User talk:Folly Mox

Red Cliffs

Hello Folly Mox, as one of the watchers of the Battle of Red Cliffs page, I must thank you and Remsense for your ongoing efforts to save it from being delisted as a FA! (And please accept my apologies for leaving the page in such a state of disrepair since its nomination - I must admit that my interest in the topic drifted away since.) Regarding your puzzlement on the edit summary here though,[1] I believe I have an answer. The mysterious Wang Li refers to Wang Li (linguist), whose placement of the historic Chibi at Jiayu can be found in 古代漢語 vol. 4, page 1319, though he does not elaborate on how he came to the conclusion (and hence, in my opinion, not worthy of inclusion). Thought you would like to know in any case. Happy editing. _dk (talk) 05:41, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Just popping in because I happen to be watching Molly's talkpage: please don't disparage your work like that. I have the niche that I do but I would struggle tremendously doing the work you did to get the article to this point. I've been learning a lot editing articles, but I am still most comfortable tweaking and preening the meat of the work done by others whom I depend on and appreciate :) a place like this requires many different niches of editor, and you are a huge part of why the article is able to become what it will become. cheers! Remsense留 05:56, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

_dk, thanks so much for resolving that mystery! I agree that the mention in 古代漢語 doesn't really merit inclusion, and given the scope of the work is likely an uncritical acceptance of another's theory.

I feel you on "interest drift". I told someone a few months ago that 三國 period stuff is something I get pulled back into Michael Corleone style moreso than where I'd really still prefer to be doing content work, but so it goes. I feel like I remember maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, before I registered an account, it was you and like one or two others laying the groundwork for hundreds of Three Kingdoms articles, so your contributions have been fundamental here.

I'd be surprised if any 2008-era FA would pass today's much higher standards, and no apologies needed for not managing the article for a decade and a half. Thanks so much for stopping by! Folly Mox (talk) 11:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, @Remsense and @Folly Mox! (I must have you know that your well-intentioned reminiscence has aged me considerably and given me irrecoverable psychic damage. ) _dk (talk) 01:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

_dk, oops 😅 Feeling old gets psychologically more comfortable over time, even as it becomes physically more challenging (my new catchphrase this year is "Why does that hurt?"). Folly Mox (talk) 11:41, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Citation bot

Individual activators of Citation bot are limited in their ability to do anything about possible errors the bot makes. In the latest case to which you alerted me, I don't know if the bot will repeat the edit now that you changed the template to conference. It is best to bring these issues to the bot talk page. Abductive (reasoning) 18:05, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Abductive, I had a sassy message all typed out a few days ago, and never posted it. I still want to quote the top of User:Citation bot, which reads Editors who activate this bot should carefully check the results to make sure that they are as expected. I see some high volume editors like yourself activate the bot hundreds of times daily, and seldom do cleanup on the articles where it leaves errors behind.

But I do take your point that fixing the cause of the errors is more important and effective than holding individual bot activators accountable for their own cleanup. User talk:Citation bot is probably sick of me by now, but I've begun keeping closer track of my reverts and fixes, so I can be more helpful in my QA / debugging. I'll also stop mentioning you in edit summaries where I clean up an error Citation bot introduced during your runs of it. Thanks, Folly Mox (talk) 19:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

One thing for sure is that the bot maintainers are saints who really do try to fix things and don't mind at all dealing with the complaints. Abductive (reasoning) 21:09, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Would be hot if you could apply some additional pressure there to get that bot to stop changing specific-page citations in journal cites to the entire page-range of the article. Some journal articles are tens of pages long, and occasionally they breach over 100, so this bot activity is "reader-hateful". Both I and Trappist raised this complaint, but the bot operator did not seem interested in listening. Same with the bot changing |date= to |year=; the date parameter is preferred because it is more flexible and just-a-year dates often get "upgraded" to more complete information. Probably around 20% of the citation cleanup I do is improving citation specificity, and incomplete dates (on non-books like journal papers, newspaper articles, and webpages) are a very common factor in that. It's obnoxious that I have to manually change it back to |date= when it began that way on purpose but the bot futzed it to |year= for no reason at all (WP:COSMETICBOT failure and then some, since it's actually reducing functionality and is not purely cosmetic). And thirdly, there is absolutely no purpose in the bot changing consistent |work= to pointlessly longwinded inconsistent aliases of it like |newspaper=, |journal=, |magazine=, |website=, etc. But I just don't seem to get anywhere with that bot author/operator.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:47, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Actually, I've always been confused by "work", and I think that sort of thing is debated by the folks at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Abductive (reasoning) 01:03, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I've been very slowly whittling down Category:CS1 errors: periodical ignored (23,153), with some help from GoingBatty and even Citation bot itself, and I've found that the |work= parameter is very commonly misunderstood. I don't like that Citation bot unnecessarily changes it to specific aliases, but I could see how it could help newer editors understand what the parameter is meant to hold. I think I've seen almost every field there now: author, editor, translator, publisher (very common, sometimes an artifact of a translation module), title, chapter, location, and even quote. I can't remember seeing volume, edition, or page, but I've also seen it hold miscellaneous bibliographical information. I use |work= in my own citations because it is the shortest if its aliases, but its name lends itself to misunderstanding.

