User talk:BrownHairedGirl/Archive/Archive 047

click here to leave a new
message for BrownHairedGirl

List of archives

This is an archive of past discussions. 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 my current talk page

trout/egg/whatever

couold you close my coffea egg issue please? thnaks JarrahTree 14:59, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, no egg-on-your-face, @JarrahTree. I had never heard of coffea until I did a bit of burrowing just now.

I'd was going to close as you ask, but then I saw that the merge has support on other grounds. So it's now ineligible for WP:CSK. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:31, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Closed as ?

It may be helpful to add a closing statement in this discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:29, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ooops! Thanks for the headsup, @Marcocapelle.

Some glitch in the save there. It was a no consensus close. Now fixed[1]. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:12, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal RFC draft

Hi BHG,

I think there are some good ideas in there already. However, I think there is one fundamental problem with the current portal discussion, and that is that there is no consensus what portals are there for. Who is the audience? How should the audience be reached? I think that more clarity on the purpose(s) of portals should inform the criteria for portals. Here is my not completely neutral contribution if you are interested. The Wikihistory of portals at the end should be edited mercilessly and improved and not be used as such.

So, what are portals for?

They can serve a navigational purpose, augmenting lists/categories/navboxes/outlines by an additional sorted and pretty list of links. Portal:Alps is an example. This type of portals is made for readers, to allow them to find related content. They typically require very low maintenance, and could survive without a dedciated WikiProject behind them.
Portals can be mini-main pages, with DYKs, anniversaries, news and selected articles/pictures, together with some navigational features. Portal:Belgium is an example. This is also made for readers, with the hope that selections serve as clickbait to encourage readers to browse more.
They can serve as a place for editors to announce and showcase their work. Many portals on the German Wikipedia do this, for example de:Portal:Mainz or de:Portal:Medizin. This is often done in collaboration with related WikiProjects. Here on enwiki, many such pages are often linked to instead of transcluded from the portal, for example Portal:Germany/New article announcements. But Portal:Germany/Did you know is such a showcase, with its archive naming contributors.
They can serve as places where existing editors ask others for help and attempt to encourage editing. The "Things you can do" section of Portal:Germany is supposed to be such a place. This also works best in collaboration with a WikiProject.
Some ambitious portals try to do all things at once. de:Portal:Medizin is one of the German "informative portals", their "best" portals. It is a bit overwhelming, but contains lots of great stuff: navigation, several subsets of the category tree with an introduction, who to talk to about medicine articles in the German Wikipedia, lists of the most read articles. It doesn't try to be super-sleek or super-low maintenance, but is absolutely full of content, and encourages contributions.

During Wikipedia's growth phase (when the editorship was growing), many wikiprojects and portals were created, usually for broad topic areas. Those were often of the more ambitious type that only works with a dedicated team of maintainers and project organisers and cheerleaders. I myself played that role for Portal:Germany and the associated Wikiproject back in 2006/7. In the following years, portal creation focussed more on the navigational aspects, and many fairly static navigation portals were made. Portal activity died down, and the Featured Portal process died in its sleep in 2017. When the shutdown of the portal namespace was suggested in 2018, many of the old "manual maintenance" portals were in terrible condition, transcluding nonexistent monthly selected articles not updated for years. Some people think full automation is the answer. I disagree, because I still want portals aspire to the ideal of being everything: being there for readers and editors and potential contributors and to show off what you have recently written. That kind of things only works with dedicated maintainers. (At Portal:Germany, Gerda Arendt does a great job with the DYKs, I update everything else once a year, and a handful of other people write a new news item every couple of months).

None of the types of portals we currently have seems to be working particularly well in terms of readership, though. The dewiki portals don't have all that many readers either. If we can't attract outside readers, we can either give up portals completely or go back to the approach where a portal is the local main page of a WikiProject, mostly there for announcing and praising our work to each other.

Sorry for the wall of text, hope there is something useful for your RfC drafting activity in there somewhere, —Kusma (t·c) 20:49, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is very good background and analysis. German Wiki has community endorsed Portal guidelines which I've adapted as a possible solution here [2]. Your feedback would be valuable. Legacypac (talk) 21:00, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration Notice

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Portal Issues and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. As threaded discussion is not permitted on most arbitration pages, please ensure that you make all comments in your own section only. Additionally, the guide to arbitration and the Arbitration Committee's procedures may be of use.

Thanks, Robert McClenon (talk) 22:53, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notice, @Robert McClenon. As I noted[3] at WP:ARC, I think that the community is handling his, and that an Arbcom case would simply divert energies away from the consensus-building processes which are needed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:32, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WP:UP#OWN

Please keep in mind that there's no such thing as an "invite-only page" on Wikipedia. Brendon the Wizard ✉️ ✨ 15:06, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page watcher)But there's If a user asks you not to edit their user pages, it is sensible to respect their request at WP:NOBAN. PamD 15:35, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you BrendonTheWizard. V kind of you.

But did you perhaps consider that after 13 years as an admin a few contribs, I might have a bit of an idea about where where policy stands?

Or that maybe I might have grasped the point you seem to have missed that using userpages to hold a small-group drafting discussion on Wiki is not forbidden by WP:UP#OWN? And see Pam's quote above.

Or that the issue has already been raised by me in a big drama at WP:ANI, where there was zero support for another editor's insistence that they had a right to post there if they wanted?

Anyway, have a lovely day. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:42, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Closure of Adminstrators' noticeboard appeal

This is to inform you that I have complied to your request to open a RfC on the subject of the disputed image in Jewish religious clothing. Hopefully, we'll receive greater participation there and, eventually, resolve this issue to the satisfaction of all concerned. Thanks. Davidbena (talk) 20:19, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Davidbena.

Sorry for the abrupt close[4] at AN, but I wanted to avoid more content-related posts being made at a location which isn't about content.

I hope that the RFC reaches a consensus which all involved can live with. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:29, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that the community does not necessarily have to abide by the results of votes cast on a RfC. Am I correct? For example, if there is a scientific or medical RfC, and the people voting on an issue in those fields are not familiar with the scientific issues, the view of the scientific community with its supportive evidence prevails. Can we say the same thing about this RfC? Davidbena (talk) 05:52, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not that I am aware of, Davidbena. The job of an RFC closer is to weigh consensus against policy and and evidence, not to count heads, so the RFC close should reflect the community's policy-based assessment of whatever evidence is presented. Please do take some time to read and study the core policy WP:Consensus: in summary, you may think that the consensus is wrong, but it still stands.

I strongly urge you to rethink the way you are approaching this whole issue. My preliminary impression is that you are reluctant to use or accept normal consensus-forking processes ... and if that really is the case, it's a path which will eventually end badly for you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:28, 24 March 2019 (UTC)us[reply]

Actually, I did read somewhere on Wikipedia policy that a RfC is NOT a vote count. It may, indeed, reflect the community consensus, but it is not a vote count. As for accepting the consensus, as you saw we had a consensus not to add the image, and, yet, still, you opted that we take the RfC route.Davidbena (talk) 20:26, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

02

Hi BHG. I thinking how to title this post and the cat walked across the keyboard. I had been considering portals and their O
₂ so I'm leaving it :) The main page of this document once had featured portals, no longer I see, but still has them linked from the top right after "anyone can edit". Has anyone proposed changing that, the apparent elevation of a namespace detached from the foundations of wikipedia and attached by the will of their creators. cygnis insignis 08:37, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Cygnis insignis: if you want to propose a change to the main page,the place to start is by making a news subsection of Talk:Main Page#General_discussion.

Those 7 core portals seem to me to be actually okay. Their existence was one of their two mains reasons why WP:ENDPORTALS was rejected. Personally, I supported deleting all portals because losing those 7 okay and well-used portals seemed to me to be a much lesser evil than keeping what was then a total of 1500 portals whose average state was somewhere between mediocre and dire. Sadly, we now have thousands of portals, whose average state varies between dire an abysmal; the good portals are a tiny majority.

But I should say that so long as the 7 portals exist, I would probably not support their removal from that slot, unless there was something clearly better to use the space. So long as those top-level portals exist and are of better-than-average quality, it seems to me they are good candidates for that little slot on front page.

Of course, you have to make up your own mind on what you want to propose. It may be that the consensus will turn out to be a million miles from my view. I just didn't want you to risk leaving any impression that my pointer to how to pursue this was an indication of my support. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:40, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, it is helpful to get your view on this. I have been avoiding reading the previous discussions. My objections are the same as they were ten years ago, and if they were proposed tomorrow, what has played out is an experiment on wikipedia that is detached from its principles and foundations. The effect on the community is a project that promotes the maintenance and creation of pages that are likely vulnerable to deletion in what might appear to the proud creator to be a capricious decision, queue a bunch of disgruntled users who have been woefully misled about the value of their personal opinion in wikipedia's articles and discussion pages. cygnis insignis 22:20, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

indonesian football

you are brave, most eds in this area do not have english as their native language, and worse.... JarrahTree 10:31, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JarrahTree: I was just cleaning up the non-existent Category:Football clubs in Lampung, which listed on Special:WantedCategories. We'll see if I get flamed for it ... --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:33, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

tak bisa, saya bisa bercakap atau coba mencari kelucuan persona... no problems, btw we have very few good bilinugual admins left in the indonesian and malay speaking part of wp en - JarrahTree 10:36, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to hear that ... but I'm afraid I'm not going to learn thosee languages just to help out!

--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:38, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

likewise I will never walk the horrenduous plank of RFA for the sake of the huge mess they are assessment wise, terima kasih... JarrahTree 10:40, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

sequences

I fail to see a valid critique of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1916_murders_by_continent of narrow cat - when oldfactory was playing with the death categories close to 10 years ago - sometimes it took ages for populating - and they were similar to this - a valid sequence well worth keeping and not touching, unless I am missing something - JarrahTree 10:58, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JarrahTree, huh? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:00, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

imho hugo has created valid sequence of murder in oceania categories - they are not narrow scope - they take time to populate and are not narrow - admittedly it is mot a murder a night like british c class tv shows - but it is valid I reckon JarrahTree 11:02, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JarrahTree my complaint to @Hugo999 is that he repeatedly populate categories them without creating them (contrary to WP:REDNOT), and expects others to finish the job which he systematically leaves half-done.

My smallcat comment to Hugo is based on the by-year-by-country categories for countries where en.wp has little coverage, not on the by-year-by-consistent categories. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:07, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

April 2019 at Women in Red

April 2019, Volume 5, Issue 4, Numbers 107, 108, 114, 115, 116, 117

Hello and welcome to the April events of Women in Red!

