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Small request

Hi. Could you please revdel this? I edited while logged out. Thanks. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 19:33, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

 Done - your friendly neighborhood talk page stalker. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:39, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
FYI, a user editing while accidentally logged out is oversightable material. It would be better to take these straight to WP:RFO, rather than draw attention to it on-wiki. Courcelles 19:44, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
That was fast! Thanks Floq. And thanks Courcelles for saving me an email to Oversight. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:49, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, all. I could get used to this level of service. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 19:57, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

  • Out of curiosity, why are requests to remove edits while logged out honored? What reason is there to hide ones IP address, other than to cover up past (or future) sock puppetry? No offense to meant to NMMNG (and I'm no accusing them of sockpuppetry here), but I'm just curious as I had asked the same question a month ago here with no response. ← George talk 20:22, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
Because an IP address is personally-identifiable information. If you know somebody's IP address, you can tell in which country they reside, their ISP and, potentially, their name, address and phone number. Or, if they edit from work or school, you can establish where they work or are educated, and that's without doing anything more than a basic lookup. Of course, looking up some IP addresses won't tell you much of anything, but to someone with more than a passing interest, it's enough information to aid further digging if you were determined to "out" someone. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:52, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
Addendum: Checkusers (I'm sure Courcelles can explain it more eloquently) can easily find out one's IP address and establish if any other accounts edit from that address, so hiding one's IP address from the general public does very little to hinder the detection of socks. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:56, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
I was (and still am) under the impression that IP addresses are not considered personally identifiable information. I've seen numerous times where someone will log out of their account in order to violate 3RR, and another editor will report them for such, presenting an older edit linking the editor to the IP address as evidence. Those who have been discovered to violate 3RR in this manner have yelled "outing!", but I've never seen that stand up. Literally never. I guess I'm curious about when/where the discussion took place that classified IP addresses as personally identifiable info? I looked around but couldn't find it, which is why I asked the question on the oversight talk page. I've noticed a surge in the number of requests to hide IP addresses over the last year or so by editors who edit in the I-P conflict topic area - a topic area notorious for the level of sock puppetry and off-wiki collaboration - and it concerns me a bit. The threat of sock puppetry, editors from governments or companies editing articles about themselves, and similarly nefarious reasons to hide ones IP address seem to far outweigh the exceedingly unlikely possibility of anyone ever associating an IP with an actual person's name, address, or phone number (something that would require a court order at the very minimum where I live). I'm thinking also, for instance, of Jimbo Wales' comments regarding WikiScanner ("It's awesome -- I love it," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told LinuxInsider. "It brings an additional level of transparency to what's going on at Wikipedia." Indeed, the tool "uses information we've been making publicly available forever, hoping someone would do something like this," Wales added.[1])
Regarding your addendum, I was under the impression that checkusers aren't allowed to use their IP address viewing tools to "hunt" for sock puppets? That is to say, they only use those tools in response to queries from the general public (sock puppet investigations). The general public is hindered in filing those queries by having less information available, which certainly can't help the detection of sock puppets. Am I wrong about such a limitation on checkusers? ← George talk 06:21, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
They are personally identifiable. Or rather, some of them are and so we treat all of them as being such. How much useful information you can find from just the IP depends on what information one's ISP makes available to databases like WHOIS, but the country (and usually a city or a US state or similar regional division) in which the IP is located is almost always there. You can tell certain information, like ISP and country, without even looking it up. For example, my IP begins 86.xx, which tells you that I'm in the UK and my ISP is BT (but my location is on my userpage, so I could hardly claim I was being outed if that were posted). If you edit from a school/college/university or from work, then anybody who looks up your IP knows where you study/work, and some ISPs even include the real world postal address at which a domestic IP is registered. You'd be surprised at how much information can be found from just an IP address.

What I should have said is that the IP address itself is not personally identifiable (out of context, it's meaningless data), but connected to an account, it is. And connecting an IP to an account can be considered "outing", indeed the disclosure of IP addresses by checkuser is covered by the WMF privacy policy but can be done in limited circumstances. That said, logging out to avoid the 3RR would be "outing" oneself, and a request to remove the IP from the history would probably be refused (not to mention the hard block on the IP that would immediately follow if I caught anyone doing that). But knowing somebody's IP address is of little use for determining if other accounts are editing from that IP unless you have CU access and if somebody is editing from both IP and account, it would be obvious from the editing patterns (and they would be treated as the same person for policy-enforcement purposes, and as above, will have "outed" themselves). The bottom line is that a lot of sensitive information can be found by connecting an account to an IP and there's rarely any value to the project in making the connection, so IPs accidentally exposed are almost always removed from page histories by RevDel and/or oversight.