I do also wish Citation bot would stay away from page numbers, and there's another script which is even worse, reporting the total page count of printed materials (a common bibliographic detail) and including that in the citation template, as if everyone citing a book is citing the final page of the index.

On the other hand, it's pretty common for people to leave out page numbers when really they should be including them, and I've often wished that |pages= could coexist with |page= or |at=, so a page range for an article or chapter could be provided while also specifying which exact page is being cited, without resorting to {{rp}} (which moves specificity out of the template and back into the article body), using |quote-page= (which requires |quote=, or moving the full citation into a Sources section and converting references to it into shortened footnotes (which is a wholeass process). Folly Mox (talk) 13:39, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Teh kittehs

Saw that you liked Cat communication a lot. If you have general interest on the feline side, WP:WikiProject Cats badly needs active participants. It's kind of unbelievable, given the popularity of cats on the Internet, but the wikiproject is rather moribund, and we get a lot of bad drive-by edits, especially to breed articles and to veterinary ones.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:14, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi SMcCandlish, thanks for stopping by! I'm actually supposed to be working on an FAR this month, so in terms of content I'll probably not be much use, but I can prioritise WikiProject Cats for some gnoming work whenever I'm doing that. I'd also like you to know that even though we disagree on some stylistic preferences, I still have a lot of respect for you. Thanks again and happy editing, Folly Mox (talk) 18:58, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Same here, and I suspect some of the disagreements are actually more procedural/processual than substantive. (Like the one about putting East Asian names in family-name-first citations in a style like Soga Keiho, without a comma, instead of Soga, Keiho. For me, it is a matter of whether there is a clear consensus to do this – and there would be objections because of inconsitency with Smith, Janet, etc., and potential confusion on pages with untemplated citations not yet using a clear name order, and so on. It's not about me having a personal objection to the format because I simply don't like it or something. If there were an RfC about it I would have to really carefully weigh those con arguments against the cultural-respect and related pro ones.) I know I can argue forcefully sometimes, and I had actually already been thinking of dropping you an {{Olive branch}}.

Anyway, any additional watchlisting of cat articles would be great!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:18, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Invitation

Hello Folly Mox, we need experienced volunteers.

• New Page Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles. We could use a few extra hands on deck if you think you can help.
• Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; Wikipedia needs experienced users to perform this task and there are precious few with the appropriate skills. Even a couple reviews a day can make a huge difference.
• Kindly read the tutorial before making your decision (if it looks daunting, don't worry, it basically boils down to checking CSD, notability, and title). If this looks like something that you can do, please consider joining us.
• If you would like to join the project and help out, please see the granting conditions. You can apply for the user-right HERE.
• If you have questions, please feel free to drop a message at the reviewer's discussion board.
• Cheers, and hope to see you around.

Sent by NPP Coordination using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

XY problem at the Tea house

Hi, Folly Mox, and thanks for your responses to the squirrely footnote question at the Tea house. Not sure if you're subscribed and have seen the aftermath, and I wanted to introduce you to the concept of the XY problem in case you were unfamiliar with it, as it is a conceptual framework that can be very helpful and save everybody a lot of time at venues like the Tea house, WP:Help desk, and so on.