Please join us for these virtual events:

New topics: Gender studies / United Nations / Dance
Geofocus: Portuguese-speakers
Continuing initiatives: Suffrage / #1day1woman

Other ways you can participate:

Help us plan our future events: Ideas Cafe
Join the conversations on our talkpage
Follow us on Twitter: @wikiwomeninred

Subscription options: Opt-in/Opt-out

--Rosiestep (talk) 18:12, 27 March 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

Reverting category edits

You keep reverting many of my category edits saying "Better to use a category which actually exists" but the categories do exist. At first I just assumed I must have had a typo in the category name (although I usually copy and paste the names, so that's not that likely) but when the number of reverts kept growing, I started checking the previous version of the reverted article, where I am finding that the category does exists and there is nothing wrong. If you are seeing these as redlinks, then I think you have some problem with your computer/browser etc. Thanks Kerry (talk) 21:04, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kerry

No, there was no browser problem. They were all listed in Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in non-existent location categories.

I eventually realised that some of them were OK, despite being in the error category. The problem is bug T33628 in the Wikipedia software, which doesn't refresh the page when the category is created. I guess you must have created the categories after modifying the locations? That would one way to get caught in the bug.

(BTW, nothing wrong with doing that way. It's a flaw in the software)

Anyway, sorry for the un-ndeeded reverts. I'll try in future to remember to purge all the pages before starting revert the errors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:13, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

With categories, you can't create them before you use them, because someone deletes them complaining the category is empty. So you have to make them after you first use them. If I had created the 100-or-so new categories I knew needed up front (which would be a logical way to do the task), then none of the categories would have been redlinks, but most/all of those categories would have been deleted before my first use of them since the overall task took me about two weeks and the first use could have occurred anywhere in that time. We have two policies (no empty categories, no redlink categories) which mean it's not actually possible to create a category within our policy framework. There is no policy nor framework for larger projects which need to be done in a more systematic way so we are forced to things in an ad hoc way which in turn creates more one-off errors. Kerry (talk) 23:12, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, you mentioned "they were all listed in" but didn't say what list you were referring to. What was that? I am interested to see if it is a way I can track the problem myself to speed up the process. Kerry (talk) 23:17, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Like I said, @Kerry, the underlying problem here is a software bug: T33628.

That's why Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in non-existent location categories reported a problem which had in fact been resolved. So I was mostly chasing a phantom; there were a few remaining redinks, but mostly not.

The way I do a job like that is to create the categories as I go. Edit a page, find a redlink create the category. If I see a series of categories, I create the series, then promptly populate each with one page, and fill them up at my leisure. That's what I did today with the subcats of Category:Musicians from Northern Ireland by county.

The tracking category for such errors is Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in non-existent location categories. Every 3 days, non-existent but non-empty categories are listed at Special:WantedCategories. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:27, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your experience might be different to mine, because you're an administrator, I am not. I suspect other admins aren't going to rush to delete your categories with same zealous enthuasiasm as they delete mine. Re the error category. Thanks but I see it is specific to requested photo categories. I was hoping for a tool that would find me any redlink category I had used, as my usual problem relates to "ordinary" categories not admin categories like requested photos. If we had tools like that, people could clean up after themselves but when you get redlinks created as consequence of using templates (my situation), you don't see any "red" on the template use to warn you. For example, I found that having the preference to see disambiguation links in orange, easily allowed me to spot I was linking to disambiguation pages and correct them on the spot. I'm sure there used to be a preference to display categories at the top of an article (which would make it easier to see redlink ones) but that preference seems to have disappeared (or at least I can't find it any more). Kerry (talk) 23:51, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kerry, you'll still see the red when you save the page in a non-existent category. Even anon IPs get that.

And if you want to track all non-empty red cats, then Special:WantedCategories is there and needs no privileges. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:03, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Again our experience is different here too. Categories don't display automatically on a mobile device, but you can enable them in Preferences (I think it's one of the gadgets) but I don't think anon IPs can do that as Preferences are linked to accounts. But, even with categories being displayed, on a small screen, categories are displayed so far away from the area of the article you are viewing/editing you are unlikely to see them regardless of colour (hence my desire for the old preference to display them at the top when you are actively working with them). So a mobile user might never even know about categories, and so has no way of knowing about the side-effect of using a template involves a category. Because of my disability I can't use a large screen so I use a tablet or very small screen laptop, but I do have to use it in desktop mode (because it's almost impossible to edit in mobile mode) which means I get only a fraction of the screen real estate to actually display the chunk of the article I am working so if there is a side-effect happening off screen, then I won't see it. It would be better if you got a warning when you try to Save that there are redlinked categories (or redlinked anything really). Then you would know and take action as appropiate. Having said that, Commons does have exactly that warning about missing categories, but you still get the warning even when you have created the category recently, so the system trains you to ignore the warnings as you assume they are "yet another false alarm"; I am guessing that this is the same lag problem with the categories on Commons. Clearly fixing this lag would solve a lot of problems. Kerry (talk) 01:06, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kerry, I hadn't realised you were using a mobile device. I have never used one on en.wp, but from what you describe it seems that they are simply unsuitable for categorisation work. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:34, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Free and open-source software categories

Hi BrownHairedGirl, thanks for updating the category names for free and open-source software articles. I was unsure of how to do this efficiently, and you saved me a lot of work while showing the best way to handle this.

I do have a question: since the project page move turned the WikiProject into a task force, would it still be appropriate to continue using the {{WikiProject Free and open-source software}} template (which refers to it as a WikiProject) on talk pages? Or would it be better to fold the template into {{WikiProject Computing}}, which indicates that the project is a task force? — Newslinger talk 06:55, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sigurd Ring

Hello! Do you think it's a good idea to have the old article name as his name in the article's text?! That's what I tried to address. Please stop just edit-warring & fix it in a way that's acceptable to you! --SergeWoodzing (talk) 15:38, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@SergeWoodzing, please stop edit-warring to reintroduce an error. Your revert left the page in non-existent categories. I have no view on the other issues, so please feel free make what other changes you like, without breaking the categories. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:46, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I had no intention of altering any categories, only went in and updated the name after the move and have no idea how any categories got changed. I didn't do that. As an administrator on English Wikipedia, you have "no view" on whether or not we should have the old article name as the person's name in the article's text? Pardon me, but I find that remarkable. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 11:38, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Portal_Issues

Hi BrownHairedGirl, I'm Cameron11598 and I am one of the Arbitration Committee's clerks. Your statement at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Portal_Issues has exceeded the 500 word limit. Unfortunately you will need to collapse excess portions of your statement or myself or one of the other clerks may do so to enforce the word limit. Thank you for your time in this matter. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 15:59, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cameron

Is it enough to use {{Collapse top}}|{{Collapse bottom}}? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:53, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That should work. Thanks! --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 16:56, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Cameron, I make this[5] a reduction to 390 words. Is that OK? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:42, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That works thanks! --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 20:10, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Indonesian portals

If you would like to offer a detailed repsonse on wiki or off wiki why I think your nomination is/was totally out of order - you are most welcome to your choice of venue. Or if you dont wish to discuss the subject - thats fine as well, I leave it up to you, and in the end it doesnt bother me - but as I was the individual who first asked transhumanist to help create them - I figure you could actually have a rationale from the origins of that set of portals - rather than what has happened so far JarrahTree 14:47, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi JarrahTree

I discuss Wiki issues on-wiki. I use email only to smooth over misunderstandings, or (v occasionally) to give discreet advice about conduct. So if you have anything substantive to say, please say it on wiki.
I nominated one Indonesian portal: Portal:Jambi. Here's the nomination as I made it: [6].
If you have some reasoned response to the evidence I presented at MfD, then you should state it at the MfD. I note that your response at the MfD does not even try to address my rationale for deletion: the entire tree of Category:Jambi+subcats contains only 18 non-stub, non-biographical articles, so it does not even meet the risibly low bare minimum of 20 set by the fans of mass-created auto-portals at WP:WPPORT.
The fact that neither you nor TTH bothered to check how many articles were involved before creating the portal is a sad illustration of the disgraceful lack of scrutiny involved in TTH's wave of portalspam.
It is sad that you have come here to tell me that I am "totally out of order" without providing any reasoning in policy, procedure or evidence. Like all consensus-forming discussions on Wikipedia, MfD relies on reasoned debate. Unsupported comments like "totally out of order" add no value to the discussion, and are part of the sad but widespread personalisation of debate by those who advocate portalspam. If arbcom case does open a case, I will cite this one small (and relatively mild) example of the attitudinal and conduct problems of those who advocate portalpsam.

Bet wishes, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:35, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I do hope that was best and not bet. I realise I misread the tfd totally, and I am sorry for that, and I have no interest in the tfd wars - judge me as you like.

My unreserved apology for my over-reaction, I honestly couldnt be bothered wasting your time or mine any more - I was more concerned Monk (TV series) wise for the completeness of the set, and I can see your interest in the background to it - the set of articles that go to make the background. If you wish to tar me as a portalspam enthusiast simply because I felt that the smaller scope portals from under-edited areas of the Indonesia should be kept that is your call. I have not interest in the tfd arguments from either side. I had had on my talk page an instruction how to make more portals,(which I never followed up) and have converses the th - hopefully that does not constitute an issue. I regularly leave welcome messages for editors who are found to be socks, or who get blocked - and I dont have a message on my talk - I am not responsible for the actions of those whom I interact with (maybe we all should for a range of reasons) I simply wanted to be stridently defensive of the Indonesian content which I have dealt with for ten years plus, and find under considerable erosion of integrity from a wide range of sources. I do hope we have further visits in the Indonesian project where you can help the admin process as we have so few eds or admins left actually doing positive things, thanks for what you have done so far.

Have fun. JarrahTree 00:19, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I only become aware the delightful irony of being unaware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Portal_Issues until after this discussion... I really see there is indeed fun. enjoy. JarrahTree 07:26, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

thanks

for the three men in the boat explanation - it all seemed a bit weird JarrahTree 00:05, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@JarrahTree, you're welcome. It sure was v weird. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:10, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 March 2019

From the editors: Getting serious about humor

News and notes: Blackouts fail to stop EU Copyright Directive

In the media: Women's history month

Discussion report: Portal debates continue, Prespa agreement aftermath, WMF seeks a rebranding

Featured content: Out of this world

Arbitration report: The Tides of March at ARBCOM

Traffic report: Exultations and tribulations

Technology report: New section suggestions and sitewide styles

News from the WMF: The WMF's take on the new EU Copyright Directive

Recent research: Barnstar-like awards increase new editor retention

From the archives: Esperanza organization disbanded after deletion discussion

Humour: The Epistolary of Arthur 37

Op-Ed: Pro and Con: Has gun violence been improperly excluded from gun articles?

