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Seek a doctor

Does anyone else think it is inappropriate for us to tell users to seek a doctor, when they come to our reference desk to ask about a species ID? I understand if someone comes seeking medical advice, we can say "We can't give you medical advice, if you want medical advice, seek a doctor". There's a very important IF statement there too. We are not qualified to say what does and doesn't warrant medical attention, any more than we are qualified to give diagnoses.

Telling OP to see a doctor out of the blue seems very unprofessional and borderline unethical to me. This [1] is the question that prompted my post here. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:21, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

We've had this debate many times before. Advising someone to see a doctor is not medical advice. Telling them there's nothing to worry about, is medical advice, and is forbidden. I probably should have said, "if you're concerned, see a doctor." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:37, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

"Telling them there's nothing to worry about" would be highly inappropriate, agreed. I think Semantic Mantis is making a distinction between (A) cases where seeking advice from a health professional may be appropriate, and (B) cases where such an issue does not arise. In this example, it wasn't just a matter of academic arachnological interest - the OP was bitten by a spider of unknown ID. That clearly falls into class (A), so suggesting they seek medical advice if concerned is OK. I don't see that this was "out of the blue", given the context provided by the OP. If it turns out to have been a highly toxic spider, by the time they identify it, it may well be too late to see a doctor, so it's quite possible that medical attention may be a higher priority than identification of the species. Only the OP would know whether they're experiencing any ill effects, so the level of their concern would be conditioned by that. On the one hand, any sensible person should know, without being told by some anonymous person on the internet, that they may need to see a doctor in such circumstances; on the other hand, spelling it out does no harm and may do some good.

If the question had been "I'm researching Henry VIII and I can't find the date of his marriage to Katharine of Aragon", that would just as clearly be class (B). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:42, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

"On the one hand, any sensible person should know, without being told by some anonymous person on the internet, that they may need to see a doctor in such circumstances; on the other hand, spelling it out does no harm and may do some good. " Yes, indeed. On the other hand, some of our readers don't know the limits of our powers, and may mistake a simple reminder of this general concept as a specific assessment of need to see a doctor for a particular condition or symptom. That's what I want to be careful to avoid, just as much as I'd avoid giving diagnoses or prognoses. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:59, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

User:Baseball Bugs - I see you understand. If you can use that if "you're concerned" phrasing in the future, I would be much obliged. A small change in wording makes all the difference to me :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:01, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Read this - [2] - not impressed. For all I know some poor schmuck in India just sold a less-favorite daughter into debt slavery in order to get immediate medical attention for a doctor to laugh at a spider-bit son. Who knows? All this ethics schmethics is about one thing, getting more money into doctors' pockets, has nothing to do with anything else. It's about as holy a cause as the people trying to keep us from linking to Canadian websites because their copyright might be looser. If somebody asks you to identify a picture of a spider that would be a good deed to do. Preaching bureaucracy at us, not so much. Wnt (talk) 16:17, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Your hatred of doctors is well-known here. If you get severely ill sometime, you can console yourself with the thought that no doctor is going to get rich from you. (Though your undertaker might.) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:04, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

If I had plumbers telling me I shouldn't write about whether a water heater can explode because the OP should go to one of them if they are worried, they might be saying I have a "hatred" of plumbers. But the lack of a pseudo-religious deference is not actually hatred. Wnt (talk) 10:09, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

If you're worried that your water heater might be about to explode, you would call your local water heater guy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:00, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

That may be true if it's red hot, steam is spewing out the sides, it's making a noise like a train whistle, and the electronic control panel is announcing in a loud voice that you now have 3 minutes 20 seconds to evacuate the minimum blast radius. But most of the time someone worrying about the water heater blowing up tends to do it every night when they're sleeping above the thing (or rather, not) but have no particular reason to be suspicious. Wnt (talk) 14:27, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

And what has all that got to do with the possibility of being bitten by a venomous spider? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:33, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, by the time they went to Wikipedia it was already rather late in the game. Incidentally, there are very few spider bites that really can be treated, not even brown recluse. Wnt (talk) 23:18, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Which is why he was told to see a doctor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:20, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Doctors don't work, good reason to see a doctor. Yah, this is a bit like the South Park presentation of the lost 116 pages! And since when were doctors experts on identifying spiders anyway? There's a fair chance that in the improbable instance he actually did go to a doctor that we have doctor show up here saying "I have a case of a spider bite, and I'm looking for an expert to identify..." Wnt (talk) 23:30, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

You're making a medical diagnosis, and that's not kosher. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:20, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Problem for mobile users

It appears that the "Ask a new question" button doesn't work for mobile users - their questions are being posted to the top of the page without a section header. See, for example, this recent diff, and we had a similar problem a few weeks ago. Who needs to be tasked with fixing it? Tevildo (talk) 18:04, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

See User talk:Nil Einne#New question button and Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2016 May 1#Question regarding Physics for more info. It really depends what you mean by "fixing it". If you mean a proper fix (i.e. making the mw:Extension:InputBox work on the mobile site), then someone at wikimedia ideally although since mediawiki is open source it could nominally be anyone. I was at one stage planning to file a bug report, but I never got round to it, and also never replied to Wnt, partially because I was waiting for but never got a reply to my question here mw:Extension talk:MobileFrontend#New section for non talk namespace page?. It's possible to force people on the mobile site to the normal site to ask a question, like's done on the WP:Teahouse and one or two other places I can't recall offhand (ANI? Help Desk?). But personally I still have no idea how to keep it on the mobile site, if it's even currently possible, as I have no idea how to even start a new section on the RD on the mobile site. Nil Einne (talk) 20:12, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

@Nil Einne and Tevildo: I'd forgotten about that. I've just tried the edit to Wikipedia:Reference desk/header/howtoask I suggested [3] - it seems to work for me. I don't do mobile device editing so someone else will have to see if it functions any better than what we have now, but in theory it should because the link shouldn't get truncated. The only disadvantage I see from my edit is I've forgotten how the heck to get rid of that box-and-box icon that Wikipedia puts at the end of every link. It's some arcane thing coded right into HTML or CSS they use ... I've fixed it before... somewhere... I think it's only a cosmetic problem for now, and hopefully someone knows or I'll remember WTF the "feature" is for this. Wnt (talk) 22:22, 25 June 2016 (UTC) <--- update: the magic sesame is class="plainlinks". Wnt (talk) 23:36, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

On my (Android) mobile phone (which I never use for this sort of thing, I must admit) I'm just getting a blue square on the far right of the screen that I can't seem to zoom out to, and which doesn't do anything when I tap it. But this may very well be my inability to drive the device rather than a problem with the code. Tevildo (talk) 20:56, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

@Tevildo: Could you try this with the old version?? Thanks! (clicking the button on that page won't take you to a refdesk, so don't save it, but you'll see if the button did something in that version) Wnt (talk) 23:35, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of moving the box from the way right position it used to have (345 px) to 125 px left margin, which to me makes it look pretty much aligned with the top entries. I had set it so far right before to make it look like the inputbox element had for me before, but a caveat is that I don't know how that was really encoded. Wnt (talk) 23:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

The button now (seems to) work, but it takes me to the desktop view (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/). As a non-mobile user (and not likely to become one, if my past 30 minutes are typical of the "mobile experience" - how, for instance, are you supposed to get here other than by typing "WT:RD" into Google? There doesn't seem to be any way of getting to the talk page from the article), I don't really know if things are working properly, as I have no experience of what's supposed to happen. Is there anyone else who can assist? Tevildo (talk) 00:27, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Oh. I should have thought of that, but yes, I just used the hard link. There should be a way to make it go to the mobile site for mobile, I think. As long as the link is actually working, and posts a new section at the bottom instead of the top, I think it's better than what we had before, even if it takes you out of mobile site (which was suggested above anyway) until I figure a fix. Erm, then again I thought about it and realized I really don't have ideas to work with, so I went here with it. If I don't get an answer I can just have two blue boxes, but that is unwanted. Wnt (talk) 00:58, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

You're correct it will take you to the desktop view. That's the problem I mentioned above and one of the reasons I haven't really bothered to fix it myself yet. Unfortunately as far as I can see, there's no way to solve this until either 1) mw:Extension:InputBox is fixed or 2) Someone figures out how to start a new section on a non talk page on the mobile site. Actually, I'm not sure if we could fix it with 2), I'm assuming there's probably some code we can use to show a different button if accessing from the mobile site. But perhaps there isn't. In which case I guess all we can do is add 2 buttons as suggested by Wnt. However this seems to be moot until we at least figure out how to start a new section on the mobile site which as far as I can tell, we still don't know.

BTW, there's no need to use a phone to do basic testing of the mobile site. You don't even need a separate browser. Just visit the mobile site via your current browser and probably resize the window to get a better idea. There should be a mobile view button at the bottom of each page on the desktop site to get there or see for the Science desk. (This testing isn't perfect, but it'll be sufficient for many purposes.)

As for accessing talk pages, go to the bottom of the page and there should be a link if you're logged in. If you're not logged in, as far as I know you're right, the only way to access it is via manually typing the URL or some link somewhere. (Actually, possibly at least partially due to often not being logged in, I only found out about the button at the bottom of the page a few weeks ago.)

I've never really understood this. It's possibly partly due to the view that talk pages are difficult to use on mobile sites which I agree can sometimes be the case with a lot of indenting. And perhaps also due to the inability to edit from the mobile site until recently. However these don't seem good reasons to me. Maybe this is also partly due to the idea that the mobile site is supposed to be a stop gap measure until the development of single site able to adapt to all devices and that talk pages are going to be replaced by flow, who know. This isn't the right place for a discussion on all that anyway I guess.

Nil Einne (talk) 14:09, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Actually seems things are worse than I thought. In the discussion on Mediawiki, I mentioned the possibility of adding new section for talk pages on the mobile site. I just realised this doesn't actually work when you're not logged in. In fact, not only is the talk page button on the bottom missing, but you can't view the talk page via the special mobile view anyway. Perhaps because it's editing focused and editing talk pages from the mobile site when you're not logged in is disabled? (You can still view the normal talk page view on the mobile site.) I seem to have memories of this, and I'm fairly sure I tested without being logged in. So I'm not sure if I forgot about this when asking the question at mediawiki. Or editing the talk page from the mobile site when not logged in was enabled then (but not some stage in the past when I first noticed). Or what. In any case, I'm now even more sure there's probably nothing we can do but force people to use the desktop site to add new sections. This also means they'll be forced onto the desktop site after asking until they work out how to get back. Nil Einne (talk) 14:16, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Probably should clarify the above. There are two views of a talk page from the mobile site. One is [4] which should work whether logged in or not. Another is [5] which currently only works when logged in. Note that the mobile site should take your login session from the non mobile site, so you should use private browsing, another browser where you're not logged in, or just log out; to see what non-logged in editors see. Nil Einne (talk) 14:23, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this is not working according to theory. I'd originally thought I could take the link that will start a new question on the desktop site [6] and simply replace the first bit with http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ to get a new section, i.e. [7]. The theory from the earlier talk page discussion had been that mobile users were getting a truncated version of the link (which was differently ordered as produced from inputbox) that was lacking the section=new bit. However, the reality is that when I follow that link, damn near anything can happen - this time I keep landing editing the Webserver directory index article - but whether it opens the Science Refdesk or not the one constant is that it's editing section 0. The link I'm redirected to lands at something like [8] . Now it's tempting to change that "0" at the end but it just makes it go into a constant loading graphic and never open. True, this kind of munged link doesn't come with a guarantee - I can't even report it as a bug - but it means it's going to be tricker to try to hack in some way to open a new section on the mobile site at all, even given a separate button for it. I'm not convinced it's impossible though... I think there might be a way to look up the current section manually and replace "section=new" in the URL directly with that, but I haven't tried yet. Wnt (talk) 08:47, 29 June 2016 (UTC) Erm, actually even changing the "section=" causes the same failure to load (after redirecting to a screen with a different number at the very end). Simply editing the mobile site you follow links like [9], but if that's the last section (as it currently is) and you try adding one to go to [10] you're looking at that damn overfed asterisk again. Must be fun if you're just doing an ordinary edit and someone deletes a section while the text is up on your phone before you hit edit. Wnt (talk) 09:05, 29 June 2016 (UTC) Anyway, I should RTFM, but where is the manual? And for that matter, how *is* a mobile editor supposed to start a new section anyway? Wnt (talk) 09:11, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

OK, after asking on Help:Mobile access I found out that the mobile version relies on a #/talk/new extension to create a new section. On TALK pages - that "talk" extension changes the page edited from the page you specified in the URL to the talk page. Take it out, and it does nothing. [11] So it is literally impossible to ask a question in a new section on the mobile site, as far as I can tell. I see User:TheDJ added a {{SERVER}} to the template, but that definitely does not come up as the mobile server for a mobile user and if it did the link wouldn't work anyway. I think that the scheme as I left it above, funnelling mobile users into the desktop site, is as good as it's ever going to get. Wnt (talk) 11:09, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Admin attention needed

blocked
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Can someone please block the Static IP making this edit about presidents needing to be sodomized? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 04:04, 30 June 2016 (UTC) I've reported that jerk to AIV. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:00, 30 June 2016 (UTC) It looks like a leading but marginally answerable question. Certainly there is a lot of Roman trappery about the US presidency that invites negative Roman ideas about receptive intercourse; it's not truly wrong to give them an airing. I don't like Wikipedia keeping hot lists of topics too sensitive to be asked about. Wnt (talk) 10:19, 30 June 2016 (UTC) I don't know what Romans have got to do with anything, but if you look at he original version of the question, you can discern the level of the OP's sincerity. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:21, 30 June 2016 (UTC) Doesn't look that different from someone questioning whether a woman could be president - and that is only just on the way out... Wnt (talk) 23:59, 30 June 2016 (UTC) Talking about getting "nailed" is not a serious question. I would call it an anti-gay slur. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:05, 1 July 2016 (UTC) Obvious troll is obvious. HighInBC Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}} 01:16, 1 July 2016 (UTC) Take a step back for a moment and ask yourself whether someone posting as "HighInBC" whose contribution is a four-word tautology/internet meme should really be asking me to make snap judgments. The OP's bias is obvious but the question remains relevant. After all, we all know about the Taliban and their bacha bazi distinction, which is based on a related concept that is not actually the same standard by which Iranians do executions. See Homosexuality in ancient Rome#Roles. Wnt (talk) 11:31, 1 July 2016 (UTC) I didn't ask you to make any judgement at all. I used my own judgement. HighInBC Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}} 16:24, 1 July 2016 (UTC) With all due respect Wnt, we're getting trolled with this. RickinBaltimore (talk) 12:32, 1 July 2016 (UTC) Some oysters spit out the sand, and you can buy sixteen of them for a buck fifty in a little can. Others dutifully wrap it in mother of pearl, and some of their works are auctioned off one at a time in London Berlin. We shouldn't really fear a grain of sand here. Wnt (talk) 14:12, 1 July 2016 (UTC) It's not about fear or oysters, it's about making trolls clam up. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:11, 1 July 2016 (UTC) @Wnt: If you watch the reference desk you will recognize that this is a reoccurring character. The person who posting the question was trolling us, and this thread is feeding the troll. The troll says "Nom nom nom, nummy attention". As for my name, you are welcome to come discuss that on my talk page but it is hardly relevant to this discussion. HighInBC Need help? {{ping|HighInBC}} 16:23, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Help sought

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Peeps,

Can you all view this link please. This two are behaving like "idiots" and calling me disruptive. And Guy is threatening me on top - link. Note: I posted to Guy twice before out of annoyance. I thought I'd be nice the third time, but he's an idiot. There is another idiot who's trying to support Guy Macon's baseless argument, named ClanPan...