On the addendum, checkusers have considerable discretion to perform checks whether or not they have been requested, and they have no obligation to state on-wiki the results of the check or even that it was done. They do, however have to have a reasonable suspicion (or 'probable cause', I think is the American term) of misconduct. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:01, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Hmm, I think I disagree about what is personally identifiable as compared what is just identifiable. Let me give an example: If I tell you that my car is red and parked in London, you can't point to any specific car and say "Aha! That is George's car!" To me, the color and rough location are identifiable information about the car, but not personally identifiable in that it can't be to identify a single, individual car. That is in contrast to a vehicle identification number or registration plate, which could be used to identify my vehicle. The argument you seem to be making is that my car could have been a more unique color, like fuchsia with white polka dots, and because of that possibility we should consider information about any car's color to be personally identifiable. That definition of personally identifiable just seems far too broad to me. Are these IP addresses checked before deletion for how identifiable they are? Would you revdel the IP address of someone with your own IP address (which reveals your country and ISP) as personally identifiable, even though millions of people share the same country/ISP as yourself?
I'm not trying to convince you or argue with you, I'm just trying to resolve two questions I have for the benefit my own understanding. First, how can we champion transparency while covering up peoples tracks? Using an IP address to circumvent 3RR is common (though contrived) scenario, but I'm more concerned with detecting sock puppets and similar conflicts of interest that underlie an editor's edits with bias for an extended period. Second, who defines what is personally identifiable? Is that judgement made on a case-by-case basis, or do administrators each operate under their own definitions? I still haven't been able to find a high level conversation in which some group of administrators agreed that IP addresses should (or should not) be considered personally identifiable, and they aren't listed at WP:OUTING. If I boldly add IP addresses to the list of personally identifiable that constitute outing, effectively bring the letter of the law inline with how its being enforced, am I going to get reverted? ← George talk 19:12, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Well what it boils down to is that there is a possibility (ranging from remote to very real, depending on the IP you edit from) that very personal information could be accessed by looking up an IP address and so it is generally considered inappropriate to link an account to an IP address, by checkuser or otherwise. At the same time, the project gains nothing by keeping accidentally exposed IP addresses and loses nothing by removing them. I don't know of any discussion, but it's aprt of the Oversight Policy. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:44, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Why don't they just set up a bot to report multiple accounts from the same IP editing the same articles? Then a CU could whitelist the few IPs that have a legitimate reason to do it, and you're left with the socks. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 11:44, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

ITN

Thanks for your involvement, I think your example with BrE and AmE was great and explained the issue better to people who weren't so sure where the problem was. It would be great if you would also give your input on naming convention change. Novak Djokovic was apparently moved to that title based on the fact that media omits the diacritics but they omit it in every name not just his. Apart from that, all other tennis players from Serbia, have full diacritics in their Wikipedia article titles, so there is another inconsistency. This is less obvious than when it is on the main page but still I think it should be fixed once and for all.--Avala (talk) 12:46, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. I've no strong opinion on whether we should use the diacritics or not (just that we should use them consistently on ITN), so I think I'll leave the discussion on the article talk page to its own devices. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:02, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Oh dear, it's back to inconsistency on the main page, someone just reverted the ITN blurb back to diacrtic/nodiacritic version citing (oh the irony) consistency. Can you please take a look into it and fix it? Thanks.--Avala (talk) 15:55, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
I should have known that somebody wouldn't have been able to resist. I've removed the diacritics from Petra Kvitová so the blurb doesn't use any. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:46, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Thank you, you've been most helpful. Keep up the good work!--Avala (talk) 18:20, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

2010 Barack Obama visit to India

As one of the admins who closed the last deletion discussion for this article, I thought you'd like to know that it's been re-created and is up for deletion again. Nightw 03:09, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

About Andres Contreras

Hi HJM - article you might have deleted is up again - re-started by possible WP:SPA ---Shirt58 (talk) 10:29, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I deleted it per WP:BLPPROD (new BLP with no sources for 10 days). Since it's been re-created and has sources, you'll have to use another method—I don't know how conventional PRODs sit with previous BLP PRODs, but you could try that or AfD. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:48, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm almost positive that you cannot apply a PROD after a BLPPROD has been applied and rectified, because the act of recreating the article with sources indicates that the deletion would be controversial, and thus would require AFD. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:14, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
That's probably the most sensible way to proceed. Besides, if it gets deleted at AfD and then re-created again, it can just be zapped under G4. It's only a few hours old, though, so it's probably worth waiting to see if the author has any plans to improve it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:22, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Abortion semiprotection

Hello. You recently protected Abortion (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and the protection has since expired. The article has historically been indefinitely semi-protected, but the semi-protection was lost when the full-protection expired. I was wondering if you'd be willing to restore the semi-protection. I was going to do it myself, since the semiprotection is long-standing and (I think) uncontroversial, but since I've been involved in discussion on the talk page, I thought I'd check with you to see if you'd be willing, assuming it makes sense to you. MastCell Talk 21:51, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Done. I wish people would calmly sit down and talk things through so we didn't have to fully protect it (and then restore the old semi) every few weeks. But alas, Israel-Palestine and abortion are probably two topic areas where that's never going to happen. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:34, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. And Talk:Abortion can be surprisingly calm at times, but right now it's a complete mess. I've been watching the page for about 4 years now, and over time I've seen the agenda-driven editors and pettifoggers gradually wear down and drive off the sane adults. It's a process I've seen played out elsewhere on Wikipedia, but it's especially apparent to me there. MastCell Talk 23:16, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