In focus: The Wikipedia SourceWatch

Special report: Wiki Loves (50 Years of) Pride

Community view: Wikipedia's response to the New Zealand mosque shootings

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:02, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Question

Hi - We have categories for example for Category:Harvard Law School faculty and Category:Deans of Harvard Law School. I tried to set up a Deans category for Brooklyn Law School a couple of days ago - but that hasn't been acted on (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation/Redirects&action=edit&section=38), and you deleted the categories from deans themselves. Was I too quick? --2604:2000:E010:1100:BC9D:F3C9:280C:5387 (talk) 19:33, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have not taken a view on whether the category should exist. But right now it does not exist, and pages should not be added to a non-existent category. See WP:REDNOT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:55, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. I see. It is different than the "red link articles is ok if likely to be created" approach. Now I see. 2604:2000:E010:1100:BC9D:F3C9:280C:5387 (talk) 20:05, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Closed discussion and move

Hello,

Do you have any clue why Category:Ambassadors of the European Union to the Republic of Macedonia does not seem to have been moved to Category:Ambassadors of the European Union to North Macedonia, unlike all other categories in the Macedonia and international organisations CfD? Place Clichy (talk) 03:40, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Place Clichy

Thanks for spotting that.

ISTR that when Cydebot took an unscheduled holiday a week or two ago, some CFDs were implemented manually. I think thank that WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 March 15#Macedonia_and_international_organisations got caught up in that, so that one must have been omitted.

I will process it now. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:06, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks again. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:10, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to you! There was one single article, but I preferred to have it treated by someone used to discussion post-closure than moving it myself! Place Clichy (talk) 08:32, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. As closer, it was my job to get it right first time. Thanks for being so nice about my screw-up. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:53, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Saftzie

Hi! I'm Saftzie. I have moved from ShoutWiki. I am an admin there. Saftzie (talk) 10:56, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Saftzie. Welcome to Wikipedia, but please don't use it for promotional purposes. (See WP:NOTPROMO).

That message looks like pure promotion, so please don't do that again. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:01, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Okay! Got it! Sorry! I was telling you where I am from. Saftzie (talk) 11:02, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Edits

Discussion moved to User talk:Lester R. Brown#COI_editing

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.

Hi,

I got your message about editing Lester R. Brown's page and see that all my changes have been undone! A bit disturbing. I am his assistant and he asked me to make changes to this. What do I need to do to be able to edit this?

Thanks for any help you can provide...

Lester R. Brown (talk) 16:23, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Ok, then!

Got your message, dayam! So harsh! Talk about abuse! You have many glaring mistakes on his page, including a misspelling of his name, but if this is how you do business, so be it. We won't try to edit (correct) it anymore. What's the point of having the edit function if you can't do it? Just saying...

17:38, 3 April 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lester R. Brown (talk • contribs)

@Lester R. Brown: The purpose is make it easy for anyone to join in editing, subject to editing policies. I am sorry that you find the concept of a conflict of interest to be "harsh", but it is part of the distinction between an encyclopedia and social media. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:42, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Abu Dhabi

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Nyttend backup (talk) 18:08, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal Issues RFArb

This is a courtesy notice that the portal issues RFArb has been declined by the Arbitration Committee. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 22:31, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

AWB for CFD tagging

How do you persuade AWB to fill in the correct target (for the rename) in edits like this one? I've looked for clues in the documentation but find nothing. Oculi (talk) 18:21, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Oculi, I wrote a Custom Module for AWB which I hack about as needed on a case-by-case basis. Modules are written in C#, which is not a language I now well, but I have learnt how to hack it about enough to do some simple tasks like that. I would be happy to email you the module if you like ... but my code is crude and undocumented, so you would have to assume full responsibility for understanding what the code does, and be able to amend it as needed for your purposes. See the discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DannyS712 bot 13 for some of the complexities which can be involved.

So lemme know if you'd like the email. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:12, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent - please do send the module; caveats noted. I think my email is enabled. Oculi (talk) 07:23, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Al-Feiha FC

A tag has been placed on Category:Al-Feiha FC requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:19, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This category has been superseded by Category:Al-Fayha FC, so it's no longer needed. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:19, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Colonies Chris: Please watch out for Wikidata links in cases like this. The abandoned spelling Category:Al-Feiha FC was the one that had been linked to two Arabic Wikipedias, and those links would have been lost by deleting the old English page. I've merged the Wikidata records for the two spellings now. – Fayenatic London 13:58, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for sorting that out. Colonies Chris (talk) 14:48, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

AWB modules question

Hi. You seem to know a lot about AWB modules. I know that there is an option to restrict adding "orphan" tags to pages with exactly 0 incoming links - is there a way for a module to access the number of incoming links? Eg, from the category of orphaned articles, skip all those with 2 or fewer links, but if it has at least 3 then remove the tag. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 23:32, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the compliment, @DannyS712, but my 40 years of programming has nearly all been a matter of quick-and-dirty hacking. (My crude coding did actually once win me 5 minutes of global fame, but that's a story which I won't expand at all publicly). In the last year or two I have been using modules quite prolifically, but a creator of elegant code like you would be horrified at the crudeness of some of my modules, and at the number of revisions the drafts need before they will even compile, let alone pass the first tests.

So my answer to your question is "not that I am aware of". As far as I know, modules can access only the text of the page. I have managed to stretch that capability a bit by substing in custom templates in my userspace which perform more checks. For example. User:BHG/linklist might be {{#ifexist: List of {{{1}}}s|something|something else}}, and I'd add a call to subst it with a parameter derived from the page text), but that isn't always viable.

I am v happy to share what little I know, but I am more yer mum's school sewing kit than a couturier. You'll find much more skilled people on the AWB talk pages, or at WP:VPT (which is full of v helpful quick-responding super-wizards).

Hope this helps at least a wee bit. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:06, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks anyway, and for calling my code elegant. But, its really not - take a look at User:DannyS712/Cat links 3/CL helper.js :) --DannyS712 (talk) 00:09, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

2600:1:9229:E205:6470:C6C1:2065:4ACF

I do not block IP indef. But why you did? Hhkohh (talk) 00:17, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Hhkohh. I guess it was because I am tired. I will knock it back to 1 week. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:21, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) the range was blocked for a month fyi --DannyS712 (talk) 00:23, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Psst

Okay, so I ran into this issue the other day when I closed a topic on AN/I - When you closed the section you didn't {{abottom}} the bottom of the convo which caused the template to continue to the end of the page. Is that the right thing to do? Or am I forgetting something? Just curious since I literally just did the same thing myself. Dusti ^{*Let's talk!*} 08:32, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Dusti. I spotted that there was an ec when I went to save my close, so reloaded and forgot to ad the bottom. Thanks for the fix. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:37, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course! So that is the right template then? I've been gone for a couple of years and I'm trying to work out the things I've forgotten lol. It's amazing what I remember, thought. Dusti ^{*Let's talk!*} 08:40, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

RfC for organisations/organizations categories

Well done for launching Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RFC:_spelling_of_"organisation"/"organization"_in_descriptive_category_names with such a clear explanation.

I was going to say "Congratulations...", but that could be premature. – Fayenatic London 07:48, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Fayenatic. I had been meaning to start that RFC for at least a year, but never quite got my head around how to explain it even half-clearly. I realised yesterday that we currently have 4 open full CFDs on this issue, plus more being listed at CFDS so regularly that there's almost always several on the page. So I re-read the current full CFDs and saw some v thoughtful comments by @Rathfelder and Oculi: which gave me confidence that they could be part of the basis of a possibly-coherent RFC proposal.

It's early days yet, but at least it hasn't been shot down in flames at the outset. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:45, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have been saying for some years at cfd that 'ize' is perfectly acceptable UK English but had expected no progress. The average cfd on this topic attracts more vehemence than the rfc has generated thus far (astonishingly). If this rfc succeeds in advocating zee throughout, is that then implemented or is cfd still required? Oculi (talk) 13:42, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You have indeed been saying that for some years, @Oculi, and I was a slow convert to your good sense. Sorry.

If the the RFC passes in favour of standarisation, whether complete or partial, then WP:NCCAT should be updated accordingly. Then WP:C2B & WP:C2C can be used to speedily rename the remaining "S" spellings.

It's early days, but so far I am pleasantly surprised by the responses. As of right now, after nearly 3 days, the tally is 16 support, 5 oppose, 2 compromise. That is 69.5% support ... but fingers crossed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:00, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – April 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2019).

Administrator changes

Reaper Eternal • ThaddeusB

Bogdangiusca • Christopher Parham • Necrothesp • Schneelocke • Siroxo • Sarah

Mentifisto → Lofty abyss

Interface administrator changes

Mr. Stradivarius

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad

Kingturtle

Technical news

In Special:Preferences under "Appearance" → "Advanced options", there is now an option to show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Please see meta:Community health initiative/User reporting system consultation 2019 to provide your input on this idea.

Arbitration

The Arbitration Committee clarified that the General 1RR prohibition for Palestine-Israel articles may only be enforced on pages with the {{ARBPIA 1RR editnotice}} edit notice.

Miscellaneous

Two more administrator accounts were compromised. Evidence has shown that these attacks, like previous incidents, were due to reusing a password that was used on another website that suffered a data breach. If you have ever used your current password on any other website, you should change it immediately. All admins are strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication, please consider doing so. Please always practice appropriate account security by ensuring your password is secure and unique to Wikimedia.
As a reminder, according to WP:NOQUORUM, administrators looking to close or relist an AfD should evaluate a nomination that has received few or no comments as if it were a proposed deletion (PROD) prior to determining whether it should be relisted.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:57, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I could use a bit of help with Gwadar

Goodday, I am a relatively minor contributor to Wikipedia and do not usually really bother with this kind of stuff. In short, I do not really know what to do, and you are the first administrator I came across, so I assume you can help me. There is this page Gwadar that is been getting a lot of editing in wich the spellings Gwadar, Gowadar and Gawadar are used interchangeably. From what I read up on Gwadar is the correct English spelling, but I don;t want to devolve into edit wars. What should I do if these edits keep occuring? Zombles (talk) 09:34, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Child actors by medium has been nominated for discussion

Category:Child actors by medium, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Bearcat (talk) 17:03, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of 1,426 portals for deletion

Hi BrownHairedGirl, are the above portals only those created by The Transhumanist? I created 4 during the same time but they appear not to be included as they're not tagged. However, although I created them using the automated facility, I'm willing to maintain them manually; in fact, I am already doing that for Portal:Card games and can do so for the 3 Austrian states. To be honest, the main hurdle is working out how the auto-features work and how, in some cases, to override or supplement them. Bermicourt (talk) 16:05, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bermicourt

Yes, the selection process for WP:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox is as set out in some detail on that page, and the nominated portals are listed on that page. The list is a subset of the portals created by TTH, and all the nominated portals were tagged within a few hours of nomination. No portals created by any other editor are included.

