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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

Administrators' newsletter – October 2021

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2021).

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

  • A motion has standardised the 500/30 (extended confirmed) restrictions placed by the Arbitration Committee. The standardised restriction is now listed in the Arbitration Committee's procedures.
  • Following the closure of the Iranian politics case, standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1978 Iranian politics, broadly construed.
  • The Arbitration Committee encourages uninvolved administrators to use the discretionary sanctions procedure in topic areas where it is authorised to facilitate consensus in RfCs. This includes, but is not limited to, enforcing sectioned comments, word/diff limits and moratoriums on a particular topic from being brought in an RfC for up to a year.

Miscellaneous

  • Editors have approved expanding the trial of Growth Features from 2% of new accounts to 25%, and the share of newcomers getting mentorship from 2% to 5%. Experienced editors are invited to add themselves to the mentor list.
  • The community consultation phase of the 2021 CheckUser and Oversight appointments process is open for editors to provide comments and ask questions to candidates.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Help with page cleanup?

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Hello User:BrownHairedGirl Thanks so much for your recent edits to the Vonage page to help clean up the article. As a COI editor, I have recently posted to the Vonage Talk page, asking editors for help in updating the Business Services section. Is this something you would be willing to help with? See my suggested edit below, with citation. Many thanks!

Business services The Vonage Communications Platform provides unified communications, contact center and Communications APIs. The platform is programmable, allowing the integration of voice, video, chat, messaging and verification into existing applications and workflows. Vonage’s cloud communications services allow business customers to connect with various business applications and customer relationship management (CRM) tools through middleware technology.[60][61] For business customers that rely on high quantities of voice, video and data communications in their day-to-day operations, Vonage provides quality of service over its own private Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network and via a Software Defined Area Network (SD-WAN) product, Vonage SmartWAN.[62][63][64][65]

Citation - https://www.nojitter.com/cloud-communications/surf%E2%80%99s-vonage-ceo-wants-ride-platform-wave

SStankevich (talk) 17:47, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @SStankevich
Sorry, but no. My edits were all technical changes, to cleanup WP:Bare URLs, which has been my almost sole focus since May. That's a huge task, and I don't have time to get into the details of articles. In any case, that topic doesn't interest me.
Thank you for the friendly tone of your request, and for your overt disclosure of your COI, but I do have to say that I am not at all comfortable with a COI editor pro-actively soliciting individual editors to make edits on their behalf. My discomfort is heightened by the blatantly promotional tone of the paragraph which you want to add: it reads like a direct quote from an advertisement rather a neutral, encyclopedic description.
I am sure that you mean well, but having briefly reviewed talk:Vonage, I am not in any way persuaded that you have really been able to adopt a neutral POV on this topic.
So I want to respectfully suggest that your recuse yourself from editing topics related to Vonage. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:19, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See also my comment[1] on the edit request at Talk:Vonage#Business_Services_section. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:30, 1 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:MPs elected in UK election/constituency

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Template:MPs elected in UK election/constituency has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 19:27, 4 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Serbian pop-folk singers has been nominated for merging

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Category:Serbian pop-folk singers has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Rathfelder (talk) 10:06, 7 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Red Western actors has been nominated for deletion

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Category:Red Western actors has been nominated for deletion. 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. No Great Shaker (talk) 10:03, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of Disney theatrical animated feature films

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I came across the article while fixing citation errors. I've had to revert a couple of your edits, as I'm unsure what they were meant to achieve. It looks like your Reflinks edit went very wrong, it added group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="group="" " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " " to several references. Thanks ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 15:15, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @ActivelyDisinterested
Thanks for the fix, and the message. That was a real screw-up.
A little context on what I am doing here: a mass cleanup of WP:Bare URLs, which I have been doing since early July. This has several steps;
  1. Use a variety of tools to create list of articles with bare URLs.
  2. Feed those articles to Citation bot, via User:BrownHairedGirl/Articles_with_bare_links. Since early July, I have fed the bot about 350,000 such pages.
  3. Follow behind the bot, cleaning up as many as I can manage of the articles where the bot's edit appears not to have fixed the bare URLs, or (if I have time and energy) where the bot has not made any fixes. (In this case, the bot edit was almost 2 weeks ago[2]). That followup uses the following tools:
    • a) Reflinks. I use Reflinks a lot (hundreds of times per day), to fill WP:Bare URLs. In about half the cases it fails to load the URL, so makes no changes, but where it does make changes it is extremely accurate, so much so that after tens of thousands of uses I now check its changes only some of the time.
    • b) Refill 2. Much more comprehensive than Reflinks, but with a much higher error rate, so its output needs a lot of checking. I often don't use it, because on pages with a lot of refs the error-checking takes too much time.
    • c) two scripts to tag pages with remaining bare URLs: User:BrownHairedGirl/linkrot.js for pages with lots of remaining bare URLs, and User:BrownHairedGirl/BareURLinline.js for pages with few remaining bare URLs.
    • d) possibly some unassisted edits, tho those are rare
    • e) Sometimes I use InternetArchiveBot (aka IABot) to cleanup a page with a lot of dead links. If so, I use another script to avoid a bug in IABot: User:BrownHairedGirl/CiteParamDashes.js.
In this case, Reflinks went mad at a |group= parameter.[3]. I have never seen it do anything like that before, but I will watch out for that in future. Unfortunately, it is unmaintained, so no chance of a fix.
I hope that clarifies what I was doing. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks useful to know. I've been trying to work at the general cite errors, I have been for awhile as an IP. So I understand the desire to deal with bare URLs. The article uses a slightly unusual method for showing notes, at least I've note seen the exact method before. It could be Reflinks caught up on that. I've corrected quite a few errors caused by reFill2, not everyone is as careful using it as you. ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 15:53, 15 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Brian Graham (footballer)

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Hi BrownHairedGirl. Sorry I've just had to revert you again. The Brian Graham (footballer) article this time, same issue. ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 23:17, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @ActivelyDisinterested. Now fixed.[4] --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:29, 16 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

BHGbot 9 — removing redundant Template:Cleanup bare URLs

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See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 9.

This bot has now completed its trial. Scrutiny of the trial would be welcome. Please leave any comments at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 9#Discussion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:59, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom)/meta/abbrev

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Template:Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom)/meta/abbrev has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:38, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:OperasInCentury

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Template:OperasInCentury has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Izno (talk) 21:14, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:GaelicGamesInCentury

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Template:GaelicGamesInCentury has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Izno (talk) 21:15, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Harryzilber

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Hello BrownHairGirl: I'm HarryZilber. I don't often view my talk page but today noticed that in 2017 you listed User:86.152.210.238 as being my suspected sockpuppet related to an edit of this article: [5] which was posted in 2010.

Reviewing that edit related to Chelsea Footballer John Terry, I very likely couldn't have had a role in posting that edit; for one thing I don't follow British football, but more importantly I don't post significant information to a Wikipedia article unless I tie it to a citation/reference, which is obviously missing from that edit. As well I make a habit of staying logged onto my account. To summarize: I don't believe I had any involvement in the edit. Can you kindly let me know why I was suspected of being the writer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Harryzilber (talk • contribs) 21:21, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Harryzilber; After 4 years, I don't recall anything about that incident. And after 4 years, no further action will be taken, so I won't put any time into investigating it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:46, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Can others also be fixing archivedate phab problem?

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Hi there, I have noticed you have been making edits to replace "archivedate" with "archive-date" and adding the dash to archive parameters to mitigate some bug in IABot. I came across one of the "archivedate" with no dashes, and I replaced it with the dash to help mitgate that. If i come across any more, i'll add the dash in there as well. Is that OK with you, or would you rather take it all into your own hands? My relevant edits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Allan_Chumak&diff=prev&oldid=1051340627

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fantastic_Four_Adventures&diff=prev&oldid=1051340795

Rlink2 (talk) 22:49, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rlink2: that change is generally regarded as a cosmetic edit, and the bot which did it was shut down. I do it only when I need it before using IAbot, to avoid the phab:T291704 problem. It should not be done as a standalone edit. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:59, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You've got mail!

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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.
Hello, BrownHairedGirl/Archive. Please check your email; you've got mail! The subject is I made a little mistake....
Message added 13:41, 24 October 2021 (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.

I ended up reverting your commit. I will try not to commit vandalism again. Sorry... TylerMagee (talk) 13:41, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, I do not have email from you.
And your reply does not answer my question about why you accused me of vandalism.
I posted at User talk:TylerMagee#Bogus_allegations_of_vandalism. Discussions work better if they stay in one place, so if you want to answer my questions, please answer them in the place where I asked them. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:58, 24 October 2021 (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.

November 2021 at Women in Red

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Women in Red | November 2021, Volume 7, Issue 11, Numbers 184, 188, 210, 212, 213


Online events:


See also:


Other ways to participate:

Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

--Innisfree987 (talk) 21:27, 24 October 2021 (UTC) via MassMessaging[reply]

wiki

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you constantly relegate women below men in your writings.

sexism — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:7C11:DF01:F086:5C3F:93BC:F055 (talk) 11:21, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If that comment is aimed at me personally, please provide some examples.
However if it is not aimed at me, then why post it on my talk page? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:45, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
They do you are a girl, right? And that Grainne Mhaol Ni Mhaille is a hero of yours? --Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:21, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:YearcatUSstate

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Template:YearcatUSstate has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 21:47, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:Year nationality novels category header

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Template:Year nationality novels category header has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:01, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Boo!