I started to respond to OP in kind, as you did, because the most natural response to a question is to try to understand what they are asking, and then answer to the best of ones ability, because that seems self-evidently the best approach. But sometimes it isn't, and I ended up in the weeds with a lot of irrelevant nonsense; basically correct, as far as it went, but answering the wrong question and therefore unhelpful and a waste of my time and theirs.

The Eureka moment was reframing, and realizing that the OP had an XY problem and that that really wasn't their question at all. I can't mind-read, but I took a guess and either it was right or close enough, and it looks like they are now on track to something that will likely pan out. Had I thought of that at first, I could've saved myself the pointless analysis I did on their original question. As a Tea house responder, it's worth always asking oneself, "Is this really their question, or is it a subproblem of some possibly convoluted approach they've come up with in an attempt to solve their real issue, and if so, what is the real, underlying question?" Just thought you'd like to know. Mathglot (talk) 22:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mathglot, thanks for swinging by with the link. I am familiar with that problem, and have encountered it many times in the past, although I wasn't aware of its technical name. Thanks for the reminder of best practices; I think I might have been too eager to try to help since the questioner had a relatively detailed question that even included a link to an example article, at a venue where maybe 20% of questions involve checking a user's contributions or even global contributions just to figure out what article they're talking about.

I feel like that thread had a happy conclusion thanks so your involvement, and I feel thoughtless for having forgotten, in a comment right after I said templates couldn't insert page code in multiple locations, that the backlinks are generated in the References section rather than the locus of citation. Whoops. Anyway thanks again and happy new year. Folly Mox (talk) 12:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, Folly Mox. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.Doug Weller talk 17:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Replied via email 🙏🏽 Folly Mox (talk) 10:58, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

In appreciation

		The Guidance Barnstar
		For going far beyond what I expected in helping me source and cite a single sentence at the Hö'elün FAC. Your efforts are much appreciated. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:42, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	BinaryBrainBug (talk) 21:49, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

We miss you!

A month without edits!? Hope you're doing well! Your efforts are much missed here. Aza24 (talk) 23:45, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Say something...

Folly Mox, I hope this message finds you well and you are able to read it even if unable to respond. I have a few minutes left here today and remembered I hadn't seen you about the project for some time. Perhaps it is my intuition or the connection you spoke of last year, which I completely agree is an apt analogy, but I immediately grew concerned and so you are hearing from me now. I will continue to sing songs over you and trust you are safe, only taking time away, a much needed break. You are an invaluable member of this community and your presence is missed when you are away. From one tributary to another, return swiftly, we have more rivers to form. I still see you and appreciate you. --ARoseWolf 19:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Very much agreed. It's been on the record already that Folly is a big part of why I'm around these parts, and they are always a wonderful presence, even if they happen to not be present. Remsense诉 18:14, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Signups open for The Core Contest 2024

The Core Contest—Wikipedia's most exciting contest—returns again this year from April 15 to May 31. The goal: to improve vital or other core articles, with a focus on those in the worst state of disrepair. Editing can be done individually, but in the past groups have also successfully competed. There is £300 of prize money divided among editors who provide the "best additive encyclopedic value". Signups are open now. Cheers from the judges, Femke, Casliber, Aza24. – Aza24 (talk) 02:20, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

If you wish to start or stop receiving news about The Core Contest, please add or remove yourself from the delivery list.

You ever stand up too quickly?

and lose consciousness due to low blood pressure and tip over backwards and bonk your head on the metal corner of an elevated platform and have a two minute grand mal seizure? And your position prior to being noticed by coworkers is half on an empty pallet, convulsing your sciatic nerve by the L5 vertebra right into the corner of the pallet such that you lose function in your left leg for two weeks?

I'm not sure how this broke my phone but by the time I had access to my things at the hospital, it was off and would neither turn on nor take a charge.

While convalescing, I did get into my primary email on my new phone, but this account is registered to my older backup email, and I was in 2FA hell with regards to password recovery. I was also too wrecked and despondent to really dig into the problem or check my usertalk logged out. I picked up some other hobbies and dependencies on natural neuropathic painkillers.

Yesterday I was having a flareup, and was relegated to the office for sit-down labour, where I discovered that the login to my backup email I had performed during the onboarding process months ago was horrifyingly still valid in the browser that wasn't Chrome.