I remain unpersuaded that any of these automated portals is useful, especially when they are simply a restyling of a single navbox, as with each of the 1,390 pages at that MFD.

In the case of Portal:Card games, it is built on two navboxes, so it would have been excluded from that MFD even if it was a TTH creation. But since both of those are transcluded at the bottom of the head article Card games, it seems to me that the portal adds no value. In most respects it is a deficient version of the head article.

As is the case with nearly every portal, viewers agree with that assessment. The 60/day average pageviews for Portal:Card games is only 5 views per day, versus 758 views per day for the head article. It astonishes me that some editors have put so much effort in creating and defending pages when the stats have shown consistently for years that viewers clearly do not want. Obviously, it's up to how you spend your donated time and energy, but I do think it's a pity that your evident talents are being deployed on navigational aids which viewers shun and and which a large chunk of the editorial community would happily WP:TNT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:41, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that a portal that stays in its initial automated state may not add much value other than possibly pulling information together that may be scattered around.

I have added a limited degree of automation on otherwise manual portals e.g. to rotate images or 'articles of the month', but I choose the images and write the article 'tasters'. I'm not a fan of e.g. automatically importing the lede or every photo from the main article.

Portal:Card games is IMHO a valid topic, but is far from finished. As a card player myself, I want to develop it into the sort of tool I'd want to use if I came to Wikipedia cold. Part of the reason that hasn't yet happened, ironically, is that I can't see how to undo some of the automation and was also nervous about the reaction of portal zealots if I did. And I don't like importing navboxes. That's not how I build a portal; I select topics and group them by area and alphabetically, providing way more coverage in a more attractive way than a dumb navbox.

Your point about viewings is important. However, rather than giving up on them, I'd prefer to raise the profile of portals. One reason for the low views is that they never appear when searching. That's not smart. When I type in "Canada", I'd like to see the main article, but also "Portal:Canada" as a close second. Whether it's flagged at the top of the main article or in the search box or in some other way, I don't mind. But I think it's something we should experiment with. If we did, I think we'd get a lot more hits. Or you'd be proven right lol! At least we'd know.

Don't worry, I don't spend most of my time on portals. My forte is translation and that's where I try to add value. :) Bermicourt (talk) 18:53, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Bermicourt, I tried that raise-the-profile thing; in fact I have probably done more of it that any other editor. By adding portal links to the templates which create a swathe of by-year categories, I created several hundred thousand new links to portals. Yet even the most heavily-linked portals still had abysmally low viewing figures.

That's why I supported WP:ENDPORTALS. When it was launched, I studied the effect of what I and others had done, and found that promotion had almost no effect; views usually remain about 1/200th of the head article's views, and arising them to 1/50th is rare, top league stuff. I don't think that reasons are hard to explain:

Wikipedia pages are so heavily interlinked that even a modestly well-written head article on a topic is of itself a portal. This isn't like the mid-1990s web, when web pages were mostly plain text with a few links at the top and the bottom; rich interlinking is now the norm, and portals are redundant.
Search. As web analysts such as Jakob Nielsen noted as early as 1998, good search killed navigation, because users found it much easier to search than to navigate a website's menu structures. That's why search suddenly became de rigeur on web sites, and why the major web portals such as Yahoo fell off a cliff. Readers simply don't need portals any more; they are like road atlases in the era of satnav. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:28, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Draft RFC Update?

Hi BHG, is there any update you can give to "the public" concerning the effort to craft a portal RfC? Anything editors can do to help move this portal issue forward? Thanks! Leviv ich 14:52, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Levivich

Thanks for your msg, and sorry for the silence. I took a break from the discussion at User talk:BrownHairedGirl/Draft RFC on Portal criteria when the shitstorm erupted as I was bizarrely accused of "gaming the system" and several other spurious charges. When that died down, the matter ended up as arbcom case request, which took more time and had more diversions (see here), I didn't feel like going back to it while that was still live. Arbcom seems to be heading towards rejecting the case, and leaving it to the community to find solutions. I hadn't even visited the draft page in two weeks while all the drama was underway ... but now that this seems likely again to be a matter for the community to resolve, the RFC needs attention again.

I think it's an open question now whether we continue to try this path of a small group creating a draft proposal, or consider some other approach. I'd welcome your thoughts on that, Levivich.

And what about my two collaborators, @Bermicourt and @Legacypac? Sorry for my inactivity ... but do you think we should restart our work on that draft?

My concern in this remains is that the community should discuss the issues at an RFC with some framework, with a range of specific proposals to consider. That way, the discussion will have some focus. I still want to do my best to ensure that the RFC proposal does not skew discussion in any particular direction. I doubt that any draft can cover all possibilities, but I do hope that it can include as many as possible of the options which may attract non-trivial support.

Are we on the right path? Or should we just say "we tried, but the storm was too big and we're giving up"? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:16, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PS I should stress all discussions I have had about the Draft RFC have been on-wiki, and I want to keep it that way. So anything there is on it is public. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:18, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure the right path. I fear that a A123 B123 C123 multiple choice RFC will not get to a coherent result. The German model has merit, with votes up or down being simplier. However invariably some people will find any proposal that says X to be too strict or too loose. Maybe not enough people will find any proposal just right to pass. That leaves the existing guideline, which some portal fans say does not apply to them at all (diffs available). The MfDs are building precedent in some policy areas but it is a long slow process. I wish I knew the magic answer. I wish the portal fans would put forward something they could live with for an RFC but the WikiProject discussions have failed to achieve any consensus. Perhaps a series of RFCs to incrimentally change the guidelines is the answer. One on scope (number of articles), several on subject matter (BLPs, single persons, single companies, geographic metrics, groups of species etc), another on the inclusion or exclusion of references (up until 2014 some portals had references, but the refs were causing display errors so 4 to 6 people agreed to trash all the refs) Legacypac (talk) 18:10, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BHG, it should go without saying, but of course neither you nor any other volunteer-with-no-deadline ever needs to apologize for not somehow being faster in putting out fires you didn't start. The time that you and others have put into trying to resolve this is greatly appreciated. Here are my thoughts, but please correct me if I'm misunderstanding the situation or the history (and based on my understanding, I hope I am misunderstanding).

The Arbcom case request will be denied. All AN proposals are dead. The ANI threads won't be helpful. The various WT:POG proposals are not going anywhere.
There are two distinct categories of portals at issue:
1. Roughly 4,000 "automated portals" that were created (or converted from old portals) with a non-WP:BAG-approved script in an automated process that took less than a minute per portal, as described here
2. Roughly 1,000 "non-automated portals", which is basically all other portals, including "handmade" and "original" portals
The community has handled unauthorized mass-creation of pages in two ways in the past:
- Fram mentioned at AN that previous mass-creations were mass-deleted, for example the cases of User:Sander.v.Ginkel, User:Dr. Blofeld, and User:Jaguar. (I don't know where to find links to those discussions.)
- In the case of User:Neelix's redirects, they were not mass-deleted, but rather went through MfD one by one (link to the 1.2MB full list of redirects). This process started around November 2015 and took two and a half years, until March 2018. (Glancing through that full list, it seems like the majority are currently deleted. Is there a tool that can count the exact amount?)
The two categories of portals (automated and non-automated) should be handled separately.
- Though the X3 proposal at AN closed as no consensus, I have hope that consensus can still be reached because there was almost 2:1 numerical support, it was held at WP:AN and not WP:VPP, the conversation was muddied, and most importantly, unlike when the thread at AN started, we now have data about portal MfD results. So, perhaps a new proposal at VPP regarding mass-deletion of the unauthorized-mass-created portals (were they all script-created?), which lays out (in a neutral way) the facts about how many there are, how they were created, MfD results, and the outcome of WP's past experiences with similar situations, and that takes into consideration the feedback generated from the various discussions so far, with separate Yes/No survey and discussion sections.
- As for the rest, and the general question of criteria for the creation/deletion of portals, I agree with Lpac's suggestion of multiple RfCs proposing specific changes to WP:POG. I think the draft in your user-space is worth continuing with to workshop and prepare the proposed RfCs, and I can already see a few RfC questions seem like they're nearly ready to be posed.
I think any proposals should be made, if possible, by a panel of 2 or 3 experienced administrators, who are, after all, the "janitors" elected to help clean up the wiki, so as to clearly make the proposals depersonalized and neutral (and ward off any complaints of "disruption", etc.). Thank you again for the time that you and many others have put into this, including reading this long rant :-) Leviv ich 20:27, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A couple points. The Neelix cleanup did get X1 speedy but we had to analyze and tag each one. Most were not run through RfD, though the edge cases were, and clearly good ones were checked and deleted from the cleanup lists. It was a long painfully slow time wasting process that saw maybe 70% deleted and a whole lot of useless but harmless left alone. The alternative was to nuke the lot with no prejudice to recreation of useful redirects.

