User talk:Andrewa/Archive 16

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Andrewa. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 10

←

Archive 14

→

Review for English/French speaker

Hello Andrewa. First of all, congratulations for your hierarchy of argumentation types, it is great! Please excuse me if I am doing something improper, as I am new to Wikipedia. I am contacting you because you are a speaker of both English and French. I have created the page Draft:Pierre_Jovanovic nearly 2 months ago, and I am waiting for a review. Could you please consider having a look at it ? And again, please excuse me if my request is improper. I am learning the ropes. Best regards. Micha Jo (talk) 16:40, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

PS. I am a lover of guitars too. I own two acoustic guitars : a concert clasical one plus a Flamenco one.

Nothing improper at all, Micha Jo. Happy to look at it.

But my first reaction is that the issue of lack of sources has not been addressed. Perhaps they are there, but if so they are drowned in a sea of references to sources that do not meet English Wikipedia's standards of reliable secondary sources.

The first thing to do is to remove all primary sources (and any others that fail the standard for other reasons), and see what is left. And this should have been done before submitting it for review. As it stands it is in dire peril of deletion (again). Andrewa (talk) 17:56, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice! I will work on improving secondary sources. Cheers! Micha Jo (talk) 17:59, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I should also say, Micha Jo, that there is some scope for using primary sources. But it's tricky. And I see you've attracted another admin, a highly respected and competent contributor. We are on a good path. Andrewa (talk) 18:43, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello Andrewa. I have worked hard cleaning up the sources. I removed all primary sources. Only left a couple of websites references. Added half a dozen quality secondary sources such as books. I do not know how it can be improved any better. Could you please have another look? Thank you very much and Kind regards. Micha Jo (talk) 08:40, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I am now autoconfirmed. Do you think I can move now the page to mainspace? Micha Jo (talk) 08:34, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2018

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscription list on the English Wikipedia

Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.

You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.

Recent changes

The Editing team has published an initial report about mobile editing.
The Editing team has begun a design study of visual editing on the mobile website. New editors have trouble doing basic tasks on a smartphone, such as adding links to Wikipedia articles. You can read the report.
The Reading team is working on a separate mobile-based contributions project.
The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer supported. If you used that toolbar, then you will no longer see any toolbar. You may choose another editing tool in your editing preferences, local gadgets, or beta features.
The Editing team described the history and status of VisualEditor in this recorded public presentation (starting at 29 minutes, 30 seconds).
The Language team released a new version of Content Translation (CX2) last month, on International Translation Day. It integrates the visual editor to support templates, tables, and images. It also produces better wikitext when the translated article is published. [1]

Let's work together

The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:11, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Opinion needed

Hello. Would you be interested to say your opinion about the issue raised here — Talk:List of heads of state of Angola#Requested move 2 November 2018? Thanks in advance. --Sundostund (talk) 03:05, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Class Act!

Hello @Andrewa: , Recognizing mistakes and changing your mind is not so common. Doing this publicly is quite remarkable and demonstrates strength of character. It is a class act! And thanks for your time on the Pierre Jovanovic 's page. I was really puzzled that notability was disputed. Best regards Micha Jo (talk) 13:03, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

See wp:creed#wrong and User:Andrewa/How not to rant. And many thanks for your kind words. Andrewa (talk) 13:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Portals WikiProject update #022, 11 Nov 2018

Welcome AmericanAir88

Give a hearty welcome to AmericanAir88, who has adopted working on portals as one of his main purposes on Wikipedia. So far, he has created the following portals:

Way to go!

Where's Evad?

Evad disappeared from Wikipedia on October 18.

He has been, and will continue to be, sorely missed.

Hopefully, he is okay, on a Caribbean cruise or something.

The conversion continues

Portals of the old design, are slowly but surely being converted to the new single-page design.

One factor that has slowed things down is that for many sections, the section header call and section contents call are integrated into a template and buried in a lua module, locking them in on each portal. They have been that way for years.

This means that these sections can't be directly edited like the other sections on the same portal. So, search/replaces affect all the sections except those. So, upgrading headers on these portals, for example, misses the integrated sections and inadvertently results in 2 different header colors.

Before we can continue with the upgrade of these portals, the headers and section contents calls need to be restored to each portal, so that those can be edited in concert with the other sections on the portal, and worked on independently of each other.

