William Allen Simpson

See Help:Talk page#How to keep a two-way conversation readable. When you begin a new message section here, I will respond to it here. Likewise, whenever I begin a message section on your Talk page, I will watch the page for your response. This maintains discussion threads and continuity.

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Deletion review of Infidel userbox

I've moved this debate on to Wikipedia:Deletion review/Userbox debates. David | Talk 14:52, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I forgot about the subpage.

--William Allen Simpson 14:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

For cleaning up the Holding Cell. I hadcompeltely forgotten about it. Circeus 15:29, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)

Hi William, in this edit you said "the example is used consistently in several guidelines", I cannot find any other uses of this in other guidelines or, more importantly, any consensus that this is the prefered way to link to places. It is certainly contrary to how places are linked to in featured articles, and googling Wikipedia for "Rome, Italy" I could only find articles linked in the method before you changed the guideline.

In fact, on Wikipedia:WikiProject Location Format it says to do the opposite to your change, and on the talk page I could not see any support for your changed style, other than references to it being in the MOS, but that was only because you added it as far as I can tell. Martin 17:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

It's the middle of my day, shouldn't be looking in, but the short answer off the top of my head is you didn't look very hard or well. Try Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic.

For years, nearly all links in US and Canada used the full contextual link, instead of the annoying piped overlinking, until some folks using AWB started changing them en masse. Also, the ancient world articles still use contextual links. Fortunately, the AWB abusers don't (yet) seem to recognize them automatically.

Arguably, that project wouldn't even exist had not the original contextual links been used in the past. After my 2006-01-31 documentation of long existing consensus, that project was nearly entirely re-written by Quarl on 2006-02-07 (one week later).

That project has repeatedly been cited for being contrary to existing guidelines. More than half of its Talk archive is in opposition to the project. And you apparently ignored the very first section on its Talk this year just after the massive re-write, with comments copied from WP:AN/I by SPUI, Golbez, Howcheng, Kaldari, and I versus Quarl.

Finally, as I've mentioned in the past, AWB is responsible for quantitatively more damage than any single vandal. Please be rid of that annoying piped overlinking feature.

--William Allen Simpson 20:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

AWB has got nothing to do with this, I am tired of your false claims, the only changes AWB makes to links are very simple things like [[Dog|dog]] to [[dog]], which as you can see reduces excess piping, any other changes must have made manually.

If you look harder you will see plenty of articles that use link like "Rome, Italy", as this has been the de facto standard, way before AWB was even created.

Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic is about the specific case of disambiguation, whereas Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) says link to "Rome, Italy" rather than "[[Rome, Italy|Rome]], [[Italy]]" which is regardless of whether it is a disambiguation.

Again, I see no agreement anywhere with your changes, I still await links to the "several guidelines" that use the given example, I can also see common practice is not to do it the way your change supposes. Please answer these points specifically. Martin 21:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, I didn't ignore the first section of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Location Format, I read the whole thing, you have clearly ignored most of that page, as you will see there is obviously no consensus, in fact there is a fairly even split between opinions. Martin 11:46, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Since I have now linked to agreement expressed by at least 8 editors, while adding you to Quarl and MrD9 makes 3, that you "see no agreement" is an odd form of blindness. The correct form is "[[Rome, Italy]]", regardless of whether it is a disambiguation.

Furthermore, many thousands of city and town pages by many hundreds of different editors use(d) the form (paging 500 changes at a time):

• [[St. Louis County, Minnesota]],
• [[Randolph County, Illinois]],
• [[Clayton County, Iowa]],
• [[Perry County, Missouri]],
• [[Polk County, Minnesota]],
• ....

Plenty of evidence that your assertion is incorrect.

As to AWB, your constant refrain is that "any other changes must have made manually." [sic] You've written this regarding geographic links, and date links, and more topics than I can remember. All that the rest of us actually know is the edit summary says: "(... using AWB)". This was happening at the rate of 5 edits per second minute (at the contributions link just cited), covering over 400 hundred city and town pages (of the 500 links cited), and you can page through many hours and days, thousands at a time. That these are done manually is just hogwash!

There is so much evidence that AWB has been abused that in the real world it would be deemed an attractive nuisance.

--William Allen Simpson 12:06, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Again, you totally misunderstand, AWB is semi-automatic, so these changes can be done manually at a fast rate, in fact I don't believe it would be possible to code something to do what you have asserted, as there are far too mant variations in the format and potential for false positives. The date de-linking was done using some kind of regular expression, so that was much faster still, but when it became clear that was controversial I stopped the users doing it from using the software.

Citing examples is ridiculous, I could also give thousands.

And also, how do you calculate 8 to 3?, fuddle, android79, quarl, kaldari, MrD9 and myself, verses SPUI, howcheng, yourself and DLJessup, that is clearly not 8 v 3, a few of the other comments are unclear. So if you look more closely it it obvious there is no consensus, plus most of those comments do not support in any way an addition to the style guidelines. I still await links to the "several guidelines" that use the given example. Martin 14:13, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

P.s. Where did "5 edits a second" come from? That is totally impossible. Martin 14:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Pardon my error, the cite shows per minute. Corrected. Your other assertions are not supported by the evidence on the record.

--William Allen Simpson 22:44, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Please explain how you have concluded from the discussion that there is a consensus for your addition to the MOS, it seems plainly obvious to me that this is grossly incorrect. I still await links to the "several guidelines" that use the given example, though I am starting to think that they don't exist. Martin 01:55, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I brought the issue up at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Links_to_places, the responses agree that your change was wrong. Martin 01:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Some thoughts:

AWB is not the "problem" and is not causing it. Editors use the AWB tool to help accomplish what they have already been doing in a more efficient manner. AWB does not cause or push editors into using a different style of editing than they were using previously.

AWB does not have a feature that creates the "annoying" piped links that you mention. In fact, it can help do the opposite.

AWB users are making quite a large number of contributions to Wikipedia as a whole and the style issue that concerns you is not an AWB one, it is an editor one. AWB is not the issue.

Also, I think that is it worth mentioning that the use of AWB in the comment line does not mean that the user is only using AWB. For example, I use AWB but also often use it in conjuntion with jEdit, GNU Aspell, and various macros to tie those software applications together.

—-- That Guy, From That Show! ^(esperanza) 2006-05-08 14:10

Polish voivodships

Your move of all of them to new names was a major one. I made a brief mention of it on Wikipedia talk:Polish Wikipedians' notice board to see what others think about it. Feel free to comment. Balcer 15:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, you have not provided any source information for this name change. I myself doubt any of these are "official titles in English" as the capitalization and word order are not standard English at all, and these terms have no precedent in prior use. Unless you can provide strong evidence of official insistence on these titles, they will be reverted. Regards,  ProhibitOnions  ^(T) 12:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, you didn't bother to read the relevant information at:

• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland#Current guidelines
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland#Official English names used in Polish Government
• administrative divisions of Poland
• map of Poland

--William Allen Simpson 01:30, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how the two Polish government links support your strange non-English/non-Polish naming convention. Kusma (討論) 01:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

The "Administrative Division of Poland 2006" very clearly has that pairing in that order (term adjective), with hundreds of examples, as previously described (over a period of weeks) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland.

The current Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)#Term of ShortName states:

When the place has an official English form that includes a "Term of", or the native language usually has a prefix descriptor, then that form of the term should be used in articles.

• Examples: District of Columbia, Province of Rome

A redirect page should be added to catch and repair references in suffix form.

Redirects are cheap.

Wikipedia:No original research is policy.

--William Allen Simpson 01:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I see precisely zero versions of "Voivodship slaskie" or any similar English-Polish mixture. The names used are all "Wojewodztko slaskie" etc., Polish only. The link you cite "solves" the problem by not providing any English name for individual voivodships, and provides no support for your version of the names. Kusma (討論) 01:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Huh? I see an introductory sentence, a lot of explanation, and an entire table: "Voivodship (Województwo)", "Counties (Powiat)", and "Communes (Gmina)". Perhaps you could explain how Łódź Voivodship (Polish noun, English Term, wrong capitalization), Śląsk Voivodship (Polish variant of Silesian language, English Term, wrong capitalization), or Świętokrzyskie Voivodship (Polish adjective, English Term, wrong capitalization) is supported by the guideline? Or the official Polish?

There is no "English name" for the voivodships, and some of the current made-up names are laughable. "We're Wikipedia, and we just make it up as we go along." Disgusting.

There exist some translations or equivalents in English for general regions that may not exactly match. I tried to fix that, too, in the separate template.

But at least I learned something from you, that there were Erdős categories, and added mine to my User page.

--William Allen Simpson 02:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Translation of geographic names is not like mathematics. It will always be messy and somewhat arbitrary. I am sorry if that disgusts you. The fact remains that neither of the documents you cited contains the precise, exact formulation like "Voivodship slaskie" used in a valid sentence. Please present some examples of such usage in official documents, and then we can continue this discussion. Also, please remember that official government translators are also fallible human beings who often "make it up as they go along", and don't have the final word on the subject. If their translation is demonstrated as incompetent, we are not forced to use it. Balcer 03:28, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

That phrase doesn't appear in a sentence in that document, because the document is primarily tables. For a selection in several venues:

• REPREZENTACJA KOMISJI EUROPEJSKIEJ - PHARE w Polsce - baza danych
• Family background and educational attainment throughout the ...
• Rybnik county (Poland)

Anyway, I've spent some 20 years working in the international standards arena, and I'm familiar with incompetent translations. However, it's not up to Wikipedians to decide whether "official government translators ... don't have the final word on the subject." As I mentioned elsewhere,

Whether (or not) "voivodship" is "hybrid" or "ugly", should the official English name change to "mabifargtiddlywop" tomorrow, then en.wikipedia will move the articles to that page title, with redirects from the older name. Redirects are cheap. Wikipedia:No original research is policy.

--William Allen Simpson 04:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

1. I am somewhat puzzled, as links 1 and 3 don't use the form you are proposing at all, as far as I can see. Besides, none of these qualify as official Polish government websites, so the official use argument does not apply. Please be more careful when selecting references to back up your claims, otherwise I will have to conclude that you are not serious, at which point my only reasonable option will be to abandon this discussion.

2. I am sure you can find some "venues" where the expression is used, but so what?. Unfortunately, after leaving the Communist Bloc as recently as 1989 and having Russian as a mandatory second language in schools before that, the number of Poles speaking English at a high level is relatively low. This means that a Polish website using English language correctly is unfortunately still the exception rather than the rule.

3. As to your last point, you are simply wrong, which can be demonstrated quickly with a notable example. The Ukrainian government has decreeded that the official English name of Ukraine's capital is Kyiv, and yet the Wikipedia article is under Kiev. Please give Talk:Kiev a quick read. There are pages and pages of discussion about the issue in the talk page archives. Balcer 05:19, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

1. All three contain "the precise, exact formulation (as you specified), and all three use one or more other variants. That's why I chose them in particular, partly to demonstrate that Poland is quite right to try to standardize, even though it may take a long time for the rest of the world to catch up. Wikipedia should be at the forefront of such efforts, not lagging behind.

2. Other than "decreeded" and other small discrepancies, your English is quite good. I appreciate that you are taking the time to improve the articles here. I'm sure that we can also find many badly done pages by folks that are 'native' English speakers, but so what?

3. This is a place for recording the decisions of the world, not for making such decisions. If the official English name is Kyiv then that's what it is, and there really isn't anything to discuss.

A lot of pointless argument takes place around here, mostly by fairly ignorant yet opinionated teenagers. Hopefully, you're not one of them.

And with that, I've got to sleep, I have another long day tomorrow.

--William Allen Simpson 05:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Category questions ...

I have a few of questions about categories and wasn't sure who I should ask.

1. Do you know how I can tell how long a category has been empty? I can tell from the history when it was blanked, but really that's not the same thing, since category membership is really a property of the individual articles, and not of the categories themselves. It becomes an issue because for speedy delete its supposed to be empty for four days, and I just find them on the uncategorized categories list and don't know for sure how long they have been empty.
2. On a related note, is there any way to tell what a category used to contain? I'd like to restore Category:Persian deities.
3. I'm somewhat concerned about Category: Filipino writers; it was emptied and orphaned before a cfm, and I don't think thats appropriate.
4. Do you know who I would ask about refreshing the uncategorized categories list? I think its mostly done and I'm beginning to lose track of which ones I've done already.
5. What would you think of splitting the current speedy rename list into two parts, one for rename, and one for delete?
6. I have to say I'm quite pleased with speedy delete ... I've had things vanish before I even get around to listing them!

Thanks in advance for your help -- ProveIt ^(talk) 20:54, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

1. no, there's no history of the contents.
2. no, again.
3. I agree it wasn't appropriate, and there are several administrators that I'd toss off the *pedia for violating process, but the teen gangs around here routinely get away with it.

--William Allen Simpson 16:38, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes: A New Proposal

Hey, I've noticed that you've been active on the Userbox deletion page, either strongly FOR or AGAINST the use of the new T2 for deleting userboxes. I have noticed that most of the community is strong in their opinions on this issue; for that reason, I created my own proposal which attempts to create a middle ground for the two groups, and finally get this debate settled once and for all. I welcome your input into the proposal, as well as your (non-binding) vote on the straw poll. Thanks! // ^The True _Sora 01:31, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Category:Anti-Semitic people

Vote They are attempting to close the +cat AGAIN, please vote to KEEP. SirIsaacBrock 10:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

If you change, move or delete anything I post at the Vote I will report it as vandalism. SirIsaacBrock 16:44, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

DO NOT subvert the discussion. --William Allen Simpson 16:54, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Alexander the Great

Why u are deleting the categories Category:Macedonian monarchs and Category:Greek Macedonians? --Hectorian 02:54, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Because we don't include super-categories (or sub-categories), see Wikipedia:Categorization/Categories and subcategories

--William Allen Simpson 03:03, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Go on 'eliminating supra-categories', without responding to my comment on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 May 21...--Hectorian 04:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

(clean up using AWB)

You just did this to a pile of pages on my watchlist, and for the life of me, I cannot see what you "fixed"!?!? For example:

• Alexander_the_Great
• Germanic_peoples
• Kermanshah_Province

Don't just move blank lines and spaces around. They don't make an actual change to the layout or display.

--William Allen Simpson 13:53, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello. They don't make changes to layout when you view it, but when you edit it, it all looks nicer and tidier. --K a s h ^{Talk | email} 13:56, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. For example, you removed blank lines after section headers (contrary to standard Mediawiki software practice), blanks at the end of lines (pointless), and capitalized the word "category" (useless).

Also, you are banging away at the server at 5-10 seconds per edit, a major no-no! Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser#Rules of use:

• Don't edit too fast; consider opening a bot account if you are regularly making more than a few edits a minute.
• Avoid making extremely minor edits such as only adding or removing some white space or moving a stub tag. The Spaces section in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style Headings guideline contains details on different acceptable spacing options in and around section headings.

AWB is only for cleanup when you are doing some other substantive work on a page, not a "cleanup" tool.

--William Allen Simpson 14:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

It can be used as a cleanup tool. I will look in to what you suggested though, thanks. --K a s h ^{Talk | email} 14:10, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

No, stop using it as a "cleanup" tool. And stop using it at a high rate of speed, especially during the busiest time of day.

--William Allen Simpson 14:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Stop talking that, it is not WP:Civil. I have not used it for an hour or two now I believe. --K a s h ^{Talk | email} 14:34, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Since you insist on moving the discussion to my Talk, instead of following Help:Talk page#How to keep a two-way conversation readable, and my notice (at top), I'll just reply here.

I've asked that you be removed from AWB approval for failing to follow the rules.