[7] is really enlightening. The "no consensus" close, made by the Admin that forced an extension to a month for the whole thing when many editors were expecting a one week discussion, looks like a !supervote. Support 22 Oppose 14 I'd not counted votes yet. I assumed User:GoldenRing did that correctly, because I have much respect for them. We were so sure that X3 was going to happen after a week that there was an implementation discussion at CSD talk gearing up for the inevitable. What would be the process to overturn GoldenRing's close on X3? Legacypac (talk) 21:24, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

By my count, out of 46 editors who !voted on Proposal 4: 27 supported; 11 opposed because the discussion should have been somewhere other than AN, because the X3 should have a longer "waiting period", or because it should be a P2 expansion or PortalPROD instead of a new X3 criteria ("procedural opposes"); 1 opposed but could support with an exception; and the remaining 7 opposed mass deletion generally. Leviv ich 00:41, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That is an even better count Levivich. We should try to overturn the close. MFD has now been broken by portal spam nominations. Legacypac (talk) 21:32, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Here is what that count is based on:

Supports

Iridescent
SerialNumber54129
Legacypac
CoolSkittle
Kusma
Johnbod
eggofreason
Beyond My Ken
Hut 8.5
Robert McClenon
Fram
Rlin8
Fish and karate
RGloucester
SemiHypercube
UnitedStatesian
Susmuffin
K.e.coffman
BrownHairedGirl
Reywas92
Levivich
Bilorv
Bermicourt ("with exceptions")
Ealdgyth
StraussInTheHouse
John M Wolfson
Arthur Rubin

Opposes

AfroThundr3007730
Guilherme Burn
Triptothecottage ("a) on procedural grounds this shouldn't be discussed at the AN 'closed shop' and b) because these portals are doing no harm so great that they can be deleted without due process")
RockMagnetist
Waggers
Crazynas
ɱ
Alanscottwalker
Thryduulf ("I could support something that explicitly excluded portals which are in use and/or are being developed...")
SmokeyJoe (discussion at AN not CSD)
SMcCandlish (discussion at AN not VPPOL)
Paine Ellsworth ("per SmokeyJoe et al")
wumbolo ("WP:P2 covers unnecessary portals, and there is no rationale presented other than WP:IDLI to delete a large proportion of all of them, which were all kept after a RfC in 2018 [ed: this is not what was being proposed]. The next time content policies are created at AN by the cabal of admins, I am retiring from Wikipedia")
Wugapodes ("Strong oppose per wumbolo below: criterion P2 already covers a number of these, the rest should be discussed. I still stand by my original comment which follows this addition... [Original comment:] Weak oppose on principle...I'm fine with nuking these portals and not opposed to deleting them, any diamonds in the rough will prove their worth by being created again, but I would prefer one big MfD with the rationale 'created by The Transhumanist')
NorthAmerica1000 (P2 not X3)
Nosebagbear (PortalPROD instead of X3)
Gaelan ("CSD is for stuff where there's zero grey area. At best, this should be a specialized PROD.")
Tavix ("expanding P2, Portal PROD, and even MFD")
pythoncoder ("...should be dealt with preferably quickly, but this proposal as written is not the right way to do it...at least a longer waiting period so users may object")

Also, much thanks to BHG for that brilliant MfD bundle. Leviv ich 22:03, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I ever had anything deleted enmass Levivich without my consent. German politicians were the only ones I think because some were BLPs. I agree that mass creations aren't a good idea but in the early days on here I felt like I was doing a much needed thing getting us to branch in different areas worldwide. A lot of my stubs were expanded and are now half decent, a lot weren't, the project is still a working development. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:17, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I didn't expect a response to the ping! Thank you for your many contributions over the years. This was all long, long before my time here; I only mentioned you because someone else had mentioned you (along with others). Anyway, I went digging and I did get a kick out of reading, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Claus Peter Poppe, "God give us a few weeks to expand a few of them.", and then looking, ten years later, at Claus Peter Poppe. Leviv ich 00:36, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	For an effective way to propose the deletion of more than one thousand portals that were recklessly created, saving months of work. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:19, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, @Robert McClenon. It took me a while to figure how to use AWB to identify those which met all the criteria I set out at MFD:Mass-created portals based on a single navbox, but once I got the custom module working and tested, it wasn't too big a job.

The community now has a central venue where it can make a decision on whether to keep this type of portal. We will see where the consensus lands ... and if there is a consensus to delete this batch in this way, then I will nominate the rest of TTH's creations which meet the same criteria.

And if there is not a consensus to delete, then will have a better understanding of the community's view on how to proceed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:32, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

[8] really? You gonna do a second MfD? I've stopped nominating TTH creations because you are picking them up. Legacypac (talk) 14:15, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Legacypac, Yes, really.

I honestly thought that adding the extra portals would help all sides by allowing everyone to make one decision on the issue (per WP:MULTI), but some editors don't see it that way. I clearly misjudged the mood.

There is no benefit in having anyone feeling that there might have been some underhand intent, or in having the substance of the discussion lost in a procedural wrangle, so the only sensible step was to apologise for my good faith error and promptly withdraw the additions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:48, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Both good moves. One editor is sure pushing hard against any path forward and continues to throw out wild accusations. I'm going to keep bundling in smaller noms with a focus on non-TTH creations. Legacypac (talk) 14:52, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Legacypac.

But look, I am concerned that you are flooding MFD with far too many simultaneous discussions. We now have one major discussion open on a point which, if accepted, will result in the removal of a very high proportion of TTH's creations. If consensus doesn't favour deletion of the 1390, then we will have learnt where consensus actually stands.

Rather than opening yet more discussions, t would be much better to let MFD digest the very large number of nominations already open. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:02, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I will take the request to let MFD digest the large number of portal nominations that we have so far as being addressed to me, to User:Legacypac, and to a small number of other MFD regulars. Okay. I will stop nominating portals for deletion for a week or so, until we get through the current batch of a thousand-plus, with the possible exception of any recent (since April 2018) creations by members of the portal platoon other than TTH. However, I will be raising a few issues about portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:54, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm holding off on new noms unless I find something irresistible but I am trying to use Category:All portals to build out a list of all the company/product portals not already up for deletion. We have good precedent on companies including the biggest names. Many are created by other Portal people and will not be swept up in a TTH mass nom. Any help bundling would be appreciated. Also found another bird one so bundled. Legacypac (talk) 01:05, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Questions About Portal Review

Single Navbox

How do I recognize a portal that is based on a single navbox? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:54, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Taratill123456

Who is Taratill123456? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:54, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They have found a hole in WP:ACPERM.

Category:WikiProject Mount Juliet, Tennessee has been nominated for discussion

Category:WikiProject Mount Juliet, Tennessee, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:50, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Heck of a good idea

Category:Redirected portals with existing subpages thanks. Legacypac (talk) 18:49, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tks, Legacypac. There will be several more categories in that set. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:26, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Somewhere there is a listing of all portal space pages. The ones that are orphaned subpages jump out on it. There are scores there. Legacypac (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I know, this is based on some quarry queries, which produced enormous datasets. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:51, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi folks, could you please explain what a 'redirected portal' is? Bermicourt (talk) 08:13, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Bermicourt, a 'redirected portal' is a portal page which is a WP:Redirect to another portal title.

e.g. Portal:Death metal is redirected to Portal:Heavy metal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:16, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, BHG, that makes sense. Bermicourt (talk) 10:49, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

juvenile trolling collapsed

You mean, better redirect than delete? Agree! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:10, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt, please resist the juvenile temptation to put words in my mouth. AFAIK, I have not created any of the redirects, and five seconds checking would show you that this is a tracking category.

It is part of a part of a wider process of tracking the history of old-style manual portals, as set out at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Portals#Identifying_old-style_portals, which arises from yet another discussion at WP:AN (permalink).

If you don't have anything constructive to say, try just saying nothing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:22, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I put no words in your mouth, I asked. I was wrong, thank you for clarifying, and for amusing me by "juvenile temptation". Nothing to say. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:25, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, @Gerda Arendt, you clearly attributed an opinion to me which I neither expressed nor inferred. If it was merely a question, you wouldn't have followed it with I agree.

Now get lost (i.e stay off my talk page) until you can behave like an adult. --11:29, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Sortkeys with slash

I noticed Category:2016 in Texas is listing Category:2016 disestablishments in Texas‎ and Category:2016 establishments in Texas under a slash. It's caused by the sortkey /Disestablishments in {{DisestcatUSstate/core}} and /Establishments in {{EstcatUSstate/core}}. Why a slash? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:37, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter, it's convention which I invented for (dis)establishment categories, now implemented via various templates on over 50,000 such cats.

I wanted a single character sort which could group establishments and disestablishments together, rather than having jumbled up with the rest of the year's listing of assorted topics. So I looked for one which was a) not already widely used, and b) came before the numbers in the ASCII character set. Slash fitted both those criteria.

Do you think it's a bad idea? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:44, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PS its benefits are clearer if you looked at a more heavily-populated category, such Category:2016 in the United States, Category:2016 in the United Kingdom or even Category:2016 in Spain. In each case, it would be confusing to have the (dis)estabs sorted under D or E. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:48, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would prefer sorting under D and E. I doubt they are important categories to readers and I don't see a strong reason to sort at the start or together. D and E are close anyway so they would usually be consecutive (with an E heading between them). By the way, I got two notifications about [9] because I was linked in both edit and edit summary. One of them is sufficient. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:58, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter, They will be at the very top only in lightly-populated categories such as Category:2016 in Texas. In Category:2016 in the United States and Category:2016 in the United Kingdom they are well down the list, but before the numerically and alphabetically-sported pages. That was what I was aiming for.

We can disagree on their importance, which depends on what readers are looking for, but since they are so closely related it seems to me to be unhelpful not to keep them together.

Sorry about the double-ping. I didn't know the software was that dumb, and will watch out for that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:06, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:User armn-5

A tag has been placed on Category:User armn-5 requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. DannyS712 (talk) 01:04, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Wikipedia meetups in Dayton

A tag has been placed on Category:Wikipedia meetups in Dayton requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. DannyS712 (talk) 01:05, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions about portals

Do you happen to have a list of all the currently open discussions about portals (excluding individual MfDs)? I'm thinking of the ones in places like AN, VPP, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 17:12, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Thryduulf. No. I have given up following most of them. Too much drama, too much obstructionism, too little problem-solving.

The last straw for me was WP:Administrators' noticeboard#Portal_deletion_at_MfD_and_G6_tagging_and_deletion_of_portal_subpages. It's essentially a data colection issue which belonged at WT:WPPORT, where I opened a discussion at WT:WikiProject Portals#Identifying_old-style_portals. Shamefully, @NorthAmerica1000 who opened the AN discussion, didn't even comment at the thread where the data which they wanted is being collected. I am now building tracking categories for the issues she raised. What on earth is the point of raising an issue at the drama board if you aren't even interested in the solution?

It would be a fairly simple 20-minute job for any of you portal defenders to build a list at WP:WPPORT if you wanted to, and trivial exercise to maintain it. Just as it would have been fairly simple for you all to build some methods for analysing the existing crop of portals ... but so far as I can see, the only person who has published any such analysis is me, with the analysis on which I built Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox, and the tracking categories I have created at Category:Portal pages tracking. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:30, 12 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nb. I noticed I was pinged here. Actually, I have initiated discussions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals regarding these matters, it was just after the above was posted. I edit on my own time: it's important to be organized before posting, and matters should not necessarily always be rushed. I already know you're against the post at AN, however, others there had no problem with it at all. I'm working on other matters, and won't be responding further at this thread, as these matters are better discussed at the WP Portals talk page. As a closing note, please at least consider toning down on the "us versus them" stances (e.g. above: "shamefully... (et al.), "you portal defenders", etc.) and try to understand that Wikipedia consists of many diverse individuals that have many diverse viewpoints. Pinging Thryduulf, because they have also posted here. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:48, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Closing a discussion

I created this thread 3 days ago and nobody has responded to it. Are you available to close the discussion? Mstrojny (talk) 13:44, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Mstrojny

The place to ask for a close is at WP:ANRFC. You asked at WP:AN, where it will be ignored.

