

It won’t end by appeasement; it never has. It’s just a matter of what’s the next target to make it harder to build content and give us more gobbledeegook to edit around. I’ve a pretty good idea of what’s next, but it seems that my talk page is hosting a discussion where we are now fighting town hall, and we all know how that ends. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

About the “RFC”

I don't think the citation template maintainers are as bad as they're made out to be above. I also don't think trying to distill the editorbase into groups and then marginalising some of them is helpful (it's possibly even dangerous, because this project requires various groups of editors to function effectively). It's also not an accurate classification: in that RfC, there were highly active content editors supporting the changes (eg Support been waiting for some of these for quite a while. Hawkeye7), and there were technical editors opposing the change (eg Pppery). Thing is, a lot of changes to citation templates are quite niche and (at least IMO) not really of extreme interest to the wider editor-base, which I imagine can make it difficult to receive broader feedback. In the RfC I closed re. CS1/2 updates, conducted at WP:VPR, most of the changes weren't commented on or objected to. I doubt a lot of editors in the broader community really care either way. Obviously it's not possible to read peoples' minds, and if input isn't given then folks don't really know what the concerns of some editors are. I don't really have solutions here but I would echo Guerillo's call to lower the pressure. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:20, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay... then why can't the people initiating these changes clean up the crazy messes that hundreds or articles are left with? I will admit that I have only skimmed the above, but what I'm inclined to see is a group of editors that usually makes behind the scenes changes making some larger ones that leave thousands of maintenance tags all over the place, leaving editors like myself (who weren't even aware of the change) to clean it all up. And by-far worst of all, forcing our readers (our articles are meant to be read!) to see maintenance tags that have absolutely nothing to do with their reading experience. Aza24 (talk) 23:15, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Now now, Aza, we mustn't be troubled by feeling like work we take pride in has been devalued, along with the expectation that we'll now do extra work to fix errors that ... weren't.

Generally, like Aza24, we now have hundreds of GA and FA editors (and I know not how many others, as I've only seen data on the GA and FA errors), who do care about seeing their work devalued, who are waking up to find errors in articles they have built, tended and curated, and probably not even knowing where to go to discuss it. Those editors deserve a centralized forum that is not my talk page, but it doesn't appear we'll be respected at the CS page.

PR, thanks for stopping by; I always appreciate your feedback. The RFC is a good example of the thing that speaks for itself; many wise comments in there. Regarding the discussions above your post, in my experience, mocking and demeaning and downplaying the concerns of others rarely serves to calm the waters, and often pours fuel on the flames. That's been my experience of this issue so far. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:43, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

@Aza24, what makes you think that they don't? Just to name the most obvious example, Trappist the monk has not racked up 327,000 edits to articles, or run a bot that's made three million edits, by doing nothing about citation problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

And yet, hasn't bothered to put a list at WT:MED of all the articles that need fixing. Much less all the thousands of articles elsewhere, although such lists are within TtM's capability. I hope that answers the question as to what those who broke this might be doing to help fix it ? Or maybe we don't want to shine a light on the issues beyond my talk page ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:58, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Who says that WP:MED needs to do anything about this at all? It seems likely to me that the usual CS1 clean up crew will do it all for us, if we just sit tight. It might be useful to decide how we'd prefer to see it fixed (the IP's suggestion of a wrapper template has some serious potential, and a bot could make that conversion – invisible to the reader, and still getting rid of the wasteful "is this parameter being used?" check on the 99.99% of citations that don't), but I don't think that we have to do anything about this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

That's nice to know. How are all the editors who don't have WAID posting on their talk pages being made aware of this wisdom as it unfolds in bits and pieces? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:12, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I think it's likely that at least 99% of editors will never notice the problem, and the rest of us should know you, so I think we're set.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Such responses are not warming my heart. Remind me once more how nobody reads my articles or checks my sources and nobody cares about the hard work I put into them, and maybe that will make me feel better. Because someone was troubled to plagiarize the hell out of it and publish it for profit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:19, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

PS, besides, speaking for myself (and I suspect most editors who frequent this talk page), I don't tend to leave big red errors in articles I tend and that have high pageviews while I wait and hope someone else will fix them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:14, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