--William Allen Simpson 14:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I am dissapointed in your action. I hope you learn to communite better with Wikipedians in future. --K a s h ^{Talk | email} 14:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No factions of belief

I'm a bit busy over the next couple of weeks, but if you feel this is a good idea, I encourage you to refactor this and make a fresh start under a title like Wikipedia:User groups. I think, based on the comments, it would work best as a guideline.--Eloquence* 08:53, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Category:Military people of France

Hello. Regarding your proposal on WP:CFDS: there is a debate currently going on in WP:MILHIST's Talk page regarding a proposed recategorization. It would be great if you could drop by the page and let us know what you think. Regards - Andrés C. 14:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Greek Macedonians

Well, I've tried to straighten it out; let me know what you think. Septentrionalis 02:18, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Natives of ...

Hi, In relation to Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_May_23#Natives_to_People, I understand your concerns that some people abuse Wikipedia as forum to play out ethnic disputes. Just a quick question, though, which I've asked but you haven't answered: are you going to propose a similar name change for the categories included in the following: Category:Irish people by county, Category:English people by county, Category:French people by place, Category:German_people_by_state, Category:Swiss_people_by_canton, and Category:Italian people by region? They all of use the pattern Natives of .....--Damac 12:54, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Ethnic etc categories

I dp not intend to do anything wrong, so what is 'vote stacking'? This could be an unhealthy act or just name calling. I have no idea of the opinion of the editor to whom I noted? The editor might have agreed with me or not and I did not ask him to agree with me. Thanks Hmains 21:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry

I've been mostly swamped by life and work, so I couldn't (and still haven't been able to, really) close any cfd discussions. :/ Syrthiss 11:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

"out of process AfD tag" on single letter double digit page

It was in fact not meant for the redirect page. I fail to see the need to have the page, and I'd like to know why you decided it was out of process when it is in fact my decision as a WP user to start an AfD. MSJapan 04:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Then apparently you didn't read the actual Wikipedia:Deletion policy instructions for AfD, nor the speedy keep by administrator Kusma. (Coincidentally, we were both working on the problem from different sides.)

--William Allen Simpson 00:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

List of all single-letter-double-digit combinations

I have deleted this cross-namespace redirect to Wikipedia:List of all single-letter-double-digit combinations. I believe you had mistakenly created the list in the wrong namespace and then moved it. If my deletion was wrong and there is a good reason you believe the redirect should stay, drop me a line and I'll restore it. (Typically, such redirects do get deleted at WP:RFD though). Happy editing, Kusma (討論) 15:06, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Please restore. All these tables were originally in main space, but after AfD&CfD discussion were moved en mass to Wikipedia space. The redirects were deliberately left because they are used in the List of reference tables, and in the several AfD, CfD, and TfD discussions. They probably should be {{R unprintworthy}}.

--William Allen Simpson 00:44, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I have restored the redirect. Kusma (討論) 00:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Referring to the deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_deletion#List_of_all_single-letter-single-digit_combinations_.E2.86.92_Wikipedia:List_of_all_single-letter-single-digit_combinations ... The reason why there is a significant problem right now is that some of the lists were moved into Wikipedia namespace and some where not (such as, in the latter group, List of all two-letter combinations). I would advocate, as my support for moving List of all single-letter-single-digit combinations into the Wikipedia namespace is consistent with, all the related lists where the meaning of the list is focused on description of a word/symbol artifact itself rather than having any relation to the meaning of the word/symbol artifact into the Wikipedia namespace. Another solution is one created for Wiktionary, the creation of an 'Appendix' class of pages in Wikipedia that is in the main article space but is clearly distinct from the main encyclopedia content, something like the role that the gazatteer and tables of weights and measures and unit conversions have in large format dictionaries. I don't recall if I'd mentioned the Wiktionary Appendices before ... see Wiktionary:Appendix:Contents. Has this matter of the lists of x-character words been discussed at the Village Pump before, do you recall? I have not frequented the Pump, but recent happenings and trends at WP:AN/I suggest I should perhaps change that habit. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

1. After Wikipedia Requested Move, List of all two-letter combinations (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) was moved to Wikipedia:List of all two-letter combinations (edit | [[Talk:Wikipedia:List of all two-letter combinations|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and promptly moved back by Docu (talk · contribs). I'm sure he has his reasons.
2. I'm not familiar with the Wiktionary Appendices. There is no reason that cannot be done here as well. "Namespaces" are arbitrary, infinite, and easy to add (technically). The only ones reserved are (Main), Template, and Category. There's entirely too much emphasis on "namespace" integrity. It's all data. Bits are bits are bits. So, I'd support a new Appendix namespace.
3. I don't recall any recent Pump discussion, but almost all of them have been AfD once or twice each. So, there's plenty of discussion. (I only look at the Pump once a week or so, and usually only policy and technical.) I rarely watch AN/I. Is there something recent?

--William Allen Simpson 00:47, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

During the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion/Redirect Archives/June 2006, User:Kusma (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) mentioned: "If deleted, move back into main space? Or move all reference tables into Portal space?"

The Portal: space idea is novel to me, I'd never heard it mentioned before. Wouuld you find that acceptable?

The other possibility mentioned on my Talk was a proposed new Appendix: space, similar to that at Wiktionary. This is where Wiktionary moved their Appendix:List of two-letter combinations in December 2005.

I've asked for feedback from Docu (the creator) and Kusma, too.

--William Allen Simpson 11:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello

Hiya, I was perusing some of the Province/Voivodship debates, and saw your name there. Then when I dug in deeper, I saw that you're in Michigan, and have an interest in U.S. politics. I was delighted to see this, as I'm actually working on an article which requires some research into Michigan political/newspaper archives, and I've been having some trouble with this as I'm in Missouri. Would you be able to offer assistance? I'll also see what I can do about getting more eyes into the Voivodship debates. --Elonka 19:48, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Any Good Explaination?

Hi! Why do you think it proper to just toss someone's work away? Have you got so much free time that you feel empowered somehow to disrespect anothers good faith efforts? Template talk: see also is NOT what people see if they use {{see also}} to see usage instructions. {{main}} had such, why not an seldom seen like see also. More importantly, why bother? Do you need to run up your edit count or something really important? Please do grow up a bit. Sincerely disgusted, // FrankB 18:57, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Did you revert or cut? See: User_talk:CBDunkerson#Mystery_Manifestation. The template is now categorizing a displayed category... perhaps it had all day. I don't know. But since you fiddled, we get this conumdrum... and about a fifty-minute loss to my productivity. // FrankB 00:27, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

1. As you've already demonstrated that your userbox en-∞ is inaccurate (and certainly the only thing "godlike" is your arrogance), I'm not sure that you are due an "explaination" [sic]. Perhaps you could read the history and the talk, where you might note that I was the person that programmed the template.
2. Of course, Template:See also (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) isn't seldom seen, it's long been an integral part of the guidelines, that I maintained in the old Wikipedia:Section (edit | [[Talk:Wikipedia:Section|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), as recently merged to Wikipedia:Guide to layout (edit | [[Talk:Wikipedia:Guide to layout|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views).
3. Usage is always supposed to be on the Talk page, as edits to heavily used templates cause database thrashing. The problem isn't as bad as it used to be, now that the update queue is implemented, but I still only make changes to major templates during slack time.
4. As to edit count, I wonder why I'd need or want more?
5. Reading your diatribe at CBDunkerson (talk · contribs), he's already explained that "space colon category" isn't the same as "colon category". The wikimarkup is technically "[[:", and adding a space between the brackets and colon isn't proper syntax. This has nothing to do with {{see also}} itself, and my revert of your ill-advised changes had no effect on your error in usage. Stop blaming others for your own ignorance.
6. As to your productivity, why do you value it more than ours?

--William Allen Simpson 01:35, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

My arrogance? Because of a joke user box. Hah! But thanks for the lesson. When I get a moment, I'll do away with that one. I don't know of what diatribe you're refering, as my points to Conrad were on topic. I'm new to templates, and he's been kind enough to hold my hand. I think if I were abusing his time, he'd let me know by email as we're conversing there as well.

Re-read your remarks above for arrogance... (1) is obviously a personal attack, and off point so far I'd need GPS to find your page. Last time I looked, being edited unmercifully was part of wikip, and no one owns anything, even original authors. You'll note I didn't bother reverting... against my practices. I happen to think YOU should do that pennance for discourtesy, if nothing else. Did you bother questioning or even informing me of the revert? Case settled. Verdict: disrespect of anothers time, and your subconscious obviously knows, or you wouldn't have gotten rude on top of it.

Apologies for lashing out about growing up... but I get honest and blunt when ticked-off by nonsensical editing. The usage note there is far superior for the newbies I also try to sheppard as part of the welcoming committeee, or occasional template users such as myself. I swear there are some editors who do nothing but unnecessarily undo what others took time to put together... so you hit a hot button. Hopefully you truly aren't one of those.

Btw-Iteriots Tool was OOC that week, based on your contribs in the most recent screen I viewed, you certainly aren't doing much recent expansion or categorization and organization work. Embedding usage in the visible page is an old programming means of self-documentation, and I'm an old programmer who believes firmly in good useful documentation. I don't see the sense of forcing someone to access a seperate talk page where such usage is obfusticated in all sorts of other potential discussion (e.g. succession and succession box). Perhaps there's an equivilent to {{tl|pagename}} that would allow one to single link check the references on usage, but if so, I am ignorant of it. If not, being able to access the usage without trashing an overly abused history and browser stack is suboptimal to the way I edit and build—I'm usually editing five or six related pages for links at once and backing up to the first gets problematic enough as it is! The proper material on the talk is discussions about the edits made to a template, imho, not the usage. Frankly, the whole template 'usage' system write-ups I've seen are overall damn poor for the new user—it assumes one knows far too much about the consruction of templates and focuses poorly if at all on the end-users needs in plain English. So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

I've got to get back to real life. // FrankB 16:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

You are a true friend. BD2412 T 17:09, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

letter combinations

Category:Lists of four-character combinations, etc. are not disambiguation pages? --0x845FED 08:57, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Nope, the category and templates were decided at CfD and TfD some months ago, and discussed ad nauseum.

--William Allen Simpson 09:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I've read some of it, but the various discussions seem to be in many difference places, and it's not clear to me what the final conclusion was, or whether pages under the category should be formatted based on the WP:MOSDAB guidelines. --0x845FED 09:25, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia, where things that were once clear are constantly muddied. The main differences are the templates (2CC, 3CC, 4CC), and the frequent use of explanatory links. Abbreviation pages are encyclopedic and need links, while disambiguation pages are non-encylopedic, essentially multiple redirects. Don't waste a lot of time formatting disambiguation pages -- in an ideal world, they would never be seen.

--William Allen Simpson 09:34, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Portal space ~ Appendix

last message in thread at User talk:Ceyockey

The concept behind the Portal and Appendix options are essentially the same: setting aside a space that's closely linked to and abides by the policies of Main Article space but which has its own character and content focus and guidelines, that content still sitting inside the remit of the encyclopedia. With that in mind, I think either is ok. The advantage of the Portal option is that there is a template already available; the disadvantage is that the use might meet with a bit of resistance as the remit of Portal space is bent ever so slightly to accomodate this new content — my small understanding of Portals is that they are organizational zones for encyclopedia content, which is not what this new Portal would be about exactly as it would encapsulate content of its own given my notion of the intended use right now (which isn't set in stone). The advantage of the Appendix option is that it brings a whole new section to the encyclopedia, which is also one of its disadvantages; another disadvantage is that it is more prone to spiral in scope beyond the present intended purpose ... which could also be an advantage. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:56, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

An award!

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		For your unending new day updates to WP:CFD after we lost the bot. For all you do, this star is for you. Syrthiss 12:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Why are you abusing me?

You are being very insulting on categories for deletion. Can't you just trust the strength of your arguments, instead of insulting people who are doing their best to help improve Wikipedia? Chicheley 02:24, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

You have repeated the abuse a third time. So I forgot for a minute that U.S. Baptists are divided into two main streams (but I have read about it before). What's the odds that you are a lot more ignorant about my country than I am about yours William from South Carolina, USA? Five hundred-to-one on maybe? Chicheley 02:32, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Amusing. Need to hone your poor research skills. Amazingly bad, as I'm using my actual name, and there are well over 100,000 references to me on the 'Net.

Since there is no hint of "country" (nor expertise) on your User page, an incompetent oddsmaker as well.

Clearly, you didn't even read the Baptist article before creating useless sub-categories. We really don't need folks creating categories that aren't knowledgable about the subject area. That's not an improvement.

And we certainly don't need to divide/duplicate every category by country. That reflects a very "old world" myopia. Remember, each U.S. state is the legal equivalent of (and often larger than) an "old world" country. It's particularly meaningless for categories (such as Baptists) that are inherently transnational in scope and have no organization by country.

And while I'm responding to your personal attack here, there was no "abuse" at CfD. Indeed, you were not mentioned at all. Do not confuse factual accuracy with a personal attack.

--William Allen Simpson 12:16, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Just because you are technically correct does not justify your attitude. You don't own this project, we are all working together. Misunderstandings can be handeled in a civilized manner, with both parties being treated respectfully. You don't seem to have much respect for anyone other than yourself. Cacophony 18:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

U.S. Ambassadors

Hi, I noticed that you removed the category Category:United States Ambassadors to the Republic of China from several articles. You did not explain your reasons for having done so, and there is no apparent reason why the categories should have been removed. Moreover, the categories were not deleted, as they should have been if they were to be depopulated (although I don't think there's a good reason to delete them.) Regards, Paul 02:37, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully, in the future you will read edit summaries. And I see that you have found the CfD, and commented there. Your creation of the category was and is contrary to prior consensus.

--William Allen Simpson 11:44, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

AfD:Names of European cities in different languages

I notice you've contributed in the past to Names of European cities in different languages and its successor pages. There are proposals to delete these articles and the discussions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of European cities in different languages, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of Asian cities in different languages, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of African cities in different languages might interest you. AjaxSmack 19:00, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Roleplaying vs Role-playing quick follow-up

Thanks for looking into the Roleplaying/Role-playing topic. I agree with the decision to keep the categories as is since there wasn't full consensus. You had implied yesterday that you had some questions, but since that page is locked I summed up the discussion on the related category page at Category_talk:Role-playing_games#Spelling:_Roleplaying.

Just to answer one of the questions you mentioned, I got a lot of my information from the web from some of the gaming company sites, such as the Wizards of the Coast site and [ the City of Heroes Roleplaying Game web site]. Amazon.com also has a lot of listings of books with both "Roleplaying" and "Role-playing" in their title and description. For example, if you search for Chaosium on Amazon, you'll notice "Call of Cthulu: Horror Roleplaying..." and "Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium System (2003 edition)", but when you look at earlier editions they spelled it "Basic Role-Playing System". One exception I noticed is the "Everquest Role-Playing Game" from 2002, but otherwise current tabletop game titles appear to use the other spelling.

Also, FYI, you mentioned in one of your comments a few games from 10, 15 or 20 years ago like AD&D and GURPS 3rd edition and previous editions of Chaosium Basic Role-Playing System. You are correct that they used to spell the word that way, but the point I was posing is that currently most games appear to be using the other spelling. So the pattern seems to be shifting. The question of why is interesting, and I don't know the answer.