ITN

Hello! The issue that you cited occurred to me (and I considered the wording "allegations of phone hacking committed by News of the World," but that seemed too awkward).
I'm confused as to how your edit eliminates the ambiguity. How is "allegations of phone hacking by the British newspaper" less open to misinterpretation than "allegations of phone hacking by News of the World" was? —David Levy 20:10, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I thought it did, but now I read it back, I'm less convinced. Long day! Something like "committed by" would be more precise, but it does make the sentence awkward... HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:15, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I've given it another go.  :) —David Levy 20:34, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
That seems to work. Nice job. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:36, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! Items pertaining specifically to English-speaking countries other than the U.S. challenge me most, as I risk using Americanisms without realizing. I've found country-specific Google searches (e.g. "site:uk") invaluable. In this instance, I confirmed that "amid" prevails over "amidst" and the phrase "engaged in" is normal.
Unfortunately, relatively few American websites have country-specific suffixes, so I assume that the challenge is greater for you (or anyone else from outside the U.S.) when a blurb's subject is American. —David Levy 20:54, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Actually I find American English relatively easy to get to grips with. some of it I find bizarre (what did the "u" in "colour" or the "i" in "speciality" ever do to you?), but most of it makes sense, not least since much of it is developed from how the English language was spoken a few hundred years ago (which is where a little study of English Literature is useful). On the other hand, I'm convinced we Brits use some expressions just to be... British!

ITN, as with other parts of the Main Page and, to a lesser extent, the rest of Wikipedia, often seems to be written in an eclectic mix of English varieties (probably a reflection on the diverse backgrounds of the admins who look after it). Sometimes we aim for language that makes sense in all varieties, but is often intuitive in none. Perhaps we should dub it "Wikipedia English"? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:11, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I like that. (:
The one element of British English (and some other varieties) that never ceases to confound me is the treatment of collective nouns as plural (e.g. "Apple are introducing a new iPhone model.").
When editing an Irish ITN item, I inserted a notation regarding this rule (which already had been followed by the original author), only to be informed that it didn't apply in that instance! I doubt that I'll ever be able to fully comprehend the intricacies. —David Levy 21:53, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
No, that one I think you need to have been brought up on this side of the Pond to get your head round. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:57, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

RFA close

I am considering closing E2eamon's RFA as it is unlikely that he will get any further constructive criticism, and remaining !votes are likely to be "per yourself/SandyGeorgia". Would that be a good idea, should I wait until he starts editing again so he will have a chance at withdrawal, or should I wait until it drops below 50%? I feel rather dickish for invoking WP:NOTNOW on a candidate with >10,000 edits and >6 months experience. Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:40, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I would wait (but anything I say should be taken with a pinch of salt, since I helped torpedo the RfA) for a little while, because, as of my oppose, he had twice the number of supports as opposers. If he starts haemorrhaging support !votes, then that would be a good time to close. Otherwise, I'd wait for it to drop below 50% and, in the meantime, suggesting to him that he withdraw. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:45, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
That's probably a good idea. I've suggested that he withdraw the RFA, as it is very unlikely to pass now. Thanks for the advice, and if I ever become a sysop, I hope to be able to continue asking for you advice! Cheers! Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:56, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
I hope you will at some point, I think you'd put the tools to good use, and I'm not going anywhere. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:20, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
I, too recommended a withdrawal in my oppose as it does not seem likely he will get many more supports, at least from anyone with >5,000 edits.   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 15:05, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
"Sinking faster than the Titanic" isn't exactly supportive, but regardless, he's withdrawn it and I've closed it now. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:09, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
It wasn't meant to be harsh, just using an analogy to describe how fast it was tanking.   ArcAngel   (talk) ) 20:54, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
I presumed as much, but it sounds rather unsympathetic in the cold light of day. Some of the sentiment from my RfAs is still fresh in my memory today, so I try to cut some slack for candidates who are (or, after my comment, will be) clearly failing. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Have been thinking of closing it since 8:30 this morning! Watching it sink faster wasn't fun, especially since I'd realised the candidate wasn't about. Out of interest, are there instructions on how to close around? I can't seem to find them... and since you said "If I ever need anything..." ;) WormTT · (talk) 15:13, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
The only wrriten instructions I've seen are buried at WP:CRAT#Promotions and RfX closures. There are more basic instruction in the hidden comments on the RfAs themselves, but both only cover how to close. When is altogether more difficult, and I don't think there are any written instructions for that. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:19, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, was more curious about the how than the when :) WormTT · (talk) 15:29, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
WP:SNOW/HOW. –xenotalk 15:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
WP:SNOW/HOW was the only one I had seen until now. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:29, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Xeno, I hadn't seen that before. Nice to know there are instructions somewhere slightly more obvious. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Southern Sudan and South Sudan

Apparently somebody made a copy-paste move from Southern Sudan to South Sudan, is it possible to make some kind of histmerge? If it is not possible could the Southern Sudan's history be moved to the second? Tbhotch.™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 22:42, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