TtM, in my experience, alters many citations en masse to their personal preference, ignoring established styles and erasing consistency in an article. Things like this; they think they are being helpful by adding the other authors... yet I was citing the work of only one author's contribution. When the GAN came, suddenly there were all these issues with citation formatting I don't know existed, because TtM introduced them under the guise of "cite repair;". But regardless, why can't these be fixed before hand if they know there's going to be problem? How is it logical to introduce a bunch cite error notices and then fix them? Clearly they can be tracked... readers have enough trouble trusting WP as it is, what will they think that now they have to witness a new fresh batch of red notices, the meaning of which they will not understand? (and if anything, they'll assume them to be a bigger deal than they are). Aza24 (talk) 00:00, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

You mean things like Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Monkbot 18? Advance fixes already happen, within the limits of what editors will let him do. It seems that a few editors believe that objecting to fixing templates in advance is a way to prevent the template from being changed in the future.

As for readers... Readers only click on a ref (that's one ref) in about one out 300 page views. I don't think readers are going to be materially affected by this.

(For the encyclopedia ref, were the others editors, rather than authors? That's not clear from the linked page.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:12, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Let me say this plainly. I do wish you would stop diminishing our concerns with things like "nobody cares" ... nobody reads ... one in 300. It's demoralizing. We care. And my concerns are similar to Aza's having seen personal preferences foisted on articles. I don't want to wake up tomorrow and find vauthors deprecated, along with et al, and I have to edit around a string of 30 author names because someone somewhere is gathering data on author fields. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:17, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I've never said that nobody cares. I'm saying that what matters to someone like you, who is in the top 99.9995% most active editors of all English Wikipedia editors, ever, has a relationship with articles that is, at minimum, wildly atypical. There are maybe a few thousand people out of the nearly 8 billion humans in the world who think like we do. We should never mistake our experience here for being a typical one. So I encourage you to take heart: the thing that looks outrageous to you in any favorite article is probably not even going to be noticed by any reader today.

WPMED's most popular article right now is about the omicron variant. Statistically speaking, if we assume that it's an average article, we can expect something on the order of 100 refs in it to be clicked on it each day. If we assume perfect randomness, which is unreasonable but greatly simplifies the math, then it will take readers an average of four days before all the citations have been seen, and an average of two days before any individual citation is seen – by one reader. If it is a well-written article, readers will click on the refs even less often (and non-randomly), so it may take even longer. The real-world risks are less than it seems to people like us.

If you find it demoralizing to hear that readers don't click on the refs – well, I find that it's all the more motivation to make sure that the article is right. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:50, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m finding demoralizing, which is not whether readers click on my citations, but hearing your take on how valued the work of the kinds of editors who frequent my talk is or is not, and your readiness to defend technical actions that devalue our work and place that over the factors that motivate us. By “us” I mean, the kind of editor who frequents my talk page, and that tends to be people who work at the FA level, which seems to be leading back to where some of this discussion started, which is that yes, there do appear to be different sets of editors and “their” concerns aren’t “our” concerns. It seems to me that your arguments are basically indicating, to me at least, that there really are two different sets of concerns, and “ours” are less significant. And it’s clear from this discussion that “our” concerns are the lesser valued. Is that the message you want me to be receiving ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Before we get into fixing things in advance, letting CS1 editors fix things, having bots make millions of changes, having big red error messages, etc, we need to first get to a place where we agree on what should break. Take a look at the discussion that was linked from the template update as supporting the removal of the lay- parameters: Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 80#Changes to Cite news/doc. One person in that discussion thinks those parameters should be removed. In the additional discussions linked from the thread on this at CS1, there's maybe two more who supported removal prior to implementation. A lot of the "discussions" are like that, or like this one where there is significant opposition to the change being proposed, or like the string of deprecations of unhyphenated aliases where the motivating RfC explicitly did not support that move (and where the VP RfC that eventually happened found consensus against deprecation for a subset). So there's definitely the appearance of a clique of editors making decisions that affect millions of articles without fulsome community input, or in some cases in opposition to input from community members who are not part of that clique, as Sandy is talking about. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:12, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes. With the demoralizing factor that WAID (whether here as “herself” or in her capacity as a WMF person) is apparently more supportive of that small group than of the rest of us. That’s the demoralization (that someone who works for WMF is not seeing the extent of the problem, even if here not speaking in her official capacity).

