User talk:Colonies Chris/Archive/2013/Apr

2007–08 Middlesbrough F.C. season

Hi, I have reverted your edit to 2007–08 Middlesbrough F.C. season as it screwed up the links. This edit appears to have left lots of red links which were not there before. Keith D (talk) 20:45, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for the errors - problems with my regexes. I've reinstated the changes but correctly this time, plus some additional fixes. Colonies Chris (talk) 22:33, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks for fixes, looks OK this time. Keith D (talk) 23:55, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

List of Icelanders

Hello, I don't know if this is a problem with AWB in general, but your edit summary at List of Icelanders was misleading because you didn't add the word Maryland in anywhere ... and thank goodness for that! :-) Graham87 11:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for any confusion. My regexes automatically expand the suffix ', MD' to ', Maryland', which is right in the vast majority of cases; in this case I manually reverted that change as inappropriate of course, but I forgot to also remove the 'MD-->Maryland' entry from the automated edit summary. Colonies Chris (talk) 14:25, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

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Portuguese language template

Hey "Chris". I was curious, if you can enlighten me on why use the {lang|pt|...} format over the {lang-pt|...} in referencing the names in Portuguese. Its not a critic, I just wanted to see the debate as to one or another. The reason, why, is that the first does not indicate the language used, while the latter identifies the language-use in the text. Any incite would be helpful. ^{ruben jc} ZEORYMER (talk) 21:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Zeorymer - The 'lang-pt' format both visibly identifies the language and wikilinks it; the 'lang|pt' format just identifies it (silently) for the benefit of search engines and spellcheckers. (There's also an additional parameter 'links=no' available on some 'lang-xx' templates to tell it to visibly identify the language but not wikilink it). In articles like the Portugal-related ones I've been working on recently, it's really only necessary to explicitly identify the language the first time it appears (and not necessary to link it, as the reader isn't looking for an in-depth analysis of the Portuguese language). After that, the reader will assume that every subsequent occurrence of a few italicised non-English words in parens is also Portuguese unless otherwise stated, so I changed them all to 'lang|pt'. Colonies Chris (talk) 21:18, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Quite succinct. I will endeavor to apply what I know from this exchange in future work, including revising some of the articles I have edited. Appreciate your time in clarifying the distinction. ^{ruben jc} ZEORYMER (talk) 01:31, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Removing date links

Hi. Please read: WP:YEARLINK: "Intrinsically chronological articles (1789, January, and 1940s) may themselves contain linked chronological items." Deb (talk) 16:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

During the date unlinking debates, it was agreed that only those articles which are purely devoted to a specific year or month-day count as 'intrinsically chronological'. 'Year in ....' articles do not meet that criterion, for the very good reason that month-day links within such articles are utterly useless. Why would someone who's interested in the literature-related events of 2011 want to follow a link to a list of almost entirely non-literature-related events that happened on March 6, say, in a random selection of other years? Such links are neither 'relevant' nor 'appropriate to the subject' (to quote the MoS). Colonies Chris (talk) 16:59, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

That was never agreed during the debates. Whether or not you find the links helpful, other people do. Please don't keep removing them, as it serves no useful purpose apart from keeping your own edit count up. Deb (talk) 18:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

To quote from the MoS, whose wording was agreed during those debates:

Month-and-day linking

Month-and-day articles (e.g. February 24 and 10 July) should not be linked unless their content is relevant and appropriate to the subject. Such links should share an important connection with that subject other than that the events occurred on the same date. For example, editors should not link the date (or year) in a sentence such as (from Sydney Opera House): "The Sydney Opera House was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007", because little, if any, of the contents of either June 28 or 2007 are germane to either UNESCO, a World Heritage Site, or the Sydney Opera House.

References to commemorative days (Saint Patrick's Day) are treated as for any other link. Intrinsically chronological articles (1789, January, and 1940s) may themselves contain linked chronological items.