*GROAN!* People do some strange things. Let me see what the problem is... HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
The new page was heavily based off of the old page and was the product of large-scale collaboration for weeks. Please explain your decision to blanket revert and wipe out all of the updates made to bring this page into the present day. -Kudzu1 (talk) 22:51, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
What the fuck are you on? You make a mess like that, and then you come here and demand I explain myself? I think not. You made a cut-and-paste move, creating a huge mess in the process and violating 1300 editors' attribution rights, not to mention the drain on the servers that it's taken to clean up your mess. If you can't or won't move a page properly, don't try. Leave it to someone else. Or better yet, get consensus first and then ask an admin to do it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:57, 8 July 2011 (UTC)


DYK for İncil Çavuş

Hi, HJ Mitchell. I think that all information about him are not historical facts but legends. So I don't decide whether the style of question such as "Do you know "Suleiman the Magnificent supposedly gave İncili Çavuş a pearl to wear to distinguish him from other sergeants? is suitable to DYN or not. For example, according to some writers, İncil Çavuş may have lived in 17th century. But Suleiman the Magnificient was a person of the 16th century. In short this is nothing but legend. Regards. Takabeg (talk) 00:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I know it's my signature that lands on your talk page, but all I really do is copy, paste, check and then sign. The rest is handled by other editors further up the production line, and the last bit is done by a bot. Since it has the qualifier "supposedly", I think it should be OK, but you could raise it at WP:ERRORS if you wanted. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:22, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

That Was Quick (South Sudan)

I will place this on my watchlist to watch when the block expires and monitor afterwards - I have a feeling that IP vandals will return, as there is some negative opinion about the new country's independence, so I'll post a new request if I think further protection is needed after expiry. Cheers and thanks for getting to it quickly this time around. My first visit to the page and something about Ed McMahon was there, got me checking the history. =) CycloneGU (talk) 00:41, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I had a feeling that not all the attention the article attracted would be constructive, so I kept a close eye on it after I put it up on the Main Page and decided to nip the trouble in the bud. Hopefully a week will be sufficient, but we'll see—it wouldn;t be the first country article to end up indefinitely semi'd. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:55, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, my "quick" comment was because I had posted a request here at Requests for Page Protection. You never updated there, so I concluded and posted an update that you had semied the page but apparently were not patrolling the area. I didn't remove it as I did still want patrollers aware that the page is drawing vandalism. I am hopeful that the vandalism does stop, of course, but you never know; vandals from Sudan might decide to make it a mission to destroy the article. We'll see! CycloneGU (talk) 00:58, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
I've not looked at RfPP all day, actually. I've been occupied elsewhere. But it's nice to know that someone else was/is paying attention to the article. I expect the worst of it will die down once it drops out of the headlines and off ITN. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:02, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Me too. I just stumbled upon some vandalism on my first visit, so call it being in the right place at the right time. I was linking to the article for a discussion forum post on a site I've been a member of for some nine years (much longer than I've been a Wikipedian). CycloneGU (talk) 01:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Well that's going well so far. I don't think I've seen any vandals since page protection, and clearly they're not interested in identifying themselves to subsequently be banned. CycloneGU (talk) 03:09, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Still Around? Category Help

I got the sudden inspiration to go about starting work on creating categories for South Sudan since such articles are still being categorized under Sudan categories - but I'm lost. I can't seem to remove the bad category from the talk page, and I can't seem to be able to edit it on the category page. How do I go about doing this? CycloneGU (talk) 04:22, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I could also use help in ensuring I created the template for the WikiProject correctly; it now appears on the talk page separately from the Africa one since I couldn't figure out how to combine them. It's my first attempt at templating and categorizing, so I am sure I screwed up something; I just wanted to get it started and let whoever knows more about it do further work on it. =) CycloneGU (talk) 04:51, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not the person to ask about fiddly thing like that! WP:VPT might be your best bet unless you're on good terms with a template wizard. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:43, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Done. Didn't know there was a VPT, I knew of VP. CycloneGU (talk) 15:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

UGH...

History of South Sudan

Check the history. Another copy and paste move. Same person as above (I loved that response BTW).

I looked at the old location, but it's even more of a mess and appears to be another case of a copy and paste move. Can you help me figure this out? CycloneGU (talk) 18:23, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm also going to recommend removing page moving rights from the user until he learns how it's done. CycloneGU (talk) 18:25, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

If I could, I would, but all autoconfirmed users can move pages (and even an IP can cut and paste). And if it weren't for the fact it was 36 hours ago, I'd block him just because of the strain it puts on the servers when admins go round deleting and then undeleting big pages. You could drop him a {{uw-c&pmove}} if you wanted to save me a minute. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:28, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Ah, that was relatively easy. Merging two revisions is a lot easier than merging 1300! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:31, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
And now it seems we have more! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:38, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
I actually left a manual note without the template. I further see you blocked the user. I was about to say I would recommend he help locate any other pages he did cut and paste moves with, but it seems you already went through his contribution list. CycloneGU (talk) 18:58, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

He has posted an unblock request. I think he understands what was wrong, and I worry he might feel that your block might be rash (though he didn't say it). He feels he's now being punished for all his C&P moves when he didn't know he was doing wrong. I can accept that reason. Your thoughts? CycloneGU (talk) 19:26, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Come On Over (Shania Twain album)

Hey, it's been a long time. I was wondering if you could move Come On Over (Shania Twain album) to Come on Over (Shania Twain album), since it's a redirect I can't do it myself. Thank You. -- ipodnano05 * leave@message 21:39, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Happy to oblige. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:43, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
I thought "On" is supposed to be capitalized in that album name. CycloneGU (talk) 22:18, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Mr Mitchell - you have Mail!