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Happy Halloween!
Hello BrownHairedGirl/Archive:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Wikipedia, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!
    —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 21:34, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost: 31 October 2021

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* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:12, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:YYYY in demonym sport

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Template:YYYY in demonym sport has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:13, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:YYYY elections in the United States by state or territory category header

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Template:YYYY elections in the United States by state or territory category header has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 22:13, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Use Tanzanian English has been nominated for discussion

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Category:Use Tanzanian English 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. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:55, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – November 2021

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2021).

Guideline and policy news

  • Phase 2 of the 2021 RfA review has commenced which will discuss potential solutions to address the 8 issues found in Phase 1. Proposed solutions that achieve consensus will be implemented and you may propose solutions till 07 November 2021.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

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The Technical Barnstar
For this piece of sprinkling magic dust on an old FA that's close to my heart.

Thank you. Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 17:45, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Dweller. That's very kind of you ... and a welcome contrast to the sniping above. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:58, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Filipino women has been nominated for renaming

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Category:Filipino women has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Rathfelder (talk) 20:57, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]


Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Denmark political party abbreviated name templates

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A tag has been placed on Category:Denmark political party abbreviated name templates indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Gonnym (talk) 19:53, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Northern Ireland political party abbreviated name templates

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A tag has been placed on Category:Northern Ireland political party abbreviated name templates indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Gonnym (talk) 19:53, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:United Kingdom political party abbreviated name templates

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A tag has been placed on Category:United Kingdom political party abbreviated name templates indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Gonnym (talk) 19:53, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Angola political party shortname templates

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A tag has been placed on Category:Angola political party shortname templates indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Gonnym (talk) 19:54, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Democratic Republic of the Congo political party shortname templates

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A tag has been placed on Category:Democratic Republic of the Congo political party shortname templates indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Gonnym (talk) 19:54, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1899

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A tag has been placed on Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1899 indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Qwerfjkltalk 21:26, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1901

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A tag has been placed on Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1901 indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Qwerfjkltalk 21:26, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1905

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A tag has been placed on Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1905 indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Qwerfjkltalk 21:27, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1911

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A tag has been placed on Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1911 indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Qwerfjkltalk 21:28, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1912

[edit]

A tag has been placed on Category:Entertainment companies disestablished in 1912 indicating that it is currently empty, 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 it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

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. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Qwerfjkltalk 21:28, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi!

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I just wanted to say hi to you! Great Mercian (talk) 19:40, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Abusive misrepresentation by Trappist the monk

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Note: @Trappist the monk left this note under the heading fixing errors that you leave behind. I have changed that heading, because it is a false and hostile description of the issues. The actual problem here is that @Trappist the monk is unwilling or unable to distinguish between an error and an incomplete improvement, and prefers instead to engage in petty sniping at me for making widespread improvements. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:45, 1 November 2021 (UTC) [reply]

I will not conduct a conversation in edit summaries.

No. Edit summaries are not for conversations. That is what talk pages are for. If someone tries to conduct a conversation via edit summaries, they are demonstrating either that they don't know any better, or that they don't care any better. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:56, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

At this edit summary you wrote:

@User:Trappist the monk: two reasons. A) because you repeatedly mislabel incomplete fixes as "errors", with apparent malice; B) because I clean up hundreds of pages each day, checking for glitches, but I am human and have a non-zero error rate in catching ReFill2 errors. Please stop sniping just 'cos you found 1 error among those hundreds
A) yep, any edit to a cs1|2 that leaves a visible red error message is an error. No malice but I do grow weary of fixing stuff that should have been fixed by the editor whose edits leave cs1|2 showing visible red error messages: here, here, and here.
B) I know that you clean up hundreds of pages each day but:
  • you use a tool that has known flaws (Wikipedia:ReFill § Known issues); this edit by the tool created |deadurl=y and omitted |archive-date= (3×)
  • you use an awb script to fix, among other things: |archiveurl= → |archive-url= and |deadurl=y → |url-status=dead. Why do you not, with the same awb script, extract |archive-date= from the timestamp in the |archive-url= snapshot url and create |archive-date=? Timestamps are available from most (all?) archive.org and archive.today (and family) snapshot urls.

At this edit summary you wrote:

@User:Trappist the monk: your so-called "repair"" here fixed no errors, but mostly improved the citation by fixing case and adding extra fields. However, you removed the " |url-status=dead", which broke the citation. Instead of repeated petty sniping at me (e.g. in special:diff/1053049988), pls take more care with YOUR work before demanding perfection in others. Don't break a ref in an edit which you call a "repair" but which I have to clean up after you.
I came to this version of Scott Jurek because this citation had placed the article in Category:CS1 errors: archive-url: cs1|2 showing a visible error message: |archive-url= requires |archive-date=. I fixed that and, I think, I improved the rest of the citation.
You wrote: However, you removed the " |url-status=dead", which broke the citation.
That is patently false. |url-status=dead is the default condition when a cs1|2 template has |archive-url=. Omitting it does no harm:
with |url-status=dead:
{{Cite news |url=http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/obituary/id/163733/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=http://archive.today/20130121173250/http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/obituary/id/163733/ |archive-date=2013-01-21 |title=Lynn Diane (Swapinski) Jurek |department=Obituaries |newspaper==Duluth News Tribune |location=Duluth, MN}}
"Lynn Diane (Swapinski) Jurek". Obituaries. =Duluth News Tribune. Duluth, MN. Archived from the original on 2013-01-21.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
without |url-status=dead:
{{Cite news |url=http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/obituary/id/163733/ |archive-url=http://archive.today/20130121173250/http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/obituary/id/163733/ |archive-date=2013-01-21 |title=Lynn Diane (Swapinski) Jurek |department=Obituaries |newspaper==Duluth News Tribune |location=Duluth, MN}}
"Lynn Diane (Swapinski) Jurek". Obituaries. =Duluth News Tribune. Duluth, MN. Archived from the original on 2013-01-21.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
I am not demanding perfection in others because, yep, I'm not perfect either. There is a flaw that I introduced but in the above citation but it has nothing to do with |url-status=dead: |newspaper==Duluth News Tribune. I'll fix that. That particular 'error' is probably something that ought to be caught by cs1|2 when it is looking for extra punctuation. I'll fix that too.

I am not sniping but I am weary of fixing the same thing over and over again. Please fix you awb script so that I (and others) don't have to cleanup after you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:32, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Trappist the monk, if you do not want to conduct conversations in edit summaries, then you can avoid that by not enaging in malicious sniping on edit summaries. Since I replied by edit summary, I have been preparing a longer message in response to your repeatedly unpleasant antics, and will post it here when it is finished. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:39, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Long reply

@Trappist the monk, please stop your petty sniping at my work cleaning up WP:Bare URLs. It is unfounded, and appears to be malicious ... and it is also hypocritical.

You did this twice in August at User talk:Citation bot: [6] and [7]. In both those cases you encountered an imperfect improvement by the bot at my suggestion or and/or by scripts which I invoked, but you misrepresented that improvement as an error in order make a disparaging comment about me invoking the bot. In both cases you ignored the fact that the bot's output was better than the bare URL which it replaced, and tried to disparage those who invoke the bot to improve.

Now today, you have been at it again. In this edit[8] to Ross Hart your edit summary was User:BrownHairedGirl: why am I still fixing errors that you are leaving behind?

However, that diff shows no errors being fixed by you. It shows a ref being improved by the addition of extra fields to better display the data, which is great, and it follows on from my improvement of the previous bare URL refs. My partial improvement was not an error, and your decision to label it it as an error was false. Given that it follows from your previously mislabelling of similar incomplete improvements, your action appears to be malicious.

In your comment above, you note that in some cases the tools I used did not add an |archive-date=, and that this generates a red-linked error message which you resolved. However, you either fail to understand or choose to misrepresent the fact that what you encountered was an omission, not an error: no incorrect data was introduced, but more data needed to be added, which you kindly did. Again, you misrepresent an incomplete improvement as an error. Wikipedia is a work in progress, and your approach to me me is to repeatedly attack me for edits which make the cite more useful to reader, just because they haven't taken all possible steps. You found something to improve, so well done -- but for goodness sake lay off the attacks on me for getting that far.

You suggest that my AWB script to cleanup misnamed parameter should also fill in |access-date=. If you understood anything about AWB, then you would know that this suggestion is dangerous folly.

That AWB script is just a huge set of replacements which fix misnamed parameters. It processes about 160 pages per week in Category:CS1 errors: unsupported parameter, having been initially designed to clean up after my use of reFill2, but it now mostly tackles errors introduced caused by other editors. (Note, BTW, that it just fixes the errors, and refrains from making TTM-style sarky comments about those good-faith glitches). It does not attempt in any way to assess the value of those parameters, because that is a vastly more complex task with a high risk of errors. I will not attempt to extract |access-date= from other parameters, because there are so many possible permutations involved that programming it would be a huge task, and not one which I am well-placed to undertake.