Anyway, just wanted to reply here since I couldn't do it on the locked page. Later! Dugwiki 18:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

DVRU note wording

I created a new version for the relatively new Userbox debates, making the text more concise and generic. I'd like to do the same here. --William Allen Simpson 15:44, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

• Your above comment was nearly lost until I started tweaking the template again. Thanks for your suggestion, I made changes to Template:DRVNote based on your Template:DRVU note. Thanks! --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:55, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Fringe physics

Please be careful when listing categories for emptying and deletion by bots. The decision of this CfD was to Keep, and merge a few of the articles to Pseudoscience. The decision was not to merge everything to Pseudoscience. Since the Fringe physics/Pseudoscience distinction is highly contentious, this has upset quite a few editors. --Philosophus ^T 00:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry. Reviewing my closing, I forgot to put the NO BOTS on the closing instruction, and Cydebot (talk · contribs) moved them all automatically. I'm not quite used to having that bot around.... Here's a list of the ones it moved.

--William Allen Simpson 01:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Please check your email

title: Wikipedia e-mail - re: template:Category redirect2. Thanks // FrankB 19:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Sai Kung

Re [1] - I'm interested to know if "empty" was an appropriate reason for deletion of this particular category. As I've mentioned, the user who nominated the category improperly depopulated the category before the nomination. The proper way is to preserve it as it was until decided by the community. — Instantnood 18:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

All I did was tally the votes, check that it was properly tagged on nomination, and check the contents. There was no opposition to the nomination. The items that are in a category are not "preserved", you'd have to put them back yourself. Interested folks had 8 days to repopulate it. It was still empty. And you didn't indicate keep, either.

--William Allen Simpson 21:23, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Categories should never be depopulated immediately before CfR, CfM or CfD nominations. I've explicitly indicated my reservation, yet user:Minghong was not coming back to answer. It wasn't too good to say oppose before she/he answers, but my reservation was clear. — Instantnood 22:07, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I clearly indicated I prefer the original category be kept (if some materials of the original category cannot be fit into the new one), or be turned a categoryredirect. It was obviously a vote against the nomination. — Instantnood 06:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

---

I am considering filing a DRV. — Instantnood 21:06, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Legend of Zelda Categories

As someone who has previously voted or commented at the recent CfD discussion about the naming of Legend of Zelda categories, I thought I would let you know that I have started a new discussion in an attempt to reach a consensus. The current position of having 2 sets of categories serving the exact same purpose is unsustainable, and we need to reach a consensus on which set should be removed. If you have previously voted on this proposal, I would ask you to reconsider your vote, and ask yourself whether you are willing to give a little ground in order to reach a compromise. This is a generic message I am leaving for everyone who took part in the previous discussion. Thank you for your time. Road Wizard 14:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Trinidad and Tobago-British people

I can't seem to find the entry for the CFD. Guettarda 04:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

That would be because it's more than 8 days old, past due, and therefore not on the page anymore. I'm sure an administrator will get around to closing it soon, but there's been a bit of a backlog. I cannot close it because I'm the nominator.

--William Allen Simpson 04:39, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

categories for discussion

very good and thoughtful work in making this change. Thanks Hmains 16:50, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedian Freemasons

I see no problem with your reversion of my edits here. I was just trying to clean up the Wikipedians by organization category. The Wikipedian Freemasons category has no members and has been replaced by Freemason Wikipedians. By adding back the "by Organization" category, you are just adding clutter. It makes little difference in the long run since this outdated category is up for deletion anyway. Rklawton 15:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a bit more complicated than that. Somebody moved all the articles from Category:Wikipedian Freemasons (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) into Category:Freemason Wikipedians (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) without gaining consensus in advance, a re-creation contrary to previous deletion decisions. Another person tagged the categories for merging back, but used the wrong kind of tags.

Anyway, please don't alter categories while the discussion is in progress.

--William Allen Simpson 13:57, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Righto. I wasn't aware there was a discussion in progress. Cheers, Rklawton 14:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Limited-access roads on deletion review

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Category:Limited-access roads. Since you closed the deletion discussion for (or speedy-deleted) this article, your reasons on how or why you did so will be greatly appreciated in the above review. --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Welsh-speaking people

Dear William You have closed the discussion for this category with the statement that the vote was "delete all". However, I would have to point out that this category was not added to the discussion until 6 July and most of those voting did so before it was added and cannot therefore have given it proper consideration. I have therefore restored it pending the completion of the discussion. Deb 16:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

And where did you plan on putting it, given that its parent is deleted? AFAICT, although the tag was added late, it was properly nominated within the parent's umbrella, and should be deleted. Folks were discussing deletion of all the subcategories, but it took a few days for them all to be tagged. I've reverted your mistake. The discussion is properly closed.

--William Allen Simpson 16:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

That category already had two parents, William. They are still there. I don't know what you think you've reverted, but it's nothing of mine. Deb 17:57, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry, William, but the debate was not properly closed. As someone involved in politics you should know very well that in votes an elementary requirement is stability in what is being voted on. The list was nearly doubled in size while the voting was going on, with early votes being interpreted by you as votes for deletion of categories that were not listed when those votes were cast. That is absolutely wrong. In addition, while the issue being discussed at the start and for much of the debate was deleting mass categories where the information was non-notable, by the end categories of minority languages where the information is notable had been added in. It doesn't matter if Blair speaks English (or Bush tries to). British and American people's presumed default language us English. Chirac's presumed default language is French. Danish peoples' default language is Danish. But most Welsh people speak English, so their default language is English. A Welsh speaker is a rare commodity and the fact that someone like the Prince of Wales, or Neil Kinnock, can speak Welsh is notable. A Latin speaker even more unusual and so notable. Calatan speakers are fundamentally different to the big categories. It was wrong to allow a different category of language usage, must less a couple of them, be added in mid-vote, and then count votes cast before they had been added in, as applying to them also. (Even the American Supreme Court, which gave the presidency to Bush on dodgy grounds, would throw out this vote as breaching elementary rules of reliability, clarity of decision, stability of the ballot, etc.)

You should have ruled the decision null and void and restarted it, with the requirement that everyone be voting on the one list, not different lists with different languages at different times. Arguably, as the list contained two fundamentally different categories, default languages that most people speak, and small minority languages, both should have been voted on separately. I am disappointed that an admin would make such a basic mistake, and misrepresent a botched vote as a decision. FearÉIREANN\^{(caint) 00:32, 19 July 2006 (UTC)}

Naming guideline or official policy?

Hi William,
Thanks for your latest thoughts re the above. I've just left a few of my own, doubtlessly reflecting my unresolved understanding of the topic – apropos of which, I sent my first email via Wikipedia the other day, to yourself; I'd be grateful to know whether or not it reached you. If so, I'd also be grateful if you would spare a moment to comment on it. Thanks, David Kernow 05:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Towns in Oregon

Thanks for wrapping up the CfD on this. Katr67 06:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Ethnic CFD

Hi, Thanks for the comment - I've replied here. [2] --Peripatetic 17:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Category redirects

Thanks for your comment, it's really good to get some positive feedback! I've still got some refinements I'd like to make to the code before "going public", and I doubt I'll "publish" it (rather pass it to individuals such as your good self), but I do not plan to keep it secret. Regards, RobertG ♬ talk 18:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Njt-sta deletion

Hello, I just wanted to know what an "out of process" deletion is and why the template got deleted at all. Just because SPUI had a lot of free time on his hands to go around substing doesn't mean that the template is useless. He also never responded to my final questions. lensovet 01:02, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

It means that "SPUI had a lot of free time on his hands" and already subst'd out the template, without awaiting the 7-day discussion period and consensus. The next step, as you should be aware, would to take it to Wikipedia:Deletion review, where it would join so many others of SPUI lately.... He's been to arbitration so many times that he knows exactly what he can get away with, and the process for getting his way.

However, and you can take it with a grain of salt as I often (indeed usually) disagree with SPUI, this really is a template that shouldn't exist. There's no excuse for not typing the whole 20 or so characters (heck, copy and paste), and using the usual pipe for display. I've seen templates that do much more be deleted.

Templates are not the "shortcut" for slow typists, nor are they the "programming language" for wikis. They are formatting tools. In your case, a subst: friendly design that actually does something special would be better, yet you (or somebody) rejected that option. Now, do you want help designing something?

--William Allen Simpson 01:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Eh, help designing something? It's not that I just wanted to design something (i.e. a template) just for the hell of it, lol. I made this to be a shortcut and to guarantee standard article naming and presentation. I mean, you could say this is a design - one that makes sure that article links always appear the same and article titles conform to a standard. I see the logic of it not being for lazy typists (lol, I'm not a slow typer at all), but then again, how is {{otheruses}} not precisely that? I don't know. Thanks for your help though, let me know what you think. lensovet 02:02, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, I'm looking at WP:CSD#Templates and Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#What (and what not) to propose for deletion at TfD and don't really see how my template (or any shortcut template, for that matter) fits into any of those conditions. Cheers. lensovet 02:24, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

can you help me understand the TFD outcome? Here The template is not substed nad replaced, and the outcome is confusing, what does it mean? -- Drini 23:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

At the time, there were no references, as SPUI (talk · contribs) had subst'd all the entries. Looking at the Template:Njt-sta (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) history, after closing Lensovet (talk · contribs) reverted and reinstated, and then they engaged in a little edit and move war for a week. It looks a mess. Good luck!

--William Allen Simpson 12:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Arab-Americans category

Are you going to moving all the articles from 'Arab American' category to this category? Same with similar category changes? thanks. Hmains 03:12, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. In progress.

--William Allen Simpson 03:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Ethnics

There seems to be a lot of movement in this area, including a renaming drive for American ethnic categories. What I'm trying to figure out is what form of naming is acceptable for British ethnic categories? We already have the catch-all term British Asians. As TSP suggested in the Village Pump discussion, a category called "British people of X ancestry" would be both clear and accurate, without going into hyphenation, self-identification, etc. Does the subject's profession/occupation need to be mentioned as well? What is the correct form? Your comment appreciated. -- Peripatetic 16:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:CFDS Xxx Americans --> Xxx-Americans

I just delisted all 50 of these, per getting opposition...I have NOT gone through all 50 to make sure they were properly tagged, nor removed the tags (if they exist)...this is the second time they have been removed from WP:CFDS. Please clean up any tagging that may be out there, and bring them to normal WP:CFD for a full renaming discussion. (Note: I have no vote on these, and really don't care how they are!). — xaosflux ^Talk 03:52, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I removed them before, based on Chicheley's objections that were recognized as vandalism by Tawkerbot4, but on the daily he admitted that he supported them, and then he admitted they were OK on speedy, too. So, I put them back, and then he objected again twice.

In other words, he apparently has some kind of objection to my posting them. It's really disingenuous on his part. Should we reward this bad behaviour?

--William Allen Simpson 04:14, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

The tawkerbot stuff was obviously just due to the volume of text involved. A second objection was also raised by Cbustapeck to these, if not for that I was going to try to get some further clarification from chicheley before removing (again). Standardizing these cats my be helpful, and cfds isn't that much speedier than cfd anyway. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:47, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I understood why the Tawkerbot did it, it was the 46 WP:POINT duplicates. As to the other (later) oppose, I posted at his Talk asking him to read the new policy.

Yes, I know the timing is 2 days from two days ago, instead of 7 from yesterday, it's not too big a deal, but there are plenty of other countries to work on, and I tried the biggest problem first. Maybe I should have done the smallest first....

--William Allen Simpson 05:03, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe, the same bots will probally be updateing them one way or the other! — xaosflux ^Talk 15:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

R from misspelling

Hi, I noticed that you reverted my change at {{R from misspelling}}, saying "the correct spelling is always given by the title of the redirect, and these messages only show up during edits, not during redirecting".

As I said on the talk page, Castillian language→Spanish language is an example where the correct spelling (that is, Castilian language) is not the target of the redirect. You are right that the message only shows up during edits, at least for now. But I think the change would be useful for automated correction, as with this list I made, and I don't see any real drawbacks. Wmahan. 04:54, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

1. Bad idea. By definition, the target page is the correct spelling.
2. So, in the case where it really is a {{R with possibilities}} instead, you have to think. You should not run a bot where you have to examine each link to decide whether the article is talking in context about the spanish language or the castilian variant (or castillian, {{R from alternate spelling}}, not a misspelling, as it corresponds to the spanish spelling).
3. Likewise, X-box is {{R from alternate spelling}}, there are millions of references to that spelling! Including from Amazon in the first Google page! And Schneier on Security!
4. Half the listings on your list have the wrong template, some should be {{R from abbreviation}} (Ph.D → Doctor of Philosophy), {{R from alternate name}}, {{R from alternate spelling}} (Encyclopedia of Islam → Encyclopaedia of Islam), etc.
5. In summary, these redirects were intended to be looked at by humans, not automatically corrected by a bot.
6. Really bad fodder for a bot!

--William Allen Simpson 05:45, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

1. Maybe I should say "the most likely replacement" rather than "the correct spelling", since there may be many correct spellings. I disagree about Castillian language; I think it's a misspelling in English, regardless of the Spanish castellano. But here's another example: Konigsburg→Kaliningrad. It's not obvious to me as someone from the US that the correct spelling is Königsberg (with an e rather than a u). I understand that Königsberg may merit its own article, so it's not a good idea to change the misspelled links to Kaliningrad. Thus I think having a hint in the redirect would be useful.
2. You say that some or many redirects are miscategorized. True, but I don't see how that makes my idea bad. I'd say it's debatable whether Encyclopedia of Islam and X-box are misspellings. And Ph.D is arguably a misspelling of Ph.D. or PhD, although I think that's a bit pedantic.
3. I never meant to suggest using a bot without any human intervention. Indeed, the change was intended precisely to help humans decide on the appropriate changes. A few other people and I are going through the list carefully, and I think my suggestion would help avoid making mistakes in some of the tricky cases. Wmahan. 06:26, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Re:people from metropolitan areas

Hi. Whether the people by municipality categories/lists should cover a city or a metropolitan area is an interesting question. I've seen contributors treat them both ways. Some editors will remove people from the categories because they're from a suburb, while others will post notices saying that the categories apply to entire metro areas. I haven't made many changes, and the few I made were merely to reflect changes made by others. We probably should try to come up with a standard convention, but I haven't noticed any discussion about it. One example worth looking at are the categories set up for Denver: both Category:People from Denver and Category:People from Denver Metro Area exist. That model could be one way to clear up inconsistencies. - EurekaLott 05:01, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Please stop closing debates on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion

I have absolutely no faith in your impartially. I do not accept that you close debates based on consensus without reference to your own opinion. Chicheley 15:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Nouvelle Droite

If still interested, I've posted a comment some time earlier. [3] Intangible 10:07, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Denver 2008

Hey, how's it goin'? I'm gathering support from Wikipedian Democrats to help bring the 2008 DNC to my hometown of Denver. If your interested, just post {{User:1ne/Userboxes/Denver2008}} on your page. Anyhow, have a good one. Editor19841 23:57, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Ontario

Please stop edit warring to use an incorrect definition. See Talk:List of Ontario provincial highways#These are NOT called "controlled-access highways". --SPUI (T - C) 05:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Please see talk. Right, wrong, or otherwise, "King's Highway" is still a legal term. Controlled Access Highways are a subset of those (i.e. as defined in the act 400 series and other specially designated Highways)Bridesmill 14:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Limited-access road

Please do not remove dispute tags, including {{fact}} and {{or}}, without providing a source. None the assertions I added those tags to were sourced. For instance, you say that "The concept of limited-access roadways started with the parkway system in the state of New York, circa 1907." but your source says nothing about the Bronx River Parkway being the first limited-access roadway. --SPUI (T - C) 14:59, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

With apologies to WAS for making his 'new messages' box pop again, that page does say "When it was completed in 1925, the Bronx River Parkway was the first modern, multi-lane limited-access parkway in North America." Syrthiss 15:03, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Limited-access roads do not need to be modern, multi-lane, parkways, or in North America. That page also doesn't fit the definition of a reliable source. --SPUI (T - C) 16:02, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

List of Ontario provincial highways

Hi, this is addressed to SPUI (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) and William_Allen_Simpson (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log). Please stop edit warring over this. I don't want to have to protect, or to block either of you. Please both stop edit warring and discuss the question maturely. --Tony Sidaway 15:08, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

At WT:CASH SPUI has begun changing all articles to use his infobox despite the consensus to use the current one... and he tagged all articles with {{cleanup-infobox}} to enlist the public in his crusade... does that amount to "disruption"? Probably not, but just thought I'd bring it up. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 17:46, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement#User:SPUI

--William Allen Simpson 17:51, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Please stop marking the categories for speedy deletion

Given that a number of editors have expressed an opinion other than deletion on the CFD, the categories will not be speedied. --SPUI (T - C) 20:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Limited-access road

Do you watch Limited-access road? If not, could you look at my change that was reverted and see if you think this is a reaonable alternative for the article that should put an end to the edit and fact wars? Basically I'm trying to convert this to a generic term with roots in history that has evolved over many years into numerous different meanings that can not be covered in a single article. This could help with the category naming question if there is support for the article changes. The changes make the article very global and not US centric. Vegaswikian 21:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

William, please note that he does not have any sources for his assertion that the Bronx River Parkway was first before reverting. --SPUI (T - C) 21:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I am so late in replying (and therefore responding at your Talk as well as my Talk). I was not able to assist you, as SPUI had his chat friends block my account for reporting his repeated vandalism at WP:ANI, the usual place for reporting vandalism. Actually, I didn't notice (I was watching a movie), until I was blocked from updating the Cfd daily rollovers later that night.