Hello, HJ Mitchell. 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 remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

--5 albert square (talk) 00:03, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

And again, I need more help :) --5 albert square (talk) 14:54, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

User:Diego Grez

Hi. I wanted to let you know that I mentioned your name in relation to this user. My understanding is that he is still under an editing restrictions which requires him to work with you as his mentor, and I brought this up in relation to a complaint he brought on AN/I, which you can find here. Best, Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:59, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

No, the restriction was lifted a while back. I'm still in touch with him, but I'm not formally his mentor any more. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:10, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

In The News for 2011 Egyptian revolution

I think it's ready to be posted. What do you think? -- The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 07:46, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Notable topic?

DYK duplicate

I removed your DYK hook because it duplicates the same hook in another queue. [2] [3] Art LaPella (talk) 01:56, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Are you interested in being a Milhist co-ord?

Hi, HJ, I am writing to encourage you to consider taking on the role as a co-ordinator of the Military history project. The elections will be held around September/October. I've been very impressed by your content work as well as your interactions with other editors. With your experience, I think that you would be perfect for the role. If you are interested, you can find out more information here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Becoming a coordinator. Also, if you have any questions, I would be more than happy to try to answer them for you. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:22, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I have been getting more involved with MilHist the last few months. Sure, I'd be interested. Do I have to do anything between now and September except read up on it? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:58, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
You're probably good to go right out of the box as a coord, but if you have questions, I'll be happy to help. - Dank (push to talk) 15:46, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I notice the role is about as clearly defined as adminship, which is a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be when I stood at RfA. Do you guys find it to be a big time commitment? I'd be happy to take it on, but I'm wondering how much juggling I'd need to do to balance co-ordship, adminship and writing/reviewing? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:02, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
For some, yes. For you, no; you're already doing about as much as anyone expects from coords. - Dank (push to talk) 16:08, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Just to jump in, I agree that you'd make a great coordinator. The job is occasionally time consuming, but generally not too bad - there's almost no drama involved, so you don't end up in the kind of situations admins find themselves from time to time. Nick-D (talk) 12:10, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the confidence. Almost no drama? I'm sold! ;) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Can you strike this please?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FIncidents&action=historysubmit&diff=439161191&oldid=439160380

Someone struck the intervening edit as it was spam with - uh - colourful language in the edit summary. This edit summary is similar to the struck one, and probably wise we don't leave it there. CycloneGU (talk) 22:06, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Looks like 28bytes already got to it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:58, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Evangelos Florakis Navy Base explosion

--NW (Talk) 22:34, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Been a while since I've done that. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:57, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I should try it some time. Well, I suppose I should work on some content. ITN isn't very forgiving with time deadlines, and work's been rather intense recently. Should probably stop making excuses, get off my ass, and go to the library :) NW (Talk) 23:26, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I find it refreshing to take a break from admin work and write something now and then. Nobody yells at you for writing content! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
For writing Evangelos Florakis Navy Base explosion. Writing a whole article for no other reason than that it is needed is just admirable. Swarm X 08:29, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. It was quite an interesting article to write. There might be enough to get it to GA in a few weeks... HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:10, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

post-WWII British Army generals

I just wanted to say that you'll get tired of writing them before I get tired of reading them. I have written four articles on WWII British generals: Strong, Whiteley, Gale, Morgan and Browning. Compared to their Australian counterparts, its very difficult to get material on them. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I dunno, with CGSs , particularly recent ones like Dannatt and Jackson, it's a case of separating the wheat from the chaff, but with others it can take a bit of digging. There's no shortage of them anyway, and only a handful are better than start-class. I might depart from the post-WWII briefly to do Bill Slim at some point, because that bloke fascinates me. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
The other day I uploaded this picture, which shows Slim, post war. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:01, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Usernames (a confused Old Git writes)

Hi HJ. Sorry to bother you but for various reasons you're currently very near the top of my list of people to bother! I am having a terrible senior moment regarding undesirable usernames. Do we simply indefinitely block them, or actually remove them somehow? I feel as I am going nuts as I should remember this but I don't, and am not sure where to look to (re-)learn about it. I think I just made a very slight twit of myself reporting a username that was already indeffed; if that's all we do then fine, whereas I had thought, or misremembered, or something, that they were actually zapped out of existence. And if not, does it mean that there is a massive collection of horrendous usernames somewhere out there where every nasty/racist/homophobic/whatever thought that someone ever had is preserved? ... hmmmm. Please deconfuse me, or tell me it doesn't matter, or that I should shut the fargle up, or whatever. Cheers DBaK (talk) 11:59, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