Nikki, we need a way to get together on this; it’s been happening for ten years. Can we form an informal group to monitor those pages? Is there a reason ala canvassing that you can’t inform the rest of us when something like this is happening? I followed those pages for a long time after the last debacle, but it’s not English. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:48, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Monitoring is fine; the issue is whether objections are seen as valid when they're something other than technical in nature. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Redefinition of MEDRS, a long-standing and widely-accepted guideline, on a help:citation page

• See Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#A_proposal

Having removed the MEDRS-compliant lay-url (which was not used to source medical content), over at the help citation template discussion, the best I can decipher (because it’s mostly code speak), MEDRS is being completely reinterpreted with statements like:

• “lay sources that pass RS should be preferable”
• “Lay sources are not invalidated or considered ‘inferior’.”
• “ If a lay source is good enough to be used in |lay-source= then it should be good enough to stand on its own”
• “if a lay source is judged reliable after scrutiny (i.e. represents salient facts correctly and without bias) it is as eminently citable as any other so-judged reliable source”

as part of a proposal to simply bundle lay sources as a regular citation.

This is a re-interpretation of MEDRS, happening without so much as the courtesy of conducting the discussion at WT:MEDRS, rather among two or three editors on a citation template page, who have taken the stance that lay sources can stand alone to source medical content. This is something I have never seen accepted or done, period, in medical sourcing. Ever.

For those not completely aware of how the lay-source parameter was used, here is a very good example, from the most recent medical FA, Menstrual cycle:

• Emera D, Romero R, Wagner G (January 2012). "The evolution of menstruation: a new model for genetic assimilation: explaining molecular origins of maternal responses to fetal invasiveness". BioEssays (Journal article). 34 (1): 26–35. doi:10.1002/bies.201100099. PMC 3528014. PMID 22057551. See BBC Earth lay summary, 20 April 2015.

It is a recent journal article that complies with WP:MEDRS, and is what the text is sourced to. It is dense and technical. The lay article from the BBC offers an overview in simpler language; an adjunct for the reader, but not something one would ever cite medical content to; even well written lay sources often have medical errors, and this one has a lot of opinion. But it serves to help the reader understand the terminology so they can then better digest the actual source. We provide it in a case like this for a simpler overview, but we don’t source content to it.

WhatamIdoing I have moved from being astounded at the nonchalance over the reaction of those who care about these errors, to now in a state of awestruck wonder at the ongoing marvels of Wikipedia, whereby those who write code can re-interpret medical sourcing guideline.

Guerillero what say you next? We’ve already had Izno’s feedback. Nikkimaria what can we do next? A noticeboard will be as useless as trying to follow that page was, and past experience shows you can’t get answers in English.

Colin where are you on this: a decade and a half of integrity in medical content: poof. Have you stopped watching MEDRS? I know Graham has taken a break because “this place can be harmful to your mental health”. That it can. @Ajpolino, Spicy, Lukelahood, and Casliber: anybody watching MEDRS? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:18, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, and apparently the correct Wikispeak for this isn’t something I’m up on, because the parameter is still there, just disabled or some such thing, so that articles have jolly big red errors. I guess we’re supposed to be impressing our readers with that. Oh, wait, our readers don’t read our articles or our sources anyway, so why do we care. I gotta get with the program! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:59, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

The above misunderstandings of the lay parameter seem to be coming from an IP. Can you ignore them? I've only been skimming the discussion since I don't have much to add that hasn't been expressed already. Interesting that all this effort is being made to find out what is using the parameters after the change. I am concerned that those who made the change think now and on an obscure talk page is the place to justify their change. I am worried that the big red warning will cause some "helpful" wikignome to go around deleting all the lay summary citations and then there won't be any way to fix the issue. They should have come up with an agreed alternative and then offered to run some script to fix the thousands of usages e.g. bundling the citations appropriately. -- Colin°^Talk 08:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I don’t think ignoring IPs is recommended, as “they count, too”, and there are now two IPs using this same logic in those discussions. The standard operating methods around citation templates deviate, and always have, from what all of the rest of us do everywhere else; this is the long-standing problem that makes this problem so difficult. Template:Cite journal (which is protected) now recommends a disputed change to correct these errors by adding a full citation template to a lay source. Can some kind admin please add a disputed tag to that template, before exactly what Colin mentions starts happening ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:43, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