Can you guys shed some light to this so that I can take them to ANI for disrespecting me, using force. - If they understand their wrong doings I won't take them to ANI.

Apostle (talk) 18:40, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Why do you keep calling your fellow editors marshmallows? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:38, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

It's short for "people". Slang for friends, close pals, etc. See Urban Dictionary, my link attempt broke the Small template for some reason. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:45, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I know nothing of this dispute, care even less. But you might refrain from calling people idiots while complaining that they are disrespecting you. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:53, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I think Saint Russell should definitely take this to ANI and get some useful feedback. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:40, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree 100%. Nobody at talk:Reference desk has the power to shut idiots up, but at WP:ANI they have the ability to completely block idiots from editing Wikipedia. Now that Russell.mo / Apostle has determined that "he [Guy] Is an idiot" he should definitely "take me to ANI for disrespecting him, using force." Regarding the "If they understand their wrong doings I won't take them to ANI" comment, nothing Russell.mo / Apostle has said has in any way caused my to understand my wrong doings, so ANI is clearly the only way to force me into submission to Russell.mo / Apostle's will. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:38, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I have to say I didn't understand the "force" part. Maybe he's going to use The Force? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:47, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I just assumed that he was talking about the Forth (programming language) with a speech impediment. You know, like how he says "idiot" when he obviously means "all around nice fellow who everybody loves". It's a common error... --Guy Macon (talk) 01:59, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Clearly enough for me, Bugs' comment was a thinly-veiled jab at the user's imperfect conversational English, with full knowledge that English is his second language. It's treating ESL users as second-class "others", not unlike similar treatment of IP users, and equally inappropriate. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:10, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

User:Mandruss - Can you explain to me what the Original Poster is trying to say? I understand that English may be his second language, but if one edits the English Wikipedia, one should know enough English so that, if one makes threats to go to ANI, someone can figure out what the ANI issue is. Otherwise linguistic competence becomes an issue. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:14, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

No, I can't make any more sense of it than you can. And I don't disagree about linguistic competence. My only point was that neither justifies ridicule. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:17, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. The Original Poster is creating a better case against himself than is created by linguistic ridicule. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:38, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

The Original Poster is very strongly cautioned to read the boomerang essay before going to ANI. I have no idea what wrongdoing the Original Poster is alleging was committed against them. I do see that they have engaged in personal attacks themselves. However, their complaint is incomprehensible; ANI is a problematical forum, but I do not recall when I have seen them block an editor with a more-than-ten-year clean block log based solely on an incomprehensible post that doesn't even allege a wrongdoing that I can understand. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:07, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

---

Hello ClanPan, I might have misjudged you, regardless, please forgive me if so. My internet kbs ran out as I was re-correcting myself on the RD Talkpage – if you don’t believe me than please check on the RD Computing page, that I re-wrote the message, deleting your name but not “you guys” carelessly… It takes time for me to write a passage/message, and I do make [careless] mistakes if I rush it… I’m also ESL. Plus, it was late night, I couldn’t top-up…

Everyone has bad days sometimes; mine’s explained above. I don’t deal with ANI; you guys are enough… My brain malfunctioned because I couldn’t “undo” it…

Hello Everyone else (except Guy Macon), sorry about this post; my mistake. Let’s conclude the matter as “Guy Macon is right…” I don’t want/need to win this rubbish argument – I behaved like a little kid...

Let’s disclose this matter. Of course, you are more than welcome to take it to the ANI. Your free will, what I careless of...

Regards.

Apostle (talk) 05:47, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

collectivist trolling

I have hatted two threads, one on rape in Sweden, and one one I am not sure what about blacks in Alabama, since they are both accusations based on unsupported collective guilt premises, not requests for references. If the OP's want to post their questions again in actually neutral, non-baiting language, looking for sources, instead of provocation, they should feel free to do so. μηδείς (talk) 03:38, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I suspect both of those questions came from the Nazi troll, trying to work his way toward a political point of some kind. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:07, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

User disguising identity?

There is a user with posts on the ref desks who signs as: [[User:Russell.mo|Apostle]] ([[User talk:Russell.mo|talk]]), which renders as Apostle (talk). I recall a troll from awhile ago with a moniker similar to "Russell", but don't recall specifically. ~Cheers, [dynamic IP]:2606:A000:4C0C:E200:9559:2AAF:B103:4945 (talk) 22:03, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Such a signature is permissible per Wikipedia:Signatures#Customizing how everyone sees your signature. An extensive discussion of this user's signature ("Space Ghost" at the time -- other monikers have included "Angelos|Angelus", "SuperGirlsVibrator", "Mr. Prophet", & "Mr. Zoot Cig Bunner") is at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 117#Signature discussion. -- ToE 14:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Okay; thanks for clarifying. —-[OP]:2606:A000:4C0C:E200:476:A710:819B:7961 (talk) 18:03, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

2606:A000:4C0C:E200:476:A710:819B:7961: Just to let you know,

1) I did not receive your notification at the time.

2) Wiki-laides hated SuperGirlsVibrator, and a Wikipedian made me look like a flop when I was learning with the name Mr. Prophet - He probably thought I was the Oone...

3) Russell.mo is not me either.

Regards.

Apostle (talk) 09:41, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

For native English speakers only: Would a native English speaker talk like this?

Moved to Language desk
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
(Let's say A and B are friends in their late twenties, and A is a pessimist when it comes to dating and relationships.) A: She only loves you for your money, obviously. If you told her you sold your car and quit your job, she'd be gone in a minute. B (being sarcastic): Sure, I'll take your word for it. You're a self-proclaimed authority on dating, aren't you? You made me realize that every woman I've ever met or fallen in love with was either a sociopath or a gold digger. (I got mixed responses the last time I asked native-English speakers if this conversation sounded natural to them. Some said the wording is so archaic and stilted. Others said it's fine the way it is. What are your thoughts? If you were A, and B told you that, would you say "well, I didn't expect a 21st century native English speaker to say that"?)Jra2019 (talk) 02:59, 23 January 2016 (UTC

• It does not matter whether a native would say something in a particular way or not. Of importance is only whether it can be understood. 70.27.152.243 (talk) 01:46, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

'Word etymology' preferable to 'word origins'

According to some editor, the term 'word etymology' 'has been stable' (an effing non-argument) and 'needs discussion' (according to them). So I'm discussing.

Except there's nothing to discuss, it's redundant and really undermines the r. d.'s very linguistic credibility if we apparently can't even tell a redundancy. Either make it 'word origin' as I did or, preferably, just 'etymology'. Or just keep it reverting it for backward reasons, I don't care. I knew you would revert it from the start either way. ~~~~— Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.43.22.229 (talk) 21:02, 28 July 2016

"Word etymology" means "Word study of the history of words." Hard to tell why Jack would be defending that. Does he know you're talking about him? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:39, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Is there a level three {{uw-tilde}} template? I recall problems with a user who refused to sign their posts a few months ago... Tevildo (talk) 22:06, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Likewise, but I don't recall the IP range. In any case, the complaint about the redundant description is valid, albeit somewhat trivial. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:12, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

For the record, (1) "has been stable" refers to de facto consensus and is not an effing non-argument, (2) any disputed edit needs discussion, and that one was disputed, and (3) thank you for discussing. With that out of the way...
1. I would have no problem with using the less formal, more accessible term. Our readers are not all high school grads, and many who graduated didn't pay attention.
2. If we use the more formal term, we should use it correctly. There is only one kind of etymology, and "word etymology" is not very different from "language linguistics".
3. If we use the more formal term, at least wikilink it. For that matter, it wouldn't bother me if we linked every term in those lists. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:29, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

(Duh! Penny drops.) I assumed we were allowed to discuss the word "etymology", but not just any old word.  :) And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.

But seriously, now that we're discussing: the choices are "etymology" or "word origins". It's not clear to me that either is better than the other. There would be some users who'd be mystified by "etymology", but it is a fairly standard word for native speakers (if only because it's commonly misspelt "entomology", and vice-versa). Professionals use it all the time; lay people less often. I mean, two blokes are having a yarn in a pub, and one uses an odd word, The other says "That's a weird word. Where does it come from?", not "That's a weird word, What's its etymology?".

On balance, I'd prefer "word origins". That's what the OP originally changed it to, but that doesn't mean this discussion has been a pointless waste of time. Far from it.

Oh, and congratulations to the OP for his precognitive powers. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:43, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I would support "word origins", as well. Obligatory reference is obligatory. Tevildo (talk) 23:28, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I suggest "word origins" here, with an underlying link to "etymology". Especially since "word origin" redirects to "etymology". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:24, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

 Done - Changed "word etymology" to "word origins", per that rare unanimous consensus. Only Bugs has suggested linking "word origins" to Etymology, and I feel that would look strange being the only link in the whole mess. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:12, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Limits on frequent questioners?

This is just an idea that I have decided to run up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it. I may turn this into a proper RfC if enough people like it.

There are certain individuals who use the refdesks a lot. They ask question after question, seldom responding to followups. In many cases asking refdesk questions is pretty much all they do. These tend to be especially low-quality questions.

I propose that we set the following limits on frequent questioners:

No more than 20 question in any 60-day period, or productive edits must exceed refdesk questions, whichever limit is larger.

Comments? --Guy Macon (talk) 13:59, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I agree in principle but have real doubts in practice. The first problem is that it is difficult to define "productive edits". The second is that, if an editor really wants to waste the time of the Reference Desk regulars, they can do so by sockpuppetry, which is more disruptive than just asking too many vague or weird questions. Also, how does the OP plan to enforce it? Presumably by topic-banning posters who violate it. In this case, I think that there is one targeted editor, and the real question perhaps is whether to topic-ban a particular editor who changes their signature confusingly and recently backed off on a very strange threat. I suggest to GM that this idea be put on hold for a while and see if the need for it fades away. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert McClenon (talk • contribs) 14:13, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Contrary to some opinions, I don't think the editor in question wishes to waste the time of the Reference Desk regulars. He is not a troll. Rather, RD is his social outlet, where he likes to hang out. He repeatedly refers to us as his friends (peeps), which is not what WP is for, not even RD (WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK). This has been ongoing for close to two years and I don't think it's going to "fade away" by itself. I'm not aware of a significant problem aside from this user, and I don't think one problem user justifies a new bureaucracy. In my opinion the user should be encouraged to become a contributing Wikipedia editor (even the English-challenged can make a significant contriibution) and, failing that, to find another place to hang out. Unless I'm completely off base in my perception of him, he is the kind of person who, seeing a clear consensus on this, would not need an indef block. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:49, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

I would argue for a more straightforward approach: No new questions until acknowledging the answers to previous questions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:06, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Requiring him to add a "thank you" at the end of each thread would hardly address the problem. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:10, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Actually, it would address the "problem" posed by the OP here. Trying to impose a "question limit" will do nothing to improve Wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:13, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

The Ref Desk looks more like a science forum where regulars contribute to but where most regulars pretend that it is a real Ref Desk. This cause this whole issue where most questions are asked by the same few people while that kicks off a discussion by the others, to them it's like a new discussion thread. Then if we're then not satisfied with the quality of the questions asked, we should just start new discussion threads ourselves. That may then attract the attention of other people who are just lurking and not participating. It may transform the Ref Desk from the science discussion forum it is now, to a real Ref Desk. Count Iblis (talk) 00:28, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

I suspect that the cost in acrimony of trying to craft and enforce such a limit would far outweigh any possible benefit, especially since the downside of "too many" questions is so small, especially since they are so easily ignored by anyone so inclined. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:52, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

• The unnamed gorilla here is @Russell.mo:, who changes his signature on a monthly basis (so that his trolling can not easily be searched for), who erases his own edits, and who blanks his own talk page, and who asks utterly ridiculous (yes, I said ridiculous) questions to see if he can get anyone to answer, then "apologizes" with a surfeit of irritating emoji gifs that my adblocker would stop anywhere else on the interweb.

This thread should be about warning our supposedly Mongolian and Midwestern troll to cut his shit the fuck out. Other than him, I am not sure whom @Guy Macon: could be accusing. μηδείς (talk) 03:45, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the belated link. I made my comment above without quite a bit of important context. User's motive/intent aside, we clearly have a competence issue here. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:28, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion, Russel.mo is exactly as much of a troll as you are ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:36, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure how to take that. ;) ―Mandruss ☎ 16:37, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

That's the fun part. You could interpret it as me calling both of them trolls. But for anyone who hasn't been following along, I have a pretty strong record of AGF and not calling people trolls, even if they have at times engaged in behavior that is not entirely suitable for the reference desk. So the much more reasonable interpretation is that I'm implying that neither of them are trolls. Or if the are trolls, it is only to a rather similar and small extent, in my opinion. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:43, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Ah, I misread that as a reply to me. Me, the WP:THREAD fanatic. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:37, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

This states: Reference desk – Serving as virtual librarians, Wikipedia volunteers tackle your questions on a wide range of subjects. – this I believe is applicable to ‘’registered’’ and ‘’unregistered users’’, a problem (thread fanatics/trolls) what some of us tried to solve a while back rather than moaning about it like some do here, who amazingly done the 20 voting thing too… It did not work out, and I couldn’t support it back (couldn’t guide the ones who supported me, the wrong way) because (a) they are the doers (who can make good things happen), (b) I weighed everything and realised that, the creator of WP done his/her job beautifully, it’s some from within the community are creating issue(s) about certain things because it’s not adjusting with their boring lifestyle/emotions. Further information below stated by SemanticMantis-- Apostle (talk) 04:07, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Strongly oppose limits on questions. Even if you could get consensus, enforcement would be untenable as far as I can tell. I have never seen any user ask too many questions, in my opinion. If anyone thinks a user is asking too many questions, or does not like a question, they are free to skip it and move on. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:33, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

That's it in a nutshell. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:58, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

What about a limit on too frequent responders also: like BB for example?86.187.174.194 (talk) 23:57, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

What about a limit on drive-by trolls, like you for example? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:08, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

When registered accounts bring up this problem, the community has shown that it is unwilling to deal with the problem (or just doesn't care), so we simply have to live with it and hope the questioners can separate the gold from the dross. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:59, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Where's the July 29 section on the Science desk?