We just block 'em. Stewards have the ability to "lock" the account and suppress all its edits on any WMF project and suppress any trace that it ever existed, but that's only used for the really nasty ones (usually those created to attack other editors). In general, though, it's revert, block, ignore. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:54, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Aha, right, fair enough. Thank you very much. I'm obviously having a bit of a false memory syndrome day! Cheers, DBaK (talk) 16:59, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Your comment on ITN

Hi Harry, just to follow up on your comment at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Main Page features, and entirely in good faith, could I ask you to expand on your statement that "The solution is to improve them, not abolish them"? How do they need to be improved? What do you envisage? I'm on the fence about this one. Tony (talk) 15:49, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

That page is rapidly becoming a sea of text and I don't have any really clear thoughts on what I'd do with ITN, OTD and DYK if I were given carte blanche so I'll just comment here. ITN is having an identity crisis—we all agree that it's supposed to provide some combination of decent articles, interesting events and timeliness. But whether interest (or "significance") and specifically wide interest is a requirement or how far beyond a crappy stub the article has to be before we can post it are matters of contention. We also need to keep a reasonably steady flow of items going up so it doesn't stagnate. I wouldn't have a real problem with current events scrolling across the top with much shorter blurbs, even if it would make us look a little like a news website.

DYK has similar problems. Editors have come to think of having their article on DYK as a "right" and DYK has all but stopped requiring that there actually be something interesting (by which I mean unusual or attention-grabbing) about the subject and thus the hook. If I could do as I pleased with OTD, I'd probably scrap the blurbs in favour of a list of events selected by relative significance and article quality.

I don't think there's much wrong with the Main Page as it is (though having put many thousands of edits into its component parts, I'm probably not entirely neutral), but there's always room for improvement and I think people are a little hesitant to try something different. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Ahmed Wali Karzai

Hi. I wanna move the page to Ahmad Wali Karzai because in the Afghanistan region (and South Asia) it's commonly spelled as Ahmad, like the founder of Afghanistan Ahmad Shah Durrani or Afghan freedom fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud, Ahmad Zia Massoud, Ali Ahmad Jalali, Ahmad Wali, and so on. The official Afghan government documents use "Ahmad Wali Karzai" [4] and so does BBC News as well as many others. I deal with Afghanistan and I haven't heard anyone with the name Ahmed because that would sound like Ahmid, this is not how Afghans say it. Thanks.--AlimNaz (talk) 21:18, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

It's not me you need to convince. I only protected it to stop people moving it back and fort, especially while it's on the Main Page. If you can get a consensus on the talk page that it should be moved, I'll move it for you. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Nicki Minaj's date of birth

Add your opinion. I Help, When I Can. [12] 01:06, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

The Dark Knight Rises protection

The log on this page shows that you protected it in March for 6 months, but I've just had to protect it again. I can't work out why your protection didn't take, or finished early. Any thoughts? GedUK  11:50, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

  • The page was deleted and then restored for a histmerge, thus the protection fell off it. [5] Full log is here. Its a shame that "dropped" protection doesn't show up in the protection log. --Taelus (talk) 11:54, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Good work (talk page stalker), thanks for that! GedUK  12:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Milhist FA, A-Class and Peer Reviews Apr–Jun 2011

 The WikiChevrons 
By order of the Military history WikiProject coordinators, for your devoted contributions to the WikiProject's Peer, A-Class and Featured Article reviews for the period Apr–Jun 2011, I am delighted to award you the WikiChevrons. AustralianRupert (talk) 08:39, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Rupert! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:59, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue LXIV, June 2011

To receive this newsletter on your talk page, join the project or sign up here. If you are a member who does not want delivery, please go to this page. BrownBot (talk) 23:08, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

 Military history reviewers' award

YGM

Hello, HJ Mitchell. 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 remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Avenue X at Cicero (talk) 03:44, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Article title advice please

Hi HJ. If you have a moment, could you please have a very quick look at Talk:University Without Walls- UMass Amherst, where I am wondering about a rename? As you'll see, I feel it's probably right to move it to a version with UMass in parentheses or after a comma, but I don't know how to determine which is better. If you would like either to express an opinion, or to refer me to a precise guideline that I've failed to find, your input would be very welcome. Likewise anyone stalking this page or otherwise seeing this note is more than welcome to chip in! Thanks and best wishes DBaK (talk) 12:11, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The title should be whatever the institution calls itself. Obviously the hyphen has to go, but what, if anything, to replace it with should be decided by the institution's name. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:14, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks very much for the advice. Best wishes DBaK (talk) 18:45, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Brosnan

Thank you for the gentle reminder. You're right. Best wishes Span (talk) 00:24, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

And to you. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:28, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Mr Mitchell - you have Mail!