This is underway, with a solution implemented on about 1/4 of the affected portals so far. Around 300 of them. The remaining 900 should be done within a couple weeks or so.

Going wide...

We now have banner-shaped pictures included in the introduction sections of 180 portals. The rarity of such pictures has made it difficult to find suitably narrow images for display across the tops of portals.

We have a solution for this, courtesy of FR30799386...

Most pictures are not banner-shaped. But, you can still use them as banners. Here's how:

{{Portal image banner|File:Blueberries .jpg |maxheight=120px |overflow=Hidden }}

Using both maxheight=120px and overflow=Hidden produces this:

Project's status

There are now 4,140 portals, with more being created almost daily. Prior to this project's reboot, portals were created at about the rate of 80 per year. Since April of this year, we've created about 2,600 new portals, or 32.5 years' worth at the old rate.

Of those new portals, about 3/4 of them need links leading to them. Almost all of them are linked to from the category system, but they still need links in article see also sections, at the bottom of navigation templates, and on the main portals list at Portal:Contents/Portals.

Of the 1500 portals created before the reboot, about 300 have been completely converted to the new design so far. About 1100 more have been partially converted, with intros, image slideshows, and associated wikimedia sections getting the most attention.

Discussion has resumed on the portal guidelines.

Until next issue...

See ya round the portal system! — The Transhumanist 11:38, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Your email

I received your email. If you don't mind I'd like to have this conversation on-wiki as this important, although I obviously won't reveal the contents of your email. I'd like to point out the following:

If you have concerns about the quality of the checkusers' work, please take it up with them, not me.
If you h ave received information about someone that concerns you or threatens Wikipedia in some way, please send your evidence to Arbcom.
I hope you will consider the behavioural and technical evidence presented, and don't let someone persuade you to ignore it by email.
Please use notability, verifiability and the other appropriate P&Gs to make decisions about content, not emails from the subjects or their advocates that you have received off-wiki. It's fine if we disagree on points of policy (many of them are open to interpretation), but we need to make these decisions honestly and openly.

I hope this addresses your concerns. Brad v 00:52, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Understood, Bradv... then do you think it's OK if I post here the text of the email I sent you, to which you are replying? I would like to. Otherwise we only have half the story here. Or, feel free to do so yourself. But I'd like the whole text posted, then I can reply to the (very important) points you raise above. Andrewa (talk) 07:37, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Andrewa, sure, it's your email so you are welcome to share it. If you do that here then I can interact with the points you made more directly. Brad v 14:33, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, see below. Perhaps I was being over-careful in suggesting we discuss offline. My knowledge of how our checking works is all derived from pulic sources, including our own project pages of course. Andrewa (talk) 17:38, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Original email

Hi Bradv
I'm writing to request some off-wiki discussion of the Pierre Jovanovic article and ramificatiions.
I see you've struck some comments as by confirmed sockpuppets following SPI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Pierre_Jovanovic&diff=867733040&oldid=867730525
It seems to me more likely that these are meatpuppets at worst, and possibly innocent ones. But I'd be glad of any extra information on this.
I'm asking off-wiki because it's IMO sensitive... I assume good faith, but at the same time don't want to tip off potential disrupters and POV pushers as to how our investigations work. And it's difficult... if for example brother and sister or husband and wife or father and son share the same hardware and Internet connection, does that make them sockpuppets or even meatpuppets? But they'd fail SPI, obviously.
I do think it's unfortunate that you, as the AfD proposer, were the one to do this particular edit. You are hardly uninvolved, any more than I am. This is particularly unfortunate as M. Jovanovic is (I am told but have not verified) rather suspicious of Wikipedia.
In fact it's even possible that this whole episode is being orchestrated by him in order to gather evidence against us. I have no evidence of this, it just came to me as a nightmare, but it fits the evidence available to me.
In any case, it would be better to avoid giving him ammunition if he does adopt an anti-Wikipedia stance, as he may already have done. And of course, this stance, if he does adopt it, is not itself a reason to discount his notability... if we do that, we are adopting a POV, and he has won.
Lots going on! Thanks for your time.
Andrew Alder

I'd make one clarification... wp:meatpuppet does already state under the subheading Wikipedia:Sock puppetry#Sharing an IP address If two or more registered editors use the same computer or network connection, their accounts may be linked by a CheckUser. Editors in this position are advised to declare such connections on their user pages to avoid accusations of sockpuppetry. There are userboxes available for this; see {{User shared IP address}}. Closely connected users may be considered a single user for Wikipedia's purposes if they edit with the same objectives. When editing the same articles, participating in the same community discussion, or supporting each other in any sort of dispute, closely related accounts should disclose the connection and observe relevant policies such as edit warring as if they were a single account. If they do not wish to disclose the connection, they should avoid editing in the same areas, particularly on controversial topics.