Here's the latest edit I can get to, from the starting point of my edit that started the laser eye section (there's no next edit option) - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science&diff=next&oldid=732088860

If you go to the Science desk page now there's no July 29 section and those edits aren't there. Also if I click revision history of the page there's no history of my or anybody else's edits to the two sections under July 29 - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science&action=history

Anybody know what's happening? 2.102.187.157 (talk) 15:37, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Must be a problem on your end (browser issue? Page did not load completely?) I can see July 29 just fine. --Jayron32 15:41, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Try clearing browser cache, maybe WP:PURGE. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:52, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

This is a known (recent) issue - see this VPT thread and T141687. Tevildo (talk) 18:37, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

I encountered the same situation. What surprised me was that I had a current version when logged in featuring a question I'd posted, but not while logged out. I added "?action=purge" to the desk I was interested in and fixed it - and I think doing that once actually fixed it for everybody that day! One user script anywhere in the world could keep the desks current, if it comes to it. Wnt (talk) 23:19, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Financial Advice

At WP:RD/C#Windows 10 N LTSB, someone has asked what the cheapest way of buying five licenses for software, to which User:Tevildo has said we cannot give financial advice.

I would personally interpret not giving financial advice to mean advice on investing money in stocks vs leaving it in your bank account, or similar; not on something such as what is the cheapest way of buying something (though it may of course be that there are far better options online for getting an answer to this specific question, and that this is therefore best not being asked at the refdesk).

Would anyone like to try and clarify what we mean by "we can't give financial advice"? davidprior ^t/_c 22:56, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

It's a red herring. We're not really here to give advice, period. The folks behind their keyboards don't really put much serious effort into telling which course of action gets you the best deal, and don't know the specific trade-offs that you have to make. The Refdesk is about providing information, but not making value judgments for someone else. People should feel free to provide useful data, but should try to avoid presenting that as a command to "go do this". The disclaimer says that if people do tell you to go do this, and you go do it and run into trouble, Wikipedia assumes no responsibility. Wnt (talk) 23:15, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

That, I think, is a reasonable summary of the position. WP:RD/G/M only deals explicitly with medical advice, and the prohibited areas are "diagnosis, prognosis, or suggested treatment". If we extend this to financial advice, questions along the lines of "How can I save money?" would, IMO, be analogous to "suggested treatment", but how the guideline applies to non-medical professional advice is not spelt out in such definite terms. Guy Macon has made the broader point that the guideline does not, in fact, explicitly prohibit financial advice, only "other professional" advice - perhaps this is an area where the guideline could be improved. Tevildo (talk) 23:36, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

As I have pointed out before, giving engineering advice ("..now run your Uranium Hexaflouride gas through a gas centrifuge...") has the potential to hurt or kill thousands of people compared to medical advice, which typically can harm or kill one person. Although some here don't want to hear this, the WMF medical/legal disclaimers don't actually say that we cannot give legal or medical advice -- they are disclaimers, not prohibitions. We at Wikipedia are free to forbid such advice, to allow it if there is a disclaimer attached, or to craft any number of other possible policies.

Let me give everyone here some legal and medical advice; feel free to report me at ANI if you think I am in violation of Wikipedia policy. I am not qualified to give medical advice, but my unqualified advice is that you should not take methamphetamine thinking it is a treatment for cancer. Ask your doctor if you want a more authoritative answer. I am not qualified to give legal advice, but my unqualified advice is that buying heroin online is a really bad idea. Ask your lawyer if you want a more authoritative answer. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:52, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The Ref Desk is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.FDA

Others with strong views on this issue (and I think we all know who they are) will doubtless want to contribute, but it's unlikely there'll be a consensus for allowing postings which give such advice as long as they're prefixed with "This isn't professional advice, but...". However, I can see the case for removing "other professional advice" from the guideline, so that it's clearly restricted to medical and legal advice. "Other professional" does not appear in the page headers, after all. Tevildo (talk) 06:29, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

About the only safe financial advice is this: "Buy only good stock. Wait till the price goes up, and then sell it. If it don't go up... don't buy it!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:21, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

"Buy sheep, sell deer." -- ToE 12:09, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

RFC on advice guidelines wording

Should the wording of the Reference Desk guidelines on giving advice (WP:RD/G/M) be changed? Tevildo (talk) 10:06, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Based on recent discussions, it may be time to reconsider the wording of WP:RD/G/M. The relevant sentence currently reads:

“ Questions that appear to be soliciting medical, legal or other professional advice, or answers that give the impression of providing such, should be dealt with as described below. ”

The options I'd like to propose are:

• Option A: "medical, legal or other professional advice"
• Option B: "medical or legal advice"
• Option C: "medical, legal, financial or risk-management advice"

Relevant information on options

Option A

• Status quo.
• Editors may use their discretion on defining "professional advice".
• Not inconsistent with WP:FAQ section header - "medical, legal, financial, safety, and other critical issues"

Option B

• Consistent with reference desk headers - "Legal or medical advice is prohibited" (WP:RD landing page header), "We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice" (individual page headers).
• WP:MEDICAL and WP:LD exist - there's no separate disclaimer for financial advice.
• Scope of guideline is well-defined.

Option C

• Consistent with WP:General disclaimer - "medical, legal, financial or risk management"
• Consistent with WP:FAQ body text - "medical, legal, financial or risk management"
• Scope of guideline is fairly well-defined, although "risk management" is not as clear-cut as the other three topics - WP:RISK doesn't really cover the issue.

Discussion

• Option C is my preferred choice. Tevildo (talk) 10:07, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

• Please remove the following false statement from option A: "Status quo. (Always an advantage)." The addition restriction was added without consensus to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines on 10:21, 29 January 2016 by ShakespeareFan00.[12] with the edit summary "Add new section, per concerns expressed at WP:ANI". The ANI discussion is at [ Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive912#Can editors at the ref desks offer legal and financial advice? ]. Nowhere in that discussion is there anything justifying ShakespeareFan00 changing the policy from the existing status quo, and to characterize this now-reverted[13] change as the status quo is demonstrably false. Option B is the status quo. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:52, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I've removed "Always an advantage", but Option A is the current wording. Note that this discussion is about WP:RD/G/M, not WP:RD/G. "Other professional" has been the wording of RD/G/M since September 2007. Your point about RD/G is, of course, a valid argument for Option B, but Option A is the status quo for RD/G/M. Tevildo (talk) 17:31, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
    • Yeah we probably should discuss RD/G as well but it seems fairly confusing to talk about option B being the status quo when the discussion made clear from the beginning this was about RD/G/M and the links provided by Guy Macon are all to RD/G. Nil Einne (talk) 18:02, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
      • My mistake. I didn't look carefully and notice that someone was considering applying Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice to something that is not medical advice. If we want to create a policy based upon the phrase "The Wikipedia reference desk is not an appropriate place to request medical, legal or other professional advice" in a guideline that is otherwise 100% about medical advice with a medical advice title, we really need to forbid engineering advice as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:33, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Where is Option D, "advice"? Reference desks are about hard, verifiable facts. The only advice that should be given is on where one might find more information relevant to their question. Oh how we love to complicate things, apparently for the mental exercise. And the thinking shouldn't be constrained or influenced by the current structure and organization of guideline pages. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:40, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that, at present, RD/G/M is about the type of posting that can be deleted, and contains detailed instructions on how to determine if a medical question constitutes "diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment advice". If we want to make the guideline more aggressive, perhaps "advice, opinions, predictions or debate" might be suitable words to use, but I doubt if wholesale deletion of such material would prove popular, and the guideline would need to be altered to cover the wider range of unacceptable material. But please feel free to add such an option to the list. Tevildo (talk) 07:39, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know how unpopular it would be to simply revert (R) improper responses (B), then optionally subject to discussion (D), per WP:BRD. Excessive reverts subject to the well-established responses to WP:Edit warring or WP:Disruptive editing. I don't see how RD needs different treatment than mainspace articles, and that system works fairly well when used (as well as anything works at Wikipedia, that is). I think much of the conflict has been around what to do with improper questions. As to that, I think an improper question could be handled as follows. The proper response to an improper question is to the effect of: "Sorry, but that is an improper question." Any other response would be reverted as described previously. If the questioner reads the improper response before it can be reverted, there is nothing we can do about that as long as anyone can respond to any question. That is simply a limitation that we have to live with. I see no need to delete anything wholesale, if that means entire threads.
This still leaves the problematic issue of 3RR as a bright-line rule, but again that's true for mainspace as well. If there are not enough editors present to deal with problems without exceeding 3RR, we would just have to leave problems undealt with, or seek outside assistance, as in mainspace. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:31, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Since the page is not just about medical advice, it should not be called "Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice". It should be retitled "Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Advice" and the content broadened to make mentions of non-medical issues more than just passing references. I like Mandruss's suggestion, and it should be encased in gold and emboldened and made the primary sentence of the lede para: The only advice that should be given is on where one might find more information relevant to their question.

While we're at it, we should ban answers to questions seeking guidance on the morality of feeding pigeons or whatever. Morality is an exquisitely subjective thing, and the only guidance anyone ever needs is their own conscience. Cited references may tell the OP how other people have felt about a particular matter, but no reference can tell an OP what's in their own conscience. And as for respondents simply telling an OP "Yes, it's moral" or "No, it's not", or words to that effect - they apparently have no understanding of what we do here. This is not and has never been just a general forum for getting answers to, or sharing opinions about, any question one could possibly dream up. It is confined to questions for which there exist references. And that excludes a whole swag of questions; if such out-of-scope questions are asked, they should be treated appropriately, which could include a range of measures, but a respondent's brain dump is not one of them. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:08, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

You say "Morality is an exquisitely subjective thing . . . ," which is true as far as it goes, but many cultures (in the broad sense) have formed concensuses about morals. Would you not think it permissible to refer such OPs to articles (or external references) about what various religions and/or philosophies and/or specific discussions (e.g. The Moral Maze, flawed though it is) have concluded or discussed about the morality of comparable or relevant situations (assuming there are any)? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.123.26.60 (talk) 10:04, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

That's a slippery slope. Say a question is about the morality of capital punishment. One respondent is all for it, and they will be able to track down a lot of references supporting it, while omitting those that oppose it. Another respondent is dead against it, and they will be able to track down a lot of references opposing it, while omitting those that support it. We cannot assume that there will be a balanced coverage, as the supporters or the opposers may well dominate the responses. Now, if an OP asks for references specifically supporting capital punishment, or opposing it, we can help out. But "Is it moral?". Give me a break! Would a reference desk librarian countenance such a question? However they respond, they certainly wouldn't just say "Yes" or "No". Maybe we ought to have a tutorial that teaches OPs how to ask questions we would welcome and can assist with. Or maybe we should just transmute all inappropriate questions into appropriate questions and then answer them. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:51, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

That's why it makes sense to ask the OP, "Define 'immoral'". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:48, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Although in this case, the OP 91.205.144.62 (talk · contribs) isn't going to respond to that or any other question, as he's a one-shot drive-by. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:40, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

To become more Communist than North Korea will take an enormous effort and it will in the end all be in vain anyway. So, it's best to accept reality, learn from the experience of other websites on how they deal with the real problems that may arise when doing the sort of thing we do here and then design a system that works in practice. The symptoms of the system being rotten when the insiders are ideologically invested in it, is that the troubles are always blamed on external factors and there is constant internal bickering. The problems can be managed only with strong Administrative actions aimed at dissidents. Count Iblis (talk) 15:57, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know what NK has to do with anything, but if you're suggesting abolishing the ref desk, why don't you go ahead and propose it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:03, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

New form of trolling?

Someone is copy-pasting questions from horse forums (including, in many cases, responses). They come from a wide variety of IP addresses. If anyone sees this, please either hat or delete the question, perhaps leaving a note that makes it clear this is not an appropriate use of this desk. --Jayron32 12:17, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Summer vacation lasts too long for some people. Count Iblis (talk) 21:14, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Double Standards

Why is it that a regular established user can ask a completely non-appropriate question asking for opinion, and thoughts whereas if a not so established user does it, they get hatted or banned? I think it's about time this was addressed. It's as cliquey as it gets. Worth even escalating this the powers "that be" around here.

Although I suspect if they gave a toss something would have been done by now.

So as it stands, if you're an established editor you can circumvent the rules. If you're not, one toe out of the white line and off it goes. That's fair isn't it?185.81.158.144 (talk) 09:51, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Oh look, another drive-by attacking the regulars. Maybe after you've established a colorful personality and contributed 1,000+ edits instead of just hiding behind a number you can have an opinion. Maybe. In the meantime, please, someone ban him. CricketInsects (talk) 10:56, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

This appears to be trolling, since this is CricketInsects' first post. Sjö (talk) 11:04, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Every day, a troll goes hungry. These are not trolls in some third-world country, but right here at home. The growing rate of trolls is alarming. In the United States alone, the number of hungry trolls is expanding at a rate of 1 troll for every 15 Nigerian spam emails.

For example, take little CricketInsects here. On the comments section of his local blog, he does not even gain enough responses to fill an entire Tweet on Twitter. He has been forced to go into Yahoo! chat rooms and pose as an underage girl just for enough troll food to last the night.

Sponsoring a troll is easy. For the cost of sending just one flame or other response, your contribution (along with others) will keep one troll fed for a month. If you include your email address, you can get weekly or even daily letters from your troll. Think of what one post from you could mean to a hungry troll.