You had here an opportunity to thank me for having taken the time over many months to continuously develop an AWB script (now on version 56!) to fix thousands of cite errors using that AWB script. But instead of doing so, you chose instead to come here to attack me for not writing a different, much more advanced script. That hostile attitude to anything less than idealised perfection is what I have come to expect from you, and it is both obnoxiously discouraging and hugely timewasting.

Your comment Please fix you awb script so that I (and others) don't have to cleanup after you is more of that malicious nonsense. You have not identified any error created by that AWB script, so there is nothing to fix. Your whole gripe is that more work remains to be done, and you repeatedly mislabel that as an "error". You write I am not demanding perfection in others because, yep, I'm not perfect either, yet your whole post is entirely about your hostile demands that I leave the refs in a perfect state.

The broader picture here is even more troubling than the substance of your nitpicking. For the last 5 months, my work on en.wp has been focused almost exclusively on cleaning up WP:Bare URLs. When I started, there were over 500,000 non-PDF bare URls, but now there are about 300,000 (it will take a few days before I can analyse today's database dump to get precise figures). Most of that progress has been achieved by me laboriously preparing hundreds of lists of articles with bare URLs which I feed to Citation bot. That bot limits the batch size to 2,200 articles, so to keep the bot processing those lists I split them up in various sized chunks and schedule every one of my days to ensure that I am available to start a new batch when the last one finishes. That huge commitment of my time and energy has seen the bot process nearly 400,000 articles at my request, removing all the bare URL refs from about 100,000 of them.

That is a huge improvement, but I am not satisfied with its scope. The bot clears all bare URLs from only about 30% of the articles, so I also follow around behind the bot trying to fix as many of the others as time allows. To do that, I use a variety of tools which I described above at #List of Disney theatrical animated feature films (permalink). In that way, I have also cleared bare URLs from thousands of other articles, and tagged a few thousand more.

I count that as a massive contribution to upholding the core policy of WP:V, by making the refs more useful to readers. However, to do this volume of work, I have had to lower my sights. If you want to see what I think fully-polished references look like, take a look at Emma Rogan or 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election or any of the articles in Category:2019 Irish local elections, where I spent about two weeks in April/May upgrading the refs.

Polishing refs to that standard is very time-consuming, and I couldn't do that at scale unless I made several dozen clones of myself and worked the poor divils to death. So this mass cleanup is done to a much lower standard: my goal is to at minimum provide a title for a link, with anything else being a bonus. I expect that only a tiny fraction of a percent of the refs improved in this way will be up to standard that I think they should ideally reach. Many of them will lack fields for author(s), date(s), publications(s), location(s), archive-url and archive dates. That is by design: I do not aim in this task to achieve completeness, and I assume that in over 99% of cases further improvement will be possible by any competent editor who chooses to take the time to improve the ref.

In some of those cases, the omission may be one of those which is flagged by the cite templates, such as the missing archive-dates ... but the fact that the template labels that omission as an "error" does not to my view alter the fact the ref has been usefully improved. AFAIK that omission of archive-date is fixable by IAbot, so I regard your choice to manually fix it as perverse, and your decision to repeatedly snipe at me about it as uncivil aggression.

Now, if you want to surprise me and reply that you have changed your tune, and will desist from your timewasting sniping, then feel free to post a reply here. But I have had enough of that sniping, so I will delete anything further in the same vein.

You may of course choose to hold to your view that my massive bare URL cleanup is disruptive because nearly all its edits leave refs with room for improvement, and a small percentage of them trigger cite template error messages. If that remains your view, then please make a complaint at WP:ANI, and be sure to include a prominent link to this thread.

However, if you continue to engage further in what I regard as malicious, petty sniping in pursuit of perfection, then I may make a complaint at ANI about your efforts to create a hostile editing environment by petty fault-finding rather than collaboration in cleaning up a long-standing problem. Dealing with your antics today has taken over two hours of my time, disrupting both my personal schedules and my work on en.wp. I more than fed up with your conduct and your attitude.

Your call. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:37, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker) This was a bit long to read so just noting I didn't follow through the later parts and only read some of the earlier diffs, and maybe this is an unwanted comment, but it does seem to me that Trappist's request is reasonable. There are actual errors introduced by some of your script edits, other than just red error messages in CS1. e.g. this diff changed <ref>http://calgarysun.com/sports/other-sports/natalya-neidhart-travelling-is-amazing-except-when-they-lose-your-luggage</ref> to <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://calgarysun.com/?r|title=Home | Calgary Sun Home Page | Calgary Sun|website=calgarysun}}</ref> which makes the reference link now go to "https://calgarysun.com/?r". Solely from a CS1 errors standpoint, the before has no error messages and the after does. For Trappist's Citation Bot complaints, [9][10] ended up being marked fixed by the Citation Bot maintainers, it seems (?)
Of course, I appreciate you don't maintain these scripts and you have to make do with the tools you have, and that you're doing important work, and there will be mistakes from time to time, and the task isn't meant to fix all the citation issues present on the article... but it still doesn't seem unreasonable for Trappist to point out the issues. Although reFill seems to be unmaintained, perhaps it could be worth asking someone (anyone who writes scripts on Wikipedia) to see if they can't add some hacky patch to these scripts to avoid the CS1 error messages, at least. Perhaps that might resolve some of Trappist's problem? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:31, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@ProcrastinatingReader: I think it's a great pity that you didn't read fully before commenting. By not reading you missed the core points ... and it seems to me to be thoroughly inappropriate to pronounce a complaint as reasonable when you have chosen not to read most of the reply.
Trappist's sniping is all about failure to add |archive-date= and failure to separate out some other parameters. I stand by my view that those are acceptable omissions in the context of mass-cleanup, and that Trappist is being an annoying pedant about that issue simply that omission is tracked -- and in particular that his demand that I write an AWB script to add |archive-date= is so absurd that it's almost a form of trolling. WP:NOTCOMPULSORY.
As to Trappist's comments at Citation bot, he was quite right to raise the issues wrt the bot, and I am glad that they were fixed. However, note that they were trivial issues: one which did not alter in any way how the ref is displayed to readers, and another one in which some data could have ben separated. My objection is that he abused the bug report to make unjustified swipes at me for the fact that these improvements did not reach perfection, and above all that he chose not to respond to my request to retract them.
As to reFill2, it is buggy but useful, and one of its bugs is that it sometimes truncates or mangles URLs. For that reason, I try to avoid using it if possible, because if I do use it, I have to check every ref for such glitches. Sometimes it is all fine, sometimes a few fixes are needed, and sometimes its results are so bad I abandon its proposed changes. It would be nice to have that tool upgraded, but many others have proposed that over the years without result.
In this case, it seems that I did miss one reFill2 error. Thanks for spotting it, but please note that Trappist didn't spot it either, and instead decided to snipe at me over trivia. Being notified of that glitch is valuable, but the attacks for not adding archive-date are just another part of Trappists's pattern of petty sniping. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:11, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have never, ever, demanded anything of you. I did not say that |archive-url= snapshot → |archive-date= is easy; certainly it isn't as easy as |archiveurl= → |archive-url= but, I know that you have c# skills so quite doable by you.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:42, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Au contraire, @Trappist the monk: you did quite explicitly make that demand: Please fix you awb script so that I (and others) don't have to cleanup after you.
As I noted above, the missing |archive-date= was not created by the script, so it is not an AWB error which needs a fix, and you should have the decency to apologise for wrongly claiming that it is. But instead you have doubled down on the demand.
As I explained above, the AWB task I run is just a huge set of replacements. No C# module is involved. Yes, I probably could write a C#module to do that task, but I am just an amateur not not a professional programmer, so it would take me much longer to do a crude job than a skilled programmer would take to do a good job ... and because I have no integrated development environment for AWB modules, my testing cycles are very time-consuming. Since there is a bot which can do that job already, I would be unlikely to commit my time to replicating its functions ... and frankly, there is no way in hell I would devote my time to coding on behalf of an editor who has chosen for for whatever reason to demand it as part of their bizarre determination to engage in a sniping campaign.
I note without surprise that you don't even acknowledge my core point that my bare URL cleanup work is an exercise in minimal improvement, which will nearly always leave more work to do on each ref.
You have now had way more than your fair share of my time, so please stay off my talk page until you have a radical change of attitude. Enough already! BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:04, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(talk page stalker) TTM clearly explained why they think the term error is appropriate (i.e. the presence of "visible red error message"). I can understand disagreeing on this point, but you seem to be taking the additional (extraordinary) step of inferring that, because their use of the term does not accord with your own definition, they must be engaging in malicious misrepresentation.
Also, I'm just going to say it, throwing out insults like "annoying pendant" is, IMO, plainly incivil, and I think you should consider retracting or apologizing. (Yes, TTM's initial edit summary that sparked this wasn't worded in a very friendly way, but that's not a justification to pay it back tenfold.) Colin M (talk) 06:17, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Colin M: TTM has a history of engaging in malicious misrepresentation on this sort of issue. I provided the two diffs at User talk:Citation Bot where they falsely claimed I was creating crap for others to clean up, and TTM did not respond to my request[11] to retract that. Given that history, it would be foolish of me to assume absence of malice in this saga.
All that happened here was that one of the tools I used rearranged the data in the ref into a template which generates an error about the pre-exiting omission. This was not a fault crated by edit; on the contrary, my reFill2 edit[12] exposed a pre-existing flaw in one of the 12 refs it changed:
Here is the diff of my changes to that page, including the edit performed on my behalf by Citation bot: [13].
Here's the old version of that ref: <ref>http://www.wrestling101.com/101/newsitem/1644/ https://archive.today/20130209134928/http://www.wrestling101.com/101/newsitem/1644/</ref>, which renders as: http://www.wrestling101.com/101/newsitem/1644/ https://archive.today/20130209134928/http://www.wrestling101.com/101/newsitem/1644/
... and here's that ref after my changes: <ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wrestling101.com/101/newsitem/1644/|archive-url=http://archive.today/20130209134928/http://www.wrestling101.com/101/newsitem/1644/ |url-status=dead |title=Blake Norton Launches "Celtic Pro Wrestling"|website=www.wrestling101.com}}</ref>, which renders as: "Blake Norton Launches "Celtic Pro Wrestling"". www.wrestling101.com. {{cite web}}: |archive-url= requires |archive-date= (help)
I stand by my view that this is a significant improvement.
That error message identifies a technical glitch which is fixable by an existing bot, in the same way a cleanup tag does but without the hassle of a tag needing to be removed. Nothing is gained by TTM's decision to snipe at me about it this omission, let alone to demand that I write an AWB module to fix it because TTM wrongly believes that my AWB task somehow caused the omission (my AWB edit was nothing to with the missing archive date).
The fundamental issue here is simple. My efforts to clean up bare URLs will nearly always leave a ref incomplete. In some cases those missing fields are tracked by the cite template which I apply, triggering an red error message. Instead of treating the error messages and the categorisation of them as an aid to use tools to take the next steps in the cleanup where I have taken several steps to improve the mess left by someone else, TTM chose yet again to use it as a chance take a swipe at me for not achieving perfection in every one of the hundreds of such edits I have been doing every day. That is not collaborative conduct; it is the hostile fault-finding approach of a cop determined to find a reason to ticket or arrest a driver, and I am sick of the sniping.
In my view, the fact that TTM and others have helpfully developed the cite modules to generate error messages and categorise omissions is a valuable addition which helps editors to collaborate in iterative improvement. Sadly, TTM prefers to use the red error messages as an opportunity to berate me for incomplete improvement ... and I am fed up with TTM's campaign of fault-seeking. To my mind it is the complete inverse of civil collaboration on which Wikipedia is supposed to be built, and I stand by my description of this conduct as "annoying pedantry"; it completely misses the wood for the trees. If TTM's goal was to deter me from trying to cleanup the hundreds of thousands of bare URLs left by others, then they are proceeding perfectly. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:20, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Admins force a halt to filling bare URLs