And sorry, I'm not available to close it, 'cos I just !voted in it.

I suggest you list it at WP:ANRFC. But note there is a big backlog. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:57, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that, thank you for your advice. Mstrojny (talk) 14:02, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Troubles page move

Hi BHG. Hope you're well. You might be interested in this discussion. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:59, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, many thanks, @Lugnuts. I have added my tuppenceworth there.

Hope you are keeping well too. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:30, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Sandwiches

Hi–I'm going through the second batch and drafting my !vote and noticed that Portal:Sandwiches is also part of the Portal:Bread pending bundle Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Bread. I don't know if that is a problem or requires any action or not, but thought I'd bring it to your attention. Leviv ich 21:41, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Two portals had been bundled there but not tagged. No way for BHG to know that while building her list. The other MFD was just relisted anyway. Legacypac (talk) 21:47, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, the second tag to Portal:Sandwiches has now been applied, but that was after BHG's nomination. Leviv ich 21:56, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And before anyone rants at me - not my bundling. Legacypac (talk) 21:58, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BTW the Portal:Bread bundled MfD discussion is a unanimous-delete as of now anyway, further evidence that looking at these one by one is a waste of time. Leviv ich 22:02, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I was tagging from 1000 to the bottom I'm thinking ... we deleted one like this, and here is a singke person and here is another I could give five previous discussions supporting deltion of a page like this. Here is one with about a 10 page scope. WP:X3 all the way. Legacypac (talk) 22:07, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They were listing new portals in each newsletter. It is really easy to see what was created with the automated system and approximately when to pick up the straggler pages. [10] All the portal team was getting the newsletter on their talkpage so they can't say they did not know the plan or goings on. Legacypac (talk) 00:03, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Two overlooked automated portals MfD

Happy Monday! Thanks for the ping. Minor question: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Two overlooked automated portals mentions "The 4th portal in this set..." in the last paragraph, but there are two portals in the set? Drafting artefact? Leviv ich 15:20, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Howrye, Levivich

Thanks for the headsup. Good to know that noms are being well-scrutinised.

Further up, I note that my list-making process produced false negatives in what I have now found to be 4 cases out of the 3336 pages scanned.

The full sentence of the bit which caught your eye is The 4th portal in this set of overlooked spam portals is Portal:California State University, which I have not re-nominated.

I hoped that would be clear, but it seems not. (Old prob of being too close to the writing to judge how it looks to others, which is why yoir eagle eye is so valuable).

So I have added to the first mention a list of the 4 overlooked portals[11]. Does that help? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:35, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah! Yes, that does help. I get it now: you found four false positives and are nominating two of them, because the other two are at other MfDs. Thanks! Leviv ich 15:51, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Glad that clarified it. Thanks again for your help; it's a waste of everyone's time to have a discussion derailed by confusion, so reduction thereof is A Good Thing™. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:56, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia Engel

Hello Brown Haired Girl. I do not usually edit Wikipedia but I just learned that Georgia Engel died and when I went to look at her Wikipedia page I noticed the date of her death was wrong. I edited it to the correct date but noticed that the date of her death has been edited several times during the past day by users who are likely confusing the date her death was announced (April 15) with the date she actually died (April 12th). I do not know if it would be possible to lock that part of the page or the entire page for now, but I just wanted to recommend it to an admin. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.31.160.51 (talk) 12:45, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mis-characterization

I must object to a mis-characterization: "AFAICS, they are all exact copies of the deleted pages." I was responding to a newsletter posting and selected these portals. Per Transhumanist, they were deleted by process against a sock, and simply needed creation. So I did so in good faith as part of the project. I have viewed portals as a navigation aid and have had an interest in their purpose for a decade, even before there were portals; that is how I conceived the purpose of the individual category page. There needs to be a review of the project, I agree and my work was not in behalf of a sock, but is independently conceived. Please use caution when broadcasting these thoughts. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 17:24, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ancheta Wis, and thanks for your message about WP:Miscellany for deletion/7 single-navbox automated portals (repostings of sockpuppetry).

It is not true that a page needs recreation because it deleted by process against a sock. It may be that some pages which were so deleted should be re-created, but that should be based on your own assessment, rather than merely on the fact they were deleted or because a spammer had asked you to do so. WP:MEATPUPPET applies.

I note that you say my work was not in behalf of a sock, but is independently conceived.

So how come:

your re-creation of Portal:German language was based on Template:Germanic languages, just like the sockpuppet's, even though Germanic languages is clearly a way broader topic than the German language?
your re-creation of Portal:History of art was based on the manifestly inadequate Template:Westernart, just like the sockpuppet's, even though there was already a 6-week-old Portal:Art history to which the deleted portal had been redirected before deletion? A portal based on that template gives a manifestly biased misrepresentation of art history by omitting the art of Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Looks very odd to me that you both "independently conceived" the same misrepresentation, which is why I invited you to explain this at the MFD. I still hope that you will do so. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:56, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Who was the spammer? Not Transhumanist. I have worked alongside Transhumanist for over a decade. It is true that he tends to work on outlines rather than articles, but we each have different thought styles and I respect the fact that he thinks differently. Should I send you the link from the newsletter?

History of art does indeed have a Western art bias, but when I find other sources, such as Tibetan art, I have added them to the encyclopedia, and I notice there are interests against them. Other sources are not open, so I don't add the ones that don't qualify.

When sources don't qualify, then proxies have to do.

Again, thought styles appear to matter here. As an inclusionist, I tend to find interrelations that are meaningful to my style, which get to the destination anyway, even if at first glance there is no interrelation. This is a problem-solving approach as well. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 18:57, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Ancheta Wis, are you serious?

The Transhumanist is an industrial-scale spammer. He created thousands of utterly useless portals which simply duplicate a navbox in a bloated form. That's why he has been topic-banned[12] from creating portals, and why WP:MFD has been busy for the last month deleting the spamflood. I find it very surprising that you have apparently missed that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:34, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"When all we have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

It's a mismatch of goals. His idea of quantum portals, in my view, acknowledged the portal problem. His approach is to create temporary (quantum items, which are transient) items. Since we view portals as navigation aids rather than articles, the approach is similar to the generation of a query of a database. No one cares about the output report except the asker of a database query. In the same way, his quantum portal generates results to aid in navigation. Transhumanist intended for such a portal to disappear. The SQUIDs of the encyclopedia perform such a function by the way. When the readers cease to read the transient article, it disappears, to be regenerated by the data feed from an update.

The misunderstanding is similar to the use of the engineering drawings of a century ago. At that time, a drawing was thought to be like an artistic rendering of a machine. That works fine for a mechanical engine with 3-D parts. However the electrical circuits have a completely different function irrespective of their appearance. Thus an electrical engineering drawing does not need 3-D rendering to prove out its electrical function. In this case, we care only about its function, a distinction which holds even for software documents. A portal is not an article; it has a different function.

Note how a name is guiding the approach, right down to the characterization. We need to approach this in another way. We need to clearly expose the function being performed. --Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 22:00, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wow. A very eloquent exercise in totally missing the point.

@Ancheta Wis, it's fairly clear that you haven't even read the nomination I posted at WP:Miscellany for deletion/7 single-navbox automated portals (repostings of sockpuppetry).

It's quite simple: these automated portals do not assist navigation. They are puffed up balloons of air, which take a very efficient lightweight navigational tool (a navbox) and inflate it into a whole-page monstrosity which has significantly less utility than either the head article or the navbox. Clever coding, but as useless as a chocolate teapot, which is why readers don't use this automated carp.

If the "quantum portal" mirage had ever actually been implemented, then it would still have been a waste of readers's time. Just a waste of time with a smaller footprint on the pedia.

You say that TTH recognised the folly of the current portals. I don't believe you on that. If he understood the pointlessness, why on earth did he proceeded to crate thousands of the damn things, and go batshit crazy when challenged,

I agree with you about two things, tho:

we view portals as navigation aids rather than articles. Excatly. There are navigation aids which readers do not use, and have not used for years.
we need to clearly expose the function being performed. That's why when I exposed the uselessness of the function being performed, at WP:Miscellany for deletion/Mass-created portals based on a single navbox, editors piled to delete the whole pile of garbage.

Quantum or non-quantum, it's still pointless spam.

The reasons why portals aren't used are simple. Wikipedia pages are so heavily interlinked that even a modestly well-written head article on a topic is of itself a portal. This isn't like the mid-1990s web, when web pages were mostly plain text with a few links at the top and the bottom; rich interlinking is now the norm, and portals are redundant.

As web analysts such as Jakob Nielsen noted as early as 1998, good search killed navigation, because users found it much easier to search than to navigate a website's menu structures. That's why search suddenly became de rigeur on web sites, and why the major web portals such as Yahoo fell off a cliff. Readers simply don't need portals any more; they are like road atlases in the era of satnav.

Portals are a 1996 navigational metaphor. It's now 2019, and portals are not the future; they are a relic of a whole human generation ago, when the web was in its infancy. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:32, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

YGM

Hey, BrownHairedGirl. Please check your email; you've got mail! The subject is "Re: Overdue response."
It was sent at 12:46, 19 April 2019 (UTC). This notice is just to inform you of it.

Thank you, –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 03:29, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portals for deletion

Hi, I have six portals which will almost certainly be deleted at some point (they are all automated portals I created, and my track record for this is, as you know, awful). I think it would just be easier for everyone to delete them before they get to MFD. The six are Portal:Hiroshima, Portal:Canberra, Portal:Curitiba, Portal:Atoms, Portal:Mexico City and Portal:Niue. Is it possible to speedily delete them (per G7) before they have been nominated?

Yours, Gazamp (talk) 10:02, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Gazamp

Thanks for that. It certainly saves time and drama. I'll just check whether they are all G7-eligible. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:09, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OK, Gazamp, I have G7-deleted the 4 which you actually created: Portal:Hiroshima, Portal:Curitiba, Portal:Atoms, and Portal:Niue.

However, Portal:Canberra and Portal:Mexico City are pages which were created by others. Canberra was a redirected where you created the substantive portal, and Mexico City was a previous portal which had been redirected per MFD ... so in each case I have restored the redirect.

I hope that's all okay. Thanks again for being so nice and helpful about it. I wish that other creators of automated portals were as helpful in assisting the cleanup!