Please. Feed a troll today. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:09, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi 185.81.158.144, this is a perennial issue on Wikipedia. The essays about it are WP:IPHUMAN and WP:DONTBITE. However, the website is also not set up with any incentives to address the issue. In a sense, Wikipedia created the two-tier system by permitting people to register a username when they edit. You may find like-minded people at WP:Teahouse or WP:RETENTION. 184.147.119.135 (talk) 15:29, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Whatever the reason for this is I don't know and don't care but 185.81.158.144 is a proxy server. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:35, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Continuation of the above

As invited by Bugs, I would respectfully request the community's input on this, my hatting of a particularly blatant example of the issue discussed above. I do not intend to restore the hat a second time, so if the consensus is that this sort of material is acceptable, accept it I shall. Tevildo (talk) 19:54, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

You would also need to hat Jayron's guess, or else you're playing favorites. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:06, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, the attack on an editor part (and responses) needed hatting, but my initial comment was at least as good as Jayron's "I wonder if..." response, so I unhatted it. (Tevildo, your ANI complaint was flatly rejected, so stop trying to take matters into your own hands.) StuRat (talk) 22:07, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Different number of heart valves in the heart sides

I've taken the liberty of moving this question to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science Wnt (talk) 02:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Song Identification

Do you remember the post here: This post

I have finally identified that song as: You to me are Everything by The Real Thing.

Thank you. Collegiate199861 (talk) 21:32, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm glad you found your song and thanks for letting us know. I copied your answer to our archive so that anyone searching there can see it. -- ToE 03:54, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Warning template

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Is is possible to add a template for questioners to the effect that "If StuRat answers your question, please ignore it entirely" and "If your question is not about baseball and BaseballBugs answers it, please ignore it entirely"? There appears to be no way to actually stop them from answering, so maybe this would be a useful solution. Adam Bishop (talk) 12:29, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

• Support. --Viennese Waltz 12:36, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

*Support I fully agree with Adam Bishop, Steve Summit, and other editors that would like to see the antics stopped. Why an editor feels the need to chime in on questions they obviously know nothing about is beyond me. 2600:8806:4800:5100:698A:6B7A:7A28:F9A6 (talk) 19:58, 11 August 2016 (UTC) Reference desk troll 96.237.21.60 (talk) 00:46, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

• You, on the other hand, have contributed nothing at any time. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:17, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

• Comment If this is a formal proposal for a TBAN, WP:AN is the place to discuss it. Considering that other regulars who indulge in far more egregious behaviour have been reported several times in the past few years with no action being taken, I would not expect anything to happen if this is made official. Tevildo (talk) 20:41, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

How about a warning template for those who attack established editors in front of the OP? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:30, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Or we could hold a contest to find the RD regular who most closely resembles a currently-prominent U.S. political candidate, in terms of always equating criticism with attacks, and never apologizing, but rather always attacking back. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:03, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

You would be high on that list. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:57, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

In view of this, I _am_ making it official. See WP:AN#Proposed sanctions against StuRat. Tevildo (talk) 18:17, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Note that Tevildo's complaint was soundly rejected. StuRat (talk) 22:11, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, as always, there was no consensus for any action to fix one of the Reference Desk's problems, so we have to put up with StuRat's extromissions p.r. for the foreseeable future. Perhaps one day things might change. Tevildo (talk) 09:22, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

The closest thing to a consensus was that if you disagree with an answer you should politely state why you disagree and include your evidence, not run off to ANI and file a complaint. The former is constructive, while the latter is merely disruptive. StuRat (talk) 15:14, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

@StuRat: All ANI silliness aside, you do need to learn to do some more serious research before coming to a conclusion. It's more fun when you come in with facts to knock around rather than just testing your preconceptions. Wnt (talk) 03:44, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Robert McClenon has asked ArbCom to review our conduct at the Ref Desks

See here. So, I guess we should start to behave now :) . Count Iblis (talk) 18:53, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

The aim should be not to get noticed at all here. Apparently, some editors (not just Robert) don't share this objective. ---Sluzzelin talk 04:15, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Count me among them. ―Mandruss ☎ 09:55, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Maybe I don't understand. The time to have started behaving was in the past, when one started editing Wikipedia, and most but not all of the editors here have been behaving. I agree that the aim should be not to get noticed at all. I also have come to agree with User:Guy Macon that this talk page should not be a place to discuss the Reference Desk conduct of other editors (either go to their own talk pages, or go to WP:ANI after reading the boomerang essay, or ignore them), and that attempting to control the behavior of other editors at the Reference Desks is not useful. Every editor here should have known that what they said here was on the record. If you, whoever you are, haven't been uncivil, haven't been a troll, haven't engaged in ownership behavior at the Reference Desks, haven't been tendentious, and have followed talk page guidelines, ArbCom isn't going to sanction you. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:27, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, Robert, it was a bit cryptic. It's not really that easy, and it's often time-consuming, to compellingly justify the desks' existence within Wikipedia, especially when we get noticed. Wikipedia:Reference desk/Refdesk reform RFC for one example of how noticing our sometimes/frequently substandard behavior and competence can lead to a principal questioning of the desks. I'm not worried about anyone in particular being sanctioned, including myself, but, anxious person that I am, occasionally worry about the desks being shut down. I continue to believe that the best means of countering the crap by well-meaning or semi-well-meaning editors (in any event not "trolls" whose stuff can get removed) is by reference (or expertise when it's actually present) and by delivering referenced answers to the question that was asked.

I do agree with you and Guy Macon: We needn't discuss individual behavior on this page. ---Sluzzelin talk 01:48, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

You're saying that RD might be shut down if subjected to close scrutiny, so we should avoid that scrutiny. If it's not easy to compellingly justify the desks, we should maintain open minds and ask why that is. Perhaps the desks are not justifiable. I put community consensus before all, including my own views, and I think yours is a bad approach. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:08, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Approach? My approach is to help the people who ask questions at the desks, to the best of my ability, and as long as it's fun. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:20, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps now, when there is a real possibility that ArbCom will accept a broad case that includes interactions between registered editors at the Reference Desks, we should at the very least agree to try my solution (don't discuss the conduct of other Reference Desk users on the Reference desk talk page; Either ignore them, discuss it on their talk pages, or go to ANI) as a limited-time experiment? That would almost certainly cause arbcom to back off and see if we can fix this problem without them. I fail to see why some here oppose even trying my solution. Is it really better to have arbcom impose a solution on us? --Guy Macon (talk) 04:41, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Where you really should not be talking about other editors is in front of the original poster. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:01, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

The Committee are asking for input on the matter here: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#The Rambling Man. 213.107.114.104 (talk) 10:23, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I've already commented there. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:34, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

If ArbCom does impose a remedy on the Reference Desks, it may be discretionary sanctions, which allow relatively quick imposition of sanctions, typically topic-bans, on disruptive editors. (As you can see, in my statement, I have suggested that the ArbCom consider discretionary sanctions for ITN, DYK, and the Reference Desks.) If you haven't been snarky or hostile, you don't need to worry. I think that ArbCom is very unlikely to shut down the Reference Desks, since the complaint primarily has to do with ITN and DYK, two features that apparently have a lot of quarreling, but are not in any danger of being shut down because they are part of the Main Page. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:28, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Just to be clear (and since my "approach" of trying to improve the desks by actually helping out at the desks in a manner I find helpful has been labeled as "bad") go ahead with your efforts of asking ArbCom to look into it. My personal experience with ArbCom might not make me as optimistic as yours, but I'm certainly not standing in your way. My input was just that, not a plea to abandon your cause, despite the apparent misunderstanding. If you feel like reflecting on it, including reviewing the history of the desks, all the better, if you don't, that's your prerogative, and I'm willing (glad, would be lying) to be proven wrong. ---Sluzzelin talk 02:57, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I may be confused or may have missed something. I am not sure who is being criticized here by User:Sluzzelin. I certainly didn't label anything that they did as "bad". I don't see anyone labeling anything as "bad"(with the exception of trolling, and that isn't at issue). It is true that some of us have suggested that discussing the behavior of other editors here is not useful, but that isn't to say that we labeled it as "bad", and besides, Sluzellin isn't one of the editors who have repeatedly criticized the behavior of other editors. I hardly think that anything that I have said about ArbCom is "optimistic" anyway. I have said that if ArbCom does anything, it may be discretionary sanctions, or it may be topic-bans. I certainly don't see that ArbCom is likely to shut down the Reference Desks in response to a dispute that was originally about TRM and ITN and DYK. No reasonable editor should be "optimistic" about ArbCom, which deals with bad situations. I may be confused; I may have missed something; as Sluzzelin says, there may have been a misunderstanding. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:43, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I believe they are referring, at least in part, to my comment at 03:08, 25 August 2016. I did in fact use the word bad. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:44, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

You used the word "bad" to refer to an approach, which appeared to refer to a non-constructive approach to the behavior of other editors at these Reference Desks, such as criticizing their behavior here. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:57, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

The Ref Desks are a bit isolated from the rest of Wikipedia, so there is the possibility that if the Arbs see some bad behavior here they may come down to not acting on that, as they may see a net benefit in keeping a de-facto "insane asylum" open :). Count Iblis (talk) 20:49, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

The bottom line is that if the Arbcom case is expanded to include investigations into the behaviour of editors at the Ref Desk, ITN and DYK (as I'm led to believe it will), many users here had better start thinking about their defence in the face of astonishingly substantive evidence of time-wasting, misleading "answers", social media tendencies and other such poor behavioural issues. It's going to be a stellar popcorn festival. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:06, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Since you've not commented at the arbcom page yet, I would like your permission to copy the above statement to your designated space there. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:12, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Not granted, not at all. I have no interest in commenting in that lynching, and certainly no interest in you commenting in my "designated space" (whatever that is). This note is simply an advisory to any of you who have flown below the radar for a while, the exposure is about to become bright and unpleasant. Expect sanctions. Expect topic bans. Blame Arbcom and Banedon, not me. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:39, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

No need to worry, a violation of Wikipedia:Waste of Time only requires a payment in the form of carbon credits to be made to the Wikimedia Foundation. Count Iblis (talk) 21:42, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

The arbcom case may be a waste of time, but it will detrimentally affect this project's regulars' ability to "speculate" and chat. For the overall good, of course. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:48, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

There is a vacant section titled "Statement by The Rambling Man". That's what I meant by your designated space. FYI, I defended you. But your commenting on it in various places outside of that page does not help your case. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:53, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

The point is it's no longer "my case", it's "our case" and you, amongst many here, will be a key person in that ongoing discussion, no doubt. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:54, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

You plan to provide evidence? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:57, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Should the abuse of the ref desk come up in the case, definitely. I have hundreds of examples. Literally. But it depends on how much time I have, after all I spend most of my available Wikipedia time improving things for our readers and not doing this drama crap that most others get so "invigorated" about. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:00, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

That would be a change in your approach to things. In past, you've been long on general complaints and short on concrete evidence. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:11, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Then you have nothing to worry about! See you later. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:20, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I very much doubt that either one of us has anything to worry about. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:23, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Like your usual ref desk advice, that's wrong on all counts. Have a great evening. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:28, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

That's one of your typical unsubstantiated claims right there. But although you may think you have something to worry about at arbcom, I do not share your pessimism. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:30, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Ignore all rules seems to support The Rambling Man's attitude better: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." Count Iblis (talk) 22:31, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

IAR is the mother of all grossly misinterpreted and misapplied Wikipedia policies, and it should be more clearly subordinated to WP:CONSENSUS. In other words, one should be very cautious about invoking IAR when there is substantial disagreement that ignoring a rule actually improves Wikipedia. IAR does not support routine disregard for a rule because you disagree with it—especially when the rule is a policy. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:35, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Maybe the misinterpretation of IAR is an ironic form of IAR in itself. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:38, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Maybe we should just throw out all p&g and let every editor do whatever they want, no bans, no blocks, ever. That is exactly where reasoning like yours leads. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:09, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

What reasoning are you talking about? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:15, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

The reasoning in your 22:38 comment, if you were in fact advocating that. If you weren't, never mind. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:16, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

No, I don't advocate it. I was restating what you said. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:54, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

IAR does require consensus, but it has to be possible to get a consensus based on evaluating the problem at hand that may or may not come down to upholding the existing rules. When you get a faction that cares too much about the rules and doesn't want things to change, that's typically a problem for Wikipedia. It took years to change the "Not Truth" part of the Verifiability rule here because many editors in controversial politics articles had gotten into entrenched disputes where it was essential that you could cite your favorite source, regardless of the truth. In the end IAR simply guarantees that the rules will evolve in a way such that they are the most beneficial for Wikipedia, instead of the other way around where Wikipedia is held back by the desire of editors to play games using the rules they like the most. Count Iblis (talk) 00:03, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, and said evolution is determined and controlled by documented consensus, not by gang competition. That documentation resides in policy. Who is "playing games" and who is truly acting in the encyclopedia's interest is purely a matter of opinion and perspective, and people asserting game-playing are about half the time the ones doing the game-playing. Those playing the games invariably see themselves as the righteous ones. This is the kind of house-of-mirrors, rabbit-hole mess that results from the quasi-good-versus-evil, "only I and those who agree with me know what is right", policy-be-damned brand of thinking. If pure consensus fails to do the job, Wikipedia is doomed, and should be. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:32, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Basically. all the above is depressing and thoroughly demoralizing.. Fortunately there are still a few rewarding things in life besides Wikipedia or its Reference Desk. A good book from the library to be read, a novel to write, an interesting dish to cook, a bottle of wine to drink. Start with the last. Edison (talk) 02:16, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely. In the end, it's only Wikipedia. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:22, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

My feeling is that the most relevant policy in our situation is actually WP:NOTHERE. I mean, are you here because you're excited to look into the puzzles and riddles that people come up with, or have things of your own you want to find out about, to extend our collection of questions and answers --- or are you here because you want to patrol somebody's behavior, crack down on banned users, stamp out "unethical" questions and "cruft" and "obvious trolling" so forth as you see it? Most of us are here about the content, and that's what matters. Wnt (talk) 03:38, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Reference desk for music