I see that the page is protected, and you should be able to edit in peace. I'm afraid that I'm rather busy at the moment, as I have a couple of briefs due at the Court of Appeals. But at my earlier edits, you'll find a reasonable set of references that SPUI kept reverting, also conforming to WP:LAYOUT. The history really shouldn't be in the leading section, and the lede shouldn't have any references, as they belong in the body.

--William Allen Simpson 18:39, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• I may ask the person who did the protect and see if he is willing to do some cleanup there. Would be better if an outside party did the cleanup to avoid the involved parties needing to touch the article. I'll think on that a while. Vegaswikian 19:20, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Blocked for personal attacks

I've given you a brief cool-down block because of your latest edits to ANI. You repeatedly called SPUI "Vandal SPUI" in what seems to be only an attempt to inflame tensions. This was not a good faith attempt at resolving disputes, and was simply nothing but a personal attack. You should know better. SPUI is many things but he certainly isn't a vandal. He's made lots of good contributions to Wikipedia, and as an experienced Wikipedian, you should really know better than to call edit conflict vandalism. --Cyde↔Weys 22:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Or you could bring up the fact he's violated his probation twice in two days. Vandal or no, he's definitely earned a block that no one seems to want to impose because of his impressive edit portfolio. Bet if it were I making those edits instead of him I'd be on a week long vacation right now. JohnnyBGood t c VIVA! 23:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Template:Cfd2

I see you've reverted SPUI on this template - however, his version had support on the talk page. I can understand you're a bit grumpy with SPUI at the moment, but I'd appreciate if you'd check the talk pages before reverting. In this particular instance, SPUI's suggestion was bang on the money. CfD is not a vote, and the template formatting isn't helping with that. The Cfd template itself is often useful for situations where "this category is rubbish, we need to rescope it or merge it into something else or just plain delete it (oh, and if you really do want to keep it, it still needs to be renamed)" that degenerating it into a keep vs delete thing (with all the horrid prospects of vote-counting) is not the wisest of ideas. I won't re-revert you (unless you agree to em doing so) because that's not my style, but at the time you did revert, SPUI had favored the change and I had concurred with him on the talk page, so I think consensus (at present) lies with SPUI. TheGrappler 01:11, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

The relevant Talk page where the changes were discussed over the past month or so: wikipedia talk:categories for discussion. I'm aiming for consistent formatting, and the tradition has long been a bullet, followed by the action.

There is plenty of room for as much discussion as possible. But newbies should be assisted in completing the process, and this is one of the areas that problems have been found.

Moreover, the standard formatting allows for more easily distinguishing the nominations of Merge from Rename. Many folks had taken to adding a second line after their nomination in the traditional form (two edits) just to clarify their intent, and the template should make things easier rather than harder.

However, given your concern, I'll move the default action inside the text= parameter, allowing folks that are so much smarter than the rest of us to easily rephrase in any form.

--William Allen Simpson 01:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Please just let people pick their own comment. There are procedural relistings where the nominator wishes to give no comment, and putting a forced comment of 'delete' alters the neutrality. If someone wants to distinctly say they want it deleted, they can do so. Otherwise its putting words in their mouth. That's what the XfD templates are for, mearly listing that its proposed in some manner for deletion. Kevin_b_er 01:34, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

There are no procedural listings. We have 3 simple and easy to use templates, depending on the desired action. Anybody bringing WP:POINT nominations, such as Keep, is speedily closed as "Withdrawn".

--William Allen Simpson 01:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#William Allen Simpson trying to make CFR a vote --SPUI (T - C) 01:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for agreeing. --SPUI (T - C) 01:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

the CfD format

A number of us want the CfD format returned to legibility. The new version is impossible to process. Please see the discussion on the talk page of CfD.--Mike Selinker 23:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Left/Right Cfd

Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 July 19#Left and Right

Hello! I noticed your last comment concerning Wikipoint (about Intangible's listing of Category:Far left organizations, etc.) What does that means exactly? "You've noted them": where? what for? Thanks for precisions, cheers! Tazmaniacs 12:35, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I've never used the term "Wikipoint". There is no mention of Category:Far left organizations at your reference. Don't put elaborate references in section headers, especially where standard markup applies. Try looking at my markup of the nomination itself.

--William Allen Simpson 20:25, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Allegedly anti-Semitic people

They can't delete the Category:Anti-Semitic people so they are trying another tactic !

Your vote is requested: [4]

Don't alter other peoples talk

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_%28toponyms%29&diff=prev&oldid=69267190 Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Your edit to Category:Parsis

Your recent edit to Category:Parsis (diff) was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Wikipedia articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept my humble creator's apologies – if you bring it to the attention of the bot's owner, we may be able to improve its behavior. Click here for frequently asked questions about the bot and this warning. // AntiVandalBot 13:36, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

This is your last warning for editing Category:Parsis (diff). The next time you vandalize a page, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. // AntiVandalBot 13:47, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

AntiVandalBot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) blocked after discussion at WP:ANI.

--William Allen Simpson 14:27, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm willing to kill Cyde (or actually whoever set the damn bot on angry) now for misconfiguring the bot, but there was no need to call it an idiot, that borders on a personal attack :o -- Tawker 07:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Category:Pakistani British people‎

I was going through above mentioned cat and you removed all the articles in this cat. Please, can you expalin reason to remove them. --Spasage 09:37, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Categories

The categorization system is having growing pains. There seem to be several different view about what our category system should be; a way to browse, an index of articles, a classification system, and/or a database search tool. Each of these views leads editors to different conclusions about how categories should be populated, and many conflicts result. To deal with these problems, Rick Block and I have been working on a proposal to add the ability to create category intersections. We think our proposal will address these problems and add some very useful new features. We are asking editors concerned with categorizaton problems to take a look. We'd appreciate your feedback. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 05:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:NC(GN)

I apologize for spamming your talk page, but since you had contributed in the past to the WP:NC(GN) proposal, which is currently ready for a wider consultation, I thought you might want to give it another look now and, hopefully, suggest some final improvements. Thanks. --Lysy^talk 22:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Your input please...

Hi William,

from Talk:Country subdivision#Opening two paragraphs: ...any ideas/indications why "sometimes the term political division is preferred" to administrative division...?

Tobias Conradi (talk · contribs) suggested I consult you as regards this query; if you have a moment, I'd appreciate your input there. Thanks!  Yours, David Kernow (talk) 03:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

CfD

Check this out: [5] bunix 02:01, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:HATNOTE marked inactive

Well, Wikipedia:Hatnote was marked inactive. It's now been marked as proposed again. I always thought this was a good proposal. As one of the major contributors to it, I wondered if you would want to see a push to make this a guideline with wide acceptance. It seems to me that people copy the hatnotes they see, and thus this proposal reflects actual practice, and so should be a guideline. What do you think? Carcharoth 12:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Save the List!

They are trying to delete the lists we've work so hard on help put a stop to it. List of J-pop Artists Vote to keep our precious list!!! -Bilaber 21:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

List of Latin place names in Iberia

Hello, I have seen the article, and the discussion about Hispania or Iberia and I propose to rename it as it was before, or to choose Iberian Peninsula. I would like to know your opinion about the reasons. Please, see Talk:List of Latin place names in Iberia. Yours, --Garcilaso 15:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

CfD Category:Lists of ambiguous human names

Hi William. You created Category:Lists of ambiguous human names. Your opinion at CfD Category:Lists of ambiguous human names would be welcome. GregManninLB (talk) 16:19, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Bot approved: dabbing help needed

Hi there. Fritz bot has been approved at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FritzpollBot for filling in a possible 1.8 million articles on settlements across the world. Now dabbing needs to be done for links which aren't sorted as the bot will bypass any blue links. and I need as many people as possible to help me with Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places to prepare for the bot. If you could tackle a page or two everything counts as it will be hard to do it alone. Thankyou ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 12:17, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:DRVU note

Template:DRVU note has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -- Suntag ☼ 15:11, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Primary

Template:Primary has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Jerzy•t 08:31, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

ANI thread about you

FYI: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Premature_deletions.--chaser - t 04:34, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Improper substitution robot?

There are some concerns regarding your "Robot" to substitute currency templates such as {{USD}}. Generally, these have to do with Wikipedia's bot policy - these don't seem to be run from a dedicated bot account with the bot flag as WP:BOTPOL recommends, nor does it appear in Wikipedia:Bots/Status. It is also probably not a good idea to run such a robot over pages in the Template: namespace since the function of some templates may depend on active access to another template. You should refrain from running your robot until it is properly registered at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval and is in line with WP:BOTPOL. Dl2000 (talk) 17:46, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Due to long experience, I already am aware about most issues with templates, and using pywikipediabot in Semi-bots mode for short serialized tasks. "Robot" is merely its default template substitution message. In this case, as would be obvious had you examined the template at issue, substitution requirements are listed on its talk page -- and I was writing the /doc for it! Should I have any more extensive and regularly anticipated tasks, perhaps I'll reactivate Botryoidal (talk · contribs). Thanks for your concern!
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:36, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Congressmen solution

I saw you voted delete on the templates today. Since you are the one actually doing the substituting, I thought I would ask if you noticed the proposed solution. I think it is better than succession boxes although it could be complementary.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

• I implicitly rejected it, referring to the succession box solution instead. Especially as our solution is the one supported by Markles (talk · contribs), the author of one of the templates for deletion. The ability to click through random congresscritters on a list template is useless, IMnsHO, as several others have stated. Whereas the succession box adds useful information.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:56, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Jewish descent

Re this, see this. If deleted, you may want a follow-up nomination for that one. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Good catch: Polish people of either partial or full Jewish descent who did not consider themselves Jewish. Why do they keep coming up with these? --William Allen Simpson (talk) 23:32, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

May 2009

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did to Old Forge Blue Devils. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. Tomdobb (talk) 13:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• I'm reporting your abuse of the {{uw-vandalism}} templates, and WP:OWN, to administration. Please cease and desist. And use the subst parameter.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:58, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

  What shall I cease and desist? You have repeatedly removed the orphan tag without addressing the issue and without explaining yourself. This seems like obvious vandalism to me, if you have a rationale for removing the tag without addressing it, please explain yourself. If not, you're vandalizing. Tomdobb (talk) 14:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• Your abuse of the Three-revert rule reported
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:52, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

MOSDATE and Usher Burdick

I was not aware that there is an injunction on date delinking until seeing your reversion. However, I did not violate the injunction, as I am not engaging in "mass linking or delinking of dates." I was already editing Usher L. Burdick for other reasons (broken succession box) and unlinked dates at the same time (though there was an intervening save in there). I am generally not seeking out articles to edit articles soley on the date issue, but if I come across an article that needs other clean up or needs to be assessed on its talk page, I am unlinking dates. I believe that meets WP:BOLD, particularly since I support the unlinking of dates and do not link any dates in articles I create or edit. To my knowledge editors are not being asked to cease linking or unlinking of all dates in all articles until the arbitration committee rules, only automated steps to do so across hundreds of articles. Having said that, I will leave the dates in Usher L. Burdick linked as is.DCmacnut<> 14:08, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

You referenced WP:MOSDATE in your edit summary, so you should be aware of the injunction: "all editors are instructed not to engage in any program of mass linking or delinking of dates in existing articles, including but not limited to through the use of bots, scripts, tools, or otherwise." Most folks have been interpreting that to mean any series of edits, even though you may have other reasons for editing the article.

For new articles that you create, I'm sure it's OK to not link dates, as long as you link those germane and topical to the subject.

As you mention, there was "an intervening save", and there were other problems with the same edit (delinking the direct links to Congress articles, using the redirect instead, contrary to usual practice). As for WP:BOLD: It is important not to be insulted if your changes are reverted or edited further.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:32, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Duly noted. I still don't see anything in the arbitration that random delinking of dates is frowned upon, and you are the first editor to raise the issue with me. Other editors have been delinking dates sporadically since the injunction, but I guess I'll be more selective in the future if that's your preference. As far as I'm concerned, specific day links are hardly ever germane to the topic, particularly in congressional articles for the start and completion of terms. I hardly ever see "congressman so and so was sworn in on this day." With repsect to the Congress links, my original attempt was switch to ordinal numbers rather than spelling the numbers out as it was originally. I was also trying to avoid unnecessary piped links by using the redirect. My understanding is that redirects can be used when it avoids lengthy piped links. It's been done elsewhere, particularly with committees, etc.DCmacnut<> 18:55, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Chuckle. I've never heard of a problem with piped links -- they're everywhere, they don't take any execution time at all. OTOH, redirects are cheap, now. Once upon a time, folks would change a redirected link to a piped link (some versions of AWB did/do that kind of thing as cleanup). Now-a-days, it's merely a matter of editing taste.... My tendency is to leave them in the form I've found them, unless I'm making huge changes.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 20:23, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

CfD_categories_renamed

Please visit Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#CfD_categories_renamed—Preceding unsigned comment added by Debresser (talk • contribs) 2009-05-21 17:59:53

Ayn Rand

I saw that you removed several categories from the Ayn Rand article that related to her being Jewish (and in one case both Russian-American and Jewish). Your edit summary said "Heritage categories should not be used to record people based on deduction, inference, residence, surname, nor any partial derivation from one or more ancestors)". However, that Rand was Jewish and from Russia is attested to in multiple reliable sources. Therefore I have reverted your edit. If you think these categories do not apply for some less obvious reason, I would ask that you discuss it on the talk page prior to any further removals. Thanks. --RL0919 (talk) 16:28, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Just a note: it is extremely inappropriate to call another user a racist in an edit summary. That's a pretty serious violation of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. BTW, I agree with RL0--the fact that she grew up Jewish in anti-Semitic Russia is relevant. TallNapoleon (talk) 19:57, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

His edit was marked racist — which it is by definition. Re-adding a person to categories based on her grandparents' probable religion is racism at its worst, no different than the Jim Crow "previous condition of servitude" laws, and "grandfather" clauses. Moreover, his revert was contrary to policy, a policy that was clearly stated in the edit that he reverted. There is no "Good Faith" edit against policy. Finally, she did not grow up Jewish, according to the references in the article. She actually grew up outside the Jewish community. Your argument is speculative, not supported by any reference. That is a racist speculation, not to put too fine a point on it!
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 02:13, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

By Jewish law, anyone who's mother is Jewish is Jewish. I should know--I'm Jewish for that exact reason. I don't see how stating a person's ethnicity in the categories is racist--it's only racism if one is attempting to place undo weight on it, such as one editor I stumbled across who was going across numerous articles (including Ayn Rand) changing things from "economist" to "Jewish economist" and so forth. TallNapoleon (talk) 04:52, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

You must be following an Orthodox tradition, different than the dominant traditions in English speaking countries — where we repudiate racial antisemitism, and do not consider persons that have "one drop" of Jewish ancestry to remain "part" Jewish. As you should know, the definition is sufficiently notable that Wikipedia has had an article "Who is a Jew?" since its earliest years. I've previously noted Wikipedia policy requires both that she publicly self-identifies as Jewish, and that it be relevant to her notable activities or public life. Hopefully, you will remove such incorrect categorization in the future.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 20:30, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Now that the relevant edit is a settled matter as far as I am concerned, let me say for the record that your accusations of racism are based on uncharitable assumptions about other people's motives, and a looseness with facts. I never talked about Rand's grandparents or "one drop" or anything of the sort, and you are the one making unfounded claims about her parents. You could have discussed your edits and the policy reasoning behind them without any reference to motives or speculation about facts you did not have. The result would have been the same. You chose instead to use inflammatory terms and make accusations about motives. This choice on your part says something significant about your character -- and not to put too fine a point on it, it says something negative. --RL0919 (talk) 22:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The edit was marked racist — which it is by definition: "... racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race...." You repeatedly assigned several ethnic categories to a person that did not consider themselves of that ethnicity.