Note that (a) there is a requirement for the links to be 'relevant and appropriate' and (b) that the examples given of intrinsically chronological' articles do not include 'Year in....' articles, for the reasons I listed above; in 2011 in literature, for example, a link to March 6 has no relevance either to 2011 or to literature, beyond what's already in the article. Why don't you answer my question? In what way are those links useful or 'relevant and appropriate'? What evidence do you have for your assertion that that anyone finds those month-day links useful? Colonies Chris (talk) 22:38, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Comment. Forgive my interceding, but I do watchlist this talk page. Chris has pointed to the relevant details of the community decision, with his characteristic logic and clarity. In the community decision (involving about 500 editors, as I remember), a compromise was presented and approved that allows a narrow range of articles to retain target-links to these items—that is, the analogous anchor-articles. It was against the better judgement of some editors, but I think we've come to accept that it was a reasonable compromise. However, Deb continues to edit-war on a set of articles she patrols that were not covered by the new rules. I gave up on the sets of articles I mention above after Deb showed that she is prepared to wage war when en.WP's norms are brought to these sequestered articles. The articles around which she has dug a moat and which are protected by arrays of canon include timelines and year-in-X of art/music/literature in some countries, and various aspects of the history of the British Isles. It's hard to see the relevance to month–day and year links in, say, 1952 in British music; this breaks a fundamental requirement of MOSLINK irrespective of the community decision: that link-targets should be as focused as possible. For example, few people understand the insistence in such as article on linking 3 January (which opens with "Joan of Arc is handed over to Bishop Pierre Cauchon", and "Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine"). And it's even less fathomable given the prominent and sizeable navbox that appears at the top of each of these articles, leading to a number of families of year-in-X, including the inline duplications. Insisting on this duplication looks like advertising to me, rather than the proper use of wikilinking as it has evolved over the past decade on en.WP. There is now a widely accepted emphasis on readers rather than editors in this respect, and an acceptance that carpet-linking by formula is likely to weaken the utility of the system.

I note also that day–month and year links still retain a privilege accorded to no other category of links: appearance on the main page, where they're exposed to millions of hits every day. The continuation of On this day is not supported by a majority of editors if the RfC last year is anything to go by, and it's only inertia that stops valuable real estate from being otherwise allocated on a page that is cluttered with far too much text. So Deb, one would be grateful, in your position, for having that continual exposure to day–month and year links, which runs like an automated factory production line with hardly any creative input nowadays ... a bit like an advert, in my view. I'm quite willing to support the retention of OTD (but I'd like it to be shorter and more reader-oriented, with less annual repetition). However, allowing this class of link-farms to remain in pre-2010 condition at Deb's behest is stretching the cohesiveness of en.WP, in my view.

While we're talking, there's another troubling issue I'll mention here: the creation and tending of a new set of articles: month–year. I cannot see how this is worth linking to ever, in thematic terms. Tony (talk) 02:54, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

There are indeed people who are obsessed with their own edit count or page-creation count, but I doubt if Chris is so obsessed. They are a bit like birthdays: once you get past 30 (in the case of birthdays), and 10,000 (in the case of edit counts), individual ones don't matter all that much any more for most people. Unless of course that person doesn't have a life ;-) -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:12, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. I took no notice of that random and silly bit of abuse. I don't even know what my edit count is. Colonies Chris (talk) 09:06, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, you mean you didn't realise you were one of the "400 most active wikipedians"? My mistake. I notice that all those who have jumped in to support you are people who sided with you in that debate, so it's hardly surprising that they agree with you now. And I note that you have been previously blocked for refusing to abide by the consensus on date delinking. Nevertheless, there was never anything said to suggest that Year in Topic articles somehow "do not count" as Year articles. The fact that you spend a lot of your time removing those links is not in any way supportive of your argument. Deb (talk) 10:49, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I note that while block-reverting the changes you don't like, you have made no attempt to reinstate all the other fixes, such as spelling corrections, that I made. Perhaps you might like to raise your edit count with a few more constructive edits? Colonies Chris (talk) 11:17, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

(e.c.) Good point, Chris. This is what Deb did to my edits a while go, too. Stock in trade that shows an editor-oriented obsession rather than respect for our readers. Deb otherwise does good gnoming work, I must say; I've noticed, for example, painstaking and skilful reworking of clunky dates/locations of birth and death in bio articles. I do wish one could connect with her on the linking issue. Tony (talk) 13:03, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

• It seems that you may still be using the original dates script created by Lightmouse. I think you may find it helpful to try out the most advanced script for the job. Continual development of this tool has resulted in what I believe is a more sophisticated and error-free script. The script can now cope with most date variants, and effectively 'flip' date ranges and fairly complex date strings whilst being secure in protecting the 'sacrosanct'. Overall tracking is made possible by the script adding a maintenance template that allows tracking of when dates were last aligned in any given article (see categories here). I would incidentally note that your edits are similar to mine in many respects, focussing on style matters, and you may be interested in exploring my script library. Happy editing! -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:22, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

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