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Reference desk for music

 – ―Mandruss ☎ 01:05, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I normally use the Entertainment reference desk for music. But I recently noticed somebody used the Humanities reference desk for music. Any examples of subjects that some people disagree on what reference desk to use?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Sports doesn't really have a good place either. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:08, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean?? Do any Wikipedians disagree with you on the best reference desk for sports?? Georgia guy (talk) 01:12, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know but Entertainment sounds more like movies or pop. I guess they could go on Entertainment or Miscellaneous like music could go on Entertainment or Humanities. It's not really a big deal. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:17, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Usually the objection is made by people who consider their Stravinsky more a serious cultural pursuit than idle entertainment, a distinction with which I disagree. The current designated desk is Entertainment. If someone prefers to use Humanities instead, and they feel they will get an answer as good or better there, I have no strong objection. They should understand the effect on the archives, which are an important part of RD. To the extent they use Humanities, music questions will be split between two desks and two archives. Thus they put their own ego-based prejudice and preference before the overall good of the project. I wouldn't do it, but it's their choice as far as I'm concerned. I also wouldn't object if an editor moved a music question from H to E, provided they use the proper move templates as was done for this thread. ―Mandruss ☎ 01:32, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I definitely think there is a difference between classical and pop music, such that classical music questions should go in Humanities and pop music questions in Ents. --Viennese Waltz 07:45, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Well I would put literature and art under entertainment rather than humanities. Perhaps it would be better to rename entertainment to culture (and just hope it doesn't get questions about streptococcus). Dmcq (talk) 08:26, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

But that raises questions like where to put questions about Basil Poledouris, John Williams, Scott Joplin, or Gilbert and Sullivan. Poledouris and Williams write classical stuff for popular purposes (and Williams is just as likely to be known for either), Joplin wrote popular music but is now studied in mostly the same manner as classical music. Gilbert and Sullivan continue to be both classical and popular. The only distinction between high- and low- brow is timing and what people with money think they need to be more serious about, so it's too arbitrary. Plus, there's no reason why one couldn't be engaged in a technical study of, say, DragonForce as a "serious cultural pursuit," nor any reason why someone couldn't come in asking "I got a bitchin' new subwoofer for my car, what's that song with the kickass cannons?" Ian.thomson (talk) 12:30, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I definitely think there is a difference between classical and pop music - Of course there's a difference. There is also a distinct difference between most Hollywood movies and the more cerebral independent films; should we segregate them, too? I think not. Broad categories are fine, even if it means that responders only interested in classical music and cerebral films have to ignore a lot of questions that don't interest them. They might accidentally broaden their horizons a little, heaven forbid. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:49, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

There is also a difference between Rambo 2 and Rambo 3 - everything is different and unique in its own way. But pretending that there's an objective line in the sand to be drawn between "high art" and "low art" is ludicrous and completely against the spirit of Wikipedia. We do not, for example, put our porn biographies and Family Guy episode articles on a different level than our biographies of composers or articles about books of the Bible. I have long been a proponent of combining the Ent and Humanities desks into a single "Arts & Entertainment" desk for this - and other - reasons. Matt Deres (talk) 14:29, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Humanities isn't just about the arts, though, is it? It's about "history, politics, literature, religion, philosophy, law, finance, economics, art, and society." --Viennese Waltz 14:45, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The history and politics facet of the humanities desk is actually one reason why I'm not quite for merging them: if Entertainment remains separate, there's still a place to ask questions about literature, art, and possibly society whenever the humanities desk gets locked (as it does at the drop of a stahlhelm). Further dividing the humanities desk (and sticking to WP:RBI instead of locking the whole page over a limited and easily exhaustible number of socks by one person) would limit damage. Otherwise, I would be neutral on further division or combination. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:38, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

If Humanities is to be believed, we've already split off its Language component into a separate ref desk. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:06, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Sure, taxonomy is a perennial problem, both on WP, and in real life. For some refs and context, see Knowledge_organization, Subject_(documents), Faceted_classification, and maybe this blurb from the SIG from the American Society for Indexing. Traditionally, a librarian (a trained specialist in cataloging) would look at an item and look at the system and decide how to classify it. Even then, there were deep problems and disputes. Here, we ask the user (with no special training) to classify their own items, before they write them. So really it's a miracle that things get categorized in anything resembling as sane matter. So maybe our users do ok at assessing aboutness after all :) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:31, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Personally, I always look at all the desks except for (often) Mathematics, whose questions are almost always too advanced for someone like me who dropped out of a science degree because of shaky maths, and I've even contributed there on a couple of rare occasions. Do not the vast majority of regulars do the same (so the choice of desk used for a borderline question doesn't really matter), or do many really only look at (to use the current example) Entertainments or Humanities but not both? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.123.26.60 (talk) 12:49, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

A more logical split might be "Arts and Entertainment" - Twilight to Harrison Birtwistle, with no implied division between high and low culture - and "History, Politics and Philosophy". Neither really seems appropriate for sport, though. Tevildo (talk) 22:30, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Surely sport is entertainment, and beyond doubt not the other. Doesn't seem like a hard one to sort. Wnt (talk) 21:49, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Too big a change to be decided by a few editors on this page, imo. Suggest a formal proposal at WP:VPR, if you feel it's important enough to warrant the adverse effect on the archives. (I would probably oppose for that reason, fwiw.) ―Mandruss ☎ 06:17, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

I actually agree with you, with the caveat that one of these days, if we really get together enough people and determination, we should work out better ways to archive and index the content, and at that point this might be feasible. Wnt (talk) 15:35, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

How to handle vague or challenging questions

It occurs to me that many of us don't have any training to work at a reference desk. So I thought we might benefit from discussing the idea of a reference interview, and try following some best practices [14], or learning a bit from professionals in the field [15] [16].

Here is a recent example of a vague question here that I thought worked out pretty well [17], but opinions may differ.

Keep in mind that we have no rules requiring any diligence on the part of the asker, and we have no rules about questions being phrase questions in the form of asking for a reference. It is my opinion that it is not at all difficult to provide references relevant to questions that are open ended or slightly unclear, and that answering with a reference is almost always better than responding that the question is invalid.

If anyone wants to play along with a perhaps challenging reference scenario, here are a couple real-life questions asked of librarians:

Does anyone hold a copyright on the Bible?

What kind of apple did Eve eat?

What is the natural enemy of the duck?

My father owns the second oldest light house in the country, where can I sell it?

I am fairly certain that none of these patrons were told to go away. Obviously nobody is required to respond to any question here, but let's please try to either help OPs, or ignore them. Telling them they are asking questions wrong is not helping our image or our goal. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:35, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

1. Individual editions are copyrighted.

2. It wasn't an apple.

3. Anything that likes to eat ducks.

4. Contact a professional, such as a real estate agent.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:31, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

1. There is no copyright restriction on the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin Vulgate texts of the Bible that are all public domain, as also are English translations published before 1923 such as

King James Version (except in the UK)

Duoay-Rheims

Young's Literal

Darby

Wikisource offers a modern public domain English bible translation in progress. Other translations have copyright holders who restrict commercial reprinting but quoting extract verses for study is usually allowed under "fair use" provisions in copyright laws. The question has been discussed on Stack Exchange.

2. The Creation myth in the Book of Genesis mentions a Forbidden fruit eaten by Adam and Eve but names it only as "the fruit of (tree of knowledge of) good and evil". An apple is only one of many identities for the fruit that have been considered and it has been suggested that the fruit is only a metaphor for carnal knowledge.

3. Duck#Predators mentions the vulnarability of ducklings to birds such as herons, large fish, crocodilians and turtles, while duck's nests on land may be raided by foxes, cats or large birds such as hawks or owls. Another article describes Predation in general.

4. One must clarify whether the lighthouse is in commission and has a maintenance requirement, or if no longer operational is subject to a preservation order. The national authorities to contact are US Coast Guard, Trinity House in the UK. The US also has a private Lighthouse Society. Decommissioned lighthouses are occasionally advertised for sale. The GSA (see link) usually first offer a lighthouse property to the state or to a non-profit historic preservation group. Then, the property may be auctioned to the highest bidder. AllBestFaith (talk) 03:13, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Great, I especially like your response to 4). Keep up the good work! SemanticMantis (talk) 16:12, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

These questions can be a problem if you aren't fully awake. Count Iblis (talk) 03:52, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Here are some easy questions:

[01] How long did the Hundred Years War last?

[02] What was New Mexico named after?

[03] Which country makes most Panama Hats?

[04] In the story "1001 Arabian nights" what nationality was Aladdin?

[05] What nationality were the original Pennsylvania Dutch?

[06] From which animal do we get Catgut?

[07] Which U.S. State is the farthest north? South? East? West?

[08] In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?

[09] What material was used to clad the sides of the US warship "Old Ironsides"?.

[10] What is a Camel hair brush made of?

[11] The Canary Islands are named after what animal?

[12] What was King George VI's first name?

[13] What color is a Purple Finch?

[14] Where do the Cuban Lily and Confederate Rose come from?

[15] Upon what hill was the Battle of Bunker Hill fought?

[16] Who is buried in Grant's tomb?

[17] What bird has the scientific name Puffinus puffinus puffinus?

[18] What is another word for Thesaurus? Hint: One word, four syllables, eight letters, one letter is used three times, another letter is used twice, and I found it in Roget's Thesaurus.

[19] What color are White Rhinos?

[20] How long did the Thirty Years War last?

[21] A man travels due south for one kilometer. He turns left 90 degrees and travels due east for one kilometer, at which point he shoots a bear. He then turns left 90 degrees and travels due north for one kilometer, returning to the exact spot he left from.

[21a] What color is the bear?

[21b] What direction is the wind blowing from at the starting/ending point?

--Guy Macon (talk) 05:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Easy partial answers from memory, where known or remembered:

[01] Well over 100 years.

[02] Geographically or chronologically?

[03] One of the countries near Panama, not Panama itself.

[04] Not Arabian.

[05] German. Pennsylvania "Deutsch".

[06] Not cats.

[07] Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, probably Alaska.

[08] November. They switched from Julian to Gregorian (except in the church).

[09] Oak.

[10] Not the hair of camels.

[11] Canines (dogs).

[12] Probably not George.

[13] Probably not purple.

[14] The ground.

[15] Breed's Hill.

[16] No one. Grant and his wife are entombed, not buried in Grant's tomb.

[17] Probably not the puffin.

[18] Synonymy.

[19] Kind of a dark gray.

[20] Not thirty years.

[21] Polar bear. Wind from and toward the south, as the guy is standing on the north pole.

All answerable, of course, by providing links. Hundred Years War, for example. And the answer is... Now wait a minute. Should we actually answer the question, or should we provide a link so that the OP can actually learn something?

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:04, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I suggest both (as of course you were implying). A direct question deserves a direct answer (which may be urgently needed, though urgency isn't in our remit), but including the link both (a) demonstrates that we haven't made it up, guessed, made a mistake or repeated something once taught to us as as true but since superseded (a frequent error in real life if not at these Desks), and (b) provides the OP with further relevant information should they want or need it. [Disclaimer: never a librarian, but a former reference work and textbook editor.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.211.191 (talk) 11:45, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I like what 90.202.211.191 says here about including a link. That's really vital to providing useful answers. --Jayron32 15:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Bugs, how did you get #18? As far as I know, I am the first (only?) person to notice that there is another word for Thesaurus in Roget's International Thesaurus, and I had to go to the the preface of the 1922 edition to find it. BTW you got #20 wrong. See Thirty Years' War.

Related: http://www.guymacon.com/easyquestions.html, http://www.guymacon.com/easyanswers.html --Guy Macon (talk) 12:50, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I think the subject came up on the ref desk a year or two ago. And the Thirty Years' War actually was 30 years? A ringer! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:02, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: I got it by Googling "What is another word for Thesaurus" and examining the results for a word that matched your description. Google is not artificial intelligence, but it often produces results when treated as if it is. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:15, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Ok, so maybe it looked like I was trying to play a game, but I was really hoping to discuss our process, and what makes good responses in a reference context.

Since User:Baseball Bugs was kind enough to offer responses to my original examples, let's take a look at his work:

1. Individual editions are copyrighted.

2. It wasn't an apple.

3. Anything that likes to eat ducks.

4. Contact a professional, such as a real estate agent.

←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:31, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

1.-- contains a link to a highly appropriate wikipedia article, great! The article itself could use improvement, but it's a good start. We might wonder why OP cares about copyright of the Bible. I might have also directed them to a public domain text [18].

2.-- again, very good link to an appropriate article. I might have added Genesis_creation_narrative for general convenience and context.

3.-- Duck#Predators might have been a little more appropriate. Also, I'd have asked where in the world OP was interested in, because there are different ducks and predators in different places. Natural enemy is also an interesting read, because it is a redirect to predation. There, it is explained that there are various related ways animals eat each other. So I might also ask OP if they are interested in thing like duck parasites.

4.-- Fine advice, but no reference. We could ask OP where in the world they are located, or use IP geolocation, or just link to a directory of real estate agent like so [19]. That is not actually that helpful either, but fortunately none of us is acting alone, and an answer like ABF's 4) above might some come along. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:55, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I decided against giving the OP who wants to sell his father's lighthouse a direct answer. My reasoning is that the OP states as facts A) the lighthouse is the 2nd oldest in "the country" - which country? - is this rumoured or verified? - has the lighthouse public historical importance?; and B) the OP does not own the lighthouse but seeks to sell it - will this sale be in the father's wish and interest? We know nothing about the OP's family relationship which may be amicable, but we don't know that and we do know that our giving the OP an encouragement to sell will materially affect a third party. A different response based on WP:AGF might be "Here's a link to AcmeLighthouseDealers". However because the example did not allow clarifying the situation I chose to give only general information about trade in lighthouses. AllBestFaith (talk) 23:13, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

So, good job Bugs, I'd hope to see that level of reference in all of our responses, though of course our questions are often much harder! SemanticMantis (talk) 15:55, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Two more easy questions:

Q What are the low - value British coins known as "coppers" made of?

Q What are the medium - value British coins referred to as "silver" made of?

And two more for the Language desk:

Q What does the Portuguese word puxe (pronounced "push") mean?

Q What does the Portuguese word pule (pronounced "pull") mean?