When I say meatpuppets at worst, and possibly innocent ones I mean, possibly in ignorance of this policy. It's IMO unreasonable to expect contributors with only a few edits to have read it unless they have had some warning referring to it. Andrewa (talk) 17:38, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Response to Bradv above

Watch this space. Andrewa (talk) 17:38, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Andrewa, after your email I struck the "confirmed sockpuppet" tag and replaced with {{spa}} as this is more technically accurate. It doesn't make much difference, as the closing administrator should disregard all !votes from sockpuppets and single-purpose accounts (and there will be more, as Jovanovic has been canvassing on Twitter). The rest of this conversation is largely irrelevant as the fate of the article should depend solely upon the notability of the subject, and not how we feel about the editor. Brad v 18:55, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for that edit. Perhaps it would be good to point out that wp:SPA is an essay while wp:sock is a policy. Comparing one to the other is a bit like comparing a farm tractor to a Ferrari, in my opinion.

And how the closer interprets all of this is up to them. We are both involved and should not try to foreshadow that. But I'm curious that you say the closing administrator should disregard all !votes from sockpuppets and single-purpose accounts (my emphasis)... have I missed something there? Why disregard them? I think they should be assessed in exactly the same way as any other valid !vote.

On the other hand wp:canvas is a behavioural guideline. But as you point out, this canvassing is by Jovanovic, who (I am assuming) may not be Micha Jo. Very interesting. Thank you for that link! It is IMO very relevant. See my comment to Micha Jo.

Agree that the AfD result should not depend on how we feel about the editor. It should not depend on that, nor on how we feel about the subject, nor on many other things.

And long term, agree that the fate of the article should depend solely upon the notability of the subject. It's more a matter of timeliness. If the author really has sold getting on for a million copies of each of two different books, then he is likely to be encyclopedic, and the apparent lack of RSS is rather a mystery. (And if not then he may well be notable shortly for perpetrating this fraud... but wp:BALL of course.)

It seems to me that this needs very careful handling. The blunt application of the notability guidelines is not in the best interests of English Wikipedia. Rather, we need to approach this with common sense, be open to the possibility that this is an instance of the occasional exception, and investigate the claims made a bit more thoroughly. Andrewa (talk) 20:08, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Responding now to the original post [2] as promised.

If you have concerns about the quality of the checkusers' work, please take it up with them, not me.

My concern was with your interpretation of their work, not with their work. This concern has been vindicated IMO, but there is more to be said.

If you have received information about someone that concerns you or threatens Wikipedia in some way, please send your evidence to Arbcom.

Will do of course.

I hope you will consider the behavioural and technical evidence presented, and don't let someone persuade you to ignore it by email.

I'm afraid I find this mildly insulting.

Please use notability, verifiability and the other appropriate P&Gs to make decisions about content, not emails from the subjects or their advocates that you have received off-wiki. It's fine if we disagree on points of policy (many of them are open to interpretation), but we need to make these decisions honestly and openly.

WP:N reads in part it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. I see that this clause is not currently on WP:V, and I'm not quite sure why not. Andrewa (talk) 22:46, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

On the SPI

See here for some discussion. Andrewa (talk) 00:36, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Micha Jo, and my comment there. Andrewa (talk) 00:54, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Andrewa. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 2 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

Hello, Andrewa. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	For understanding I got off on the wrong foot and listening patiently, and for writing User:Andrewa/How not to rant here is a barnstar. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 21:21, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar

Hello Andrewa. I'm trying to find out some specific info on a page you had a lot to do with: the Jervis Bay Nuclear Plant proposal page. It says that concrete footings are still visible to this day. I was at the site last week and I searched but couldn't find any concrete. Do you know exactly where they are? Like precisely? If you do, would you be so kind as to send me a Google Map image with a pointer on it? I know that the general location is the carpark at Murray's Beach but I just couldn't find those concrete footings. Thanks! :-) CraigCanberra (talk) 04:54, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Jack & Jack discography

Clicking Jack & Jack discography on mobile from the history page takes me to Jack, a disambiguation page you created. Any idea why & is not recognized in the url? Flooded with them hundreds 18:40, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

No idea, sorry, and I'm not a user of mobile devices myself. But happy to investigate.