So I've regained account access, and – most days – the ability to walk without a cane. Apologies to those concerned wikifriends who have left kind messages in my absence: @ARoseWolf, Remsense, and Aza24: It was inconsiderate of me not to check in as an IP and let folks know I'm still alive. My apologies and thanks to all of you for your kind words and concern.

Folly Mox (talk) 13:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

I was so happy to see your name in my watchlist, and I am so glad to hear you are slowly recovering amid a difficult situation. My thoughts are with you as you continue to do so. Remsense诉 21:58, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Wow!–That is quite the experience. I'm wishing you the best, and a speedy recovery. It sounds like you've powered through the worst of it. Your presence and contributions have been much missed here! Aza24 (talk) 06:20, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh my goodness -- welcome back, and best wishes for continuing recovery! --JBL (talk) 20:24, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

CS1 error on Pearl Thusi

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Pearl Thusi, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A bare URL error. References show this error when one of the URL-containing parameters cannot be paired with an associated title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 16:31, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I know, User:Qwerfjkl (bot)#Task 17. I had to go back to work before I could fill it in. I fixed it. Folly Mox (talk) 17:51, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you

For replying on my talk page to my student. And there is no need for any apology, you are not interfering, I asked for feedback from community members so students can see how Wikipedia works. It does not always happen, but when someone is interested in articles of my students and engages them in a wonderful way like you've done, then it's great for everyone. Once again, thank you for helping out and you are more then welcome to review activities of other students of mine and comment on them (many topics are not as high profile and "useful" as the prehistory... one, however - I was genuinely surprised when I realized that one is missing few weeks ago). _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 05:55, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for understanding, and for very charitably characterising my edit summaries at the article as helpful. The cynic in me notes that how Wikipedia works – in this case as in many – seems to be editors flitting in to correct technical and stylistic issues without verifying content or adding sourced information. I do intend to get around to the more important parts of article editing, but as my work week has begun it may be an attenuated and inconsistent process. Folly Mox (talk) 13:00, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

If you're hunting for EL:s out of place

You may find this a little interesting:

• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Film/Archive_79#Masking_imdb_links_as_wikilinks
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Film/Archive_79#Masking_imdb_links_as_wikilinks,_again

They keep popping up and me and Mike Turnbull (well, mostly Mike Turnbull) keep removing them. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Poorly sourced royalty articles

To follow up from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zhu Zhigeng, the same author has created dozens of similarly poorly-sourced articles on minor members of Chinese and Japanese royalty. What do you suggest doing about them? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:57, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

AirshipJungleman29, I'm not sure if any general approach is best here: I looked at a sample of five of these articles, selected rather arbitrarily, the sourcing and notability vary considerably. Tian Xiuying looks good, Consort Yi (Kangxi) seems fine if a bit padded, Prince Hwaui also looks pretty padded but might be ok, Zhao Tingmei is probably not quite notable enough for his own article, and Zhu Mo is a pure genealogical record ripe for merge / redirect to House of Zhu.

I haven't put in the legwork of actually looking for additional sourcing on any of these people, but judging by the sources used by the article creator, they probably already found them all. Also I should note I'm not competent in Japanese or Korean historiographical tradition, so I wouldn't even know how best to approach improving sourcing for minor nobility from those places.

In general, as I noted at one or both of the LUGSTUBS discussions, my philosophy on topics of borderline notability is to create better list articles, with fuller information and better annotation than our current convention of "List article" = tabular data (Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway is my go-to example for how borderline notable topics can be presented in useful context). So my preference for borderline notable topics usually starts with merge / redirect.

Many of these 66 articles are about premodern women, and written histories are typically pretty terse about women. It's worth disclosing that I have a bit of a personal bias towards more inclusiveness for biographies of borderline notable historical women, although I know consensus is that everyone gets the same notability requirements.

So I guess I don't really have an actionable suggestion: the articles that are nothing but genealogical data can be redirected, others can be merged, others should stay. It will have to be done case by case, and at a gentle pace, because User:16272js is still an active editor, and we don't want to drive them away.

When's your RfA by the way? I feel like I've had it watchlisted since the beginning of 2024. Best, Folly Mox (talk) 12:44, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Good thinking and suggestions all. I'm especially inclined to agree with you on the better list articles front.