I'll give you the answers tomorrow. 86.168.124.54 (talk) 16:04, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

1 and 2) Coppers leads me to Coins of the pound sterling, where the answer can be found for both question 1) and 2). Here is an online Portuguese-English dictionary, where you can look up the meanings of those words for 3 and 4. --Jayron32 18:09, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

This section is interesting, which means it's worth thinking about how to make a useful resource out of it. The Refdesk has many archives ... maybe it's time to start one or more irregular archives of interesting questions chosen in this top-down manner, rather than the usual Socratic method. I think we should work this into something like oh maybe Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Collections/Trick questions, maybe. It'll come up in an archive search that way, and since some of these are actually questions people might ask, that seems appropriate. Wnt (talk) 21:48, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Military tactics

Which reference desk is most suitable for asking questions about military tactics? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 00:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

"List of Dewey Decimal classes" has "Military science" categorized in section 355, which is included in 300–399, the class for "Social sciences", also called "Humanities".

—Wavelength (talk) 00:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Miscellaneous is also always good. If there's ever any question, stick it there. Everything Is Miscellaneous. --Jayron32 00:57, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! I don't want to deal with the humanities desk because of the rampant anti-Americanism there (on the other desks it's much less), so I'll go with miscellaneous. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 02:27, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I haven't noticed much anti-Americanism there. Or maybe I'm just used to it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:51, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Reality has a well-known liberal bias, something that US conservatives often mistake for anti-Americanism. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:09, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

At ITN, I had seen plenty of anti-American bias. Maybe it was just more overt there? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:13, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

1) Reality has a well-known liberal bias, something that US conservatives often mistake for anti-Americanism. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:15, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

At ITN, I had seen plenty of anti-American bias. Maybe it was just more overt there? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:17, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Goto 1 ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:19, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Wow, it's like deja vu. Wow, it's like deja vu. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:29, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Passing of a Ref Desk contributor

If this isn't appropriate, just delete it, no big deal.

But User:KageTora died on 6 July 2016.

Can supply his obituary if required, but I'm not sure if that's appropriate.

All he ever did was contribute on the Ref Desk, so here felt like the most appropriate place to post. 82.4.218.94 (talk) 17:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/Guidelines; we would need positive confirmation that the person who died was in fact the Wikipedian by that name; also per WP:OUTING and the like, we avoid linking Wikipedia accounts to real people's names unless they do so themselves. If it is true, I do mourn his death; however we cannot publish such information if it is not reliably confirmed. If we cannot confirm the death without violating WP:OUTING, then we really shouldn't say anything. Thank you for the information, and any confirmation you can give would be most appreciated. If you have any more questions, you may be able to contact someone at Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/Members who can give you more details on how to document this, if it is true. --Jayron32 17:46, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

His talk page uses both his alleged first and last names at various points. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:45, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Sad news. What was the cause of death? 119.141.244.160 (talk) 18:47, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Unspecified. (I am the IP who posted the news.) Vimescarrot (talk) 07:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

His names aren't "alleged". The obituary notice is here: [20]. 213.107.114.104 (talk) 10:12, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I've seen it. How do you know with absolute certainty that it's the same guy? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:31, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Besides the name, the age details [21] and location seem to match up with KageTora revealed in the past. (KageTora lived in various places, but Liverpool seems to be where they were originally from and they have said in the past they lived with/look after their parents Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 December 25.) Nil Einne (talk) 14:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate that I am not a reliable source, but for what it's worth I did know him personally. Vimescarrot (talk) 18:40, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Peace to his family and friends, and thank you for letting us know. I'll miss him, and I'm additionally saddened that his last edit on Wikipedia was reverted by me. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:03, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Thank you Vimescarrot, and peace to us all. And Sluzzelin, don't feel saddened, but instead find joy that it was you with your gentle edit summary -- "reverting sneaky KageTora" -- who made the reversion. -- ToE 03:46, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, ToE. Upon reflection, I believe it might have made KageTora smile. ---Sluzzelin talk 03:53, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for notifying us, I think he will be missed here. He was generally helpful and useful to all, and I know I learned a few bits about language from him. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:10, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I read this with tears in my eyes though he and I were not especially close associates on Wikipedia. I guess it's just the feeling that we'll all be gone in good time, and what will we have accomplished. The thing that comes to mind is MEDITATION XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Edison (talk) 17:44, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Einstein had the right perspective here

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Count Iblis (talk) 18:20, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Einstein knew that the nature of time is actually a mystery, especially to physicists. Physics does not account for the distinction between past and future, but it does not say that there is no distinction. Some of us who believe in physics also believe that when we depart from this strange world we proceed to another world. KogeTora has moved on to another world. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:57, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I looked up his name and mine in the archives, and found this discussion about genetic memory. As wacky as it seems, there was actually evidence that had come out in favor of some kind of association, at least in a very basic sense of deciding the fearfulness of an odor in mice. So although my usual ideas turn toward the reuniting of new bits of the Atman with the knowledge a person left behind here and elsewhere, perhaps he has explored a different route to share some of his thoughts across the years. Wnt (talk) 03:59, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone. By sharing these memories, you made me feel I at least managed to do this one last thing for him. Vimescarrot (talk) 06:36, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm reminded of this thread, in which you yourself asked a related question about online contacts passing away. --Viennese Waltz 10:17, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. It's something I've always been curious about. When I've got time I plan to go through all of KageTora's old accounts and leave messages indicating what happened, just in case anyone tries to find him. Vimescarrot (talk) 17:59, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. :( 2.217.4.243 (talk) 19:51, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I weep for KageTora

God Bless KageTora among my five favorite contributors here, certainly above JW with whom I personally corresponded in the 90's. Calling this 'outing' is silly, and has no standing in US law. He was a great, most excellent contributor, and sorely will be missed. I weep. μηδείς (talk) 00:35, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Archives page links not working properly

The links on Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives are only showing the recently edited pages, not the recently created pages, which is what is really needed. On the links to some desks recent archives are showing up because people have edited the page post-archive, but see the Humanities link for instance, where the most recent entry is in January 2014, or the Miscellaneous link which currently has no entries at all. SpinningSpark 14:38, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

You are referring to the Recent Changes links. The archiving is done by a bot and Recent Changes excludes bot edits by default. If you want to see the bot edits, then click "Show bots" under the "Recent changes options" header on the recent changes page you are looking at. -- ToE 20:29, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Where our archive page says "To see which of the archives are active, check the following pages with recent changes to the archives:", it means where the archives are actively being edited directly by users, not where new pages are being archived by bot. If you are looking for the most recent archived pages, look further down at the list of archive indexes by year, subject, and month. -- ToE 20:33, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Are people not allowed to ask questions around here?

I've had my queries — on both this and the main page, deleted under the assumption that I am a troll even though my history suggests no such thing. Nobody's willing to answer questions because "hey, fuck this guy for no reason". I asked a legitimate question on the Misc page, it gets deleted. I ask why the rudeness, deleted too. Can someone at least be polite enough to, I don't know, just explain WHY rather than delete without warning or explanation? So much for not assuming bad faith. 74.15.116.62 (talk) 01:09, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

You're talking about doing property damage. We are not therapists here. Go find one. OR, go watch a sporting event where yelling is encouraged. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:35, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

See here. Count Iblis (talk) 23:54, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

If you want help, you can increase your odds by telling us what you're talking about, including links/diffs. I went ahead and did that myself, but you can't count on volunteer editors being so kind-hearted.

Anyway this [22] is a rude and aggressive question, packaged with insults to our editors, and I understand why someone might delete it.

This [23] is borderline, but at least it is a question that is in principle able to be addressed through references. However, I suspect whoever removed it thought it was WP:POINTY - but if your were acting in good faith, then supplying a rough geographic location would have helped. BTW, in the USA, most city parks have no noise ordinances in effect during daylight hours. It appears it was removed by User:MarnetteD. The polite thing to to would have been to ask that user about it on their talk page, or post something here that was a simple question about removal. Even here, your tone is very aggressive, and you'll not win a lot of allies with that approach. I do agree that the description "nonsense" or "errant nonsense" are not entirely helpful. However, it is also not helpful to edit war.

In the name of being helpful and clarifying, I have edited your post to a state where it would be acceptable to me.

Does anyone know of a suitable public venue where screaming loud noises might by allowed? Because I am in a fit of pique right now and my only option is to vent my frustrations through screaming or property damage. Oh, and to the person who removed this question because they thought it was "errant nonsense", this IS a serious question to which I seek a serious answer. Just because it's unusual to you doesn't mean I'm trying to troll. Please try to not be a jerk about this.

The thing is, I know of very few public places where screaming is not allowed. If you can't scream in your domicile, presumably you can walk outside and scream. Because your question seems to not consider what many would consider an obvious solution, many will consider it to be some form of trolling or bad faith editing.

Finally, this [24] question got a number of good faith responses. Hope that helps, SemanticMantis (talk) 20:12, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

While screaming might not be prohibited specifically, I'm pretty sure if you starting screaming in any public place for no reason the police will have a word with you for disturbing the peace with "loud and unreasonable noise", and take action if you didn't stop. So while OPs question might be a little strange, I don't see how your reasoning works to prove he is trolling. 168.9.40.11 (talk) 20:22, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

If you read what I said, I never said OP was trolling. To what extent one can scream in public without police attention is perhaps an interesting topic, but not really related to the meta discussion here. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:19, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Speakers' Corner might be an appropriate place for public screaming without attracting police attention. The OP's IP address geolocates to Quebec, Canada - I have no idea if there's any such location in his area. 110.140.181.116 (talk) 09:32, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Is "range" IP semi-protection possible to introduce?

So it seems like that pesky anti-semitic refdesk troll has returned. My question is, given that he edits only from specific IP ranges (Verizon Canada?), would it be possible for the developers to introduce a feature so pages could be semi-protected only for users from specific IP ranges?. In other words, during periods when the troll is active and semi-protection required, our non-Canadian users should be able to edit the page as normal without needing to log in; whilst users from the IP range(s) which the troll edits from would need to log in with an auto-confirmed account? Has this possibility been explored? I hate to see more disruption than necessary, so is this a feasible possibility?

PLEASE let us not re-open the debate as to whether semi-protection as a whole is warranted - we've had that discussion ad infinitium. My question is only about the possibility of limiting that semi-protection to specific IP ranges. 110.140.181.116 (talk) 09:00, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

It's not particularly possible with the current software. An edit filter can be used to some extent, but it cannot be entirely effective. A filter request would need a list of IP ranges, and can be made at WP:EF/R. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 09:45, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

"but it cannot be entirely effective"--do you mean range blocks cannot entirely stop a dedicated vandal, or that the software cannot ensure that blocked/filtered IPs within the specified range cannot edit? Because I understand what you're getting at with the former, but the latter is confusing. SemanticMantis (talk) 13:55, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

While you can do a lot with edit filters, The Wikimedia software automatically compares every edit made to Wikipedia against all of the existing edit filters. You can imagine the reluctance to add new edit filters -- add too many and the site has no CPU or memory to do anything else.

It has always been possible to make it so that semiprotection protects against a range of IPs instead of all IPs. We just have to spend a small part of our $75 million dollar budget writing software so that it does that. Expect objections much like the objections you see from anti-death-penalty groups against anything that makes executions less painful -- they don't want it to be "too easy" to decide to execute someone. Likewise, range-based semiprotection will be opposed by those who don't want any semiprotection. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:19, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

And if the troll is using open proxies, you would end up with complete semi-protection anyway. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:45, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

The bottom line is, as long as Wikipedia allows unregistered editing, there will always be a certain background noise level of trolling, vandalism, and other unwanted content from anonymous IPs. Revert it and move on: that's the wiki way. Wringing our hands over it too much, or trying to somehow proactively beat it back to a zero level, has me thinking a bit of good old Canute. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:55, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

See, however, King Canute and the waves. The wise Dane wasn't trying to do the impossible, but, if the story is true, was rebuking those who thought that he could do the impossible. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:47, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I understand the troll has been known to use multiple registered accounts. I'd rather not go into detail, but I will say that the test for the vandal's IP range can be avoided. Bugs has alluded to this. I would view this as a filter that can be turned on when necessary in place of semi-protection, because this particular troll isn't particularly full-time-persistent. It may have some effect, but I'm not convinced about using this method. Otherwise Guy Macon is right that ip-range-protection will need to be implemented at the dev level. WP:PHAB is the place to request it. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 15:29, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

My understanding is that ip-range-protection can be implemented at the dev level or the edit-filter level, and that someone who understands the implications of each should decide which is best. Which still leads us to asking at Phab. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:25, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't think the edit filter is well suited to do this, as the underlying IP is not always available. I'd be surprised if there wasn't already a request for a software feature (perhaps an extension?) to prevent all editing, or all non-auto-confirmed editing, to a specific page from specific IP ranges. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 17:55, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

How to handle misinformation in question header/title

What should we do if the header for a question contains misinformation? What about if it presents as true a claim that cannot be verified.

Examples:

When was Benjamin Franklin president of the USA?

I can't find it in POTUS, please help.

Most aliens are humanoid

At least as far as I've seen. Why is this?

Now, we can help both OPs with references, but in both cases, there are questionable or incorrect statements in the title, and that's not great either. So what should we do in these cases?

a) nothing - ignore it and move on, no real harm

b) unilaterally replace with description, e.g. "question about aliens" or "question about Benjamin Franklin".

c) ask/ tell OP to rephrase.

d) ?

Obviously this is not terribly important, but it came up today, and Inspired by Dr.Chrissy's comments here [25], I thought I'd check in with the group. Thanks, SemanticMantis (talk) 20:21, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Could I change the question to:

Why do flowers have the number of petals that they do? Why aren't the numbers 1-6 or 7 equally common?

Either in nature worldwide, among common garden plants worldwide, common garden plants in area X or the nature of area X. How much is because of random reasons that don't help the plant and how much is because the better ones are more common? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:38, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

I think that's a better question, but honestly I don't know if it's worth changing at this point. I was more interested in the general case, but it seems I'm one of the only ones :) It is an interesting question, I just don't think we can answer it in much detail. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:08, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

My $.02 - it's not worth changing. If it's something so egregious or important that we do everyone a disservice by leaving it up, just make sure you add the anchor tag when you make the change. My thinking is that it's visible for a couple of days and then gets swept into the dustbin of the archives where it won't bother anyone. Matt Deres (talk) 16:11, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Matt Deres and choose action a). Good faith questions often contain incorrect assumptions, nomenclature or grammar; a claim that cannot be verified cannot be disproven either. These features help us frame answer(s) helpful to the actual questioner. A good answer can include "it's better to ask (this way)" but it is not a goal of the Ref. Desks to purify the history of what the OP actually posted, unless it was an obvious breach of AGF. AllBestFaith (talk) 17:22, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Hear, hear. Leaving the false assumption in the section header allows others laboring under similar assumptions to more easily find the question in the archives (and thus learn of their misconceptions). -- ToE 03:09, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 September 2016

What is the best way to detect a bootleg ground?

