User talk:Geo Swan/archive/2014-03

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Disambiguation link notification for March 6

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Done Geo Swan (talk) 04:56, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Inactive editor

User:Skier Dude has been inactive since late 2013, so you may want to ask someone else. ww2censor (talk) 10:07, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

March 2014

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, Cain portrays in his new play, 9 Circles, a character, Daniel Reeves, as a disturbed 19-year[old snarled in the web of war. Cain's drama mirrors, through a fictional adaptation, the 2006 Iraq

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Done Geo Swan (talk) 04:55, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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USCGC Charles W. Sexton (WPC-1108)

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a search with the contents of USCGC Charles W. Sexton (WPC-1108), and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: USCGC Charles David (WPC-1107). It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. CorenSearchBot (talk) 02:54, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bot premature. Geo Swan (talk) 18:59, 15 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Issue in which you may have been involved

An issue in which you may have been involved is being discussed at WT:Deletion policy#Does contentious discussion on the talk page create standing to delete the article?. Unscintillating (talk) 02:58, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Too many redirects / too many hyperlinks

Hi, Geo Swan. I came across the page Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay and noticed some problems with redirects and hyperlinks. I see you still edit pages related to Guantanamo so I thought I'd explain my concerns here rather than just through edit summaries. I have two main points. The first is that most if not all of the ISN number directs probably shouldn't have been created. Those are more like database entries than encyclopedia topics. If a particular ISN number were very noteworthy as established by reliable sources, it could be a redirect but I don't think they are. If they were particular helpful too, I could see a case being made for their creation but I don't think they are that either (since almost nobody is using those redirects as the page view statistics show). The second is the redirects for the detainees' names. I did find User:Geo Swan/Redirecting Guantanamo captives articles to the list articles on their nationalities but I think that sometimes redirects can do more harm than good. Let me explain. When I first came across it, the "Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay" article was filled with self-redirects. This is something to generally be avoided too because it is very confusing and frustrating to the reader. It also "hides" the links to detainees' names that have actual articles in a sea of redirects. I have deleted all the self-redirects of the ISN numbers because they were useless. I also have partially deleted the self-redirects of the detainees' names. If there were no redirects for the detainees' names, one thing that could be done is to wikilink them all. It would produce red links but this informs the user the pages doesn't exist and encourages them to create it. It one of the ways in which Wikipedia grows. However the existing redirects send the user to the "Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay" page and makes them much less likely to actually start a valid new article. In other words, the redirects inhibit the organic growth of articles. Jason Quinn (talk) 18:00, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for raising your concerns.
Should the ISN n be redirects -- or redlinks? Redlinks would be just as useful as redirects, as both could have a "what links here" applied to them.
Unfortunately, many wikipedia contributors unlink redlinks on esthetic grounds.
Some Guantanamo captives have multiple aliases. While some of those aliases may seem on first examination to simple and trivial alternative spellings, like Mohammed, versus Muhammad, it also included Ahcene versus Hassan. And it includes genuine completely opaque alternates. So unlinking redlinked ISN n wikilinks would cause terrible confusion -- and would be a step which couldn't be undone.
So, really, the only way to make sure one is talking about the same individual is to figure out the individual's identity number.
For what it is worth, for almost of these instances, the ISN n entry was changed to point to Yememi detainees at Guantanamo Bay by a robot, when a standalone article about a Guantanamo captive was changed to a redirect to the broader article. Initially, all those redirections were part of the conclusion of an {{afd}}.
I am going to go get some groceries, before the store closes, and continue this reply in about an hour... Geo Swan (talk) 23:34, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Age in years, months and days

Hello again. I hope I wasn't stepping outside my boundaries by making this edit. When I came across your page it appeared to me to be a template for writing articles on Guantanamo Bay inmates. I thought you would like to know Template:For year month day got moved to Template:Age in years, months and days, and that you would like your future articles to use the new title. So, I gotta ask, why did you revert it? 117Avenue (talk) 01:33, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because the context where it is used specifically says "Joe Blow has been held for N years, m months, d days." It is not an age, it is a duration, and using an unfamiliar looking template is going to confuse me. If the redirect is going to give me the behaviour I expect why should I subject myself to the cognitive burden of remembering that someone renamed it?

If the redirect's behaviour is changed that is even more of a problem.

Thanks for your interest. Geo Swan (talk) 01:42, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The template never should have been named "for", the series is "Age", "Age in years and days", "Age in days", etc. 117Avenue (talk) 05:35, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]