I'm a bit busy with content work at the moment, so I'll be running later in the year, maybe as part of the new election trial process? We'll see how it goes. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:27, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Chinese history titles

The post move discussion at Talk:Shiji is making me look elsewhere: Emperor Gaozu of Han, for instance. Wilkinson actually says, "The founders of major dynasties are more often known by their personal names" (I'll have to find the page somewhere, but I'm almost 100% sure). This is a rather unusually direct scholarly statement on a matter that could directly inform Wikipedia's naming policies. And its not too surprising either, Liu Bang completely dwarfs the current name. I'm sure there are others, Li Yuan comes to mind. Aza24 (talk) 23:46, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

That's pretty surprising to me! Remsense诉 23:56, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is full of surprises :)

I found the exact quote, its on xxi in the 5th edition, he has a list talking about the most common title for the rulers of each dynasty, and then says:

"The two main exceptions are the first and last rulers. The leveling reaction against the imperial system that began in the twentieth century has ensured that emperors, especially better known ones, such as the founders of major dynasties, are often anachronistically referred to by their personal names rather than by their titles". The examples he gives are Liu Bang, Zhao Kuangyin, Zhu Yuanzhang and of course Nurhaci – Aza24 (talk) 00:15, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not super surprised by that, honestly. I feel like I see "Liu Bang" way more frequently than any other option. Ditto for Zhu Yuanzhang.

Who was it who wrote the 白話 survey histories? Qian Mu? I think I'm either thinking of him or Bo Yang, but might just be forgetting. Anyway I remember someone mid–20th-century being so opposed to the idea of legitimating imperial rule that every single monarch was always referred to by their personal name, and his books influenced an entire generation of readers.

Anyway hopefully this phenomenon is contained to dynastic founders and failers. It would be quite a tedious literature review to do all the emperors. Maybe we should all take turns about it. Folly Mox (talk) 00:35, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I would be surprised if it the personal name exceptions expanded past the first/last rulers, that is, for major dynasties (smaller/competing dynasties often seem to exclusively use personal names. I fear having some emperors with different names will upset some, perhaps approaching the sentiments of this monstrosity...

Re [2] – if you think that's bad, our Qin Shi Huang article manages to use three different English translations of the Shiji! Aza24 (talk) 00:40, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh my gosh the European Monarch RFC... funny how we try having these big conversations so we can stop having a bunch of similar, repetitive small conversations, and the big conversations end up being six times worse than all the small ones put together.

I think I might prefer up to seven different translations for the Shiji to a single one with parameters |last= B.C. |first=Sima, Qian, approximately 145 B.C.-approximately 86, but I'm particularly sensitive to garbage citations after the incident.

I suppose I should just move that template to {{Cite Shiji}} and get with the transclusions. I got sidetracked by Tao Te Ching, and this mysterious eighteen year old failed verification, then I got sidetracked twice in a row an arc from that, and the final sidetrack led me back to the Shiji. Folly Mox (talk) 01:09, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Alsa, Texas

Thanks. The maps now show it closer to Lake Taw... Some maps and W articles list a sec set of L&L. Here are coordinates from Alsa on Google Maps... 32°49'06.0"N 96°02'02.0"W 32.818333, -96.033889 Found on upper left of screen/display. DMc75771 (talk) 19:56, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Cool, thank you for noticing the error! Looks like Google maps, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, and Wikipedia now all have the same coordinates. I think the two sets of coordinates are just identical values rendered once in degrees–minutes–seconds and once in decimal degrees. Folly Mox (talk) 20:27, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

A Barnstar for You!

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		I feel like your line in the last RfA should be a motto for everyone working here "social capital, free time, persistence, and javascript". Thanks for the laugh and the painful truth that I really need to learn Javascript! Dr vulpes (Talk) 01:36, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Capital moving

Of course the Chinese are known for moving their capital so much, but looking at the scanty Xia/Shang info, there seems to have been a comparatively extreme frequency at doing so. Sometimes there are 4 rulers in a row, each with different capitals. Any idea(s) why? I'm thinking flooding or maybe strategic maneuvering against outside invaders but not sure. Aza24 (talk) 01:49, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Agnatic seniority led to some iffy internal political situations in the royal house, plus I think I remember some Shang specialist a few decades ago saying how the Shang king's power was extremely personal in terms of range, and anytime a new power base was set up, the king would personally have to reside there to control the locals. Gilles Boileau has a few recent good articles on mid-Shang stuff, a 2023 on at I think BSOAS, and a 2024 one at Early China; those might have better insight.