[edit]

After sleeping on the discussion above, I reviewed the situation.

One admin, Trappist the monk is engaged in a pattern of unjustified sniping at me. Trappist is unrepentant, and even goes so far as as to deny having made a demand of me that was clearly made.

Another admin A non-admin, ProcrastinatingReader, popped up uninvited to endorse Trappist's sniping while admitting to not having properly read my reply. That is iniquitous. My reply is 1462 words, which should take about 5 minutes for the average reader or ~3½ minutes for a college student. Not a big burden.

This puts me in an impossible situation. With twoan admins on my case and behaving so poorly, I have good reason to fear that I will be back in the impossible situation in which I found myself in August, when misconduct by admins and others was ignored and I was targeted for attack by a mob who were interested only in my responses to that misconduct. That ugly episode led me to being placed on extreme civility restrictions because my response to misconduct was deemed to be uncivil, while the substantive misconduct of which I complained was ignored. Kafkaesque.

Given the stance of the two admins here, I fear that some admin — whether one of these two, or someone else — may choose to label my replies to this provocation as "uncivil", and apply those special sanctions by blocking me and then having any other admin be debarred from unblocking me.

Then I returned to my laptop to find that a non-admin Colin M weighed in to make that accusation of incivility ... so off we go.

I don't want to go near that sort of drama, which is all my objections to TTM's decision to snipe at me yet again, this time because when I cleaned up a mangled ref I did not add an extra field. For goodness sake, folks: is this for real?

I have had to waste hours of my time trying to counter the nonsense, and it has caused a lot of stress which I really do not need.

So my remedy is that for self-preservation I will simply stop doing the work which triggered this wee drama, that is my cleaning up those WP:Bare URLs which have been missed by Citation bot in its processing of the lists of articles which I feed the bot. Instead I will just tag those articles with {{Cleanup bare URLs}} or {{Bare URL inline}}.

It seems to me to be better for the 'pedia to use tools such as WP:Reflinks and WP:reFill 2 to improve the refs, but since my efforts to do so are under attack by admins who are not interested in my responses, it would be a form of self-harming folly to expose myself by continuing that work. Tagging is now the best that I dare do.

If there is any resumption or repetition of Trappist's August attacks on me for the edits made by Citation bot ([14] and [15]), I will stop all my work on bare URLs: i.e. no more feeding lists to Citation bot, and no more tagging. I think that bringing an end to this work would be be a loss to en.wp, but I have had enough of being a target for this sort of negativity, and I want to stay out of harm's way.

Meanwhile, I offer my deepest apologies to the entire Wikipedia community for being a damn fool who hoped that her months of massive, sustained effort to clear a widespread and longstanding problem from over 100,000 articles might actually be quietly appreciated somewhere, rather than being the target of sniping because they don't always go as far as someone would like.

