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Community interaction at the English Wikipedia (2013)

Iri, I know you'll know. I had never seen this before (WAID posted it to the medicine project); apparently FAC was the Center of the Universe back then, as the large yellow dot in the middle is me, surrounded by the FA community (you are just above and slightly to the left), and Blofeld and Jimbo having smaller dots off to the sides. [1] Do you know if there is a study or something attached to this visualization, where terms are defined? Meaning, is there anything useful here to help FAC get re-invigorated? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:36, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

It's the first I've seen of it. Without documentation it's hard to make sense of, but I assume you're at the center of the universe because your name appeared on every failed FA nomination as the closer, so every who ever commented on an FAC is counted as having "interacted" with you. (Eric Corbett is the second-most-central figure, presumably for similar reasons from the GA sweep.) If it's supposed to in some way illustrate the closeness of contributors, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to me; you have people with no obvious crossover like Drmies and Pigsonthewing shown cheek-by-jowl, people who at that time (2013) were ultra-insiders like Wehwalt, Bishonen and RexxS relegated to the fringes, and me (who at that point had barely edited for two years) shown as more central than Jimmy Wales. If it was WMF-funded then WAID might know whether any study was attached to it, since the creators would presumably have submitted a "what we did with your money" form. Alternately, there's doubtless someone watching this page who can prod the Wikipediocracy crowd; if it was 2013 it would probably have still been pre-schism Wikipedia Review, but whatever their faults the HTD-ers have memories like elephants. I can't imagine the combination of "complicated statistical analysis containing terms like 'Betweenness Centrality: 180731.2640208649'" and "apparent visual proof of the existence of Wikipedia cabals" is something Poetlister or Moulton would have ignored the chance to write at length about. It would be interesting to dig out the database dumps and run the whole thing as a time series from 2001 to the present to see how the patterns have changed. ‑ Iridescent 15:34, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

And it misses most of my most central connections, so I was wanting some definition of terms. I can't find anything of substance that references it ... and I would have bet the bank that you would know!

While WAID could tell us what sort of flawed methodology WMF paid for, I was more interested in whether there is anything of interest here for re-invigorating the FA process. It goes back to something I've said often here about how much I hate the echo system: we no longer talk to each other. I had 500 active talk page watchers, who helped me manage FAC, and we were more of a community. I suspect echo helped kill that. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:08, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

According to the documentation in it it is based on "the whole history of the project", up to August 2013. So no great surprise if someone who had been inactive for the last two years of that period wound up central. Not sure how I wound up fairly central by then..... ϢereSpielChequers 22:38, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

There's probably not much there which would be any kind of pointer to reinvigorating FAC. The problem there is a cultural problem derived from a shift in how Wikipedia operates. Because WP:PR has fallen out of use and because most of the WikiProjects have a dwindling membership, there's less scope for people to ask the minor but necessary questions like "what exactly does this sentence mean?" and "the spelling in these two sections is inconsistent, which of them is right?". That in turn makes the FA reviews look longer than they used to. Bloated FA reviews put people off both participating (people quite reasonably don't want to engage in a thread when they haven't read the whole thing, and not many people want to spend the couple of hours it would take to get up to speed on something like Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Coropuna/archive1), and put people off nominating (although most of the points raised at FAC are quite trivial and easily fixed, it looks intimidating; it's understandable that the proud author of a new article would be put off by the prospect of a dozen people nitpicking every inconsistency).

Plus, of course, there's the small handful of people who get their kicks from hanging around FAC making unreasonable demands, one of whom in particular has bullied multiple people away from ever participating in FAC again. There were a lot of legitimate criticisms about the way FA used to be run—it was totally against the spirit of Wikipedia for a project to be run by a de facto dictator—but it at least meant that there was a mechanism for assholes to be shown the door so we didn't have the culture of smug "I'm determined that this will fail and will do anything I can to disrupt the nomination" obnoxiousness we sometimes see nowadays.