Does clicking Jack & Jack from the history of this talk page give you the same problem? Maybe if we define the bug we can get someone interested in fixing it.

If this were Andrewpedia I would never use & in an article title, it's just asking for problems like that for no obvious benefit. Some browsers and platforms will be fine, others perhaps not. Who is going to test them all, under all scenarios (such as wikilinks in history)? What others will give problems in the future? But it is an even more lost cause than suggesting we use capitalisation according to the conventions of normal English grammar! (Mind you, I haven't entirely given up on that one.) Andrewa (talk) 21:28, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Oh well, that's alright. Certes described the situation accurately below, turns out the issue is with the technical limitations of Wikipedia and not a mistake by how the link is clicked. Too bad I'm unable to go to the desired page directly using the ampersand in the url. Flooded with them hundreds 10:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Flooded with them hundreds: I don't see a problem when using the history page on mobile view with Firefox. Forgive me if you knew this already: & in a URL can introduce a parameter, so for example https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_&_Jack_discography would set title to Jack_ and set _Jack_discography to an empty value. The first value takes you to the title Jack, trailing underscores being ignored like spaces; the second is ignored because index.php doesn't expect a _Jack_discography parameter. (More details: Ampersand#Web standards.) I do see links with an & character on that page but none of them have a preceding ? so it shouldn't matter. (& can also introduce a special character in HTML, e.g. < means <, but I don't think that's relevant here.) WP:VPT may give you a more helpful answer. Certes (talk) 21:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Yep, that's all part of the problem. Some platforms and browsers will do it one way, others another way. A real mess, and a predictable one. It might be fixable in this case, but it's a bit like the Dutch story of the kid putting his finger in the hole in the dike. Andrewa (talk) 22:01, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

You're right, Certes. I guess it isn't the history page I was having difficulties with but the url itself. Thanks for telling me. It'd be great if someone would start a discussion at VPT or somewhere to get the developers to fix this issue since right now users are unable to get to the right page directly when the url is in this form "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=", but it works surprisingly when the ampersand is changed to "%26" or when the url is in the regular format "/wiki/". Flooded with them hundreds 10:35, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Flooded with them hundreds: Some links to a title containing & do have the & encoded as %26. In my browser (Firefox on Ubuntu), & still works as long as there's no ? before the title, because & only has special meaning after a ?. Perhaps your browser is less tolerant. I'm not sure what the standards say on this, but it seems that converting & to %26 everywhere would help some readers and harm no one (apart from wasting two bytes of data). As you say, it may be one for the experts at VPT. Where does this link lead on your mobile device? It takes me to the discography, despite containing a &. Certes (talk) 11:35, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

My preferred (and lost cause) solution would still be to move the article to Jack and Jack. A redirect from Jack & Jack is unobjectionable, and similarly for other titles such as the discography. Some I'm sure see this as wrong because we are going to influence the rest of the web by this decision. I say, so what? My only agenda with article titles is getting readers (all readers) to the right article. The correct name for the topic can be used and justified in the article if that can be sourced. The article title is IMO primarily just to get the reader to the article. Andrewa (talk) 12:01, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Would that be a good idea? The opposition could argue against moving by citing WP:COMMONNAME as it looks clear the name with the ampersand is the most used. Flooded with them hundreds 12:22, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

It's actually a very good idea. It just mustn't happen. [3] Agree that it would not comply with the rules as they now are. All I'm saying is, it would improve Wikipedia. Unfortunately I see no prospect of enacting such an improvement, so we just need to put up with the predictable glitches that our unnecessary use of special characters in URLs will continue to produce. Andrewa (talk) 18:27, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Maybe that is the case. When I clicked the link on mobile yesterday it took me to Jack, which disappointed me so much because I wanted to go to the discography page. Flooded with them hundreds 12:21, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

And it will hinder other readers too. But as we can no longer even get consensus that readers are our bottom line, nor even that the change that removed that principle without consensus should be reversed, I guess that's now irrelevant in terms of the rules. Hang in there. Andrewa (talk) 19:10, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Flooded with them hundreds: According to RFC 3986, the path can contain any character except ? and #, so & should be treated like any other character as part of the page name. The obsolete previous version RFC 2396 explicitly permits &. Clicking on this link takes me (via Firefox) to the discography. If it takes your mobile browser to Jack then that may be a bug ~~in that browser~~. If you are clicking on some other link, please can you paste the link and say exactly where it appears? Certes (talk) 09:33, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