I get the message, loud and clear: I have been a damned idiot to hope that I would escape attacks, and now realise that it is far better to not do the work. I am very sorry for not hearing that message sooner, and await to see how much more crap is thrown my way. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:46, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • BHG, reading through the above I became worried that you were being led into a situation where someone unfriendly might cry "incivility", so a dignified retreat seems wise, though sad. I'm sorry you are again having a hard time. Bare URLs are a mess and a pain (my pet hate being the bare URLs cited in refs in square brackets, so that the reference list doesn't even show the URL, just a number: totally uninformative for the poor reader), so working to fill out the refs to any extent is a Good Thing, although I'm not always happy with what ReFill produces. The red links being mentioned above, as far as I know, only appear to other editors and not in the version seen by the all-important reader, so they are advice of something which isn't right but they don't damage the encyclopedia. Good luck with everything. PamD 10:22, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, @PamD. I agree about ReFill: its output can be perfect, but can also be flawed or even atrocious, so it needs careful checking. In the examples which TTM complained about, I had a lot of cleanup to do before saving.
    Yes, bare URLs are a pain, esp the number in square bracket sort, which is why for the last few months I have put well over a thousand hours of my life into cleaning them up. Sadly, TTM appears to be wholly uninterested in the improvement, but determined to snipe at me for the lack of perfection.
    As far as I can see, the red error messages about missing parameters do appear to readers. I tested that by viewing https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ross_Hart&oldid=1052402433 in a private window, logged out, and the error messages are still displayed. They probably shouldn't be displayed, but the fact of their visibility should be used as an aid to improvement rather than as a stick to beat people with. As you rightly say, they don't damage the encyclopedia.
    Anyway, it's all moot now: in my followup to Citation bot, I will just tag. Others may attempt the fixes, so they can get the resulting sniping from TTM ... while I enjoy the rewards of not being the damn fool who tries the cleanup and makes herself a target for a robocop who appears to have no regard for the process of iterative improvement. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:48, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • ProcrastinatingReader isn't an admin, just one of your talk page stalkers (as am I). It does say at the top of your talk page that "input is welcome" so I'm not sure that "popped up uninvited" is entirely fair. Pawnkingthree (talk) 12:33, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Ooops! Thanks, @Pawnkingthree, and sorry @ProcrastinatingReader. I will correct that error. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:22, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think there may be several talk page walkers watchers watching this unfold, gritting our teeth, wishing to de-escalate the situation, and afraid of just making matters worse. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 13:47, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Here's another, teeth suitably gritted. Oculi (talk) 16:10, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      @Oculi & @Deepfriedokra: the way to resolve this is simply for TTM to stop using the error messages as a stick with which to beat editors who have put in the time to cleanup bare URLs ... and instead use existing bots to add |archive-date= where it is missing. Such pages are categorised in Category:CS1 errors: archive-url, so it is a simple task to make a list to feed to a bot.
      However, that would require TTM to move from fault-finding-finger-pointing mode to problem-fixing mode, which so far seems to be much too big an ask. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:07, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • TTM points an issue with your edits. The proper reaction to having an issue pointed out is not to shoot the messenger, but to fix the underlying problem: e.g. the issue with your edits. Those issues have been explain at length and in detail. The next choice is yours. You can update your behaviour, or not. One is productive, the other isn't. One leads to serenity, the other to further requests for you to cleanup after yourself. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:21, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          @Headbomb: sigh.
          The "issue" is that the edits concerned are a significant improvement, but not a complete fix. TTM insists that only a complete fix is acceptable.
          That doesn't fit with the tools and workflow I used to improve tens of thousands of refs in thousands of articles where Citation but didn't clear all bare URL refs. If any editor wishes to add missing archive-dates, bots are available to do that without fuss and without drama. There is no need whatsoever to snipe at me for making an incomplete improvement. So yes, the problem is that the messenger prefers to send snarky messages instead of helping me to clean up the mess left by others.
          All of that has been explained above at length and in details, but you choose to ignore it. Sheesh.
          Anyway, the problem is now resolved. I have stopped my intensive work of manually fixing hundreds of bare URLs per day, and I hope you are satisfied with that outcome.
          Those who demand perfection on first pass can update your behaviour, or not. If they stop sniping at incomplete improvement and start collaboratively assisting, then the cleanup could resume. But until then, I am getting out of the firing line by withdrawing my labour. I do hope that you think that this lack of cleanup is a good outcome. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:56, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't trying to do a holistic evaluation of the situation because I wasn't trying to judge whatever interpersonal conflict you had/have with Trappist. I was trying to comment on the actual issue mainly a) to say I could see Trappist's POV and hint there may be some legitimate feedback in their message, and b) suggest a way of resolving the problem amicably and time-efficiently (the script hack suggestion). Technically speaking, off the top of my head, you could do a simple regex like \d{14}, get the first match, and then convert that into a datestamp and fill in |archive-date=. It'd only work with web.archive.org (rather than other archiving providers) but that could account for a substantial number of diffs and at minimum be a token attempt to resolve the problem. It's not just about appeasing Trappist; it also fits in nicely with your goal to improve references on articles.
As for whether you have to do it, I guess it depends what you mean by "have to". I suppose an editor doesn't have to make any changes to their workflow unless not doing so could result in community sanctions, which this probably won't. I guess that's a different question from whether you should. It's a fair point that one could create/request another bot to do this change, but usually bot operators are happy to make small changes like this to their code (I'm aware you're not a bot, but still). For perspective, it probably would've cost less time to add the functionality than it has for you to research and write your responses in this section. Course, you're entirely free to disregard that message (and this one) if you don't feel it is helpful. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:04, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, apologies, I missed a reply above where you address why you can't do it as simply as I put it above. You mention another bot does the task of filling in archive dates; do you happen to know what it's called? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:15, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@ProcrastinatingReader: there is a fundamental misunderstanding in your reply, which is also present in several other replies.
It's quite simple: BHG did not create an error.
I repeat:
  • BHG did not create an error
  • BHG did not create an error
  • BHG did not create an error
  • BHG did not create an error
There was no |archive-date= before I edited the ref. There was no |archive-date= after I edited the ref.
So TTM's complaint that BHG left a mess for others to clean up is false. The problem was not created by BHG.
What BHG did do was to improved the ref in several ways, one of which was to wrap the ref in a cite template, which causes the error to be flagged up and categorised. That is a very similar effect to tagging: visible notice plus cleanup category ... with the added bonus in this case that as a result of my edits, the omission became bot-fixable.
Yes, it would be better if ReFill2 had added the |archive-date=. But it doesn't do that, and nobody is maintaining it, so that won't happen. And no, I will not write an AWB module to do this, because a) it would be a lot of work (more complex than you suggest), and b) there are existing tools which will do this: IAbot certainly does it, and maybe Citation bot too.
When TTM encountered that error, they had a very simple remedy available to them: grab a list of the pages in Category:CS1 errors: archive-url, and feed them to IAbot. But TTM chose not to do that, and chose instead to resume their snark at me.
You might conceivably be right that it would have taken less of my time to write an AWB module. I think not, but even if you were right about that, why on earth should I be bullied into writing code to perform a task which is already covered by a bot just to avoid the fallout from TTM's preference for snark?
You misunderstand what I am trying to do here. I am not, as you suggest, trying to improve references on articles. As explained above and on the page where I list articles for Citation bot, I am pursuing here a much much narrower goal: making bare URLs non-bare. In nearly every case, that leaves lots more room for improvement, but Wikipedia is a work in progress, so room for improvement is the norm.
If you ever try to do any sort of genuinely mass cleanup, you will learn early on something very simple: that you can either:
  1. keep focused on the precise fix, and cleanup many instances of it,
    or
  2. start making the many other possible related fixes on each article, and fix a tiny fraction of the set.
One or the other ... but unless the set of articles is very small, not both. In this case the set of articles was huge when I started : over 500,000 articles had bare URLs.
Both approaches have their merits, but in this case I was taking the first approach: broad and shallow. But instead of building on the work I have done to tens of thousands of articles, TTM chose to try to bully me into going deeper, and to create duplicate tools. And you, sadly, have chosen to join in with that, by suggesting that I allow myself to bullied into some unnecessary coding in order to avoid the time taken to defend myself from the snark machine.
Meanwhile, it's 15 days since WP:BHGbot 9 completed its trial. I was disappointed that it took 14 days to get a review of that, but I replied yesterday to the review which you kindly made. Instead of using your time to come to this page to assist TTM's snark, please could you work with me to get that bot task up and running? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:09, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
About your last paragraph: A lot of my offwiki time has involved writing/reviewing code recently, which makes me want to do it less in my free time onwiki, hence the longer reply time on the BRFA. Which does illuminate the volunteer nature of the project and ones freedom in choosing what they want to work on, which (on reflection) I suppose applies in a similar way to this citations issue. I'll leave a response at the BRFA, but I'll probably ask for another BAG's opinion before approval (will follow up there). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wish I had joined this entire discussion sooner, but I want to underscore the importance of the work BrownHairedGirl is doing here. In any major task involving tens of thousands of edits, there will be some quirks that arise, mostly from articles already containing formatting errors that don't play well with proper formatting. Fixing tens of thousands of bad instances of formatting at the expense of an occasional issue is more than worthwhile, and it is (obviously) a thankless job for an editor to undertake. BD2412 T 21:26, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks, @BD2412. Right now this reminds me of the latter stages of six phases of a big project. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:42, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While BHG and I have had our differences in the past, what she's doing here in cleaning up bare URLs is awesome. No one should be attacking her or complaining about that thankless task. So, to make it not a thankless task, thank you BHG. Please keep it up. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 22:16, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks, @Nihonjoe. That is much appreciated.
I would like to resume actually fixing bare URLs rather than just tagging them, but there are too many unwithdrawn objections here to make that a wise course of action. I don't want to risk another shitshow like this where multiple editors choose to look at a pre-existing an error which I have caused to be flagged, and falsely accuse me of creating that error ... and where I again get accused of being "uncivil" for objecting to the nonsense. I have painful experience of where that leads.
So unless this is clearly resolved somehow, I won't resume fixing the bare URLs which Citation bot doesn't fix. By the end of November, I plan that the bot will have processed every page in the backlog, and I will continue to feed it the new bare URLs which are created at a rate of about 250 pages per day. But Citation bot removes all bare URLs from only about 30% of articles, so that will leave about 250,000 articles with old bare URLs which won't be fixed in any systematic way. Pity.
And to add my sense of frustration, my WP:BHGbot 9 proposal to remove redundant {{Cleanup bare URLs}} tags has been derailed by a radical and unworkable broadening of the definition of "bare URL" after I had spent about a dozen hours on it.[16] Why the f**k do I bother with this place? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:34, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I believe there is a solution to this problem that will make everyone happy: both Trappist the Monk, and BrownHairedGirl, i will describe this solution when i have time since i can't really type on my current device right now. There is no need for argument. Monk and BHG are some of my favorite editors, and it pains me to see them arguing. The things both editors have done for the wikipedia can not be overstated, both have made great works in improving the free encyclopedia. And if BHG will give up completely on bare link fixing, I will pick up where she left off and continue fixing bare links while following the advice, policies, and rules set forth by Monk, BHG, and all admins and bureaucrats. This bare ref work will be done in parallel to my current work of archive.is link fixing and archiving youtube videos. Rlink2 (talk) 12:28, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Rlink2: more people working on the cleanup would be great!
But first a few caveats.
I estimate that by the about end of November 2021, I will have fed to Citation bot every article with a possibly-bot-fixable bare URL, and that this will leave us with a backlog of about 250,000 articles still in need of cleanup (i.e. 250K which the bot has tried to fix but failed). If an editor works very fast and cleans those at a rate of 100 per hour, that would be 2,500 hours of work -- or 50 hours of work every week for a whole year (a breach of the European Working Time Directive).
In practice, that rate of output is unachievable even in the easiest runs: there are always some pages which need manual attention and/or the use of reFill2, which usually needs a lot of cleanup. The best runs I get are about 50 pages per hour, and 20 per hour is probably a more realistic average. 20 pages per hour means 5 years full-time work.
All those figures are based on my de minimis approach: fill the bare URL, and do no other polishing. If you want to satisfy TTM's demands for perfection (e.g. things TTM has attacked me for not doing: splitting data out of the |title= such "Man bites dog -- Post Examiner, Hightown"; not using |website= when another param would be better suited; adding |archive-date= if it is missing), then you will at least double the time taken on each articles, and more likely quintuple it or worse. That would mean ten to twenty-five years of work just on bare URLs.
Now maybe you have more tools than I have, or can develop more tools to speed up the process (an updated hybrid of Reflinks and reFill2 would be great). But without those extra tools, it takes a lot of time to make significant progress ... and if you try to satisfy TTM's demands for perfection, you won't be able to work fast enough to make a meaningful dent in the backlog.
So as far as I can see, you gotta choose: either you can spend some time filling a significant number of bare URLs, or you can pend the same time doing a very thorough job to keep TTM off your back. Work fast, or work to to avoid TTM's sniping. But not both.
If you do have some solution to this, I will be keen to hear it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:20, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have many ideas, one of which is to bring reFill up to speed with much needed updates. I noticed in my overview of the tools many things are lacking. I can and have put in some effort to fix some of these problems (for example: changing archiveurl to archive-url, turning refit into an AWB module for easier editing). I do not have a list of pages that dont work properly with reFill, so i'm going off the pages you marked as bare URLs as a sign that they may not work with refill that great. So if you have a list of pages that don't work well with refill place let me know i can see if i can fix any bugs.
I plan on implementing the archive-date parameter to archived references like what Trappist wanted for all wayback URLS and long form ghostarchive, webcitation, nationalarchives.gov.uk, and archive.today URLS. Future ideas include better detection of dead links and better title retrieval. Its a great tool, just in need of many bug fixes. You are right, doing all this manually is plainly impossible. Fixing the automated tools to satisfy Trappist and everyone else seems like a win win, and I volunteer to help. Let me know what you think. Rlink2 (talk) 23:05, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Rlink2 that sounds really great. Those tools badly need updating. I think we should have a longer discussion somewhere on the details, which are a bit off-topic for here. I have a pile of observations and ideas!
Also, a quick note beware of using tagged-by-me pages an indication of failure of either of the tools. In May and June I did batch tagging without first trying those tools, and since then I have sometimes tagged because it's quicker and sometimes because tools have failed, and now I tag by default to avoid TTM's sniping. So please treat my decision to tag as no more than a rough guide. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:11, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Where do you think that discussion should take place? I'm happy to move anywhere. Maybe the refill talk page? Rlink2 (talk) 00:44, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, i did trial using Refill as a awb module. There are lots of bugs to be fixed, but initial results seem promising. Looks faster than using the web interface, and its easier to make manual edits when refill messes up. Rlink2 (talk) 22:38, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Constituency Commission information