All rated articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	???	Total
FA	1,577	2,503	2,417	1,961	181	8,639
FL	181	688	768	702	100	2,439
A	370	681	788	584	91	2,514
GA	3,247	7,384	14,816	19,724	1,760	46,931
B	16,999	32,983	54,674	69,832	23,504	197,992
C	17,003	54,359	136,096	313,208	92,533	613,199
Start	18,538	92,549	417,304	1,633,221	414,093	2,575,705
Stub	4,277	31,458	277,970	2,809,022	762,948	3,885,675
List	4,889	17,233	54,108	195,662	69,553	341,445
Assessed	67,081	239,838	958,941	5,043,916	1,364,763	7,674,539
Unassessed	123	482	1,237	17,037	407,042	425,921
Total	67,204	240,320	960,178	5,060,953	1,771,805	8,100,460

On top of that, there are questions about the whole purpose of article assessment nowadays. Offline Wikipedia is nowadays just a historical curiosity—"that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so" is much more likely to have access to an internet connection than she is to have access to a CD-ROM drive—so there's no real need for the kind of detailed article importance/article quality matrix on the right any more to determine which articles get berths on the Ark. As such, the only difference the FA star makes is a slight but steady increase in readership and eligibility for TFA, and the GA blob makes no difference at all. With less at stake, it's reasonable that fewer people would consider it a worthwhile use of their time engaging at GAC and FAC.

As I've said many times, IMO the whole setup needs a complete rethink, and we should seriously consider scrapping the importance scale altogether and replacing the ridiculously unintuitive S–S–C–B–G–A–F quality scale with "inadequate–adequate–excellent". Assuming that's not going to happen, the best things you can do to revive FAC participation would be:

1. Write detailed, honest and up-to-date "what to expect" guides for both participants and nominators. (The FCDW articles are a decade out of date, and the culture there has changed significantly.) A lot of Wikipedians aren't from academic backgrounds and have never experienced something like a viva or a thesis defense in real life. If you're not used to it, it must be very disconcerting to have received nothing but positive feedback for your pet article through all the stages of its writing, but then—when you've finally got it to what you consider its best—be confronted by a bunch of strangers rattling off long lists of obtuse questions about minor technical details;
2. Get consensus for the delegates to clerk FAC much more aggressively, in particular moving off-topic and tangential discussions to the talkpage. If the first thing somebody looking at FAC for the first time sees is long arguments about the precise interpretation of the MOS or someone throwing incoherent accusations of racism at anyone who disagrees with them, most sane people are going to be put off participating and you're setting up a feedback loop in which the only people who sign up will be those who enjoy arguing;
3. (closely related to 2) Get consensus to give timeouts—temporary or permanent—to people who are repeatedly being obnoxious. It only takes a single "you're obviously demonstrating systemic bias by writing about a topic I haven't heard of" or "I can't believe you're so stupid you haven't read this book" to poison the well and ensure that that particular editor will never either review or nominate again, and some regulars seem to take great pride in driving off any participant they consider beneath them. The FA process, and FAC in particular, has a reputation for tolerating bullying self-important assholes for a reason;
4. Collapse the list at WP:FAC by default. Because we've all been using the Wikipedia:Nominations viewer script for so long we've probably forgotten even installing it, we can lose sight of just how incomprehensible and off-putting the FAC page is the first time one reads it. At the time of writing—in the middle of the summer vacation in the northern hemisphere and during a global pandemic, so with even less activity than usual—WP:FAC currently runs to 132,650 words. (To put that in perspective, the whole of Sense and Sensibility runs to 126,000 words.) Any sane person is going to look at that and immediately conclude that there are better things they could be doing with their time, so we're yet again setting up a feedback loop where the only people who aren't put off participating are the kind of obsessive types we don't want participating;
5. Be much more proactive in recruiting people. Approach people (either by hand or by bot) who've recently been active at GAN, or even at reviewing DYK, inviting them to participate. Ask the Signpost if they wouldn't mind each month's issue including a list of open FACs with a very brief synopsis ("Currently open for review are Pepi I Meryre, an Egyptian pharoah; Lips Are Movin, a song by Meghan Trainor; Limusaurus, a dinosaur…"). Possibly post a similar list periodically at various noticeboards, and maybe even mass-spam it monthly to the Wikiprojects. (Most of the projects are moribund, but a lot of people still have them watchlisted.) This might pique the curiosity of people who wouldn't necessarily see themselves as FAC types but notice that a topic in which they have an interest is up for review. If nothing else, if we regularly post the list it might dispel the myth that FAC is just a long list of hurricanes, battles and videogames;
6. (Coupled with all the above, particularly 2 and 5) Be welcoming to new reviewers and be understanding of the fact that if someone doesn't agree with the way we currently do things it's possibly an indication that the way we currently do things is wrong. I (rightly) complain about the self-appointed professional nitpickers, but the toxicity can flow both ways. We've all seen examples of someone raising what to their eyes is a legitimate concern, and being shouted down by the nominator and their friends. Particularly if we're actively trying to recruit new participants, we need to be much more patient at explaining "no, here's why we do it this way" instead of just barking variants of "go read the MOS". We also need to be open to the possibility that the MOS isn't some kind of sacred text and that people refusing to follow some part or other of it may actually have a point.