Part of it too is the transmitted record: Pan Geng is known for almost nothing aside for moving the capital, and stories of capital moves may have been emphasised during the early Zhou to give a sense of normality to the process.

There's another fairly recent book on Shang stuff that I'll try to see about any information, and at minimum relay the title. As to Xia, I have no insight. Folly Mox (talk) 02:34, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry Aza24, I shouldn't have been trying to reply here and IRL with my roommate simultaneously. Here are the more specific of the four sources I mentioned:

• Campbell, Roderick (2018). Violence, Kinship, and the Early Chinese State. doi:10.1017/9781108178563.
• Boileau, Gilles (2023). "The Prince of Huayuanzhuang THE 花園莊, Zu Jia 祖甲, and the succession of Wu Ding 武丁: Alliance and crisis". Early China. 46: 79–130. doi:10.1017/eac.2023.1.
• Boileau, Gilles (2023). "Shang Dynasty's "nine generations chaos" and the Reign of Wu Ding: towards a Unilineal Line of Transmission of Royal Power". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 86 (2): 293–315. doi:10.1017/S0041977X23000277.

All three are Cambridge University Press. As to the "someone said something a few decades ago" clouded memory, I'll see if I can find what I'm mentioning....

For clarity, I'm not certain if any of these sources has a good answer to the question, but I liked them and they're recent and topical. Folly Mox (talk) 03:26, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Newcomer homepage

This edit you just made doesn't work for me, and I do have a newcomer homepage. (It just sends me to the base link, Special:Preferences. -- asilvering (talk) 20:38, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Tagged you in Special:Diff/1244941352, where I tried a different link, then replied here for the record. Folly Mox (talk) 02:29, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I think we'll have to describe it in prose. That still doesn't get me any closer than the base Preferences page. If I'm understanding you correctly, the location you're trying to send people to is "Newcomer editor features", at the bottom of that page. -- asilvering (talk) 17:15, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering: the initial link went straight to the toggle; I changed it to point to the "Newcomer editor features" subsection, but since that didn't work for you either I've restored the original link and added navigation directions in Special:Diff/1245046149. Folly Mox (talk) 18:05, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Great. And too bad, since a direct link would have been much cleaner. -- asilvering (talk) 20:09, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Primary Source vs Secondary Source

Hello Folly Mox, you may recall reviewing and editing Bobbie R. Allen several months ago - Thank you!

This morning, I reviewed the links provided in the Primary Source banner at the top of the article. Regarding links on Books, Bobbie R. Allen is found nearly 100 times. Most of the links are related to congressional testimony but 5-6 are book publications focused on aviation safety. When I researched what sources constitute a primary vs. secondary source, I find that "Congressional Record is considered a secondary authority from a legal perspective". Regarding actual books, I found they are "generally considered a secondary source because it typically analyzes, interprets, or discusses information from primary sources". Regarding links to Newspaper Articles, there are approximately 11 articles which report on aircraft accidents where Mr. Allen was contributing to the investigation. When researching the primary vs. secondary categories of Newspaper articles, I see that "articles that contain reporting of current events are considered primary, while articles that provide analysis of events that happened in the past are considered secondary". Since Mr. Allen's work was always within the "analysis" realm of these events, I would think these newspaper articles would also be in the category of secondary.

This, as I'm sure you guessed, leads me to ask if the Primary Source banner could be removed from his article?