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Hi BHG. In explanation rather than defence of removing information about the Constituency Commission from constituency pages, I had formed a view that this was better on the pages for the legislation, rather than each constituency. This is because every change to a constituency since 1980 has occurred because of a recommendation from a commission of some sort, and every one from 1997 from the Constituency Commission, so that there is a redundancy or duplication in stating this on each constituency page, rather than it being available collectively on the linked page for the electoral law revision. That said, that might be a case for trimming the text and retaining the reference, rather than removing entirely. In any case, I've decided to focus in this mini-project on first building up the detail of each of the constituency revision Electoral Amendment Acts, before returning to constituencies. My longer term goal here would be that each constituency page would include tables of all past definitions of area, with the legislation as reference, using collapsed text in tables so that they don't take up too much space. At the moment, there's a mix of some of the more recent revisions, perhaps the initial definition, and no consistency. Thanks again for your constructive oversight of edits made. — Iveagh Gardens (talk) 09:06, 8 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Internet Archive Bot

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Hi. I've been looking at Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter. Most of the articles contained in there have duplicate |access-date=, |archive-url= and |archive-date= added by InternetArchiveBot where the original parameters are not hyphenated. Looking at a few of the articles at random, it appears the bot has been triggered by yourself over the past few days, for example [17]. It might be as well to stop using the bot until the problems are resolved. Regards. --John B123 (talk) 21:07, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@John B123: thanks for the headsup.
I am aware of the problem (I filed phab:T291704), and my workflow is to use a script (User:BrownHairedGirl/CiteParamDashes.js) to fix that issue before invoking IAbot, but it looks like I missed a few. I will go back and fix them now. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:34, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@John B123: I have now cleaned up all the articles which were in Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter, which is now empty. I will ensure that my ongoing use of IAbot is on pages which don't have the phab:T291704 problem.
Thanks again for alerting me to this. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:00, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well done and thanks for sorting that out. Regards. --John B123 (talk) 09:08, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Diffusing/nondiffusing women lawyers

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Hallo BHG, I was adding Category:Algerian women lawyers to the new stub for Blanche Azoulay, the first such person, and checked the category to see whether it was nondiffusing so she ought also still to be in Category:Algerian lawyers. It wasn't showing as a nondiffusing subcat... but I checked the equivalent Category:American women lawyers and Category:Indian women lawyers and on the basis of that sample of two decided it probably ought to be a nondiffusing subcat and copied the code from the Indian cat to make it so (correctly I hope - but I've never known much about nondiffusion). I then had a look at the history and see that you created Category:Algerian women lawyers, in 2018. Just alerting you in case (a) I've messed up or (b) it was part of a systematic set of cats which now need to have nondiffusion added, rather than (c) you overlooked it on that one odd occasion (so all is now done and dusted if I've fixed it correctly). You might like to cast an eye and see if I fixed it right. Thanks. PamD 17:08, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Freddie de Guingand

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What's the rationale for blockquote instead of quote [18] I just wanted to know if I should be doing things differently. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:06, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

hi @Hawkeye7. Long time no talk; hope you are well.
That was a WP:GENFIX by AWB, not a conscious decision by me. {{Quote}} is a redirect to {{Blockquote}}, and as with many other template redirects, AWB converts it to the canonical form. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Virus

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Hi, what does this mean in plain English, "the point is to canonicalise some cite parameters, to allow the use of IABot without triggering the phab:T291704 bug"? Graham Beards (talk) 22:54, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Graham Beards
If you did not understand phab:T291704 (which is linked from my edit summary), it would have be better to ask before you reverted[19] my AWB edit.[20]
The problem is that there is a bug in IABot which causes it in some cases to add duplicates of some cite parameters. Three parameters are involved: |accessdate=, |archivedate=, |archiveurl=.
In each case, the canonical form of the parameter has a dash: |access-date=, |archive-date=, |archive-url=. The unhyphenated form is supported and is not treated as an error, but the dashed form is preferred. Or in other words, the unhyphenated form is an alias.
Unfortunately, IABot has a wee bug: it does not recognise the undashed form, and in some cases adds a duplicate parameter, e.g. |accessdate=5 May 2018 |access-date=5 May 2018. This duplication causes the cite templates to generate an ugly error message about the duplicate parameter.
This was reported over 6 weeks ago, in phab:T291704. Sadly, the bot has not yet been fixed.
So to allow phab:T291704 to work its deadlink-fixing magic, I have been using WP:AWB to fix the undashed parameters in sets of articles which I have been feeding to IABot. I have done this wee fix to all Good articles, and the bot is currently about a third of the way through processing the GAs. The current batch is at https://iabot.toolforge.org/index.php?page=viewjob&id=8924; the rest are queued.
When the Good articles are done, I will process the Featured articles in the same way. So this afternoon, I used AWB to apply that wee fix to all Featured articles which needed it. About 10% of FAs needed the fix, and virus was one of that set.
Hope this helps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:27, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(I had a response written up, but BHG submitted before i could). So basically what she said. Rlink2 (talk) 23:32, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @Rlink2.
@Graham Beards, if you want to see examples of the valuable work which IABot does, try this recent set of its edits to the batch 8924 of Good articles which I submitted: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/InternetArchiveBot&dir=prev&offset=20211114205615&target=InternetArchiveBot
See for example this edit to Folate, in which the bot found 4 refs with dead links. In three cases, it found an archived version of the link, and added that to a ref. In the fourth case, it didn't find an archived version, so it tagged that ref with {{Dead link}}.
WP:V is a core policy, so this work by IAbot is invaluable. It helps to ensure that refs remain verifiable, and saves editors from huge amounts of work manually checking refs. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:48, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ReFill