Best wishes, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much and well done on all your hard work on the portal clean-up. Gazamp (talk) 10:50, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pseudo-Portals and Zombie Portals

You have identified a large number of pseudo-portals. At least one of them is not only a pseudo-portal, but a zombie portal. A zombie portal is a portal that should have been killed but is still walking. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:13, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, @Robert McClenon. I guess I don't spend enough time reading or watching horror fiction, 'cos I clearly have insufficient horror vocabulary to describe all the various permutations of nightmare which I am encountering on this journey through portal-land.

Σ Portals
~ 545
As of 15 Nov 2024 01:10

Well, there may not be as many zombies in Ireland as in the United States. There might not be zombies in Ireland; they may only be something that you read about. Zombies can't swim across the Irish Sea. I don't know if there is zombie debt in Ireland either. If you weren't in information technology for 45 years, you might not be familiar with zombie processes (which really were why the reports couldn't be run in one particular test period with one particular system, until we got rid of the zombies) or with zombie computers, although they are how a lot of spam is transmitted.

Well, vampires and werewolves are no longer among the usual inhabitants of horror fiction in the United States any more, because they are no longer evil. They hate each other, but they are both as often good as bad. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:30, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, did you notice a wee milestone being passed yesterday? The number of pages in Category:All portals fell below 3,000 for the first time in this cleanup process, down from a peak of about 5,700.

We now have a total of 2,927 portals, of which 1,580 are currently tagged for MFD (i.e listed in Category:Miscellaneous pages for deletion).

They won't all be deleted, but if they were, there'd be only 1,315 left. My guess is that when the current live nominations are closed, that will leave us with about 1,400 portals, slightly below the pre-spam level of 1500. The big step in that direction will when by remaining mass nominations close from Sunday onwards. After that, I think there will be about another 100 portals of various forms which belong in this phase ... and then it will be time to start planning some RFCs to establish what sort of portals the community does actually want. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:59, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Did someone say pseudo-portals? If you look at the page histories, the names will look oddly familiar. ‑ Iridescent 21:26, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, @Iridescent. Yes, very familiar.

To be honest, I think that the outline pages are way better than the portals. They are a much more lightweight, much more usable way of listing key topics. But also almost unused, with pageview remarkably similar to the tumbleweed-covered portals.

Seeing the extent of TTH's previous gig reminds me of how appalled I have been by the systematic sloppiness of his portalspamming. There are just too many instances of inexcsuable editing, coupled with clear bad faith in unilaterally rewriting guidelines to suit his spamming. It seems to me that we have an editor with a long-term track record of widescale disruption, who repeatedly fauls to help clean up the mess even when he realises that consensus is against him.

Did Someone Say Site-Ban?

Seems to me like a clear case for a site ban. Do you think it's worth trying for that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:17, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't asked, but have also thought about whether a site ban is in order. The basic question is whether they are not here to contribute to the encyclopedia constructively because they are only here to use it for experiments in how to organize knowledge or something. I will think about this a while after I come back from church. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:58, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:BrownHairedGirl, User:Iridescent - I am thinking that the conduct of the subject user is not comparable to that of the first editor for whom I requested a site ban. I propose a site ban on editors who are as disruptive as User:Flamekeeper. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/EffK. I can see that a good case can be made that this editor is not here to contribute to the encyclopedia constructively, but only to impose some sort of destructive structure. However, my thinking is that a global topic-ban from creating new pages in any namespace except draft space would be adequate. At the same time, it might be best to start out by proposing a site ban, with the page creation ban as an alternative. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:49, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

<begin talk page stalker> I think what might be less contentious and nearly as effective would be revoking the user's AWB privilege: since the problem is less the ability of the editor to do damage and more their ability to use automated tools to do A LOT of damage. Is there a precedent/mechanism for such revocation? UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:22, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There also was considerable breakage of existing working portals. I don't think that revocation of AWB would have prevented that. A topic-ban from all edits in portal space may be necessary, in addition to a ban on the creation of portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:16, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

^ +1 It's not just that this mass disruption messed up the encyclopedia pages, it also messed up the encyclopedia people, causing many editors whom I respect and admire to essentially draw knives on each other, none of whom even made the spam!! Look how much damage can be done with a script. Leviv ich 05:04, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are letting certain editors off scott-free: a number quickly G7-ed their own mass portal creations as soon as the broader community took notice. Better than forcing us to discuss them all at MfD, sure, but far from "uninvolved." UnitedStatesian (talk) 05:14, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm generally willing to let people off scott-free if they clean up their own messes. But I don't mean to say that blame or responsibility is shared equally among all–it's not. Leviv ich 05:19, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This week some of us are focused on the Life of Christ, and the mess of the portals makes me think of the moneychangers in the Temple, who had to be thrown out. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:16, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That's a little unfair; as far as I can tell TTH and co genuinely believe that they're the ones who are being helpful, and those of us trying to hold back the flood of portals are so being driven by our ideology to prevent them providing a useful service. (We went through the same thing a couple of years ago when the Wikidata enthusiasts thought they were being helpful by using scripts to auto-rewrite Wikipedia articles based on their data.) If you want to stick with the Christian analogy, what's going on here is more akin to the Council of Nicaea, in that we're trying to reconcile two fundamentally incompatible views of what the purpose of Wikipedia actually is. ‑ Iridescent 09:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My own view is that the seventeen centuries after First Nicaea have shown that Christians are better off to agree to disagree, as they still do, but that is my opinion. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:45, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It has long seemed to me that given contemporary christianity's overwhelmingly comfortable co-existence with capitalism, the moneychangers might have a right to feel aggrieved. If they got lawyered-up and spin-doctor-equipped, they could make a good case that they they were hard-working, wealth-creating, job-providing entrepreneurs offering much-needed financial services to the grateful faithful, but what thanks do they get? Evicted from their place of business by an attention-seeking young unemployed hippie with apparent anger management issues, all without a hint of due process let alone protection from legitimate public authority. Then they get vilified in the one-sided media, with no hint even of even a quote from them let alone a right of reply, and maligned for 2000 years and counting. How's that for gratitude, eh? </spin>

Well, as far as the co-existence of Christianity with wealth and power, that goes back more than a millennium. I don't want to start a messy discussion with humans on different sides of the Atlantic and different approaches to Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, other, none or humanist) and different views of the political system. I know where I am geographically and intellectually, and I know where some of you are geographically, and I don't want to make a mess. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:45, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Back on point, though, @Robert McClenon and @Iridescent, there is indeed a commonality between the portalspammer+followers and the Wikidata bunch. Both were pursuers of WP:THETRUTH who ignored the fact that en.wp is supposed to work by consensus. When there was significant disagreement about their work, both groups angrily brushed it off and avoided consensus-forming until the whole thing exploded as a megadrama.

That problem of fundamentally incompatible views of the purpose of Wikipedia arises many times. The drama levels are inversely-correlated to the protagonists's willingness to use consensus-building mechanisms. We've had similar storms over infoboxes (in part a proxy war about en.wp's role as a machine-readable data feed for Google), fancruft, longevity etc. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:24, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I like that part of The Carpenter's canon and it resonates in this situation. the faithful carpenters versus those in the thrall of legitimised usury? I'm not a Christian, forgive any impertinence in latching on to this. My view is that users drift, or are drawn, to hot and quick edits and become less inclined to building (carpentry) through the core processes of N, V, with good and better RS. Do the latter correctly and there is little to say. What 'useful navigation' does is create opportunities for those who are including themselves in our content, for self-promoting motives of one sort or another, with a vigorous and noisy defence across talk pages to clear the way. Maintainers are crucial to wikipedia, to allow the builders to do their bit; these selfless users are a political minority in the community. cygnis insignis 13:57, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Reacting to the original comment, I would suggest that religious imagery should not be used in Wikipedia discussions, and in particular, that specific editors should not be compared to negative biblical figures. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:14, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I accept the criticism of User:Newyorkbrad. Perhaps my error. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:45, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You made a mistake, then you reverted my fix

You are an uncivil bore. [13] who continues to harass me over every perceived mistake - then when I fix your close you mess up my name and act snarky. Legacypac (talk) 02:06, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@You do yourself no favours by indulging in yet more name-calling, Legacypac. It will all make a fine ANI report someday.

If you wanted to fix my formatting error, all you had to do was move one line. Instead you reverted my close, and reclosed under your own signature.

Unilaterally reverting a close is an absolute non-no. There are only limited situations when an admin can do that, and you are not an admin.

I didn't make a big deal out of this. Revert, fix, move on. I could have made a big deal, but didn't.

But your response now is part of a pattern. Every time one of your errors is pointed out, you assume bad faith, and interpret it as a personal attacks, and you get abusive. Most editors take a minor correction like this as a welcome correction, but there's a long pattern of you choosing to take offence and trying to make an enemy out of a friend, while denying the substantive problem.

This approach will not end well for you. Other editors have asked you to change tack, and I very much hope that you will. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:33, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is way easier to properly reclose then to copy the expanded close info on mobile. Stop youe ridiculous trolling. [14]. You obviously have it out for me. You are no friend - you go out of your way to attack me every chance you get. You continue to threaten me - °and as an Admin that could go badly for you. Just stop commentimg on my edits. Legacypac (talk) 03:24, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You really are in battleground mode. Again, I urge you get change tack, and stop assuming malice where none is intended. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:36, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No you continue to harass me. I see you continue to stalk my edits. [15] Cease and desist. Legacypac (talk) 15:03, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The edit which you link was made by another editor, viz User:Sumanuil. If you want to allege misconduct and bad faith, check your facts first.

Having looked at Sumanuil's edit, they were entirely right to revert your edit. If I had spotted it myself, I would have reverted it. As you know, Portal:Peaches is under discussion at MFD:Portal:Peaches. It is not acceptable to go around removing links to an item under discussion at XFD, because that pre-empts the outcome of the discussion. Please assure me that you have reverted any other such removals you have made of links to existing portals fro their head articles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:17, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Opps I saw your name on my watchlist and this revert and merged them. My error. I see you also make mistakes in MfD nominations. Might want to rethink/strike some of your comments. Legacypac (talk) 15:49, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Legacypac - Exactly what you are suggesting that User:BrownHairedGirl should rethink or strike? Her warning to you is not about mistakes in MFD nominations, which are a content issue, but about your conduct, about personalizing disputes. She hasn't accused you of trolling, even though your posts are much more uncivil than hers. I am thinking that the next time that you claim that she is trolling you, it may be necessary to take you to WP:ANI for the personal attack. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:55, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Plenty of examples of personal attacks from someone who goes out of her way to find fault and criticize my editing even where there is no problem. It's harassment and it needs to stop. Legacypac (talk) 17:02, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Legacypac, I note that you don't even say "sorry", and that even tho you acknowledge that I was not involved you don't withdraw your unfounded allegation of stalking.