Thanks again for your interest in Mr. Allen's work! Wdallen49 (talk) 13:28, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Wdallen49: good to see you again! Apologies for the late response. I think Congressional testimony is typically considered primary, since it is not assessed by later authors but represents a direct transcript of legal proceedings. I don't have time at the moment to reassess the Bobbie R. Allen article's sourcing, but I'll have another look at it today after work or later this week ☺️ Folly Mox (talk) 14:15, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, sounds good Wdallen49 (talk) 16:37, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Seven years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:55, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Gerda! It's actually rather believable that 2017 was seven years ago. 🙏🏽 Folly Mox (talk) 14:58, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Sfn

Re this...do you have any insight on why we're still using this citation method which seems like it's so prone to being broken? I get Harv and sfn errors all the time. The errors I get with other methods seem to be things like the edition containing an unexpected character or the author being something like Staff, Newsdesk. Nothing that actually breaks the citation. Am I not reading the right talk page? Valereee (talk) 19:38, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

(talk page jaguar) It can break, but it breaks relatively harmlessly (a shortcite is still pretty likely to be of use to the reader) and produces minimal visual disruption of the wikitext while reflecting its semantics. In my mind, it's also ideal organizationally for articles that (1) cite mostly books and (2) cite several distinct locations in at least a few of the aforementioned books. I'm assuming the competition includes {{rp}} or manual formatting of some stripe, but not the impending subreferences feature? Remsense ‥ 论 19:56, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Valereee, "citing lots of different locations in the same book" is probably what I'd guess the most common push factor is for choosing shortened footnotes. It does also produce cleaner wikicode, without the same mistargeting and lookup worries that named refs and list-defined refs can entail. It probably also satisfies those editors who are used to inline parenthetical referencing, which we've deprecated.

I don't have any real insight into the relative level of brokenness between shortened footnotes and fully described footnotes, but {{clc}} returns Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors (4,814) and Category:Harv and Sfn multiple-target errors (0). Meanwhile regular CS1 errors that significantly affect the usefulness of the citation be like Category:CS1 errors: missing periodical (37,789), Category:CS1 errors: missing title (21,060), Category:CS1 maint: archived copy as title (52,758), etc.

Not sure what any of this means other than: algorithms are not good at creating correct citations, and people should be better at previewing all the way to the bottom of the page when performing copypastes. Folly Mox (talk) 23:55, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I've suprised myself a few times when I moved stuff around and discovered the references were now full of big red warnings. :) Valereee (talk) 11:32, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Also, I failed to do due diligence and check all (or even a representative subset) of the diffs posted in the ANI report. A lot were removals of undefined refnames, a completely separate kind of error from most of the ones mentioned here, and not contingent upon one citation style or another.

I've also made my own share of errors. My favourite might be how list-defined references will scream at me in giant red letters just because I've defined a reference I plan to use in an article but haven't got round to citing it yet. Folly Mox (talk) 12:39, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Because Wikipedia allows saving errors -- anything: bad HTML, bad CSS, screwed up mark up, broken template invocations, unbalanced open-and-close tags, busted references, ... -- and that users don't preview before publishing, it's inevitable that errors accumulate. Imagine how much better the content would be if the editor didn't allow saving pages that had more errors than they did before the edit. -- mikeblas (talk) 21:31, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Or at least if the interface would allow the edit to be saved only after popping up a big message like "hey you have broken references! please double check your edit and see what the problem is", like any other edit filter set to warn.

If we had edit filters that caught and displayed any errors thrown by mw:Extension:Cite, Module:CS1, and Module:Footnotes, the rate of accumulation of new referencing errors would certainly diminish significantly. I'm sure there would be some collateral damage: people who can't figure out how to fix the error and don't know they can still publish might not commit their edits at all; people might publish, miss the warning, and close the tab assuming job done; etc.

Something that might be harder to implement and less effective (but also less intrusive) might be an error foregrounder on preview, where any errors thrown by anything on the page would be collated at the top of the preview, each of them linking to where the error occurs down the page.

But just silently accepting errors, trusting that the editor will scroll all the way through the article to the references at the bottom to double check their work, no matter how small a change they're making, how much of a hurry they're in, how bad their connection is, how laggy the preview is, and so on— this is a recipe for even experienced editors to publish errors with some frequency. Folly Mox (talk) 21:47, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

thank you

Hello Folly! Thank you very much for considering the evidence and context so deeply and broadly over at my AN/I case thread. Your input was considerate and comprehensive, and very refreshing. Your comments off-thread in a couple other places, plus helping out with the "fixes", was very much appreciated. -- mikeblas (talk) 21:32, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome mikeblas! I seem to have missed this earlier, possibly because I was composing a response one thread up, or clicked through the first notification and missed the second, or something. Thank you for the kind words. ANI would be funny were it not so tragic. Hoping for a full recovery, Folly Mox (talk) 03:08, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the Muddy Flat edits. Also you are funny. (X