So assuming that the rules never change and everyone obeys them, there is no problem. Unfortunately, the evidence is that people do break the rules, and that the rules have changed in the past, and the smart money is that both of these will continue. But I guess they may not. Andrewa (talk) 10:39, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Clicking this link also takes me to the discography but this one goes to Jack. Flooded with them hundreds 11:30, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

That's correct behaviour: & terminates the "title=Jack_" parameter and introduces the unused "_Jack_discography[=no value]" parameter. Does such a link appear somewhere on another Wikipedia page? Certes (talk) 22:43, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Interesting... see this history, the wikilink I just put there works fine for me... but I'm not a mobile user. But is that what you mean by from the history page above? Andrewa (talk) 00:39, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

That was my issue, as I said above, when the url is in the "?title=" format, the ampersand is not recognized. When I said from the history page, I meant I went to the history page of Jack & Jack discography on mobile using the above format in Chrome but it didn't work the first time. Only after Certes mentioned above that the ampersand is read as a parameter rather than part of the title, it became clear there was a technical issue from the developers' end and not ours. Flooded with them hundreds 08:11, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia can and should generate only code that is compliant to the relevant standards, that's for sure. And it seems that this might be a case where we do not.

The wikilink i put in my sandbox history is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_%26_Jack_discography for me, and resolves correctly. But not for you? Andrewa (talk) 09:29, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I get that as well but wikilinks aren't very problematic for me. Flooded with them hundreds 09:35, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

OK, and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_&_Jack_discography takes me to the wrong page too, as it should. But how are you generating that URL? If I go to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_%26_Jack_discography&action=history and click on the (currently) current version, I get https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_%26_Jack_discography&oldid=870738254 which again resolves correctly. But not for you?

I'm feeling that I have missed something. I confess it's not an area in which I have any depth of expertise. But I think we're getting there if you bear with me. (And I'm learning a lot, I haven't hand-coded HTML since HTML2 was new and radical.) Andrewa (talk) 09:49, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I got to that url by going to the history page of another article and changed the name to "Jack & Jack discography", as it was much easier to do in Chrome from mobile. Flooded with them hundreds 10:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

That doesn't just change the name, it adds a second parameter, because & delimits the first parameter and introduces a new one. It's a bit like changing "Iowa, Utah, Nevada" to "Iowa, Utah, Texas, Ohio": the reader won't think that you mean Texas, Ohio. An & within a parameter value needs to be encoded as %26, and it looks as if Wikipedia and MediaWiki have got that right. Details: URL#Syntax (See "query component") and RFC. Certes (talk) 12:09, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Oh, good to know! Flooded with them hundreds 11:42, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that you're hand-coding the URL and getting it wrong. Is that too harsh? Neither the browsers nor Wikipedia can cope with that!

But if that proves to be the case, thanks for raising it here. Perhaps there is a facility we need to add for mobile users so this isn't a iseful shortcut?

I often play with URLs when I want to give a permalink or create a bookmark, particularly those generated by MediaWiki and Google. Sometimes it works. Sometimes not. Andrewa (talk) 19:27, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

That was what happened the first time but since then I've been using shortcuts from my browser to get to the right url. Flooded with them hundreds 11:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

If you created a shortcut or bookmark from a URL that you created manually, you may need to edit that shortcut/bookmark to use %26 instead of &. Certes (talk) 11:58, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I guess so. Flooded with them hundreds 13:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Per our discussion on Wikipedia talk:Page mover...

...You may be interested in seeing this subpage of my user page. This is essentially a backlog of redirects that I requested be generated so I could see a list of pages that could potentially be unhelpful redirects that could have edit history hiding under them, most of which are redirects and were created as a result of what I consider to be an incomplete round-robin move and/or a very unlikely title in the "C" example you provided. I’ve been attempting to slowly clear out this list by moving the edit histories hiring under the redirects (some are valid names of pages and thus should obviously not be touched) to valid "C" titles, as described in your example. (I have some additional thoughts on how/why the redirects in the aforementioned list were created, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Steel1943 (talk) 20:42, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good, I'll have a look. Andrewa (talk) 21:10, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

can you tell me where can i get expert support for a draft related to PHP, web-shell, hacking , cyber security and something just like that ?