And as you can see, now we have Guerillero supporting this as well, so it’s folly to ignore IPs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:52, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• While is it a pain to switch over the ~3k citations, TtM's cite lay source template seems like a decent path forward and makes these important links available in a robust way that won't go away on a whim. --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 11:42, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  We don’t cite the lay press for medical content; Ttm’s method is disputed, and discussions about MEDRS should happen at MEDRS, not on an obscure page no one follows. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:45, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

There was a time when they did read our articles AND the sources

• Miliard, Mike (December 12, 2007). "Wikipedia rules". The Phoenix. It might even get the rarer 'Feature' designation — 'Definitive. Outstanding . . . a great source for encyclopedic information' — of which there are just 1752. (See the piece on Tourette's Syndrome, a crisp and information-packed 5200 words, with eight book-length sources and 84 online references.)

Hundreds of medical articles being edited against consensus

The pattern continues. With no resolution of the disputed change, a personal preference is being installed broadly across hundreds of medical articles.

See discussion here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Nikkimaria 1) Should a Minor edit tag be used on these controversial edits? 2) How can I tell if they are being performed manually or via bot? 3) Is the next stop ANI or is AN better for this purpose? 4) Or should we move direct to an RFC to attempt to stem these repeated issues?

In either case, we need a refined and comprehensive list of every previous similarity. I will start through the list above, but I'm sure there are more. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:46, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

1) No. 2) They're probably being performed manually given the speed, or possibly script-assisted. 3-4) Depends on whether you are looking to address this single spate of edits (in which case AN/ANI may be appropriate if they persist or if mass rollback is needed), or the broader pattern (which is unlikely to be well-handled at ANI - although tbh I am not sure what venue would best address it). Nikkimaria (talk) 15:50, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I am more interested in stemming the broader problem, which has gone on for years. @Hog Farm, Spicy, Ealdgyth, AleatoryPonderings, Guerillero, WhatamIdoing, Buidhe, Ajpolino, Jo-Jo Eumerus, ProcrastinatingReader, Aza24, and Colin: (I believe that is everyone who weighed in here.) So, AN is next unless this stops? Is this blockable behavior, considering the long-standing pattern? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:54, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I suspect that if the current spate continues, the best place to take it will be AN. And I'm worried that given the sham RFC that has occurred, it might take a new one advertised at T:CENT to get this resolved, much like with the "deprecation" of |accessdate. As to blockable, if most editors (including myself) were to make mass changes like this with weak/no consensus repeatedly, we would get blocked, but I think ttm is firmly in the "unblockable" portion of the power structure. I'm cynical that anything will actually stop the long-term pattern, so we'll probably have to pick which short-term battles are worth fighting. I would say backdoor erosion of MEDRS is definitely a hill to fight on. Hog Farm _Talk 19:56, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I think it is about 120 so far, starting with the As. (I didn't notice it until it hit my watchlist, and the brazenness is a concern.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:00, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I've attempted to stay out of this debate because I have somewhat conflicting feelings on how the CS1/CS2 templates should be handled. I'd probably ask on Trappist's talk page first. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:57, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: - Asking nicely on their talk page likely won't work, given that I asked lay-url|a reasonable question about this last month and never got a reply. Hog Farm _Talk 19:02, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I suspect the only way to get an answer is by asking where I did (on the CS1 help page), but then the issues seem to be swept under the rug. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:14, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Citation style pages and the bots that are powered up supposedly randomly, and often in spite of FAOWN, are well known walled gardens; one of the few times they are subject to scrutiny and actually accept any problematic behavior is when it's ended up in the SWAMP. Not saying that's where we're at; just saying we have been. SN54129 20:08, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I would suggest opening an RFC asking which format should be used. It shouldn't be this way - the onus should be on those wishing to change the template to demonstrate that they have more than a local consensus - but I can't see any other way to handle this. BilledMammal (talk) 20:01, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