You are a good adult. :D Historyguy1138 (talk) 17:57, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome! Found my way to Battle of Muddy Flat via your post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China. I appreciate the vote of confidence, but unfortunately for all involved (especially me), after all this time and practice I still really suck at being an adult. My nonpublic personal information verifies this. Folly Mox (talk) 23:38, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Pssst hey... @Folly Mox guess what... we all suck at being adults. Some of us just suck less than others. (;

I don't know your nonpublic personal information, nor am I asking you for it, but you helped me with my work. So that is a step in the right direction. And I thank you for it. (: Historyguy1138 (talk) 05:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Tell me about your interest in China please, if you feel so inclined. (:

What did you think of the article? Historyguy1138 (talk) 05:14, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I claim to be a subject matter expert on early China, with a second chronological topic area competence in the Three Kingdoms period, and concentrations in political dynamics, textual histories, and historiography. Never finished my graduate degree, which I still owe money about.

I don't even remember how or why I became interested in Chinese history, but I edit the area because I keep up on the research, have a bunch of sources, and can read Classical Chinese (and, effortfully, modern Chinese). It's my nerd shit, to use a favoured phrase of someone who played a major role in my life this decade.

Historyguy1138, I may disappoint you here with this additional honesty, but I did not read the article. I don't find military history to be particularly interesting, nor the late Qing dynasty, and my seemingly increasingly worse adult-onset ADHD makes reading things more difficult than it used to be. I just saw some citations I felt I could improve – my primary contributions to this project by volume of edits as opposed to value of content created – and did so, in addition to some Wikidata stuff I am just beginning to learn how to do. The article seems fine. I'm not sure why MilHist failed it on B1, nor even where to find their reviews. Best, Folly Mox (talk) 11:19, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Ooooh cool. Could you recommend to me some books that goes over the period. Maybe you know some military books too?

I'm sorry to hear that, but that also doesn't mean you don't know the material, it just means you did not get the official piece of paper that says you did. (:

Impressive that you can read Chinese. Love the nerd shit. (;

Disappoint me? No I love the refreshing honesty. We cannot all have the same interests, I still really appreciate the help with the article, and the B1 compliment. Please do not be so hard on yourself. We all have our quirks, plus I know for a fact that people with ADHD create some great work with their special interests and attention to detail. You are cool. :D 104.129.198.124 (talk) 13:31, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Historiography

I see you are interested in historiography; is it only for China, or feel like helping out at a draft on historiography but having nothing to do with China? Mathglot (talk) 04:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

(talk page jaguar) I also hope Folly would be, but I certainly would be too. Remsense ‥ 论 06:10, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot, I only have subject matter expertise in Chinese historiography specifically, but I am interested – as a novice – in the general case as well.

My focus and time for content work is scant these days, but I would be interested in helping as able. Folly Mox (talk) 16:13, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

See Draft:French historiography, which has been in the works for quite some time. There is a lot of content, but it has a lot of rough edges and some holes, not to mention lots of excerpts that are stopgaps to promote releasability, but would be better off replaced with custom content eventually.

As far as expertise: interest and willingness are enough in my book; I didn't have any expertise in this subject until I started researching it, and while I am far from an expert now, I've learned plenty, enough to craft an article about it. I think of it almost more as a parent and article incubator, or tip of a historiographical iceberg (see Draft talk).

Please do feel free to jump in, and Remsense, you too; glad you spotted this. On the flip side, this could be an example of other articles on FOOish historiography based on other FOO traditions, and I would like to see the incubation go broad, as well as deep. Maybe we have the kernel of a historiographical task force, here? I wonder if HouseBlaster might be on board for something like this as well. Mathglot (talk) 16:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I would be happy to join a group! My Wikipedia bandwidth is currently a little full, but definitely would be happy to join up :) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:12, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Shang Dings

Hello, Folly Mox,

You correctly tagged this empty category for speedy deletion, CSD C1. No further explanation is really required. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:28, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Liz. I was trying to hold myself accountable, since I've seen people accuse each other of emptying categories in bad faith, but if I have to do something like this again I'll keep any explanations confined in an edit summary. Folly Mox (talk) 00:52, 3 November 2024 (UTC)