Yes, of course I make mistakes. I'm human, and errors are part of the package. The important thing is to strive for accuracy, to minimise the number of mistakes and promptly acknowledge and correct any that are found. That's why when @Robert McClenon spotted[16] my mistake at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Atlases, I promptly corrected the error and thanked him.

The difference between us is that when you make mistakes, you usually don't correct them, and instead make direct ad hominem personal attacks on whoever has identified them, often claiming instead that you are being persecuted or trolled. Others have noted that you seem much more fixated on achieving goals than on being truthful and accurate, and that they have little confidence in the accuracy of your assertions. This extends to both your errors of fact, and your repeated procedural failings.

That's why I warned you above that this approach will not end well for you. If even those who broadly share your objectives have no confidence in your desire for honesty and accuracy, then when your conduct returns to ANI (as it almost certainly will if you don't change tack), you may find yourself with no defenders. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:09, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MfD Portal:Battlestar Galactica

Portal:Battlestar Galactica seems we both were right about to nominate that one. The table I am constructing for a bundled nomination. Can't wait to see what you come up with! :) –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 19:35, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@MJL, see the competed nomination. It's based on there being no version worth keeping.

Your draft makes no mention of a deletion rationale. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:54, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My process is a bit different than yours. I start by listing all the portals that meet the criteria, and then I come up with how to word it right before I nominate. Currently making a form for myself to automatically get all the relevant data first before I resume nominations. Cheers! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:03, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I will note however that So I propose that this portal and its subpages is misleading since the portal has no active subpages at the moment. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:05, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not misleading. Just a shorthand for "any subpages which exist". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:23, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Bananas

@BrownHairedGirl: Someone should connect Template:Banana cultivars to Portal:Bananas, this will greatly improve this portal.Catfurball (talk) 21:09, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Catfurball, the head article banana already transcludes Template:Banana cultivars, so the portal would still just be a WP:REDUNDANTFORK of the head article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:20, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal triage question

Hey BHG: thanks for the incredible work on the portals; I have a question: can you determine how TTH one-page portals like Portal:Chinese gardens and Portal:Windmills ave not tripped any of the filters you have used so far to create your MfD noms? UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:23, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Thanks, @UnitedStatesian!

Both use embedded lists, for which I got the tracking working properly only a day or two ago, after several half-successful steps. (See Category:Automated portals with embedded list), So neither is aWP:REDUNDANTFORK of a navbox.

I had spotted Portal:Chinese gardens and began drafting a navbox to go at Template:Chinese gardens, but the categorisation was such a mess I hadn't the energy to continue, esp when I saw Template:Chinese garden styles also as an overlapping mess. So I lazily quit.

I haven't investigated Portal:Windmills yet. Maybe it might make a navbox? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:37, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A seiche in a teacup?

I'm not up on the history of the portal pitched battles, but observing I'm prompted to remember seiches. The water sloshes back-n-forth, back-n-forth with the slightest impetus.

Not sure what preceded "delete all portals", but perhaps the reaction to that was TTH's to vow "10,000 and beyond!"? Then the reaction to that (remember I agreed "delete all") Then reactions to that. Anyway, now the ripples are lower, but continue.

I'm wondering if maybe I'm all wet, or are people throwing rocks just to hear splashes? Shenme (talk) 06:30, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Legobot and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Carnatic music

BrownHairedGirl, since Legobot updates the GAN page, having it blocked will have other effects.

I took a look at the timestamp that was in your miscellany for deletion nomination, and it was incorrectly formatted, doubtless why Legobot choked on it. (My assumption is that a valid timestamp is required for these pages; you can always generate one with five tildes.) I have, I hope, fixed it, though the only way to test it by letting Legobot try again. There's been a new reply with a likely looking timestamp; I think this should be safe. If not, then by all means reblock Legobot. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:16, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @BlueMoonset. I hope that fixes it.

I will be offline for he next few hours. Please can you keep an eye on it too?

Thanks! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:25, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that I'm past my bedtime, and the laptop is closing up as soon as I post this, so I'll be offline for more than a few hours. Hope all goes well. Best of luck! BlueMoonset (talk) 06:33, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You've got mail!

Hello, BrownHairedGirl/Archive. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 13:22, 24 April 2019 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

SITH (talk) 13:22, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Got it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:41, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MfD nomination of Portal:Guernsey

Portal:Guernsey, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Guernsey and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Portal:Guernsey during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Hut 8.5 21:24, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't her portal, only her redirect. She killed it a while ago, and now it is a zombie portal. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:59, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Two Cautions About Disruption (not by BHG)

I have had to notify two editors that they disrupted the MFD process. User:Legacypac disrupted it by including the MFD for Portal:Saddam Hussein in a bundle with Portal:Ruhollah Khomeini (I can't spell his name and don't want to learn how, because I still hate him) after I had already !voted. This was not a matter of an accuracy issue so much as failing to look where one is going when driving. I know that you have already warned Legacypac. The other editor who messed things up was User:Northamerica1000, who managed to completely confuse the table of contents of the MFD main line by including the name of the template for WikiProject:Nintendo. This transcluded the table of contents of Nintendo into MFD, at the second level. I had to un-transclude it by nowiki-ing it. I think that they both meant well and had no idea what they were doing, but Legacypac is trying to drive the MFD process at a speed of 140 km/hr, which is too fast for either a car, or a train that isn't high-speed rail. Northamerica1000 probably had no idea that it would do that. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:59, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Northamerica1000 had the courtesy and dignity to thank me for my edit. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:01, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good work, @Robert. Both editors need to slow down and take a lot more care, and also check the effects of their edits. In particular, @Legacypac has turned several group nominations into WP:TRAINWRECKs by ill-conceived and/or poorly-implemented bundling. That has wasted the time of a lot of editors. This has been going on for weeks.

--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:06, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BHG, you should know that I made this worse. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 02:21, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nb. I already responded at my talk page. Yes, I overlooked this matter, and I know all about transclusions; it was a simple, honest error. After fixing hundreds of similar errors at AfD through the years, I'm surprised I missed this one. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 23:20, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Shut up - you keep criticizing me every time you can find an excuse real or imagined. Call it trolling, call it harassment or call it being a bitch - define your behaviour how you like but shut up already. You are not my mother and you do not need to be my personal critic. Legacypac (talk) 00:33, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I call it being remarkably restrained about a set of persistent problems. Today, I spent half ten minutes undoing a set of problems which you had inadvertently created by not taking enough care. If it was any other editor, I'd have dropped them a note about it so that they woukd know how to avoid it future ... but in your case, no matter how it's phrased, you respond with personal attacks.

Your botched bundling has been going on for weeks. It's time for it to stop ... and also time for you stop indulging in blockable personal abaue. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:02, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

FRSA

Hi there, I'm hoping you might be able to advise when members of the Royal Society of Arts started using the post nominal FRSA and whether it's the right form to apply FRSA to members before the post nominal was used? I found this letter [17] from Charles Allom to the Society that may offer a clue? Regards81.149.141.199 (talk) 11:47, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea. Maybe try asking at Talk:Royal Society of Arts? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:55, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Will try, thanks.81.149.141.199 (talk) 12:15, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Gambia / the Gambia

Hello!

I notice that you created Category:Canada–The Gambia relations and Category:France–The Gambia relations, duplicating the existing Canada–the Gambia relations and France–the Gambia relations, which had been renamed to the small-case format after this CfD. Would you care to suggest a uniform format among Bilateral relations of the Gambia subcategories? Place Clichy (talk) 10:12, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Place Clichy

I honestly don't know which is right, so the best I could do is to toss a coin.

We certainly do need standardisation, but to what?

I think this needs to be settled first at article level, by a group WP:RM. Unfortunately, there we have a joker: Talk:Gambia–India_relations#Requested_move_13_March_2018, which removed "the" entirely. So it needs some sort of big-set RM with several options.

In the meantime, duplicate categories are no good, so I have redirected my creations to the older titles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:50, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - everything in Category:The Gambia at the top level uses (and does not omit) 'the'. Oculi (talk) 23:57, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, @Oculi, the categories do. But is that sufficient to WP:C2C the sub-categories into that format when their head articles omit "the"? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:15, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I expect if I were to try it at C2C, controversy would erupt. You in contrast can get 250+ 'sports organisations established in XXXX' renamed via speedy without demur. Oculi (talk) 11:57, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Oculi and @Place Clichy: I did some research, and I reckon that C2C applies. So I have nominated[18] 16 cats at WP:CFD/S. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:43, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Atheistic/humanistic "scientific" preachers

A tag has been placed on Category:Atheistic/humanistic "scientific" preachers requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

CFD closed as delete Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 October 23 (G6), no longer needed as a redirect since its empty (C1)

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, pages that meet certain criteria may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. DannyS712 (talk) 00:29, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Wikipedians on Mars

A tag has been placed on Category:Wikipedians on Mars requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

CFD closed as delete Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 May 19 and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 January 16 (G4/6), no longer needed as a redirect since its empty (C1)

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, pages that meet certain criteria may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. DannyS712 (talk) 00:32, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Wikipedians who get all POV on others, 'cause it's funny

A tag has been placed on Category:Wikipedians who get all POV on others, 'cause it's funny requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

CFD closed as deleteWikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 October 20 (G6), no longer needed as a redirect since its empty (C1)

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, pages that meet certain criteria may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. DannyS712 (talk) 00:32, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mammal nav boxes

Hi again. I have seeking opinions of a set of nav boxes, most recently at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mammals#Article_templates, and the view that we are better off without them seems to be emerging. This is a large set of interdependent and nested templates, so I want to get the process right. Can you provide any guidance on smoothing the process of discussion when there is an elaborate set of templates, my concern would be that keep !votes on part of the set would require the rest be maintained to accommodate the group of animals that is updated to agree with the articles. cygnis insignis 03:54, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Catholics

Hi, your 10 March CFD closure here has not been reflected, perhaps because it was undated. Johnbod (talk) 23:32, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Johnbod ... where's here? That's not a discussion page. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:48, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Correct - it's a category page with an open cfd tag. Johnbod (talk) 23:57, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Duh. Sorry, Johnbod, I was slow. Now untagged[19].

Thanks for the headsup. Hope you are well ... and that you are engaging in some hard-core mortification of the flesh for this <evil grin> --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:14, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - blimey, more missing & doubled words than usual there! Congrats on your record-breakingly long Portal noms, too. Johnbod (talk) 00:17, 25 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]