2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 04:33, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Posted. Nil Einne (talk) 05:35, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Here Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science#Best way to detect bootleg ground? Nil Einne (talk) 12:41, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 September 2016 LG-C395

Somebody bought the entitled model number mobile phone from America, it needs to be unlocked. A USB wire came with it, so I wonder, if I could unlock it myself, with some of wikipedians assistance. What do I do?; a step by step guide is beneficial… 103.230.106.1 (talk) 11:38, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Some repairers say that if a blocked 'phone is brought to them they will hand it in to the police. It may be that this is an illegal operation, in which case we wouldn't be able to help. 78.146.219.18 (talk) 11:54, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

I have copied this to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing#Unlocking LG-C395 over USB. Answers from editors unaffected by semi protection should be made directly there. Answers or comments from those affected by semi protection can be made here but it would be useful to give some indication of a change, probably easiest is to update the template above to answered=no Nil Einne (talk) 12:44, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Refdesk awarding badges.

Does the refdesk ever award badges to people like Yahoo Answers does? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncle dan is home (talk • contribs) 21:10, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

No. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:12, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

But it would be interesting to award badges based on the veracity of the answers provided. After all, the ref desks are the perennial harbour for the Facebook crew of Wikipedia, who prefer to just chat about things, make absurd and inaccurate claims. If a scoring system was instigated whereby it was made obvious who was making a mockery of the ref desks, perhaps we could start clearing out some of the obvious and overt nonsense-makers, all for the betterment of the encyclopedia. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:43, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Let's hear the details of your proposal. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:04, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

I believe Cuddlyable3 proposed something of the sort and even provided a ranked list, but did not or could not provide the actual script they used. That was years ago. There was quite a lot of heated debate about it, which is shocking for the RefDesk talk page. Matt Deres (talk) 17:34, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Approaching five years ago at least, as the user had been indef'd by then. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:33, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Time flies. I could have sworn it was C3 that did that, but a check through their RefDesk talkpage contributions didn't turn up anything (though it was certainly not an exhaustive search by me). Matt Deres (talk) 16:33, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

The ranking list that the Nonperson C3 calculated, together with an explanation, is visible here. TearsOfaClone (talk) 16:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I've had people give me barnstars (or other forms of thanks) for ref-desk responses. But we ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges. Deor (talk) 22:11, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

LOL. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:16, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Quite. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:21, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

See Template:The Reference Desk Barnstar. —Wavelength (talk) 22:57, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

I thought of that, but it's not exactly the RefDesk itself awarding anything. It's an individual editor wanting to recognise some other editor for their work at the RefDesk. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:23, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

See User talk:Wavelength/Archive 2 (sections 11 and 26). —Wavelength (talk) 00:40, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

• The joy of a well-researched and referenced response is reward enough. --Jayron32 17:52, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

•  :-) Matt Deres (talk) 16:10, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

• How about awards for people who use the refdesk but have 50%+ of their contributions in mainspace, or for people who have written articles based on refdesk questions? --Shirt58 (talk) 04:11, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

• It wasn't a personal barnstar, but there was a happy little note that was sometimes left in-thread to show off responses that had been developed into proper articles. That might form the basis of a barnstar. Dweller used to have a 'thread of the week' award as well, but ceased it after some rather harsh criticism on this page and elsewhere. Matt Deres (talk) 16:10, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

• If that moribund proposal ever gets legs again, please feel free to by-pass my talk, and just drop "people who use the refdesk but have 50%+ of their contributions in mainspace" and "people who have written articles based on refdesk questions" badges on my userpage. :-) Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:16, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Now degenerated into the usual shitty bitch-fest which makes this one of the worst pages on the whole project

HILARIOUS THOUGHT, I don't think there's a single Ref Desk contributor whose article space contributions would creep above 20%. In fact, some of the Ref Desk regulars simply "hang out" at the Ref Desk in order to provide false advice while not improving the Wikipedia in any form. I look forward to a time when we can purge these individuals and restore some kind of order here. Mu-ha-ha. Thanks Arbcom, for helping with that! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:48, 21 September 2016 (UTC) 64% of my edits are to mainspace. DuncanHill (talk) 19:01, 21 September 2016 (UTC) You may believe it but you would be wrong. Rmhermen (talk) 19:05, 21 September 2016 (UTC) There you go. DuncanHill (talk) 19:09, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Indeed, now show me the top ten ref desk contributors vs their mainspace contributions. Duncan, you are a shining light. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:26, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Clearly, you would be at the top of that list. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:34, 21 September 2016 (UTC) What an odd thing to attempt to assert. Please re-read and re-assess that. It would be terrible if your posts indicated that you were not competent to contribute in such a fashion. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:41, 21 September 2016 (UTC) That was supposed to be a compliment. You would be a top ten ref desk contributor qualitatively. You also do a lot of high-quality mainspace editing. In theory, what you're saying is that ideally someone should be at the bottom of such a list, i.e. lots of mainspace and not much ref desk. So flip the list over, and you're in the top ten. Get it? Got it? Good! ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:53, 21 September 2016 (UTC) The point I'm making is that I'd like to see a list of Ref Desk contributors by contribution versus their additions to the encyclopedia. I wonder who would top that chart? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:55, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Who cares? There's no rule against focusing primarily on any one area. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:57, 21 September 2016 (UTC) No, I think it would be instructive, particularly in light of the Arbcom case, to discover the most disruptive contributors to areas such as the Ref Desk. E.g. unreferenced, opinionated edits, people who make no actual improvement to the project, people who provide false information to our readers with seeming impunity, there are lots of things that need to be examined, and lots of users who need to be monitored. I'm glad that Arbcom will be looking into this in due course. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:09, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Well, once you're cleared in the ArbCom case (which I'm sure you will be), you can open your own case against all your perceived enemies here. Although your traditional inability to present evidence could prove to be a handicap. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:12, 21 September 2016 (UTC) No need, it will all be considered! I have no "enemies", I just see a number of users who don't add anything to Wikipedia. Arbcom are more than capable of seeing that. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:20, 21 September 2016 (UTC) You'll probably have your elves doing the actual work. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:27, 21 September 2016 (UTC) I have no idea what you're talking about. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:30, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Sure you don't. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:32, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Nope, as you have seen, the dice are loaded. I have no further interest in this "discussion" with you. It has distracted from the original point, and that is that certain users here will be under serious scrutiny going forward. Hurrah for that. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Your complaint about dice allegedly being loaded is part of your "poor-little-me" game. But you need not worry. I expect ArbCom to give you a clean bill of health. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:06, 21 September 2016 (UTC) No, not at all. I didn't canvass two or three dozen editors to complain about me. Arbcom will no do that by any means. The game has changed, and there are many, many individuals who will be about to undergo a similar level of scrutiny. Let's hope they can defend their contributions. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:15, 21 September 2016 (UTC) You've got nothing. Empty threats, as usual. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:27, 21 September 2016 (UTC) I have 314. All related to one user. Pow. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC) You have nothing. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:56, 21 September 2016 (UTC) According to that tool, I have 52.78% mainspace edits, but I don't think that's saying much, as most (as in over 95%) of those edits are minor (adding wikilinks, reverting vandalism, fixing typos, ...), and my content contributions really are nothing to write home about. The Rambling Man has 49.92% mainspace edits, and contributes much more, content-wise, than I do. In other words, I think these percentages are mostly meaningless. (What about editors who add huge chunks of well-researched, well-formed, well-written content in one edit)?. Moreover, I don't see what's wrong with having lots of reference desk edits; it's not like they're harming the encyclopedia, and sometimes, ideally, as mentioned by Shirt58, they even lead to improvements and new content in mainspace. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:45, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Yes, but I'd like to see it from the other point of view, how many people here just rack up Ref desk edits? Particularly when those edits are often incorrect, and almost invariably unreferenced. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:50, 21 September 2016 (UTC) That broad claim requires citations. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:54, 21 September 2016 (UTC) It's not a "broad claim", it's a request for statistics, e.g. it should be easy to determine how many edits someone has made to the Ref Desk without providing a single reliable source for their "opinion", particularly when their "opinion" is factually 100% incorrect. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:09, 21 September 2016 (UTC) How do you propose measuring that? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:13, 21 September 2016 (UTC) To start with, we'll gather stats on individuals who contribute to the Ref Desk vs mainspace. Then we'll analyse the number of reliable sources they use to back up their claims. That way we can determine whether users are simply giving personal opinions or factual answers based on reliable sources, a tenet of Wikipedia. Don't worry about how it's done, we can use a "computer" to do it! The Rambling Man (talk) 20:20, 21 September 2016 (UTC) I don't worry about anything. But you're saying "we" when you really mean "someone else", because you traditionally don't produce evidence to back up your claims about others' alleged misdeeds. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:26, 21 September 2016 (UTC) No, quite incorrect. I don't participate in heavily loaded, biased, canvassed actions that our Arbcom sanction. I have plenty of evidence to support the fact that some users are simply using the Ref Desks as an alternative to Facebook or Twitter. Something like three hundred diffs for one specific individual in the past year or so for what it's worth. And dozens in the same timeframe from other users. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:29, 21 September 2016 (UTC) No, instead you play the poor-little-me game on your talk page, and recruit elves to do your work for you. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:31, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Pardon? Personal attacks are not required. I have no "recruit elves", whatever that means. Please provide evidence of such or redact your odd comment. I look forward to the analysis of the Ref desk contributors! The Rambling Man (talk) 20:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Should I provide a citation of you playing the poor-little-me game? No, I didn't think so. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:04, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Feel free. It pales into insignificance with the 300+ diffs I have. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:06, 21 September 2016 (UTC) Actually, you provided one right here, when you complained about the dice being loaded. As for you posting diffs, you don't do that. It's an idle threat on your part. And if you ever do post 300 diffs, it would suggest an unhealthy obsession on your part, and might open yet another ArbCom case against you. But it won't happen, because you don't do that. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:10, 21 September 2016 (UTC) I have at least 300 diffs. It's no problem. Let's see how things pan out. Then we'll work on solving the issues at the Ref desk etc. This is, in no shape at all, an idle threat. That Arcbom accepted such a canvassed approach has changed the game! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:15, 21 September 2016 (UTC) P.S. Last word is yours. This is nothing to do with this thread. But, as usual, you want the last word. Here you go ------> The Rambling Man (talk) 21:18, 21 September 2016 (UTC) You never provide diffs. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:25, 21 September 2016 (UTC) I have 314 (so far, but I haven't looked hard). All related to one user. Pow. Have a great day. Once this Arbcom case is over, per F. Flinstone, "we'll have a gay old time"! In the meantime, don't forget your passport!! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC) "Passport"? What, you want I should come visit you? I think not. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:56, 21 September 2016 (UTC) The only thing I know about "Passports" is that on international flights, you hand them over to be put in "a safe or something". At least that's what one of the Ref Desk Experts has asserted here in the past. 2600:8806:4800:5100:4147:342E:CC85:87F4 (talk) 00:08, 22 September 2016 (UTC) That doesn't sound right. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:05, 22 September 2016 (UTC) Let me refresh your memory. --Viennese Waltz 09:20, 22 September 2016 (UTC) I see. From over two years ago. Well, I wasn't aware that there's a rule against asking a question. But I have to wonder whether the IP is one of the elves I referred to above, or whether he's just an obsessed fan? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:17, 22 September 2016 (UTC) Whichever is the case, it's still probably the stupidest question ever asked on the ref desk. --Viennese Waltz 12:40, 22 September 2016 (UTC) That's one of the stupidest comments ever made on the ref desk. I won't say it's the stupidest, but it's in the neighborhood. And in any case, there is no rule against asking "stupid" questions. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:01, 22 September 2016 (UTC) And by the way, Mr. Know-It-All, where are your citations for these claims?[26][27] Or do the citation rules not apply to you? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:07, 22 September 2016 (UTC) WP:RD/G does not say that citations are required for every RD answer. I'm a native speaker, so I can comment with authority on matters of English usage. I'd provide a link to my British passport to verify my nationality, but it's locked up in a safe in some aircraft somewhere. --Viennese Waltz 13:17, 22 September 2016 (UTC) I know plenty of native English speakers, but they ain't all self-styled authorities. For further info, see argument from authority. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:21, 22 September 2016 (UTC) Thinking back on your dusty old complaint, here's where that question came from: On past flights, I've sometimes had to bring an oversized object on board, and the flight attendant was able to store it up front somewhere. Using logic, it occurred to me that it's possible they might have a lockbox up front, for whatever purpose. Hence the question. But instead of saying, "They don't have lockboxes," editors such as VW and TRM and countless elves have used it to generate personal attacks, then and now. If that's your so-called "evidence", be careful it doesn't backfire. Especially if it turns out TRM made some of those attacks during the interaction ban. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:00, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Olbers'

Olbers' paradox in action

Over-generous scattering of barnstars like this and that can flood the Ref. Desk in Olbers' paradox. Verily, Sic transit gloria mundi. Greater value than such worldy baubles offer may one cherish in humble Folk art as here below epitomized by the ASCII artistry of Steve Baker.

          /\
         /**\
 _______/****\_______
 *.******/^^\******.*
   *.***( () )***.*
     *.**\,./**.*
      /**.**.**\
     /*.*    *.*\
    /.*        *.\
    '            `

TearsOfaClone (talk) 20:01, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

As you may have noticed, some users get badges, others get badgered. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:07, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, I for one think the refdesk is very helpful. The responders here are fantastic. You are much appreciated. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 19:33, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Why is it that the colour of the bike shed is controversial?