My draft is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Web_shell . You can respond here I am watching your page. Eatcha (talk) 13:23, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Merry Christmas! -Fwth

File:Restaurant Bob l'éponge (1).jpg

Merry Chr1stmas and Happy H0lidays, Andrewa!

Hey Andrewa, i lOvE yOu and wish you a pleasant Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year.
Thanks for all you do on Wikipedia. 🐇🐇🐇
Flooded with them hundreds 09:35, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #024, 26 Dec 2018

Last issue, I mentioned there would be a flood, and so, here it is...

Portals status

We now have 4,620 portals.

And the race to pass 5,000 by year's end is on...

Can we make it?

The New Year, and the 5,001st portal, await.

( New portals are created with {{subst:Basic portal start page}} or {{subst:bpsp}} )

Evad is back!

After disappearing in mid-thread, Evad37 has returned from a longer than expected wikibreak.

Be sure to welcome him back.

Improved cropping is coming to Portal image banner

User:FR30799386 is working on making {{Portal image banner}} even better by enabling it to chop the top off an image as well as the bottom.

Many pictures aren't suitable for banners because they are too tall. Therefor, User:FR30799386 added cropping to this template, so that an editor could specify part of a picture to be used rather than the whole thing.

Upgrade of flagship portals is underway

Work has begun on upgrading Wikipedia's flagship portals (those listed at the top of the Main page).

So far, Portal:Geography, Portal:History, and Portal:Technology have been revamped. Of course, you are welcome to improve them further.

Work continues on the other five. Feel free to join in on the fun.

Spotting missing portals that are redirects

In place of many missing portals, there is a redirect that leads to "the next best topic", such as a parent topic.

Most of these were created before we had the tools to easily create portals (they used to take 6 hours or more to create, because it was all done manually). Rather than leave a portal link red, some editors thought it was best that those titles led somewhere.

The subjects that have sufficient coverage should have their own portals rather than a redirect to some other subject.

Unfortunately, being blue like all other live links, redirects are harder to spot than redlinks.

To spot redirects easily, you can make them all appear green.

What's new in portal space?

Here are the new portals since the last issue:

Keep 'em coming!

And I'll see you next issue.

Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 08:01, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #025, 30 Dec 2018

We can now crop the tops of pics to make banners

Before, we could only cut off the bottom of pics.

User:FR30799386 has pulled it off, and made the upgrade to {{Portal image banner}}...

So, this:

Niagara falls, from the Canadian side

Becomes this:

Niagara falls, from the Canadian side

Here's the code for the above banner:

{{Portal image banner|File:American Falls from Canadian side in winter.jpg | [[Niagara falls]], from the Canadian side |maxheight=175px |overflow=Hidden|croptop=10}}

To see it employed in a portal, check out Portal:Niagara Falls.

About that end of the year goal...

We were racing against time to create 5,000 portals by the end of the year (just for the heck of it).

We made it. We've passed the 5,000 portals mark, with time to spare!

And the 5,000th portal is Portal:Major League Baseball, by Happypillsjr.

Congratulations!

What's next?

The 10,000th portal mark. But...

...there is plenty else to do in addition to building new portals:

The new portals need to be linked to from the encyclopedia.
On those portals about subjects that are not typically capitalized, the search parameters need to be refined/expanded, to maximize the chances of Did you know and In the news items being found and displayed.
A Recognized content section needs to be added to each portal that has a corresponding WikiProject.
Addition of a category on those portals that lack a subject category.
Implement the portal category system, adding the appropriate categories to each portal.
Upgrade, and complete (as per the tasks enumerated above), the old-style portals that are not regularly maintained, which have not been converted yet (about 1,100 of them).
Find and fix the remaining bugs in the underlying lua modules.
Build portal tools (scripts) to assist in the creation, development, and maintenance of portals.
Build a script to help build navbox footer templates, via the harvesting of categories, amongst other methods.
Update the portal building instructions.
Update the portal guideline.
Refine the programming of the portals to reduce their load time.
Design and develop the next generation of portals and portal components.

And whatever else you can dream up.

But most of all, have a...

Happy New Year!

Andrewa, thank you for your contributions to the Portals Project, and have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year.