Hello, HJ Mitchell. 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 remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

--5 albert square (talk) 00:44, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

And you have more!--5 albert square (talk) 23:13, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your comments at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Harold Pinter/archive1 which helped in the process of getting this article to FA status. Jezhotwells (talk) 16:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

That's good news. I'm glad to see it made it through FAC, and with relatively little contention. Good work. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:57, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

MILHIST Article Question

Hey Mitchell, I've seen you around ITN and I recognized your name at Milhist:Logistics. Anyway, I've been working on User:Hot Stop/Charles II de Cossé for a few days, and I'm kind of stuck. I can't find much information, but I've seen the French article on him but I'm not sure how to add that info in without doing somesort of plagirism. I figure you could help or at least know someone who could. Thanks Hot Stop talk-contribs 17:15, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

The tricky bit is translating the French into English. You can copy material from other Wikipedia (since they're all CC-By-SA), you just have to cross the Ts and dot the Is. There's a template to stick on the talk page (but I can't remember what it's called!) to say you've copied it from another Wikipedia, and ideally you'd use your edit summaries to provide attribution for any text you copy (just "copied from [link to the French article]" kinda thing should be sufficient). Quite a few experienced editors lurk at WT:MILHIST so one of them might know the name of the template. Oh, and please, call me Harry, I hate being addressed by surname! ;) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:21, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
That was fast, thanks HJ. I'll try working on it when I'm back on my computer later. Hot Stop talk-contribs 17:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Barnstar of Good Humor

I attempted to award someone the above-named barnstar today. Per the documentation at the barnstar page, none of the supplied methods worked; I had to save it on my third try, then manually edit the message into place. Might you know how to fix it up so the documentation listing correctly produces the barnstar? CycloneGU (talk) 15:56, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Let me guess, your message isn't showing up? I've had similar problems before. Try adding "1=" after the pipe ("|"). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:59, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Request

Sir you have indefinitely protected Jehovah's Witnesses for valid cause I am sure. I request, as reviewer for its GAN, that you unprotect the article now so I can observe it for stability. If any situation gets out of hand I will promptly see it reprotected, but that could derail its potential for "GA" I expect page watchers and routine patrols will ensure nothing egregious sets stale and I will be closely observing as well. If you can see fit to accomplish this for me I would appreciate it. When it happens, (if), I will advise the participants that it is unprotected and stability and maintained standards are the objective. Thank you for considering this for me. My76Strat talk 23:37, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Hold on, what? It is protected due to excessive and unending vandalism, and vandalism is never a bar to GA status. You might want to take a few moments and read that document, to see what the GA criteria do and do not require. Persistent vandalism that requires semi-protection is not even a bar to FA status, much less GA. Courcelles 23:48, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
(ec with Courcelles, who put it more concisely, if more bluntly, than me!) If it was almost anyone other than you, I'd think you were winding me up! If I was being blunt, I would say that no admin in their right mind would unprotect that article. Have you seen the state of its protection log? Click a few of those "hist" links, and you'll see the problems are endemic and endless and won't have gone away after a couple of months' protection.

Anyway, semi-protection wouldn't normally affect a GA nomination. This particular protection is to give the article exactly the stability that the GA criteria require, and many GAs are indefinitely semi-protected—take Lindsay Lohan, one of "my" GAs, for example. Or Emma Watson and Brad Pitt, both FAs. I don't think any admin in their right mind would unprotect those, either.

I wish you luck with the GA process, you're a braver man than I for taking that on, but unprotecting the article would only interfere with it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:50, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well that is even better, I perhaps misunderstood stability. Obviously. Thanks. My76Strat talk 23:52, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Please don't assume I haven't read any of the criteria. I have read some of it several times. No where have I seen it so directly stated that protection did not adversely affect stability. And I did have one person ask why I would review a protected nomination. So before you cast me to the realm of the clueless, forgive that I am willing to ask. Cheers My76Strat talk 00:05, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
One thing to consider for future reference: If an article is semi-protected indefinitely, especially if it's a high-profile controversial topic like that, there's usually a good reason. And rocking horses leave droppings more often than I permanently semi an article (I prefer very long, definite durations, but some topics will always attract vandalism), so if I did so, I had a very good reason. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:10, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
My76Strat, I know you're not clueless, and I'm sorry if I came across as blunt. This is actually a fairly common question from those new to GA reviewing -- even long-time GA reviewers have the tendency to make the criteria stricter than they really are, or what stability is. Stability is designed to catch three types of articles that should not be GA's. One is about future events, as every detail in the article might change. The second is where the article barely exists, and is being rapidly expanded while the review is ongoing. The third and more common problem is when the article is subject to actual edit warring, there's very little you can do to review the content of an article that actively has a problem that would be handled at WP:ANEW. Courcelles 00:18, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for that, and yes I am new to GA review, this is my second. That is normally when I do ask questions, and I knew HJ would give me a straight answer. It was only after seeing that he placed the block that I felt comfortable to ask. I have already asked others who I trust to review my conduct of the review to help me do it right, and both of you gentlemen are of that same class. So by all means if you observe a thing I am doing wrong, as has already been noted, let me know. because I still have plenty of time to get it done right, and that is what I intend to do. Best regards to you both, My76Strat talk 00:29, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Mail

Hello, HJ Mitchell. 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 remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

—GFOLEY FOUR!— 02:18, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Never mind, someone else has explained it on-wiki. —GFOLEY FOUR!— 02:32, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