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There are a lot of references that reflinks can't expand, and there's a tool that can expand many of them: https://refill.toolforge.org/. I just used it on Marcus Semien. Give it a try. The biggest downside is it won't add access dates. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:33, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Muboshgu.
I am aware of WP:REFILL, and I previously used it systematically on pages where WP:REFLINKS failed to clear all refs. It's powerful, but flaky: it can do great work, but can also completely angle some refs, so it requires a lot of scrutiny.
Unfortunately, @Trappist the monk (TTM) decided some time ago to snipe at me for any bare URL filling I do which adds cite templates but doesn't fill them out perfectly. See the lengthy thread above at #Abusive misrepresentation by Trappist the monk, in which TTM again decided to have a go at me for refs which I significantly improved using tools, but which have room for further improvement. So I have given up using ReFill.
That means that as I followup on the huge lists of article with WP:Bare URLs which I feed to Citation bot, I now use only Reflinks. It can't handle many URLs, and it never adds Cite templates, so it does a much less thorough job ... but restricting myself to that tool helps to keep TTM off my back.
In the last few days, I have taken to watching out for domains which Reflinks can never handle. I then tag bare URLs from those domains with {{Bare URL inline}}, using AWB if there are more than about a dozen of them. (See for example this edit[21] to Miguel Cabrera. Maybe one of those edits brought you here? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:59, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a big baseball editor and I saw Cabrera, the Grandyman, Semien, and Chapman pop up on my watchlist. I don't see how using ReFill on bare urls is a bad thing, because it's better than a bare link, and I do appreciate the tagging bringing those articles to my attention. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:11, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's my view too, @Muboshgu: better than a bare link is what matters here. Of course, any ref filled by ReFill is still way short of an ideal standard, but it is more helpful to readers than a bare URL.
I am glad that my tagging was helpful to you: that's exactly why I do the tagging! Tags help other editors identify articles which need a fix.
Good luck with your work, and I hope that TTM stays off your back. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:17, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
PS @Muboshgu: a suggestion.
I did a quick Petscan search for articles with a {{WikiProject Baseball}} banner which are tagged with a {{Bare URL inline}} or {{Cleanup bare URLs}}, i.e. those in Category:All articles with bare URLs for citations.
https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=20657369 found 303 of them. So if you are feeling energetic, you might want to make a dent in that list. Sorry if that suggestion is unhelpful. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:25, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is helpful, thanks. I'll take a look. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:34, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Republic of China at the Summer Olympics has been nominated for merging

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Category:Republic of China at the Summer Olympics has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:32, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Marking of Bare Ref

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Hi BrownHairedGirl. I see you have been very active lately in marking links as BareURL. I do see that you have also been filling in some of those URLs. May I ask that instead of just marking refs as BareURLs you spend a moment longer (or edit fewer), and actually fill in the refs? That would reduce the burden for the future. peterl (talk) 01:01, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Peterl
For the last 5 months, I have been spending my days filling in bare URLs. Since July, my primary tool has been Citation bot, to which I feed massive lists of bare URLs.
Just that targeted use by me of the bot has cleared over 100,000 bare URls, and when combined with other activities, this period has seen the number of pages with non-PDF bare URL refs nearly halved.
In addition to using the bot, I follow behind it, using other tools to fill in the refs which the bot missed. When I can't fill the refs using WP:REFLINKS, I tag them.
Along the way, I noticed that there are some websites where WP:REFLINKS consistently fails to fill the ref (see User:BrownHairedGirl/No-reflinks websites). So in the last few days, have taken to using AWB to tag such refs where WP:REFLINKS fail. Filing in those refs manually would take between twenty and one thousand times more of my time than tagging them.
So the effect of your request would be to make very little extra progress in actual clearance of refs, but massively reduce the number of bare URLs which have been tagged for the attention of other editors. That lack of tagging would mean that other editors wouldn't know where those bare URLs are.
So, the answer is no. I will not stop tagging these refs which WP:REFLINKS doesn't fill, because stopping the tagging would seriously impede the community's ability to clean them up.
I hope that clarifies things. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:10, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
[edit]