We have an explicitly detailed categorization policy: "Heritage categories should not be used to record people based on deduction, inference, residence, surname, nor any partial derivation from one or more ancestors." As you admitted above, my edit specified that policy. You reverted my edit, demonstrating that your revert was a violation of policy, evidenced by its summary (Her heritage is attested in reliable sources).

Your assertion is that Rand was Jewish by matrilineal descent.

1. Rand herself was an ardent atheist.
2. Rand's original surname is commonly associated with Jews. She changed it.
3. Rand's parents lived outside the Jewish community, and were not observant. They qualified neither as cultural nor religious Jews.
4. The Jewish descent was implicitly assumed to be from a grandparent, although there are no references in the article for any grandparents.

That's deductive speculation. QED.

Please distinguish between actual facts in evidence (cited in the article itself) and corresponding edits, and try not to take objective criticism personally. Whether you consider yourself a racist is irrelevant.

Until now, I've not mentioned motives anywhere. But your return to this page to engage in ad hominem attacks says something significant about your character -- and not to put too fine a point on it, it says something negative.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 18:47, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You, an admin?

See the numerous accusations of uncivility on this talk page and in the few conversations I've seen you involved with that you have a FAT CHANCE of becoming an admin. You must be kidding. Debresser (talk) 00:39, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Socratic Barnstar
		For successful launching what appeared to be a snowball argument that saved the {{R from other capitalisation}} template, I hereby award you this barnstar. Your arguments were both impressive and persuasive. Well done! ThaddeusB (talk) 15:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Conduct in conversation

As to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#More_out_of_process_category_renames. Please refrain from adding your comments out of chronological order and stating the precise same thing twice. Debresser (talk) 19:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I've restored them. Please do not delete or mangle my comments. The indentations are responses in different parts of the thread. And please use section edits, not full page edits, with descriptive edit summaries.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice. I do try to do so generally. No idea why I din't in this case. I do seem to remember disctinctly that one should refrain from adding posts in the middle of conversations, as you did here. I'll try to find the source. Debresser (talk) 15:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I have found Wikipedia:Tutorial_(Talk_pages), where it says "When you post a new comment, put it at the bottom of the talk page. The exception is, if you are responding to someone else's remarks, put your comment below theirs." So I sincerely apologise. Debresser (talk) 15:10, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Invitation

Please visit Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#User:William_Allen_Simpson. Debresser (talk) 14:57, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Please do not attack other editors. If you continue, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. It is truly telling that when we are trying to resolve incivility issues regarding you in WP:WQA that you take quite a few chances to prove your incivility and repeat personal attacks. At Wikipedia we comment about edits and never editors - note the emphasis on never. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 21:34, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Rubbish - no you will not be blocked. If an editor's actions are questionable, we question them. Isn't that what you are doing at WQA? I'm not sure how much Debresser's edit history is troubling here, but bringing it up and inviting people to look at it is not neccessarily unhelpful.--Scott Mac (Doc) 22:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

"Of Jewish descent" categories

Unfortunately, I think your decision to have these categories deleted may have not been a wise one in the long run, because many, if not all, of these people of "partial Jewish descent" are now going to be listed in the full-blown Jewish categories and lists, regardless of their background (people like George Allen). We're going to end up with more lists/categories like List of Jewish actors where, by my count, approximately 50% of the entries are people of half or quarter-Jewish descent, less than 50% practice the religion, and about a quarter don't have references attributing a self-identification to them and likely do not identify. Bulldog123 21:18, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure you are removing them as soon as you notice! That's what I'm doing....
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 03:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not easy to do that without a wall of ravenous editors accusing you of being an antisemite. Relatedly, why does your argument against Category:Jewish physicians not apply to cats like Category:Jewish inventors, Category:Jewish economists, Category:Jewish fashion designers? There is no "Jewish way" of inventing or no Jewish fashion. Knowing this, I would put them up for deletion myself but have a group of users who follow me around and vote opposite to whatever I put in in the nomination, just for spite. Bulldog123 19:37, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree, but there's only so much that can be done per day (or week or month). Sadly, folks can create these much faster than they can be deleted.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 19:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Turkish provinces

I just replied some discussion that you were wrote somethings: Talk:Provinces_of_Turkey#City/Town/Village (place name) disambiguation...--Tuleytula (talk) 23:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I'd not been involved in this discussion for some years, but hopefully this will help standardize inter-wiki links.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 03:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Could you help me?

I have an argument with others on disambiguation. I want to add some useful information to ACE, NME and PMF, but other people always delete them. The link is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#need_help_on_ACE_and_NME Could you please have a look? Thanks.--141.89.77.122 (talk) 21:10, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Cinema to film

Good work on the cinema to film rename, William. I'm pleasantly surprised it went through, having (belatedly) seen the light! --Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:50, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, and the same to you. All I can do is research the policy and precedent, point to it, and wait (im)patiently. Sometimes folks come around. Sometimes, not enough sane folks show up. I've already changed the world, so I'm not out to prove anything. The key thing to remember is the same they taught us back in the '70s -- ego-less programming....
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 03:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Alicia Keys

I responded on the talk page. The Bookkeeper (of the Occult) 11:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

User notice: temporary 3RR block

Regarding reversions[6] made on June 12 2009 to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)

You have been blocked from editing for a short time in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for violating the three-revert rule. Please be more careful to discuss controversial changes or seek dispute resolution rather than engaging in an edit war. If you believe this block is unjustified, you may contest the block by adding the text {{unblock|Your reason here}} below, but you should read our guide to appealing blocks first.

The duration of the block is 24 hours. William M. Connolley (talk) 21:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

William Allen Simpson (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

Request reason:

A block beginning 7 hours after the final edit at that page? Hours after my final edit for the day, some 100 edits and 5 hours later? Appears purely punitive. The count is wrong. Edits in sequence are counted as 1 edit. Edits to different sections are not counted. The final edit restoring the page to its original condition after bringing the edit warriors to WP:AN/EW is not counted. By mere counting convention, I'm still at 2 for the page. Moreover, this was in defense against a tag team (Debresser & Kotniski) edit warring on a policy page. We don't defend policy pages anymore?

Decline reason:

You show no indication that you understand the reason for this block. Your arguments do not cite to valid exceptions to 3RR and even if those exceptions applied you don't appear to fit them. You need to discuss this block with the blocking admin if you have specific problems with the timing but I am not convinced that you understand or acknowledge the rationale. Absent that I will not unblock. You'll have to ride out the next 7 hours. Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:09, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

---

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Your edits to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)

Please stop assuming ownership of articles. Doing so may lead to disruptive behavior such as edit wars and is a violation of policy, which may lead to a block from editing.

Please read this essay. where it says

"Characteristics of problem editors

On returning from a block, your first action is to head right back to the article and repeat the edit.
A contentious fact does not become uncontentious by virtue of repetition. On Usenet and web forums you can get away with repeating something until nobody cares enough to contradict you any more; on Wikipedia, that is unacceptable.

Debresser (talk) 13:26, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Protection of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)

Hi, I notice that you're involved in a dispute on WP:NCCAT. In order to prevent any more blocks of any parties to the dispute, I have full-protected the page indefinitely. Once the dispute is resolved, you may request unprotection at WP:RFPP.--Aervanath (talk) 14:06, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Continued personal attacks

Please be informed of the following thread Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#User:William_Allen_Simpson. Debresser (talk) 18:31, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

As per this advise I opened a thread on Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:William_Allen_Simpson. Debresser (talk) 21:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Always a delight to awaken in the morning to diatribe by this fractious user.... No time to discuss at the moment, perhaps another day.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:09, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Thracian tribes category

I'm going by the books, those are tribes considered Thracian or perhaps Thracian in the literature. Revert your changes, thanks. Alex (talk) 19:11, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Policies_and_guidelines#Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people.2Fboilerplate_fact_policy

FYI. - Dank (push to talk) 15:43, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for doing this after my close. I forgot again! Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome, as nominator I feel somewhat responsible for helping clean up.... Although this didn't affect me, as I don't run with JavaScript so it didn't collapse, I did remember that it needed to be unhidden to help folks find the entries later.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 02:11, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Searched the old CfD archives for other {{hidden}} and cleared roughly 90 of them going back to the beginning of 2008. Of course, other templates might have been used, or HTML directly, but this should improve indexing and searching.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Category:Articles to be split

You should not reopen a discussion that was closed by an admin. The correct process is to take the decision to deletion review. Also you can use WP:ANI to request a change in the close by another admin. For the record, I have closed discussions that I was involved in without realizing I had participated. When I notice this I request a re close by another admin. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:15, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there is/was language in the administrative process for reverting anybody that closes a discussion where they were involved. At least there was back when I was updating it 3 years ago. WP:ANI seems overkill. Anyway, please close it as you see fit. Thanks.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 06:22, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Surname

I'm not sure what your edit to this page means - is it what you intended?—Preceding unsigned comment added by PamD (talk • contribs) 2009-06-25 07:41:21

Yes. It's awaiting an administrator to copy and paste the revised template into place.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 07:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Done--changed to semi-protect. Let me know when you're done there and I can change it back to full protection. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:21, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks!
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 09:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Deletion review for Surnames by Country

The discussion for Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 June 6#Category:Surnames by country in which you participated was closed as delete and is now under review at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 June 25#Category:Surnames by country. Your participation and input is invited. Alansohn (talk) 05:09, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Please explain

I saw you undid a change of mine in this diff. Would you please explain why. Debresser (talk) 18:23, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Out of order

I've had enough of your personal attacks. I'm preparing an official WP:A/R against you. --William Allen Simpson (talk) 23:26, 28 June 2009 (UTC) (Quote from Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(categories)#Concrete_proposal)

The right place to say so would have been my talkpage. Which would have been the right place for another 50% of your posts in discussions, which are all personal attacks. This being so, I am rather pleased you are taking this to arbitration: since wp:ani and wp:wqa have not helped so far in making you behave civily, maybe ArbCom will. Debresser (talk) 23:33, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Categorization of people/boilerplate fact policy

Wikipedia:Categorization of people/boilerplate fact policy, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Categorization of people/boilerplate fact policy and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Categorization of people/boilerplate fact policy during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. - Dank (push to talk) 23:36, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Unreferenced categories

I saw your edit to Szymon Szymonowic. Please note that there exists a template Template:Category unsourced. It would be more usefull to use that template than removing the category, because the template is likely to provoke some editor in providing a reference. Debresser (talk) 15:52, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Russian surnames

Good afternoon (or whatever part of the day you are observing), William! I've noticed you populating the Category:Russian-language surnames, and I am not quite grasping how it is different from the recently deleted Category:Russian surnames. Could you, please, point me to the place where the new category scheme is being discussed; I would much like to follow its development and/or study its outcomes. Thanks in advance!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:53, June 29, 2009 (UTC)

For one thing, these are only the referenced ones that I've found so far. The others have no references, or appear to be for other language origins. The discussion is ongoing at Category talk:Surnames.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 17:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I do not dispute that these cats are necessary and useful. I just want to clarify certain inclusion criteria (such as, for example, what to do with, say, Russian last names which are also common outside Russia). Thank you for the discussion link; that's all I need for now :)—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:06, June 29, 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect template use

Hi, your recent multiple use of template:R from surname for redirects to different transliteration of the same surname are contrary to the meaning of the template. The template has a very specific purpose: trace redirects from a surname to a specific person, that is clearly described at templates page. To quote:It is used because Wikipedia has only one biographical article of a person by this surname, or because one individual is ubiquitously known by this surname (other persons sharing this name might be listed at a primary topic disambiguation page). Would you please correct all your such edits. It is also a good idea to familiarize oneself (by reading corresponding documentation) with a new thing before rashly misusing it; most of the templates have reasonably clear explanations for their use.Henry Merrivale (talk) 22:10, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

On the positive side, there is {{R from alternative spelling}}, which will work for this purpose just great. Another idea is to look into creating {{R from alternative romanization}} which could come in handy for all kinds of things related to Russia (as well as other countries using non-Latin-alphabet-based languages).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:06, June 30, 2009 (UTC)

Get off my back

You said "He routinely reverts my edits, and opposes my XfD nominations."

1. Please note that I revert only edits I disagree with. It is not my fault that you make so many contra-logical or disputable edits. Many editors deeply disagree with you on certain point you persue relentlessly.
2. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion abunds with discussions where I agree with you. Interesting you missed that fact.

You said "Then your deletion of the G7 tag was WP:POINT, as you now agree that it should be deleted."

That is a mistake. (I don't think I have to assume good faith any more as far as your attitude to my person is concerned, so it might also be a deliberate "misunderstanding", but whatever.) I opposed a speedy deletion, but not a Mfd. That's a big difference.

But the main thing is that you should get off my back! You must not place these personal attacks of yours in discussions. How many times do I and others have to tell you that? You are not stupid! You actually said you have something to do with law. So it is about time you understand that this is not a courtcase in which besmearing a person's character will help. At Wikipedia we should differentiate between "who" and "what". 1. Address my arguments only. 2. Don't discuss my person. 3. Try to address my arguments logically, and not with whatever you used so far. Debresser (talk) 22:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:LithuanianSurname

Please explain the purpose of this edit. - Altenmann >t 04:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorization#Typical sort keys
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 07:48, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Category:Native American surnames

Hi. Are you in the process of eliminating the Category:Native American surnames? I've restored the category to the Harjo page. I can remove it again but would like to know the reasoning behind eliminating the category. Thanks for any information! Cheers, -Uyvsdi (talk) 19:41, 2 July 2009 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Actually, I'm in the process of eliminating surname categories with no references, as the edit summary indicated. You've now added references for this page. Good work! However, both are anecdotal, rather than strictly Wikipedia:Reliable sources, so I'm hoping that sometime in the future you'll have some more scholarly linguistic references. Moreover, the reference is for Creek language. So, I'm adding it to that category, instead.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering how many Muscogee surnames you'll be able to find that are well documented, but good luck with your project. -Uyvsdi (talk)Uyvsdi

Removing categories while they are under discussion at CFD

Hi William Allen Simpson, This edit has been pointed out to me. Whatever you think of the suitability of the category for that article, it is generally considered bad form if you are seen removing articles from a category you have nominated for deletion. This is generally regarded as attempting an end-run around CFD, as it could result in the speedy deletion of the category under WP:CSD#C1 (the "empty categories" criterion). While I'm sure that is not your intent, it is important to avoid the appearance of impropriety. So, in the future, please refrain from removing categories from articles while they are under discussion at CFD.