Why is it that, the more stupid the question, more replies are posted. Or is thaT a stupid question?--86.187.168.215 (talk) 01:24, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Where did you see that? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:07, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

See Bike shed discussion. I rather suspect the OP is referring to the discussion on RD/L re dashes and commas. Tevildo (talk) 04:15, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

If the OP thinks commas are trivial, he needs to read Eats, Shoots & Leaves. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:25, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

That link is relevant. If somebody asks what tropical fruit has red and green skin, I can answer, and do, but if they ask for a description of a particular nuclear fuel cycle, I don't know the answer, so don't. Others seem to do the same, which, indeed, they should. The problem is that we lack experts in certain technical fields, not that we should avoid answering in fields where everyone has experience. If we refer to the bike shed discussion, the source of the problem is that the approval of a nuclear reactor design is given to a committee who apparently lacks expertise in the field, although they could at least convene a group of experts and ask their opinions, IMHO. StuRat (talk) 17:16, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

In Parkinson's example, the committee have obtained the the opinion of a group of experts on the design; they (to summarise) agree to trust that those experts are correct, and then decide to approve the financing, which decision is presumably within their own competence (as business experts). The protraction of the discussion of the bike shed's colour arises because (in context) the matter is too trivial for there to be an expert on the subject, hence there is no overriding expert opinion to defer to. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.211.191 (talk) 00:32, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Can someone please copy the following (preserving the links, as they are important) onto the computer desk? Thanks

Using xidel how would you extract only the "no" data from this json feed? The feed contains 150 items each with "no" and "last_modified". I want only the "no" data returned for all 150 items,

For example

{"no":40489590,"last_modified":1421804809},{"no":89921534,"last_modified":1474576329},{"no":89924252,"last_modified":1474576328}

etc would become;

40489590
89921534
89924252

etc. I tried reading the manual and readme text but I just can't work out the syntax and I have no experience with json. Thanks for your help! 179.197.26.37 (talk) 20:40, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Done. -- ToE 22:51, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Archived.-- ToE 10:34, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request

 Done

In WP:RD/H#Electric fans in old movies, currently the last item begins:

Good find. Interesting that the Popular Mechanics article gives the method for "Streamers Attached to Electric Fan with Paper Clips" without, itself, suggesting a reason...

If there has not already been a response to this effect, please add in response:

The reason is given in the caption to the illustration: it's "for Window Displays". In other words, the intended audience for this item was shopkeepers. --69.159.61.230 (talk) 10:30, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. --69.159.61.230 (talk) 10:30, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Done, thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 11:41, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. It showed up as if it had been an unsigned contribution by me; not sure why that happened. --69.159.61.230 (talk) 22:07, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I wanted it to be clear that you had contributed the answer and couldn't think of another way of doing so. DuncanHill (talk) 22:10, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

At times, I've done that by copying the signature from the edit request, like so:

Example comment --69.159.61.230 (talk) 22:07, 3 October 2016 (UTC) (added by SemanticMantis (talk) 22:46, 3 October 2016 (UTC))

While not ideal, I think it does the job. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:46, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Bugbullocks

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I don't know why you continue to let this guy post at this desk. His answers are not helpful to the questioners and have fuck all to do with science. SpinningSpark 18:17, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Your complaint is invalid. Unless you're claiming that the metre article is wrong. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:03, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

And by the way, I don't own any cattle. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:04, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

This is not the personal attack desk. This is the reference desk. --Jayron32 19:24, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

This page is for discussion of the Reference Desks. None of the reference desks should be personal attack desks. However this was a personal attack on a user who for merely asking a question gets lambasted for allegedly not bothering to read an article. Shortly after that misconceived post it became evident that no purpose would be served on the desk by arguing the allegation so I hatted the thread without prejudice. Further discussion of the origin of the metre (US: meter) should be taken to the actual article page if one has any reliable information that is not already there. Otherwise, there may be an issue of competence and/or behaviour that we can resolve here, ideally reaching to a comprehension by all of explanations such as those already given by SemanticMantis [28] and SpinningSpark [29]. AllBestFaith (talk) 01:01, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

My argument is based on what the article says. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:51, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't think SpinningSpark should have posted what he posted here -- it's pretty personal-attack-y -- but I don't think your assertion is supported by the metre article, which doesn't even contain the word "mile". —Steve Summit (talk) 03:10, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

If they didn't start with miles, what did they start with? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:24, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The first to get an accurate measure was Eratosthenes in 240 BC who quoted the result in stadia, but that is all beside the point. The original definition of the metre takes the size of the Earth as the standard against which everything else is defined. This is in the same way as the Imperial system used a yardstick as the standard. It is meaningless to ask what the yardstick has been measured in, it wasn't measured in anything, it is the reference standard. Similarly, under the (orignal) metric system it is meaningless to ask what the Earth has been measured in.

Your answer on the desk was not based on any article, it is based, as so many of your answers are, on your own faulty reasoning and opinions. Your continued attempt to defend your incorrect position in the face of all evidence to the contrary demonstrates why you are such a problem on the reference desk, the science desk in particular. SpinningSpark 08:01, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The adoption of the meter in 1793 by the French National Convention was the first great attempt to define terrestrial units of measure in terms of an unvarying astronomical or geodetic constant[30]. See History of the metre. Conversion factors between the meter and length units with earlier definitions are available (and some are mentioned in the meter article, including some imperial/US units) but it is an error to suppose that the meter was defined merely by conversion from any other unit. That error was given out, very regrettably, on the Science Ref. Desk. Correct procedure in Wikipedia article space is that an error may be challenged and, if not supported by WP:RS, removed. While actual removal is allowed on the Ref. Desks only in narrowly defined cases (such as WP:BLP, medical or legal advice) the option for (almost) anyone to challenge a factual claim has been upheld by administrators. I suggest that in Ref. Desk responses one should feel a greater duty of politeness than on article discussion pages because of their wider non-specialist public exposure and should appreciate that accusing another of posting nonsense quickly erodes collegiality. It appears to me that IP User 85.74.20.82 is owed an apology for condemnatory treatments of their only two posts[31] (one of which is censured[32]) on the Science Ref. Desk. But for some, a healing "sorry" is a rare word. AllBestFaith (talk) 15:13, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The IP attacked first, though I don't expect him to apologize, as he never does. As to the meter issue, you can't start with nothing. Whether they used miles or stadia or cubits, they had to start with something. The only other way is to run a tape from the north pole to the equator and make 10 million equal marks on it and say each one is a meter... an even then, you would have to refer to already-existing units. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:52, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

You're arguing from your own ignorance and your own presumed authority. This is not the scientific way, and not the way of the reference desks. You are out of your depth. I've tried patiently to explain to you what your mistake was, yet you persist in loudly proclaiming your misconceptions. Seriously, you're just embarrassing yourself. Try admitting that you're wrong for once, it will be good for you. 23:44, 5 October 2016 (UTC) -- SemanticMantis (talk · contribs)

Try signing your posts. And by the way, if I'm ignorant, so was my science teacher. But I don't think so. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:20, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

They would use nautical miles. A nautical mile is a well - defined unit - if two people on the same meridian sight the sun at noon the observed difference in elevation in minutes of arc corresponds to the distance between them in nautical miles. The distance from equator to pole is 5,400 nautical miles. The point is that there is no relationship between the nautical mile and the inch - i.e. the length of the metre was never defined with reference to Imperial units. 86.16.15.70 (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Bugs, the IP in this case did not "attack" first. At 09:00 the IP asked, "Where is it stated that 'the meter was originally defined as a fraction of a number of miles'?", which is hardly an attack (especially since the article doesn't say that). At 14:25 you claimed "65.74.20.82 is speaking nonsense". Then at 16:47 the IP made a perfectly accurate contribution, albeit with an edit comment which smeared you, which Jayron then reverted and blocked him for.

I realize that the IP is an alleged troll and may therefore be felt to deserve zero sympathy, but again, he really did not attack first. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:42, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it was actually SpinningSpark that fired the first shot.[33] The IP followed that up with this in the edit summary and was blocked. Further feeding the troll, SpinningSpark then restored the troll's comments,[34] and further fed the troll by continuing the attack here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:40, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

A person who retorts to a mere question about one of their own claims as if it were an attack to be matched discredits all the good work that is still done on the Ref. Desks. When that person is, naturally or wilfully, obdurately uncomprehending of the rationale for nominating a standard unit of measurement, it serves no purpose to encourage them in this thread to repeat the same immature behaviour that led to this conclusion. Where, as in the case of recent questions, the absence of posts from Baseball Bugs would give a net improvement to the quality of the Ref. Desks, the conclusion to draw is obvious. TearsOfaClone (talk) 22:52, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I have no regard for the pointed opinions of a user who has a grand total of 8 edits. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:13, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Excuse me, I didn't restore anything, at least not deliberately, and definitely not in the diff you provided. Although I can see that my edit summary might have led you to think that I had done so. SpinningSpark 23:02, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

You insisted on continuing the argument there, after it was hatted. And someone else foolishly unhatted this section too. How about re-hatting this section and be done with it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:18, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

What Baseball Bugs calls foolish is my edit whose summary is "Opened hat that obscured a heading. An issue that we can resolve?". AllBestFaith (talk) 11:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is free and open, and it would be rather difficult to force any one user away. Well, it's easy enough to get banned, if you do certain things that piss off the enforcers, and then you'll have a whole cadre of militant defenders who'll happily chase your shadow across the world. But Bugs seems to have an uncanny ability to stay just shy of bannable offenses. It's not that he breaks rules, he's just generally not helpful, and rude to IP's, and we don't really have rules against that.

I tried several times to patiently explain to him what he got wrong in terms of definitions there in the collapsed section, but the last thing I'll ever expect from Bugs is admitting that he made a mistake. SemanticMantis (talk) 23:41, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

You can't get something from nothing. They had to have translated an established unit into meters. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:10, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

And I've read your attempt at an explanation. It doesn't make logical sense. If you say such-and-such unit is one ten-millionth of X, then X has to have a numerical value. Unless you're arguing that it's just a miraculous coincidence that a meter is one ten-millionth of that distance along the meridian. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:24, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

It's not a miracle. They defined it as that distance. It's not a coincidence, they said "The meter is 1 ten-millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator". It was specifically referenced to that measurement. The mile never entered into the thinking at all. Afterwards, once the meter had been pegged, someone worked out the equivalent distance in miles, but the definition didn't base itself on the mile in any way. --Jayron32 03:52, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

It's true that the length of the meter was initially defined as exactly 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the north pole to the equator (through Paris), but it's also true that this distance was first reported in terms of other units. However, these were French surveyors, so they reported the length in French units, the ligne and the toise, and never in terms of miles or inches. And in any event, these units were being abandoned precisely because they had no exact definition. Exactly how many lignes fit in a mile differed according to whom you asked, and thus it wouldn't even make sense to say that the original meter was a precise ratio of the contemporary mile. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Finally, a factual answer: They used French units instead of English units. Merci bien. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:28, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Keep going, Bugs. When you find yourself arguing against extreme opposition on simple matters of fact, the reasonable thing to do is to consider the case, not dig in and say "my science teacher said so". I've given up trying to help you, because when I try to help you rudely rebuff. You won't listen to sensible explanations, you won't listen to references, and you won't listen to our expertise (every single person trying to explain it to you has advanced training in science). But please, continue to argue that the meter is defined in terms of miles. It just makes it more and more clear that not only do you not understand the basics of metrology, you also don't understand what a definition is. Stick to facts about baseball and cartoons - I honestly think you're very good at that! And if I said something like "Daffy duck was the first cartoon", I'd be happy to have my error corrected by someone who knows a lot more about it ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 14:21, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

To whom it may concern. To set an example of charity towards humanity I hereby release to the public domain all rights to an entirely new standard of length measurement to be known from today as the Bugstick(R). The Bugstick(R) is defined as one billionth of the diameter of exoplanet Kepler-452b. No previous measurement units are involved in this definition, nor is there a use for them because I offer bits of string cut to a possible estimate official Bugstick(R) reference standards at a bargain price. An expedition to Kepler-452b is planned as soon as voluntary donations permit. This will be to measure Kepler-452b with unprecedented accuracy which will make it possible to express its size in traditional American units with many decimal places (early contributors can get a decimal place named after themselves!). No one knows what the diameter is today, except me who can quote it as exactly a billion Bugsticks(R). Yay, go Bugstick(R)! Disclaimer: No Imperial units were employed in this foolish example. AllBestFaith (talk) 23:54, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hypothetical Questions at the Reference Desks

This isn’t about regular editors here. It is about the use of the Reference Desk. The following post was made a few days ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AReference_desk%2FMiscellaneous&type=revision&diff=742141870&oldid=742105669

I would suggest that if anyone asks a question at a Reference Desk that isn’t about general knowledge, but is about Wikipedia policies and guidelines, or how to use Wikipedia, they be referred to the Help Desk or the Teahouse. I recommend strongly against giving “advisory opinions” based on a one-sided description of a dispute. The description is almost always slightly biased, and the real purpose often is to get an “advisory opinion” in order to wikilawyer, saying, “They said, at the Help Desk/the Reference Desk that A is X”. (In this case, the editor had already also gone to the Teahouse.) Robert McClenon (talk) 16:11, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The question was completely out of place at RD, and Medeis should have known better than to engage it. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:58, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I won't exactly defend Medeis, but I will note that she did say that the question was out of place at the Reference Desk. It is true that she went on to answer it anyway (and gave the answer that the questioner was trying to elicit), but she is not a Help Desk regular editor or a Teahouse regular editor. If she had been, she would have known that the posing of hypothetical questions of that sort is a common device. In this case the description was biased and the question was also being forum shopped. I mentioned this not to rebuke Medeis but to caution regular editors to be wary of hypothetical questions about Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:43, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Just stick to the RD mission and that won't be an issue. Further, it benefits newer users to inform them about the WP landscape, and engaging questions raised in the wrong venues does the opposite. Answering the question and then pointing to the better venue(s) does not have the same effect as the latter alone. This applies not only to the OP but everyone reading that thread. ―Mandruss ☎ 03:45, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I assume that User:Mandruss refers to the Original Poster of the thread that I referred to above, and not to the Original Poster of this thread (me). I was advising that editors should avoid answering questions about hypothetical disputes. The hypothetical disputes are usually somewhat biased versions of actual disputes, and are sometimes being used to elicit a biased "advisory opinion". I think that Mandruss and I are in agreement that experienced editors should avoid answering such questions. At the Reference Desks, such questions are outside of the scope of the Reference Desks. At the Help Desk or Teahouse, one can sometimes look at the edit history of the Original Poster and infer what the actual dispute is, or can ask what the actual dispute is. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:05, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Your assumption is correct. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:06, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

What if there was no such thing as a hypothetical question? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:48, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

That is a hypothetical question, and therefore its premise is false. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:44, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Don't be too sure. What if the genesis of Wikipedia was, "What if there was an encyclopedia anyone can edit?" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:31, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

That does not compute! *BANG* {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.27.88 (talk) 11:32, 9 October 2016 (UTC)