Sincerely, — The Transhumanist 11:43, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

A comment on the TMNT RM

Hey Andrewa, I was considering replying to you on the TMNT RM, but decided that it best to leave you a note here. I felt (subjective feeling of course) that your last few comments on that thread were very patronizing and while you were showing a facade of trying to find a solution, what you really wanted us to agree with was with your solution. --Gonnym (talk) 18:41, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm actually quite happy with the result. You are not, it seems. But accusing me of a facade of trying to find a solution in my opinion says a lot more about you than about me.

There was no facade, but then you have only my word for this. Have a look at how to reveal yourself without really trying. Very interested in your comments. Andrewa (talk) 04:14, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Sig test

Hi Anameisbutaname, reply here and sign with your new sig and that should be a better test. Andrewa (talk) 15:25, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

OK,here goes... Yes, it worked fine on your page. Many thanks! Anameisbutaname^Talk 16:32, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #027, 28 Jan 2019

Portal styles

For a visually intensive portal, see Portal:Hummingbirds.

If you find any other portals that stand out, please send me the links so I can include them in the next issue. Thank you.

Conversion continues

There are about 1100 portals left in the old style, with subpages and static excerpts. As those are very labor intensive to maintain (because their maintenance is manual), all those except the ones with active maintainers (about 100) are slated for upgrade = approximately 1000. We started with 1500, and so over a quarter of them have been processed so far. That's good, but at this rate, conversion will take another 3 years. So, some automation (AWB?) is in order. We just need to keep at it, and push down on the gas pedal a bit harder.

You can find the old-style portals with an insource search of "box portal skeleton".

Flagship portals: the portals on the Main Page

Speaking of upgrades...

The following portals are listed in the header at the top of Wikipedia's Main Page, and get far more traffic than all other portals:

Of those, all but one have been revamped to an automated self-updating single-page design.

The remaining one, Portal:Mathematics has manual maintainers, and has been partially upgraded.

As these are our flagship fleet, they need to be kept in top-notch condition.

Check 'em out, and improve them if you can.

And be sure they are on your watchlist.

New portals since last issue

Keep 'em coming!

Deorphanizing the new portals

As you know, thousands of the new portals are orphans, that is, having no links to them from article space. For all practical purposes, that means they are not part of the encyclopedia yet, and readers will be unlikely to find them.

What is needed are links to these portals from the See also sections of the corresponding root articles.

Dreamy Jazz to the rescue...

Dreamy Jazz has created a bot to place the corresponding category link to the end of each portal (if it is missing), and place a link to each portal in the See also section of the corresponding root articles.

That bot, named User:Dreamy Jazz Bot, is currently in its trial period performing the above described edits!

To take a look at the edits it has made so far, see Special:Contributions/Dreamy_Jazz_Bot.

It shouldn't be long before the bot is processing the entire set of new portals.

Good news indeed.

Way to go, Dreamy Jazz!

And, that's a wrap

That's all I have to report this time around.

No doubt there will be more to tell soon.

Until then, — The Transhumanist 13:08, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Request for advice and help

Hi Andrewa, I found you in the "Wikipedia:Editor assistance" page: "22. Happy to help in any way... If I don't know, I'll try to find out. Andrewa."

I'm looking for some advice about how best to resolve a dispute which arose yesterday with another editor.

The issue concerns this: I am the Webmaster for The Boots Orchestra in Nottingham's long-standing web site - www.bootsorchestrs.co.uk - and I want to post details of the orchestra into the "See also" section of the "Boots UK" page on Wikipedia.

The dispute is clearly shown at the foot of my Talk page.

In my first reponse I asked him to take a look at the orchestra's web site. If he had done so he would see photos showing we display the Boots UK logo on our music stands. The logo also appears elswhere, for example on handbills advertising our concerts which can be seen on the site's Home page.

In my second response I did my best to give some more facts and asked the other editor not to undo my entry when I post it again. I have also asked him to remove his threat to block me if I do so.

To summarise my request to you: if he does not respond to what I have said, can I request assistance from a third party editor - maybe you? - to help me to get my new entry posted without risking being blocked? Anameisbutaname. 10:42, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Andrewa, by extended searching using Google - through many results pages - I found two secondary sources. Here is a link: Sources found for suggested addition of a new entry The Boots Orchestra in Nottingham to Boots UK's See also section They look ok to me. Your opinion please? Thanks in advance. Anameisbutaname^Talk 11:07, 11 February 2019 (UTC)