Also, I've noticed other editors referring to you by your initials; is this acceptable, or would you prefer I use your full username, or is there some other form of address you would prefer? Regards, --Aervanath (talk) 17:27, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, I notice you have been removing a large amount of surname categories from surname articles with the edit summary "no references, no category". I would suggest instead that you include a link to Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_June_6#Category:Surnames_by_country, which seems to be where that rule was promulgated for surnames; there seems to be no other specific place in policy or guidelines where this is stated, and it will reduce possible misunderstandings on the part of other editors.--Aervanath (talk) 05:21, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

You might also link to Category talk:Surnames, so interested editors would be pointed there instead of complaining on your talk page. :) --Aervanath (talk) 12:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Each time that I try your "This edit" link, Wikipedia stalls for minutes, and the link doesn't display. But based on my memory of recent edits, there are often articles in both a parent and child, and I've removed the parent, leaving the article in only the child. Articles should always be in the most specific category. As the child is already present, there is no loss of information.
2. I've some 40+ publications in "Real Life" under William Allen Simpson. There are other editors with the initials WAS, and I'd prefer to limit confusion.
   1. WAS (Created on 2005-06-25 at 02:32:59)
   2. WAS 4.250 (Created on 2005-07-30 at 19:57:08)
   3. WAS 4.250 alternate account (Created on 2007-12-03 at 10:55:27)
   4. WAS 4.251 (Created on 2008-11-20 at 22:05:23)
   5. WAS23 (Created on 2006-05-29 at 22:42:59)
   6. WAS333 (Created on 2006-10-12 at 22:49:49)
   7. WAS67 (Created on 2009-07-04 at 21:08:04)
3. In my experience, the folks that use WAS (or Willy or whatever) are employing diminutives to insult and assert primacy (as in, "my time is more valuable than yours, too lazy to type or copy and paste your actual user name"). Even my close friends in "Real Life" use my full user name here.
4. You are misinformed. It is policy, cited in many guidelines and debates, that all categories must be based on WP:V and WP:RS references.
5. Category talk:Surnames is about the subcategories, not the other discursions.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:40, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your clarifications. Regards, --Aervanath (talk) 17:46, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Following up, "This edit" worked after a shorter stall today (I'm using the secure server, and plain links seem to be having problems lately). The edit summary is in fact "remove parent category". Thus, it should have been obvious to anybody, other than those pedants trying to score points with you (or against me).

4. I'm flabbergasted, but the requirement that unsupported categories be removed immediately was deleted from the main Wikipedia:Categorization in May, without discussion anywhere, by a certain user Debresser. The same user that tried to remove explicit requirements from other policy and guidelines without discussion – where I was blocked recently (even though carefully following the 3RR requirements as written) while defending against the unwarranted removal there.

--William Allen Simpson (talk)

Edit warring

I'd like to warn you to refrain from engaging in an edit war on the article Wieland Speck. You have been reverted by two different users, and the subject is under DISCUSSION (at the moment here). Debresser (talk) 12:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Please be notified that in view of your repeated changes to this page, defying consensus building processes and the fact that 2 editors have reverted you, I have asked for administrative intervention at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:William_Allen_Simpson_reported_by_User:Debresser_.28Result:_.29. Debresser (talk) 12:37, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

(Result: No vio)
--William Allen Simpson (talk)

Personal attacks

Saying I "pervert" [7] when I just change the template is definitely a personal attack. Apart from that, you got the facts wrong. Debresser (talk) 12:58, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Please do not attack other editors. If you continue, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Debresser (talk • contribs) 2009-07-07 13:00:57 (UTC)

Categories based on WP principles

In view of your remark above: "It is policy, cited in many guidelines and debates, that all categories must be based on WP:V and WP:RS references.", I'd be grateful if you could cite the specific guidelines concerned. I take it that this applies to all wikipedia principles, such as WP:NPOV and WP:OR. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 21:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Cleaning up List of topics related to Black and African people

We've been cleaning this up, to bring the "pie in the sky" down to Earth.  :)

What else needs to be done to it?

Please answer at Talk:List of topics related to Black and African people#Clean up.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist 23:03, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: what would you like to see annotated?

lithuanian-language surnames

Please explain the reason of your deletion of nocat parameter and wait for discussion before you continue your revert war, since I am sure some of us have a misunderstanding about what is in lithuanian name pages. - Altenmann >t 03:19, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The nocat parameter was deprecated several years ago, in favor of the cat= parameter. The cat= parameter is now being eliminated, after the recent CfD. The categories are better managed individually, rather than subsumed in a template where they were hidden from the Cydebot cleanup. This has nothing to do with Category:Lithuanian-language surnames, and has no effect on them.

Of course, all Lithuanian-language surnames require references showing that they belong in the category.... You are being diligent about your own cleanup?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 03:54, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

If I am not mistaken, there are plenty of templates/navboxes, etc. which have categories. There is nothing about 'cat=' in Template:Surname/doc. I don't see why Cydebot cannot see templates if it is smart enough to see 'cat=' (is it?). Yes I am diligent about Lithuanian surnames. This is my microproject no else particularly cares, except for occasional drop-ins. - Altenmann >t 04:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Ash disambiguation

I see that names has been split off from Ash. Why would we want this? It causes a double step for every bad Ash link, hindering the purpose of a disambiguation page. Please reply to Talk:Ash --Knulclunk (talk) 04:07, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the problem is that you recently merged the name pages into the disambiguation page. That's not the (currently) proper procedure. I only noticed because you made several mistakes in templating.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:11, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Your recent edit to Patronymic

If an article belongs to a broader category, and to a narrower subcategory thereof, we remove the broader category, not the daughter category, since all members of the smaller category are by definition also members of the larger one. Thus, it is the broader category, Names, that should have been removed; not the narrower one. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:04, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

No, when an article is in two sister categories, we move them to the parent, as the guideline is the most specific category. However, in this case, this can be ameliorated by adding a single definition category, Category:Human names, parallel to Category:Human name disambiguation pages.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 00:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

"See also" in categories

Hi. You said this is not good for categories. Also, you suggest this can do. Is this how it is done in a consistent manner all over WP? Or at least, is this how it should be done? I am just asking in order to know. I have no problem with your edits: obviously you know something I don't. Could you, please, explain that. Dc76\^talk 14:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's very consistent. The {{see also}} template is for articles. For categories, a "See also" section is fairly common. I'm pretty sure there's a guideline somewhere, but lag is setting in, and I don't really have time right now to look it up. Just look around at the parents and siblings of the category you're working on, and emulate. And don't be too surprised when folks fix things, it's not a criticism.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:25, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Nationality and ethnicity templates

You should refrain from "restoring" old version, when the new versions are better than the old versions. The edit summaries give ample indication of the flaws of the old versions. Furthermore, in view of my previous experience with you, and in view of the fact that these templates are not community sanctioned, I will view a revert without discussion as anti-consensus action. Please not that on Template talk:People by nationality another editor also seems to address the same issues I addressed in my improvements. Not to mention that you reverted each and every one of my edits, which is rather peculiar. Surely there must be room for improvement. Sorry to sound a little haughty, but you should know better than just revert without any explanation. Debresser (talk) 21:04, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I forgot thiswarning, which is most appropriate for you, after you reverted my edits so many times without the least explanation:

Please stop assuming ownership of articles. Doing so may lead to disruptive behavior such as edit wars and is a violation of policy, which may lead to a block from editing.

Thread about you...

..on User:Aervanath's talk page. Not that I like complaining about fellow editors, or that I don't appreciate that you do a lot of good work with categories etc., but you can't just keep on insulting people and reverting their changes arbitrarily. I hope you realize that this can't be how WP works. --Kotniski (talk) 15:12, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I have reverted your most recent edit to WP:NCCAT. I unprotected the page on the understanding that changes would be made based on discussions on the talk page, but that doesn't seem to be what you did. Please stop this, and discuss the changes you'd like to make on the talk page.--Aervanath (talk) 17:52, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Surnames

See Category_talk:Polish-language_surnames#Only_a_few_surnames for what happens when a few people looking at actual books deal with the amateur anthroponomastists. Most of the categories are in fact nonsense, and I support upmerge until reliable sources are found and then (and only) should we start creating the categories. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:54, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

You and Debresser

The edit war between you two is obviously getting out of hand. I have no dog in this fight, and I don't particularly care what the templates say, or what the naming conventions for categories are. I do care that this doesn't get further out of hand. Therefore, I'm going to place the same restriction on both of you: as of now, you are restricted from editing any page that Debresser has edited in the last month, excluding discussion forums (talk pages, noticeboards, deletion discussions, etc.). Any edit to a page in which both of you have an interest must be performed by a third party. Violations of this sanction will result in a block. Debresser is under an identical restriction. This sanction will last as long as I deem necessary, or until a consensus of editors determines that it should be repealed or modified.--Aervanath (talk) 19:32, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

More commentary by admins in the WP:AN3 report

Hello William. Please see the recent updates at the 3RR report. If you have a proposal for how to resolve the dispute with Debresser, or an idea for a dispute resolution forum whose verdict you would accept, you are welcome to add your own comment there. EdJohnston (talk) 17:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Ed, I've been busy/traveling, and had no idea my report was continuing to see activity. Also, Aervanath is clearly an involved editor (based on the User talk activity reported here by Kotniski, where the conspirators have been coordinating). Perhaps this weekend, I'll have enough time to file for Arbitration (again). I'd started filing a few weekends ago, but withdrew because the terrible lag prevented research for the links.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:45, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Just on a purely practical note: if you're going to go to ArbCom accusing others of edit-warring, it won't take ArbCom long to work out who the other side in the "edit war" was. That side consisting of yourself in this case. So any restrictions that may be applied to those you accuse are almost certainly going to be applied to you as well. It would be better first to try talking politely to those you feel have acted unreasonably, to try to reach satisfactory conclusions without the drama of an ArbCom case. But do whatever you decide. --Kotniski (talk) 13:22, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

List of Latin place names in the British Isles

Whatever happened to this page? It now redirects to List of Latin place names in Continental Europe#Cities and towns in Ireland, with one one place name, i.e. Dublin! The same is true for List of Latin place names in North Atlantic islands‎ (which I didn't even now existed, but that's beside the point)! Pasquale (talk) 14:26, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I have undone User:Þjóðólfr's redirect of List of Latin place names in the British Isles (as well as List of Latin place names in North Atlantic islands and List of Latin place names in Ireland to List of Latin place names in Continental Europe#Cities and towns in Ireland, and I have restored your List of Latin place names in the British Isles. The text from List of British places with Latin names is now merged into List of Latin place names in the British Isles. List of Latin place names in North Atlantic islands and List of Latin place names in Ireland now redirect to List of Latin place names in the British Isles. I hope that is satisfactory to all concerned. Pasquale (talk) 15:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

It was all for nought. User:Þjóðólfr has done it all over again. This user is causing great damage to the Wikipedia and should be reported. But I don't have the time to pick this fight now. Pasquale (talk) 16:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I made some additional edits. Ireland is now part of List of Latin place names in Continental Europe and Ireland, while List of Latin place names in the British Isles is now List of Latin place names in Britain. This accommodates User:Þjóðólfr's whimsical insistence that Ireland should be nowhere near Britain, but salvages your original format. Hopefully this will work, since Þjóðólfr should now have no need to mess it up again. Pasquale (talk) 18:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

ANI thread

FYI, in case you are interested, Debresser has asked for the mutual sanction placed on you and him to be repealed. Please see WP:ANI#Request_to_revoke_sanction if you are interested in discussing it. --B (talk) 22:08, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

That thread has resulted in the sanction I applied being reduced to a simple prohibition on you and Debresser being forbidden to revert each other's edits. On a personal note, I note that you appear to believe that I am somehow an involved editor in this. I wouldn't have felt competent to levy any sanctions if I thought I had taken any sides in the dispute. What makes you think I have taken a side in this? I have tried to be as even-handed as I could.--Aervanath (talk) 04:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Categorisation

This is just to tell you that I find your arguments against categorisation by ethnicity to be well-argued and convincing. Please inform me in the future if somebody repeats the claim that your position is held only by a fringe or a tiny minority in wikipedia.

I would be interested in participating in future debates on these issues. Feketekave (talk) 14:43, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

R from misspelling -- Hidden parameter, and need for conditional text

Hi there! Back in July you disagreed with part of a proposed change to {{R from misspelling}} at Template talk:R from misspelling#Hidden parameter, and need for conditional text. Please clarify your objection there as neither the proposer nor I quite understand your concern. Thanks. -- ToE^T 04:31, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of List of Roman Catholic United States Supreme Court justices

The article List of Roman Catholic United States Supreme Court justices has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Very strange to single Roman Catholics out in this way; we have no categories for other faiths, and who cares anyway? Irrelevant list.

Moreover, it seems that this has been discussed already and the decision was to delete: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_May_6#Religions_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_justices

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the Proposed Deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The Speedy Deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and Articles for Deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. KarlFrei (talk) 08:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

List of Roman Catholic United States Supreme Court justices

They are trying to delete this. Please comment. 13:29, 21 October 2009 (UTC) Stan

Deleted it under G4, as it is a clearcut effort to circumvent the results of this discussion. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:05, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Debresser

Hello,

I wondered if you could look at these, and see if you feel you can counter sign either (or both) of them?

• User:Newman Luke/dDb
• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Newman Luke#Response

Newman Luke (talk) 03:02, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Undoing a recent change of yours

Hello. I've recently partially undid an edit you made to Helen Gurley Brown. Typically, in a biographical article about a person, the subject of the article is rarely referred to their first name alone in the article prose. They are usually referred to as their last name, or first and last name. This can be seen in articles like Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. They are both featured articles.--Rockfang (talk) 21:44, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Wikipedia:Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. Courcelles (talk) 18:54, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Whyte, etc

I noticed you were the last person to work on Whyte, Whyte (surname), and Whyte (disambiguation). I proposed moving the article on the surname to Whyte, and the dab to Whyte (disambiguation): Talk:Whyte. ENeville (talk) 03:38, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the notice. Opposed.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 22:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

One name to rule them all

I agree wholeheartedly with your proposal about a single name qualifier. Was there any response or decision taken? --Wormcast (talk) 17:57, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

WP:CATGRS

Hi there! There is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality regarding material you added a while back to the page. It seems an editor there is under the impression that you have not obtained consensus for this material. I have pointed out to him that you indeed have since, in your edit summary, you linked to an earlier discussion where it was decided that such "race"-based categorization ought to be renamed to ethnicity-based categorization. Another editor has joined the discussion and suggested that we should add concrete examples to help further clarify the situation. I've already provided a few such examples on the talk page, which I think help illustrate the point. Your thoughts on the matter would be most appreciated. Best regards, Middayexpress (talk) 23:06, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I've not been very active lately, but I'll try to aid the discussion.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 18:22, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Dacia

Hi, I saw that you collaborated on articles related to Dacia and thought this could be of interest: WikiProject Dacia is looking for supporters, editors and collaborators for creating and better organizing information in articles related to Dacia and the history of Daco-Getae. If interested, PLEASE provide your support on the proposal page. Thanks!!--Codrinb (talk) 02:02, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Emit parameter

Template:Emit parameter has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Mhiji 21:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi

Please see my post at All Hallow's Wraith's talk page. You are right in that he is removing a long-standing policy without consensus; however, it's not a 3RR or edit war in the sense that he's only done it twice in 24 hours. CycloneGU (talk) 06:34, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:CANVASS

That's not a neutral message -- I'd suggest stopping for a second opinion on whether you're violating WP:CANVASS before posting any more notices.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the discussion, it looks like you already got the second opinion, and several others, before posting the latest round. I strongly suggest re-reading the guidelines a few more times -- you seem to have misread them before. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:47, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, I've not posted anything on your Talk page, so I don't have any details of your concerns (nor how they have arisen). Whenever I do post on Talk pages of those whom have participated in prior discussions, the details of my postings match the subject of the discussion. Thank you for your interest.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

It's very irrelevant whether you've canvassed me or not. You have posted a large number of messages (granted, apparently to all involved parties) stating that "Wikilawyers have been trying to drive through a wording loophole in WP:BLP". The Canvassing guideline explictly calls out as disruptive editing "Posting a notification of discussion that presents the topic in a non-neutral manner." So, basically, Don't Do That. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you personally object, without mentioning the private communication that brought this to your attention. But every word in that sentence matches the discussion itself. The discussion also uses the word "quibbling". As I'm sure you well know, "wikilawyer" is a term of art here. If there weren't any, I doubt there would be an entire essay devoted to the issue.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 22:10, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

"Private communication" <> "posting messages to multiple pages on my watchlist". When you're in a hole, stop digging. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:01, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that your message is biased.