If I do an RFC, it's going to be to address the question of how to stop the overall behavior, not just this instance. This is a lather-rinse-repeat that has been going on for a long time. The problem is, once the CS1 changes are done, we (the rest of us) can't get them undone, because we can't just revert something that is done without consensus. Any RFC needs to deal with the problem in the power structure. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

That would be better, but a proposal that won't result in WP:NOTBURO objections is needed if we want it to pass, and I couldn't think of one. BilledMammal (talk) 20:11, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Well, it goes back to what is being discussed at Iridescent's talk page: WMF vs. Wikipedia. Do enough editors care to try to get this to stop? An RFC is needed to force WP:CENT approval, well-formed RFCs closed by a panel, before these kinds of changes can be forced through backdoors. Because they hold the technical reins, once non-consensual changes are made, the rest of us can't get them reversed even when consensus is demonstrated. In the WMF v. Wikipedia world, WMF is consensus, apparently. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:26, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Unless I missed something I don't believe WMF is involved in this; it appears to only involve enwiki editors? BilledMammal (talk) 22:03, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Aye, this is an on-wiki issue about the CS1/2 templates and the editors who maintain them; it doesn't seem like the WMF is in any way involved. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:17, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/TRAPPIST-1/archive1

Greetings, noting here that I went ahead with the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/TRAPPIST-1/archive1 FAC nomination since we discussed this article a few months ago. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:30, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't successful. Back to peer review before another attempt. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:30, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

J. K. Rowling

Really glad that things seem to have gone well with the J. K. Rowling main page. Was a bit worried it'd end with a bunch of attacks, so very glad to see it going okay. I did realise last night that the timing was a bit terrible, though: It's in the middle of Pride, but, well, it's run it now or run it never in anything like its current form, I suspect. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 19:18, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it's quite rare to see a subject which is both contentious and high profile as an FA. Well done indeed. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:48, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

I got one critical comment but otherwise it seems to have worked out fine. Well done.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:15, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much ! We set the tone early on in the FAR; we are all here to collaborate, listen, cooperate, and reach consensus, and we aren't having any non-collaborative BS. As the "crowd" coalesced, even with differing opinions, I really believed it would hold together on TFA day, and hoped that Joe Roe would be wrong. At 99,066, it barely missed Wikipedia:Today's featured article/Most viewed, which is a disappointment. It could have been dreadful; instead, it has been a most rewarding collaboration. I wish TFA days at Buruli ulcer and dementia with Lewy bodies had gone as smoothly as JKR did ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:37, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping... have you guys taken one look at what people off wiki thought about us running a TFA about a (Redacted), during LGBTQ pride month, across from an ITN about a mass shooting at a pride event? Because it's not pretty. That's the trouble I was predicting, not an uptick in vandalism. And honestly this patting yourself on the back about what a civil discussion you had just illustrates why we keep ending up with shit like this on the main page. Nobody outside the Wikipedia bubble cares that there was a consensus. They care about what they're reading and what message it sends. The fact that a comparatively tiny group of Wikipedia editors didn't spot that something was a terrible idea doesn't mean that it wasn't a terrible idea. – Joe (talk) 09:38, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Aren't you a delight. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:41, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

You pinged me to gloat that your offensive stunt gave you the warm fuzzies, what do you want to hear? – Joe (talk) 09:45, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Something beyond shit. And yes, I have googled every day to see if there has been fallout offWiki. Your select audiences are a good reason Wikipedia should not succumb to the inevitable complaints by internet activists. I'm also not fond of hosting a BLP vio from someone who should know better on my talk page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:48, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Neither was I referring to an "uptick in vandalism"; there was a relative (compared to other TFAs) absence of criticism or changes needed to the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:55, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Not gonna repeat what others have said, but thanks a lot for your amazing work on J. K. Rowling. This is ignore all rules at its peak. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:15, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks ... but I'm not aware of any "rule" we ignored.