FA

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do with "it's nice, but not FA". Can you be more specific? Are you willing to review it? The only reviews it has had is as a result of FA, PR, B and personal pleas have all failed to gain a single comment. Maury Markowitz (talk) 02:27, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Duh, that would be space debris of course... Maury Markowitz (talk) 02:28, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I did leave a few specific concerns. It's not that it's a bad article, it's just that it's going to need a lot of work before it's ready for FA:
  • You need to work on the referencing—every statement in the article should be attributable to a reliable source
  • The references should all be formatted the same way, and you should provide enough information about them that the information they're citing can be checked
  • You need to make sure that the sources you do have are reliable
  • It could probably do with a copy edit
  • You may need to cast a wider net for sources—I don't see any books cited, for example, and most of your sources seem to be from the same few authors/publishers.
  • You need to read the block of text at the top of WP:FAC that includes the instructions—that explains who the delegates are and that you need to wait at least 2 weeks before you re-nominate an article after its FAC was archived.
The most difficult of these is going to be the referencing, but articles brought to FAC are expected to already have a reference for every fact. It's not reasonable to be addressing that while it's at FAC because, until it's sorted, the article has no hope of becoming an FA and reviewers would be wasting their time by reviewing it before it's close to meeting the criteria. That's why I'm suggesting you withdraw it. Once the referencing is sorted, try nominating it at WP:GAN. If that goes well, get a peer review, and state in your nomination that you're hoping to take it to FAC. Once you've addressed all the reviewers' comments there, then you can think about FAC, but right now it's premature, I'm afraid. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:24, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Have you reviewed the current version of the article? I scrubbed all of the references into a common format, at least the main portions (optional elements like dpi and retrieved I didn't bother with). Are you finding many examples of offending formatting that suggests a withdrawal? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:04, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
If the formatting was the only issue, I'd sort it myself or at least go through and list which ones are inconsistent. The biggest problem is that (as of the version I looked at an hour ago), there are big chunks of text with no reference, including whole paragraphs. That's the kind of thing that should really be sorted before it gets to FAC (or even GAN). When every fact in the article is supported by a reference, and, at minimum, there's a reference after each paragraph, then the FAC might have a chance of progressing. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:17, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
I just went through it line by line and I can only find a single instance of an unreefed para, and that's a stand-alone introductory sentence on a section at the end of the document. Can you point out other instances? I believe the rule of thumb that one ref per para is overwhelmingly met, and I can't see any unsupported statements. Maury Markowitz (talk) 01:16, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
Originally known as a "meteor bumper" and now termed the Whipple shield, this consists of a thin foil film held a short distance away from the spacecraft's body. When a micrometeorite struck the foil it would vaporize into a plasma that quickly spread out. By the time this plasma crossed the gap between the shield and the spacecraft, it would be so diffuse that it would be unable to penetrate the structural material below. I found that just from a quick scroll through. I believe the rule of thumb means that there should be one ref at the end of each para. If that ref doesn't support the whole para, then others should be added in to support the other facts/sentences (quotes should also have a ref immediately following them, but that's not likely to be an issue here). To illustrate what I mean (because it's easier than writing it out), I've left a few [citation needed] tags in the history section. Feel free to remove them once my point is illustrated, and if you can provide refs there pretty quickly, there may be hope for the FAC yet. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:31, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

I believe the rule of thumb means that there should be one ref at the end of each para

Ahhh, I suspected as much, but in my old age I have learned to avoid assumptions!

Generally speaking this is not true, although it often is in practice. The basic rule is that every section of text that comes from a single source should have a ref at the end of that material. This may or may not line up with the end of the paragraph. In theory, you could have an entire section with only one ref at the bottom, as long as that section comes from a single source.

However, this is considered poor form, and will garner many complaints in spite of being perfectly OK. So for this reason, many authors choose to add a ref at the end of every para, even if that ref is the same as the para above it. I choose not to :-) There is no MoS or hard-n-fast rule on this (that I know of), and suggestions that a rule be added are invariably shot down - here's a recent example Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#Citations for every sentence?.

So, if you're willing, check the article again, assuming what I say here is true. Is it, as it seems, fully refed? If so, we can then carry this on as a style discussion, which is perfectly valid. Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:12, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in theory, that's perfectly acceptable, but I'd bet good money you'd never get an article through FAC with the ref density space debris had when I last looked. The problem is that, even if it all comes from one source, that's not clear to anybody who wants to check your sources. It would also allow a completely unref'd paragraph to be inserted in there.

I'm aware it's not codified as such in the style or verifiability guidelines, but the most common interpretation of the "rule of thumb" is that you should have one ref per paragraph if that ref supports the whole paragraph. in "my" articles, I tend to reference less densely than others (I will use one ref to support quite a big chunk of text), but it should always be clear where the information has come from—which is the purpose of WP:V and the rule of thumb. In my current FAC for example, I think that's the case, but in space debris, I don't.

However, If you disagree with my opinion that it's under-referenced, you should say so at the FAC where the delegates and other reviewers can see. If consensus backs your method, I'll strike my comment. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:14, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough! Actually, I'm not sure the "insertion argument" is a good one though, that could happen in any article at any time. Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:50, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Opps, almost forgot, I have touched up the lead, do you mind taking another look at that too? Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:51, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

It could (happen in any article), but the greater the gap between refs, the harder it is to detect. I'll take a look at the lead now. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:53, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
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