I also suspect that you have jumped to conclusions about this alleged "private communication". More than 100 people are watching just my talk page page, and you spammed this notice to more than a dozen pages. The obvious conclusion is that your public messages are, indeed, public.

As for the content, I am glad that EGRS is on the path towards being corrected. You should not have to prove that a monarch's gender is deserving of its own article ("notable") to be able to place the ruler in Category:Queens or Category:Kings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:29, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

WAS has been know in the past to post biased messages on many a forum and talkpage. He has big problems with consensus, canvassing, forumshopping, and not insulting other editors, and in general is sure that his point of view is the only correct one. And of course any attempt to show him wrong is called wikilawyering (which is actually his favorite pastime). Debresser (talk) 01:40, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

And he never passes up the change to accuse another editor of making personal attacks or poisoning the well, even if such was not what that editor intended. But WAS always knows better what the other guy really had in mind... Debresser (talk) 01:43, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:The Sing-Off

Category:The Sing-Off, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:30, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Point-to-Point Protocol

Hello WAS. I noticed your comment at Talk:Point-to-Point Protocol that you were involved in PPP development, and a document with your name on it does turn up in Google searches. There is a discussion now happening on the talk page about improving the references (and possibly the article) so your participation would be welcome. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 15:43, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Template talk:Surnames by language

Hello, William Allen Simpson. You have new messages at Template talk:Surnames by language.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

– Fayenatic London 15:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of List of American primetime network series that ran ten seasons or longer for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of American primetime network series that ran ten seasons or longer is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of American primetime network series that ran ten seasons or longer until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. JayJay^{What did I do?} 18:22, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:REFUND

I have removed 2 entries from WP:REFUND due to massive personal attacks and bad faith statements. WP:REFUND is where you go ask a favour - acting like a jerk is no way to ask a favour, so beb happy that you're not blocked for your actions there. If you'd like to try again using a) the proper format, b) without casting aspersions on other editors, and c) maybe something policy-based then please go ahead. Future similar posts, however, will not be looked upon well (✉→BWilkins←✎) 10:43, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

There are/were no personal attacks nor bad faith statements.

1. It is very clear that an administrator is using a bot to clear PRODs, which is contrary to policy. I've added specific quotations of policy.
2. There were already linked citations to notability guidelines. I've emphasized them in bold now, so you can see them better. Hopefully you will pay more attention to content.
3. Moreover, according to policy, restoration after a contested PROD deletion is automatic:

   Even after these seven days, a PRODed article can be restored by anybody through an automated request for undeletion.

It is not a favor. Your removal of these entries was contrary to policy.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:55, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Your accusation that someone is using a bot is unwarranted, and a personal attack. Accusing me of not paying attention to content above is uncivil, and improper. Contrary to your belief, contested PRODs are not always immediate restore - if you're acting like a jerk, there's NEVER a need for them to be actionned. make your request without aspersions and unwarranted attacks, and they'll likely be done. This is not a WP:BATTLE - don't treat it like one. (✉→BWilkins←✎) 14:22, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

1. Actually, it is not a personal attack: "... discussion of a user's conduct or history is not in itself a personal attack when done in the appropriate forum for such discussion..."
2. A personal attack would be saying "he's an idiot" – or your repeated use of the work "jerk", which is highly uncivil.
3. Rather, this is documenting a runaway administrator, via the tools provided by the wikimedia software, who did not follow the specific requirements of the policy.
4. It is "Policy", not a "belief". These are words with very specific meanings.
   --William Allen Simpson (talk) 17:22, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Marieve Herington

The article Marieve Herington has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No indication of notability, no third-party coverage beyond a local newspaper, nothing relevant found via Google.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Huon (talk) 21:02, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Draft:Helly Luv

To summarise my replies at WP:UND#Helly Luv: I found that all three versions were blatant copyvios from here and from her website, so I reckoned the best way to give you a start on a proper article was to delete both drafts, copy the latest article into Draft:Helly Luv, and remove the copyvio text while leaving the images, links and references.

Even if they gave a copyright release, an encyclopedia article and a Facebook page are two very different things. Facebook is her telling the world her story about herself, but an encyclopedia article should be more a summary of what other people say about her. There is good advice in User:Uncle G/On notability#Writing about subjects close to you:

...don't use your own personal knowledge of the subject, and don't cite yourself, your web site, or the subject's web site. Instead, use what is written about the subject by other people, independently, as your sources. Cite those sources in your very first edit. If you don't have such sources, don't write.

You said that the number of drafts shows this is "obviously a current popular topic" - given that all three come from her management, I think they indicate an energetic publicity push, based as far as I can see on one Youtube hit and some resulting controversy. It makes me smile to see a 25-year-old popstrel who has yet to release an album set up a "Philanthropic Foundation". But there probably are enough refs there to make a passable article. If user G2musicgroup (talk) turns up with a new account, point him to WP:PSCOI and tell him to make suggestions but not edit. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 22:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

PS: if possible, it would be good to get at least a basic stub back at Helly Luv before someone else starts another article, giving rise to more histmerge problems. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 12:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

PPS: User G2musicgroup (talk) has requested unblock, saying that s/he is not G2, only a fan, and if unblocked will no doubt come to help with the article. See my talk page advice. JohnCD (talk) 20:59, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

RFC

An RFC on an article you recently edited is being conducted at Talk:Joni_Ernst#RfC: Can material that is critical to the subject be included in the article? - Cwobeel (talk) 03:26, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

RfC

An RfC has been opened at Template talk:Succession box#RfC about Congress succession boxes. I remembered our discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 April 6#Template:NYRepresentatives which ended with the replacement of that mega template with succession boxes. So you may, or may not, want to opine there. Cheers. Kraxler (talk) 23:31, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Note that WP:CANVASS prohibits such non-neutral notifications as made above. The issue at hand is whether in accord with Template:Infobox officeholder the succession box should list a predecessor or successor who has no connection in reliable sources as being biographically connected to an officeholder due to the district being so altered as to make the claim palpably unusable to readers. In some cases, the redistricting completely changes the district such that few or no voters are held in common by the officeholders. In fact, it is reasonable to say the "predecessor" is the person who held office prior to the person in the article, and there is no "successor" until a person replaces him in office. Note Congress does not use "district numbers" to identify anyone at all. Collect (talk) 17:05, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Note that my WP:Notification was neutrally worded and, and was required under the guidelines, as explained in detail at the RfC. Kraxler (talk) 17:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, seemed neutral to me. Simply reminded me I was involved in a previous discussion.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 17:16, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

It is my understanding

That requests for changes to articles and removal of information cannot be made personally, but must be made through WP legal or the Foundation, or at very least through Talk pages. Since there is currently no sourced birth year for bassist RZ Roberts, I am leaving the d.o.b. out. But I see no record, anywhere, of a request that this individual made to WP that her d.o.b. not appear. Moreover, I am away of no right that an adult individual that is a public personality has to request that their d.o.b. not appear. Hence if a sourced d.o.b. arises, it will be returned to the article. Respond here, I will monitor the page. If there is a conflict, we can move it to an AdComm. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 17:17, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge

You are invited to participate in the 50,000 Challenge, aiming for 50,000 article improvements and creations for articles relating to the United States. This effort began on November 1, 2016 and to reach our goal, we will need editors like you to participate, expand, and create. See more here!

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:41, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

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Fix on a page

Hi User:William Allen Simpson, can you add some info to Maiorana article please, and the links might have to be removed, I don't want to make mistakes on article, but I'm fair sure you can help, thanks if you can.--Theo Mandela (talk) 22:35, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I've not contributed to that page as yet, and don't really know anything about the subject. Good luck.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:06, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

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Possible vandalism on the Leyva page.

Hello, Mr. Simpson. Please, if you would, turn your attention to the "People" section of the Leyva page, wherein I encountered what I suspect might be a bit of scurrilous and personally motivated vandalism, which might also (while perhaps being vaguely comical to a disinterested party) represent a liability to Wikipedia. Please investigate, and call it to the attention of an administrator, should you see fit. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.168.119.108 (talk) 05:39, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Barnstar - Aunt Jemima

		The Original Barnstar
		I've been particularly impressed with your dedication to improving Aunt Jemima and its related subarticles over the past week or two, doing the hard work of finding the history and expanding the articles isn't easy but with the current events its more important than ever before. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 17:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

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Wanting to discuss 1 on 1 and hear your reasoning

So we have had some differences in the last 24 hours. I want to discuss with you (Having no pressure about any Afd deadlines or outside interference) about your reasoning to why you believe the consensus on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Impeachment resolution against Mike DeWine was a clear "Delete" consensus.

Let me explain why I believe it was a clear "Merge" discussion. Starting off, we have the original Afd nominator (Of course, they vote delete). Then I posted a !vote to keep. Me and the original Afd nominator discussed a while (No one else had commented yet) and the original Afd reason was cleared up/solved....Which was fact of not enough reliable sources. The next comment was bolded as an !vote delete. However, if you read the comment, the immediately mention that it should (Keep word, should) be mentioned in the Mike DeWine article. The next comment (In time order) is a !vote delete/merge from a fourth editor. Next is a !vote delete from a fifth user with the comment "covered adequately at Mike DeWine, not notable enough for a standalone article". Next, the original Afd nominator changed his vote to merge. Then I agreed to a merge. Basically in the end, 7 users (With me being the 6th one), had a consensus to merge as it was notable for mentioning in Mike DeWine, but not notable enough for its own article.

Hopefully I got my reasoning across to why I believe it was a clear "Merge" consensus. Hopefully you will respond with your reasoning to a clear "Delete" consensus. Elijahandskip (talk) 15:20, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Adding on. 8th editor joined in discussion. !vote was a delete/merge. Elijahandskip (talk) 16:06, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Impeachment resolutions

Howdy. Hope you don't mind, but I changed the title of the discussion at WP:BIO/Noticeboard, from Mike DeWine to Mike DeWine and Gretchen Whitmer. Less confusing & might get more attention from passers-by. GoodDay (talk) 13:06, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I mind. That's not how the noticeboard works, and hopefully there's no problem at Whitmer.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 19:45, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Impeachment resolution against Gretchen Whitmer

Deleted as the article was deleted. --Doug Weller talk 15:44, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Admin Noticeboard notice

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--Elijahandskip (talk) 23:30, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Nota Bene: Much to my surprise, as I'd only observed actions on Wikipedia, the administrators found that Elijahandskip was hosting attack pages on DeWine and Whitmer, an alternative Wikipedia website (and Twitter account). And a view that mainstream media, or what Wikipedia would consider "reliable sources", is biased. Also, that Wikipedia is inciting racism. After discovery, the blog entries were deleted (or hidden from administrators). Don't feed the trolls.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:56, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Gretchen Whitmer

Hello, I'm JJPMaster. I noticed that you recently removed content from Gretchen Whitmer without adequately explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry; the removed content has been restored. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thanks. JJP...MASTER!_{[talk to] JJP... master?} 13:02, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Just a friendly notice

Since you denied the previous notice, I wanted to try a friendly notice. Here is a direct copy paste from the admin on the noticeboard.

"I'm happy to warn both of you. William Allen Simpson, please adhere to our policies re: civility. There's no need to call high school seniors, some of whom are actually adults, "school children". IMO that's an obvious attempt to denigrate and tweak. Elijahandskip, you appear to have a fairly strong bias in the area of race in the US that may make you likely to push certain points of view. I suggest you default to using the Walt Street Journal as your reality check on whether or not race is pertinent in a given article. If WSJ is noting someone's race, you can be assured that is not "creating a version of racism." It's acknowledging the racial element in the story. And both of you stop spamming discussions. That's disruptive."

Hopefully we can have a normal conversation and work out our differences. Agreed? Elijahandskip (talk) 17:54, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

A Dobos torte for you!

7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

7&6=thirteen (☎) 02:26, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

December 2020

Please don't tinker with other people's talkpage edits. Grandpallama (talk) 21:46, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

That's a Project page, not a Talk page. You didn't use a formatting instruction, so it appeared at the same level as the OP, seeming to make it a continuation of the OP (see "Fixing layout errors"). Also, it didn't make any sense in context without a specific name instead of "this user" (repeated several times), which made it seem like a reference to my personal blog. (That is, "cautiously editing".) I've never had a blog. Just trying to make it more readable.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 00:08, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Changing the layout isn't a big deal; changing my words is. Please don't do that again. Ask a user to clarify their meaning if you think it's confusing, but don't edit their posts, please. Grandpallama (talk) 03:40, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2021!