Unfortunately, you are only using the basic - aka noninteractive - reflinks. When they restarted it a couple years ago this is the first screen that comes up. When the tool is run on this screen the only thing it does is add a bot generated title. Your edit here is an example. That has not put the ref into a url template at all - it has only added a title and brackets thus the ref can still be affected by linkrot which cannot be easily fixed since IA bot likes to have a bit more info like the publisher etc. There are a couple extra steps to get reflinks to perform a more complete job. On that first screen click on the word interactive in the upper left hand corner. The next screen will have three choices in the "work on" section. Click on the third one "All unformatted links" then copy paste the article title in the box above and run the tool. As you can see here when I ran reflinks correctly it formatted the two references in the article into the proper template and filled the fields necessary to aid in fixing the refs should they ever be affected by link rot. Sadly the tool defaults back to the "noninteractive" screen after you've run it so you have to do the steps I've mentioned each time. Running the tool properly does fill many of the refs that you are tagging with the "bare url inline" tag. Past interactions with you leave me doubtful that you will take this on board but I live in hope. Just know that adding a bot generated title is not fixing a bare url so the stats you are keeping are not accurate. MarnetteD|Talk 06:00, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FYI refill2 works on putting some (though not all) of the bare urls at you list User:BrownHairedGirl/No-reflinks websites into templates. Granted you have to check your work to make sure it was done accurately. MarnetteD|Talk 06:04, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@MarnetteD: I used to use WP:REFILL2 as a second step. But I gave up doing that after Trappist the monk started giving me grief over cases where Refill2 didn't make every possible improvement. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:08, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I had a suspicion that was the reason. After I run refill 2 I take a quick peek at the ref section. If any of the red message problems appear I go ahead and fix them. Yes it slows things down a bit but not every article will need the extra attention. MarnetteD|Talk 06:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@MarnetteD: TTM objects to a wide range of cases, not just those where thee are red messages. TTM also fails to see that significantly improving a ref to the point where some omissions are tracked is a bad thing for which editors should be berated, even when those omissions are fixable by existing bots.
I don't want to waste time dealing with that attitude, so I have given up using ReFill2. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:28, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@MarnetteD: I use the reflinks gadget which I installed on my toolbar via preferences. Where is the other version you talk of? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:06, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you click on the first link I provided you will see the "non-interactive" screen. You can then procede with the steps I mentioned to see the screen that will format the refs properly. I have know way of knowing what you the screen you use looks like. I can add this link that was the original screen that reflinks used. It had limitations and I don't know why they haven't removed it completely. I know that might not be the one you use either, If you can find a way to add the new one that will get you headed in the right direction - even better will be if you can add the interactive screen. Good luck either way. MarnetteD|Talk 06:18, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@MarnetteD: thanks, I tried that on 2008 United States presidential election in Washington (state).
It doesn't overcome the problem that there are some domains which RefLinks can't handle, in that case http://www.realclearpolitics.com ... so it won't overcome the issues which have led me in the last few days to use AWB tag such URLs. My latest tagging batch, ready to roll now, includes realclearpolitics.com.
I see now how http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/view/Reflinks does allow one to get a point where it lets you specify cite templates. Thanks for explaining that. That's good in principle, but the need to open a second window and rest it every time would radically slow my workflow. So I will stick with the more lightweight version, because it allows me to work much faster at clearing WP:Bare URLs. And yes, wrapping the link in square brackets with a title does make the link non-bare according to the definitions at WP:Bare URLs. Sure, using a cite template is better, but that crude fix is a useful first step.
More fundamentally, I think we are doing different tasks, and that part of the tension between us arises from that.
My goal is to radically dent the huge number of articles with WP:Bare URLs, to provide the reader with as much extra info about the ref as can be done at speed. My efforts cannot do that if I polish the refs to the high standard I applied at for example Emma Rogan and 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election. That high standard is far too time-consuming to do en masse, so my mas cleanup is done to a lower standard, which leave the ref non-bare but with room for improvement.
The vast bulk of my work is being done with Citation bot, which operates to a mid-range standard: cite templates are used, website is usually added, authors and dates may be added. But it never adds location, issn, orig-date or archive data. (It may fix existing archive data, but wont add archives).
The rest of my work is doing as much as I can to make some quick improvement to the refs which Citation bot doesn't fix. That followup takes most of my time, but the pages in that followup are a tiny proportion of the over 100,000 pages which I have cleared using Citation bot, which at my direction is clearing all bare URLs from about 1,000 articles per day on average (the range is ~500 to 2,000 per day).
In doing that followup, my approach is to what I can to improve that page's refs in less than 30 seconds, and at most under a minute. That means accept what reflinks can do, fix any errors it makes, and tag any remaining refs.
Yes, that means that followup work will be needed by other editors. But that is inevitable: this whole exercise that both of us are doing is only a first step in trying to cleanup the omissions by other editors. The difference is that you are working to more completeness on a small number of refs, while this followup part of my work is done to a lower level of completeness on a much bigger number of articles.
New bare URLs are being add all the time: each new database dump shows ~250–300 new pages with bare URLs per day. We can't even keep up with that flow, let alone turn the tide, unless working at speed is part of the mix, and unless tagging is part of the mix to alert other editors.
I value your slow and more through work as part of the mix, and I wish you could accept the value of my high-speed work. I am keen to avoid creating barriers to further improvement of the refs I work on, so I welcome any evidence of ways in which I may inadvertently making the next steps harder. On example of that was inline tagging of refs which reflinks could otherwise fix, so I stopped that: I now use the inline tag only if reflinks fails.
I am not so far persuaded that the non-cite fills (e.g. [http://example.com FooBar]) are a barrier to further improvement, but I think we should discuss that more.
Best wishes BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:15, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, when I use reflinks, if it can make changes, it loads them directly into the edit window, so there is no chance to do anything in the first window. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you can't do a "show preview" you might tinker with it until you can. My use of the tool gives me one. MarnetteD|Talk 06:26, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You have missed the point. The way you are running reflinks it is not fixing any bare urls at all. As in the example provided above you are only adding a bot generated title. That does not prevent linkrot so you are not putting a dent in the number of bare urls. Worse than that you are creating barriers to fixing bare urls since refs the tool has added a bot generated title to are now hidden in brackets and other editors cannot readily see that they still need formatting into proper cite templates. Again reflinks is not failing since it is not being run properly. Next, I just ran reflinks on 2008 United States presidential election in Washington (state) and it fixed four of the five bare refs. The fifth (which you did note in your post) gets fixed with this. Since not making things more difficult for those of us doing the work using the slow and thorough method is not in the cards could you at least change your edit summary and remove the inaccurate statement that reflinks doesn't expand the ref since I have demonstrated that it isn't always the case. MarnetteD|Talk 20:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@MarnetteD: I am very disappointed by your response. It is you who is missing the point, and you are missing it repeatedly.
  1. Please read WP:Bare URLs. Its first sentence says A bare URL is a URL cited as a reference for some information in an article without any accompanying information about the linked page.. (Emphasis as in the original).
    So, adding the article makes it no longer a bare URL.
    Yes, of course it is better to add more info, but the title is better than nothing: it helps readers identify the article.
  2. It should be very clear to other editors that no cite template is being used. It is visible in the markup, and it is also easily visible in the rendered page because all the info is linked to the URL. So there is no barrier to identifying such refs.
  3. Your claim that reflinks is not failing since it is not being run properly is wrong, because your example is of a page where I did not run reflinks: my edit[22] to 2008 United States presidential election in Washington (state) was an AWB edit, whose sole purpose was to tag a ref to realclearpolitics.com, because reflinks cannot fill the ref which was tagged. You appear to have misread this as an assertion that reflinks cannot fix the other links, which is not what it says. The edit summary is explicit: {{Bare URL inline}} for refs which WP:REFLINKS doesn't expand. ... and the only ref which was tagged is http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5
    I did not open the page, and I did not run reflinks on it ... but I did test elsewhere that neither version of reflinks can fill in refs to realclearpolitics.com.
    I have now created a test page at User:BrownHairedGirl/sandbox101 which uses that same bare link to http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5
    Running reflinks produces the output which I had found in my testing of links to realclearpolitics.com. , but you manual at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py?page=User:BrownHairedGirl/sandbox101&citeweb=on&overwrite=&limit=20, reflinks reports: Can't get page http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5 : <urlopen error [Errno 1] _ssl.c:510: error:140770FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unknown protocol>
  4. The fact that reflinks fixed the other 4 of 5 refs is a separate issue, because my AWB edit just tagged the one ref which reflinks cannot fix. It did not try to fix any ref, and it did not make any claim about any other ref.
  5. You later manually filled[23] that ref to realclearpolitics.com. Thank you for doing that, but your manual edit[24] (summary format ref), was not done by reflinks ... so your claim that I made an inaccurate statement that reflinks doesn't expand the ref is false.
  6. So as far as I can see, my AWB edit to that page was very successful. In seconds, AWB accurately tagged a link which reflinks cannot fill, and that brought another editor to the page. Your claim that I am making things more difficult for those of us doing the work using the slow and thorough method is demonstrably false: you have not demonstrated any way in which tagging that page anything more difficult for anyone.
It has taken me over 30 minutes to write this reply, and I would much prefer not to have spent my time correcting your failures to read: failure to read WP:Bare URLs, and failure to properly read my edit summary. I am annoyed that you falsely called my edit summary inaccurate. I am also very disappointed that you chose to criticise me based on your misrepresentation of a manual edit as one by reflinks.
I find your approach here to be deeply uncivil and uncollegial. Repeated misrepresentations are highly corrosive to civil discourse, and making another editor spend lots of time correcting false assertions is highly disruptive to collaboration. I urge to rethink your approach. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(talk page stalker) I think you could get the same output MarnetteD wants without slowing down your workflow by changing line 48 of User:BrownHairedGirl/common.js to "http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py?citeweb=checked&lang=" + mw.config.get('wgContentLanguage'). Of course, by producing citation templates, you are running into a risk of causing cite errors, but that's fundamental. (Incidentally, I've been doing a lot of testing with reflinks and I cannot reproduce it converting the realclearpolitics article used as an example above) * Pppery * it has begun... 01:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @Pppery.
  1. Your suggested tweak to User:BrownHairedGirl/common.js is done[25], and it worked perfectly in this edit[26] to Howardian Hills. This is excellent -- thanks!
    @MarnetteD may want to adopt this too, because it is much simpler than the multi-step process which she described.
  2. As I note above is a post which crossed with yours, I made User:BrownHairedGirl/sandbox101 as a test page for that ref to http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5 ... and here's the URL of reflinks's failure to expand that link: http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py?page=User:BrownHairedGirl/sandbox101&citeweb=on&overwrite=&limit=20
    I am remain annoyed that MarnetteD has chosen to criticise me based on her false claim that it does fix it, and I hope she will retract that claim.
Thanks again. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:33, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
While I am very disappointed in you I did suspect that this is where things would wind up. Your pattern of unfounded claims uncivility and uncongeniality in situations like this is well known by now. Ditto your repeated misrepresentations which are highly corrosive to civil discourse. In closing I'll just note a few items. 1) My very [first example is clearly of you running reflinks incorrectly. 2) The previous edit summary discourages other editors from using reflinks since it implies the tool can't expand refs. I note that you have stopped using that summary and that is most helpful 3) I have been fixing bare urls for years and I know the guidelines quite well. Your insinuation that I don't is deeply uncivil and uncollegial. 4) I will not be retracting anything. 5) I am a man. MarnetteD|Talk 02:23, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
v@MarnetteD: enough already.
I hoped that you would have the decency to retract your false assertions, but instead you have doubled down on your nonsense and added to it with a personal attack.
  1. Running a older version of reflinks is not running reflinks incorrectly
  2. I have not stopped using that summary. That edit summary in question {{Bare URL inline}} for refs which WP:REFLINKS doesn't expand. is one I use only for the AWB edits where I have done mass tagging. The clue is in the "AWB" tag at the end of those edit summaries. (e.g.[27], [28])
    I have not done any AWB edits for the last few hours, because my time has been taken up replying to your nonsense .. but when I resume AWB edits, I will use the same edit summary.
  3. Your assertion that edit summary discourages other editors from using reflinks since it implies the tool can't expand refs is more nonsense. {{Bare URL inline}} for refs which WP:REFLINKS doesn't expand. is very clear that it is only tagging those refs which which WP:REFLINKS doesn't expand.
    Your failure to read and comprehend those six words is not a fault of my edit summary. Those who cannot or will not read plain English will experience a lot of discouragement in a lot of places, but that is not my fault.
  4. You write been fixing bare urls for years and I know the guidelines quite well. Your insinuation that I don't is deeply uncivil and uncollegial.
    If you genuinely know the guidelines quite well, then you would not in good faith claim that The way you are running reflinks it is not fixing any bare urls at all. As in the example provided above you are only adding a bot generated title.
    The first sentence of WP:Bare URLs says A bare URL is a URL cited as a reference for some information in an article without any accompanying information about the linked page., and adding a title gives accompanying info.
    I cannot know whether you genuinely do not comprehend this, or whether you are for some reason choosing to misrepresent the guideline ... but your assertions are false. Your claim that pointing this out you is "uncivil" is very nasty behaviour indeed.
  5. So you will not be retracting your misrepresentation of the guideline; not retracting your false claim that reflinks filled a ref which you actually filled manually; not retracting your false claims about my edit summary. That is disgraceful conduct, and your assertion that my correction of your falsehoods is evidence of incivility on my part is gaslighting.
I was not aware that you are a man. Marnette is a girl's name, and I have seen nothing on your user page indicates that your are male, so since I first encountered you about 8 years ago, I assumed that your were a woman. I am sorry for getting that wrong, but it is reasonable to assume that a woman's name means that user is a woman, unless they indicate otherwise. I suggest that you clarify this on your userpage, instead of reproaching me for having been misled by you.
In this discussion, you have repeatedly misrepresented facts, guidelines, and plain English, and you have tried to gaslight me by denying these falsehoods and claiming that my refusal to accept your falsehoods is uncivil.
This follows months of you badmouthing me across Wikipedia, after I refused to accept your demands that cleanup tags be applied only at the rate at which you can do clean the up.
Despite the history, I tried here to engage with you, but instead of taking that opportunity for productive dialogue you wasted hours of my time with falsehoods which you stand by, and with bogus allegations of incivility.
Enough. Get off my talkpage, and stay off. And stop badmouthing me as you did here[29] (in collusion with an Ibanned editor who was stalking me), because I will consider any more of that as harassment. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:27, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:EstcatCountryDecade/old

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Template:EstcatCountryDecade/old has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Did Q28 make a mess today? 04:27, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Template:EstcatCountry/old

[edit]

Template:EstcatCountry/old has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Did Q28 make a mess today? 04:28, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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