The issue of Pride month was never raised in the many discussion between February, when the TFA was proposed, and right up to the day it ran. Rather, editors of divergent opinions on the topic came together to produce a dispassionate and even-handed analysis of the sources which was not a disservice to the kinds of reading Joe Roe does. Wikipedia used the tenets of collaborative editing (albeit inadvertently on choosing TFA day) and did not succumb to the vitriol and issues raised by sources on freedom of speech, academic freedom and cancel culture; while demonstrating the support for transgender people from the literary, arts and culture sectors. (Some text copied from J. K. Rowling.)

I suppose some people see their glasses as half full, while others tend towards always empty. That is, some people can't take "yes" for an answer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:44, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Had I remembered that Pride month is ordinarily held in June in the rest of the UK, I probably would have said something. However because in Northern Ireland we hold it in August, to avoid clashes with Orange Order parades that take up most most of June and the first half of July, it completely slipped my mind.

In the end though, it all turned out well. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:04, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

What I meant by IAR is that you don't need to jump through hoops of RfC, NPOV noticeboard and bureaucracy in order to make the article more neutral like some people think that it must do so. You can make the article more neutral if everyone in the discussion is determined to do so, without these formal systems. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Ah, understood now; agreed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:59, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Sources

Pape, Madeleine (2022). "Feminism, trans justice, and speech rights: a comparative perspective". Law and Contemporary Problems. 85 (1): 215–240. Retrieved 29 March 2022. Schwirblat, Tatiana; Freberg, Karen; Freberg, Laura (2022). "Chapter 21: Cancel culture: a career vulture amongst influencers on social media". In Lipschultz, Jeremy Harris; Freberg, Karen; Luttrell, Regina (eds.). The Emerald Handbook of Computer-Mediated Communication and Social Media. Emerald Publishing Limited. doi:10.1108/978-1-80071-597-420221021. ISBN 978-1800715981. Steinfeld, Jemimah (2020). "Not my turf: Helen Lewis argues that vitriol around the trans debate means only extreme voices are being heard". Index on Censorship. 49 (1). doi:10.1177/0306422020917609. Suissa, Judith; Sullivan, Alice (February 2021). "The gender wars, academic freedom and education". Journal of Philosophy of Education. 55 (1): 55–82. doi:10.1111/1467-9752.12549. S2CID 233646159. Wagner, Wolfgang; Hayes, Nicky (2022). "Repressive moralism: world making and petty fascism in transgender politics" (PDF). Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science. Springer Publishing. doi:10.1007/s12124-021-09670-4. PMID 34988872. S2CID 245709011.

Further, as David Fuchs points out: "You could argue given the state of LGBT rights in the world there's never a good time to run Rowling's article.". Acccording to the scholarly sources, that would be the desired outcome along the lines of Joe Roe's advocacy. It's also interesting that the one semi-serious complaint that we got, and hopefully resolved, was that we were being too critical of Rowling. The lack of criticism of this TFA stands out, in my TFA experience. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:58, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

Slurp, slurp. KJP1 (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Wonderful! Hope it's strong enough ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:39, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Featured article leads

I've been perusing through some of the high-visibility FAs recently. It's surprising how bloated and/or poorly organized their leads in particular can get, which is unfortunate because many readers will read the lead and nothing else. Has there ever been an idea of, say, requiring substantive changes to FA leads to get consensus? Anyway, I don't know how to feel about making relatively drastic changes like this, because maybe there's some sort of implicit consensus in the lead of an article with millions of views per year. Ovinus (talk) 02:55, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Ovinus I lean towards WikiDragon in my approach, so I'd suggest being bold! Just because an article is widely viewed or rated featured does not mean there's no room for improvement. Besides, if it passed a long time ago the lead may have looked very different. (t · c) buidhe 04:09, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Ovinus, that is a big concern, but I don't have time to respond with care until after the wedding ... pls ping me next week if I forget ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:50, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Ovinus I'm sorry I haven't yet gotten back to this. A partial answer is at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#Seeking consensus for table modification. A longer answer involves the downward trend of all types of review (except prose nitpicks) at FAC, including review of leads, which once were considered urgent as they formed the basis for the blurb at WP:TFA. I don't expect anything can be done about any of these trends, but I certainly applaud you for trying. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:27, 30 June 2022 (UTC)