Hello William Allen Simpson, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2021. Happy editing, – Fayenatic London 18:47, 23 December 2020 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Category:Regions

This clearly includes various types of country subdivisions. Geography includes administrative regions, not just physical ones. Rathfelder (talk) 10:35, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

The main article very clearly says it applies to physical geography, human geography etc. That includes administrative and political and national regions (see sections 2.5 and 2.6). So it is a parent, not a child. That's why I've reverted the mistake. Also, making up words for our category structure makes wikipedia look foolish.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:15, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Let us be friends

We have had a very long disagreement that even involved administrators warning us both. I do not want to continue this argument any more. Can we just agree to disagree and drop this very long argument. I respect that you volunteered in political campaigns. I highly respect that. As you know, I am a senior in High School, so I haven't had those opportunities yet. I got my feet wet in Wikipedia editing about 2 years ago. Earlier this year, I took a major challenge and restarted the WikiProject of Current Events that had been in hibernation for years. I want to learn from others, and disagreements are bound to arise. But lets be real, it has done nothing other than cause us both problems. Can be just be friends? Elijahandskip (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Category:Redirects from citation identifiers

• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 November 30#Category:Redirects from citation identifiers

I don't see how this warranted a keep close. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 19:33, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Multiple reasons, all given by the Keep responder. Your nomination itself didn't list any standard category merge qualifications. In 30 days, it did not get any support. No good reason to relist, so nobody bothered.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 23:56, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

This isn't a standard merge request because we're dealing with rcats here. The redirects that populate these categories are virtually the same. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 00:28, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the process. I've created a fair number of them. Also, was among the first users of parser functions in templates at the time they were brand new. Also, was a developer. Categories are cheap. Redirects are cheap. You aren't arguing WP:SMALLCAT, because they aren't small and they have potential for growth.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 08:54, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Triple intersection categories

With your dislike of such categories I am shocked that you appear to be OK with keeping Category:Asian-American skateboarders and Category:Asian-American biblical scholars.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:47, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Actually, I'd sent off an email to a friend in the community asking what he'd like, and haven't heard back from him yet.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:58, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Closing CfD cases

Hello, William Allen Simpson,

I see that you closed Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 November 27#Category:Archaeology on stamps discussion but forgot about taking action on Category:Archaeology on stamps. It needs to be untagged and marked for deletion citing the discussion that was closed. It doesn't get automatically deleted when you close the discussion. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!}

And the same goes for Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 December 1#Category:Professional Rugby union leagues in Americas. Please finish this closure. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 14:12, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• Thanks, Liz, they were both listed for action at WP:CFDWM#Ready for deletion after depopulating. Administrators have been rather slow these days.
  William Allen Simpson (talk) 19:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

This has happened once again with both Cuban atheists and Baseball venues in Abilene, Texas. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:17, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Yep, you administrators are rather backlogged, waiting since the 13th.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:33, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Possible attempt at avoiding discussion, and possible intentional misunderstanding by User:William Allen Simpson

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. --Antondimak (talk) 15:13, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

O

What is the subtle change of the 'o' in "from"? Am I missing something?Rathfelder (talk) 23:29, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

@Rathfelder: It's an 'omicron' character. That's why it appears slightly wider looking at the two on successive lines:

• Category:People from Arta (municipality) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), re-created after deletion, then re-deleted again.
• Category:People frοm Arta (municipality) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), re-created later the same day.

William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:33, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Category:Types of country subdivisions

Hello, In this CFD discussion, you indicated that you had added the parent category to the nomination. I don't think that change was saved though; can you double check the nomination? - RevelationDirect (talk) 19:37, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

{cfr}
William Allen Simpson (talk) 00:23, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Oops, just missed it. Thanks! - RevelationDirect (talk) 13:28, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Category:Adolescent suicides has been nominated for merging

Category:Adolescent suicides has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:40, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

What do you have against me

Why do you want me banned from Wikipedia. At this point, I am taking it personally. Please tell me what I can do to stop making you want me banned.... Elijahandskip (talk) 23:16, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

A) Eli should drop the DeWine impeachment stuff & B) Will A Simpson should be communicating directly with Eli. GoodDay (talk) 23:24, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Agreed GoodDay. I will drop the impeachment stuff and will not bring it up ever again. Hopefully @William Allen Simpson: will see this so we can actually communicate. *Crossing fingers*. Elijahandskip (talk) 23:26, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Cordillera autonomy movement category

Hi William, with regards to this edit you made, the proposed Cordillera polity would not be a province but an autonomous region which includes multiple provinces, like Bangsamoro. I understand there have been a few related CfDs recently, and thought your edit may be related to them. If so, is there a better solution than putting it in the proposed provinces category? Best, CMD (talk) 08:08, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

I'll propose rensming the category to provinces and regions, to match others in the parent, such as states and territories. Thanks, I'd read it, and didn't see that there would be provinces within the region.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 08:11, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, that would work. CMD (talk) 08:14, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Concerning language used in a discussion

Hi, thanks for participating in a few recent CFD’s with me. However I’d like to raise concern with with words you used in those discussions, namely, “useless and absurd” and I ask that they be striked out of your comment per guideline at WP:RUC. Reply here or at here: User_talk:Carlossuarez46#"not_useful_or_meaningful.—Prisencolin (talk) 16:34, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Didn't bother replying there, either. Yet another defending a WP:CSD#G4 with a WP:WALLOFTEXT.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:53, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

It's clearly not WP:G4 eligible as the category is still standing (I can point to my rationale that it's not a recreation as well). Anyways I will wait for @Carlossuarez46: to become active again, and if he does not strike his uncivil language I will be reporting the both of you to WP:ANI.--Prisencolin (talk) 10:15, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Prisencolin (talk) 22:30, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Aunt Jemima reverted edit

Thanks for your revert of my edits on the Aunt Jemima article, I should have looked to see if the part about the name change being related to the a push against injustice which started after the death of George Floyd. before I posted my edit, again thanks for reverting my edit as my edit was just repeatative and not needed. ComputerFreak34 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 20:13, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Territorial entities to Countries and territories page moves

Hello. You moved a number of pages related to places where one or another language is spoken. Do you know that those moves were proposed last year and that there was no consensus to carry them out? See Talk:List of territorial entities where Afrikaans or Dutch are official languages#Requested move 10 May 2020. Largoplazo (talk) 22:52, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Glad to see that great minds think alike! Missed it, as that proposal was not in the correct place for an entire subcategory. However, the non-administrator no consensus close was a bit unusual, as there was a clear majority of support, and a fragmented minority. Moreover, it has been overtaken by events. Administrative territorial entities (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been deleted WP:CSD#G5, WP:NEO, WP:NOR, and WP:DENY. All "territorial entities" are in the process of being removed/renamed/replaced.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 03:14, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Since you're experienced with categories

I uncovered this while researching the IMO terrible unfair attacks on you at ANI. Do you think Category:Coptic people by occupation should be in Category:People by language and occupation and Category:Coptic language? We also have Category:Coptic-speaking people by occupation. Nil Einne (talk) 13:13, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Nil Einne As you probably are unaware, I'd started Categories for Discussion and Templates for Discussion 15 years ago, hoping that good policies and fair processes would help. But nowadays there are too many partisans and not enough participants. It's hard for the engineers and experts and lawyers who built the institution to keep up, and many have been discouraged in the face of such vitriol.

The modus operandi of those three Welsh-language partisans seems to be attacking as "racist" anybody who disagrees with them. And counter-attacking with spurious allegations when they are brought to ANI.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention! There was already a wide consensus on the proper naming at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 November 13#People by language and occupation, and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 November 13#Category:Coptic-speaking people. Therefore, Category:Coptic people by occupation appears to be a recent (2017) duplication. Would you like to make the merge nomination? Or should I?
William Allen Simpson (talk) 18:07, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

No more personal attacks like the above, please. And no more false claims about having "started" something that was in existence well before you arrived. Deb (talk) 10:37, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

On June 30, 2006, Categories for Discussion was created from earlier Categories for Deletion and other processes, as I'd proposed and documented detailed migration strategy. Also, using the then new parser functions, revised all the templates and the documentation. On July 20, 2006, I'd automated the daily process using a built-in function that I'd designed as a developer. Likewise, Templates for Discussion. I'm reasonably proud of my past contributions to this project, both technical and content.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 07:33, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

To clarify my ANI comments

I am not an admin, but I can get you banned (or, more likely, some admin will ban you before I get around to it). Your edit-warring is not welcome on this project, please stop doing it. There's no reason to care whether the CEO of Quaker Oats hosted borders in the article on Aunt Jemima; if you feel otherwise please discuss on the talk page, not ANI. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:39, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

More pointedly

Look, William, it's fine to use reliable sources which, themselves, also try to right great wrongs (to cite various pertinent facts of note or whatever), but that is not what we, ourselves, do on Wikipedia, especially in wikivoice. We are under no obligation to use their examples, especially when it is blatant, WP:POINTy editorlizing. Further, please read again what vandalism is not, because my sense is that you're still not getting what you did wrong there, slapping an inexperienced user with a uw-vandal4 (doesn't matter they'd gotten one back in 2017) just add insult to injury. Coupled with no attempt on your part, as the experienced user, to deescalate by engaging the article talk page (WP:COMMUNICATE). Again, I'm not sure if there's a WP:CIR issue preventing you from understanding all of that, but it's a problem. WP:POINT, NOTVAND/NPA, WP:CIR, WP:COMMUNICATE — it's not a short list, I'm afraid. El_C 03:44, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I want to apologize to you.

Hello William Allen Simpson. We haven't had a problem in a while, and I wanted to apologize for all the problems and stress I caused you months ago. I have been working on getting over on all our arguments, and I just wanted to say sorry. I know during our past arguments you considered me a troll. I just wanted to tell you that I am not a troll and that I really do wish to better Wikipedia. I hope you and me can sorta have a "clear slate" going forward in the future. Once again, I am sorry for the fighting and debates I had with you in the past. Will you forgive me? Elijahandskip (talk) 12:04, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Category:Items to be merged has been nominated for renaming

Category:Items to be merged has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. --Trialpears (talk) 16:31, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

BLP talk

(refactored from Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons)

Copy my post from White supremacist discussion:

• It amuses me to see our European colleagues think that:

1. Irish are white. Not until mid-1900s, in the US, officially.
2. Italians are white. Again, not in the US until recently, where they were called Mediterraneanoid to distinguish them from Caucasoid.
3. Slavs are white. Actually, the word "slave" comes from "slav", and they've never been considered white in the US to this day.
4. Obviously, you were sheltered from Spics, Wops, Polacks, and other Papists. And my parents who called them these things, and who voted for Trump.

William Allen Simpson (talk) 00:24, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

I've moved this comment here because I can't see how it has anything to do with the discussions at WT:BLP, and because the casual ethnic slurs seem merely gratuitous. Thank you. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:56, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

You made some disambiguation pages 5+ years ago. I came across them and found them useful. I wanted to thank you for setting these up, and to report back that they have grown with other people adding to the lists. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:51, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

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Category:Video games by game engine has been nominated for discussion

Category:Video games by game engine has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Respiciens (talk) 10:59, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Nomination of game lists by engine for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether these articles are suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether they should be deleted.

• List of CryEngine games
• List of GameMaker games
• List of RenderWare games
• List of Ren'Py games
• List of Sierra's Creative Interpreter games
• List of Unity games
• List of Unreal Engine games

The articles will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of CryEngine games until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the articles during the discussion, including to improve the articles to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the articles until the discussion has finished.

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CFD discussions

Hello, William,

I was looking at the CFD for Category:Oceanian sportspeople by ethnic or national origin and other related categories you nominated for deletion and noticed that you didn't inform that category creator of the CFD discussion. This is a very important step. If it is decided that categories are to be deleted, they should understand why so that they don't try to recreate them and so that they understand the organization of categories on Wikipedia. It's also just only fair to let content creators be part of a discussion that involves pages they created.

I encourage you to use Twinkle to tag pages for deletion. Once you set up your Twinkle Preferences to "Notify page creator", then any time you tag a page for deletion, Twinkle will post these notices on your behalf on the talk page of the category creator. Most page patrollers and many administrators use it because it remembers templates for you and has a lot of other great time-saving features. Please consider trying it out. If you don't like it, well, then find an appropriate template of your choice to use (or write a personal note with a link) and beging to notify page creators yourself when you nominate their page creations for any type of deletion. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:05, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm still doing things by hand. I'm assuming that recent creators monitor their watch list. Once upon a time, 15-20 years ago we had dozens of folks participating at CfD. Now, it's a mere handful. Thanks for being one of them.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 07:35, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi William, in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 December 19#American people of European descent by occupation, did you mean to write "facially incorrect", and if not would you like to change it?

More importantly, would you like to reply again there to Firefangledfeathers? – Fayenatic London 21:30, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Facially incorrect means "incorrect on its face". Too American? I'd thought my further details about the running gag were sufficiently clear. I'll post a response to Firefangledfeathers, but at the time didn't think it necessary to add more to the debate (and my watch had expired).
William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:23, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Cheers. I'd never heard "facially incorrect" before, and did not pick up its meaning in that context. 🤔 As to the other point – FFF has accepted your argument. – Fayenatic London 09:32, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Stub templates at CFD

Copied from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 February 25#Australian transport stubs because that thread is closed

• Delete all — technically, the templates are nominated at TfD, but are so closely tied that I'm OK with them here. Means an administrator will need to close; the template process isn't as well developed as categories (even though I made them both).
  William Allen Simpson (talk) 18:43, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  @William Allen Simpson: re your first sentence, please see WP:TFD#NOT (the pseudo-heading "Stub templates") also WP:CFD, first paragraph. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:05, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  Redrose64: looks like folks have changed things around. Once upon a time, we didn't make temporary categories for stub types (or templates in general). We used the engine's What Links Here on the template. There's a table in the database that has been around longer than categories, so it's actually cheaper computationally. I'd have a link to What Links Here in the template itself, so it was one click for maintenence. Folks have forgotten the old ways.
  William Allen Simpson (talk) 07:10, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand your second post. The categories concerned are not "temporary categories for stub types" - it has long been the practice, certainly since before I joined (May 2009) that stub templates that have sufficient transclusions (typically 60+) will gain their own category, which is permanent to all intents and purposes. Some stub categories have been around for many years - Category:Rail transport stubs, for example, was created in December 2004, which (correct me if I'm wrong) was before you joined Wikipedia.

For a long time, we have asked people to propose new stub templates and categories at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals, where a simple count of potential members is usually enough to ensure approval. The categories (and indeed the templates) in this CFD were created out of process and also had insufficient potential members, as explained at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals/2022/December#Various Australian transport stubs (linked in my first post in the CFD). Stub templates and categories that it is felt should be deleted for whatever reason have both been sent to CFD ever since the WP:SFD process was shut down more than ten years ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:42, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• Of course, we didn't always have categories. It wasn't part of the original software.
• I've been around since 2003. I was a volunteer developer on the technical list, helped monitor the servers, and sometimes helped fix broken database entries before administrators were given history merge tools.
• I'm an Internaut. I've been involved with network engineering since 1978-79, long before it was called "The Internet". I'd helped build the NSFnet. I'd started one of the original ISPs circa 1994, so had plenty of operational experience.
• But I'm not experienced with PHP, a horrible mashup. So I've only written small amounts of code that ended up approved. Including the time function used to automate the CfD and TfD page rollovers without editing them every day. After Brion got parser functions working, IIRC I moved those over to Discussion (from Deletion) in mid-2006,
• In 2005, at an IETF, a group of us agreed to begin using our mundane names instead of sobriques. If you've bothered to Google, then you have a very good idea about my original login here. We hoped to add a bit of authority to our areas of expertise. Camelcase WilliamAllenSimpson, later with spaces.
• I've spent most of my time on policy, not articles. Good policy, guidelines, and processes are what keeps the project stable.
• Sadly, I didn't even notice that WP:SFD had shut down. Never interested me much. I'd forgotten about it.
• I'm just pointing out that we frequently used What Links Here on templates, from earliest days, no need for populating matching categories. Faster, better, cheaper.

William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:55, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I was going by your earliest recorded contributions. There is no suggstion at your user page that you have ever used another name, I'm not in the habit of googling Wikipedians. I know of at least two former Wikipedians who have been globally banned for doxxing.

Categories for stub templates enable a hierarchical tree to be constructed, so Category:Victoria (Australia) road stubs is a fourth-level descendant of Category:Transport stubs (by more than one chain). I don't know how such a hierarchy might be set up using templates and not categories. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

• Not too worried about doxxing, after all the international standards, conference reports, and other public publications with my name, home addresses, and 45+ years of email addresses at various universities and companies. I've had to discontinue many accounts because the spam load was so immense.
• Don't know of a way to do a hierarchy with templates alone. No idea why a hierachy would be useful, either, just looking for stubs to improve. Sorry that I'm not able to be more helpful.

William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:35, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

ANI notice

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Category:Lists of Interstate Highways sharing the same title has been nominated for renaming

Category:Lists of Interstate Highways sharing the same title has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 02:54, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Hey

Are you alright, William? I haven't seen you active in over a month. I kind of miss you. Hope that you are doing well. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 09:39, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

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