I doubt Echo had anything to do with the decline in FAC activity. Echo hasn't affected who watchlists whom, it just provides a backup mechanism for notifying people that they've been mentioned on pages they're not necesarily watching; you still have 639 watchers. (The proportion of watchers of any given page who are actually active always declines over time, since some of those watchers are going to be blocked, retired or deceased.) The decline is much more going to be an artefact of the general drop in Wikipedia participation between 2007–2014, of the loss of a few feverishly active people like Geometry Guy, Malleus and even Mattisse who skewed the activity figures, of the increasingly vocal strict-compliance-to-the-MOS faction making the whole process increasingly unpleasant, and of a new generation of Wikipedia editors who see the new WP:WIAFA as an almost impossibly strict set of criteria (which it is; I don't believe a single FA actually complies with it, and FAC is all about persuading people to turn a blind eye to non-compliance) and to whom creating five adequate articles is a better use of time than attempting to create a single perfect article which will likely be rejected in the FAC crapshoot regardless. ‑ Iridescent 06:39, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more with that last sentence if I tried. I've always wondered if I'm just not cut out to be an A-grade writer on here, and have to settle for B/C-grade "enthusiastic amateur" instead, but seeing stuff like this makes me realise I shouldn't beat myself up about it so much. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:36, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

(I hold my hands up: a long post about writing quality really shouldn't end with a 132-word sentence, particularly when that post is a reply to SandyGeorgia, scourge of the run-on sentence…) People (not just at FAC but in general) get too hung up on stylistic issues. As far as I'm concerned the current WP:Featured article criteria is the political manifesto of a tiny clique of people who wander around criticising other people's writing rather than writing anything themselves, not an actual set of instructions to be taken seriously (unless someone wants to claim that Immune system, Sea, Association football or India are really "a thorough survey of the relevant literature"). Provided the article is a balanced summary, sourced, and passes both the "would a bright 14-year old with no prior knowledge of the topic understand this?" and the "would a bright 14-year old with no prior knowledge of the topic be bored by this?" tests, the article should be considered high quality, and the people who care about en-dashes and number formats can do their thing afterwards. Something like Ceilings of the Natural History Museum breaches the Manual of Style in about 50 different ways; all you need to do is either be prepared to explain why you've done so if you've done so deliberately, or be prepared not to object when other people tinker with it if it was an oversight. Being accurate and being interesting (or at least as interesting as you can make some of the duller topics) is by far the most important thing—there's no point slaving for a month over something that complies with every rule, but which is so boring nobody will ever read more than the first paragraph. It's very out of date, but I highly recommend Giano's essay as still the only "how to write" essay on Wikipedia that isn't total drivel. ‑ Iridescent 21:14, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay, well as a practical example, consider Talk:Machine Head (album)/GA1, which I'm basically contemplating closing as "failed" on the grounds of "I'm not wading through that lot, particularly when half of it contradicts what I know about copyediting from Giano, Tony1 and others" and the other half is basically a list of stuff covered in Wikipedia:What the Good article criteria are not. I've had Giano's essay linked on my userpage for years; it's an essential read. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Lord. My standard for GAs is that they should have at least the quality of a B+ 8th Grade book report. I haven’t read through all that, but there’s no way in hell all that feedback is justified over a GAN. TonyBallioni (talk) 12:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

As the commmunity changes any project that fails to recruit from among the newer editors is bound to decline, even while the community as a whole is broadly stable. As with any project that could use new blood, I would suggest writing a signpost article on the FAC process, and emphasise the bits you find useful. Maybe even give some examples of FAC feedback prompted improvements - either by dealing with omissions or getting things rephrased for a general audience. In this era of Zoom meetings it might be useful to host a Zoom session where people review some FA candidates. Or to occasionally ask for reviews from long inactive FA writers and reviewers who are still editing. I have done quite a few FA reviews in my time, and though my attitude to MOS is similar's to Giano's, I'm never really sure whether I'm perceived as a net negative or a net positive there. I think my queries are generally well receieved, but I know to avoid reviewing articles by one editor who doesn't want reviews by people who haven't yet written an FA. More feedback to reviewers might help the process get more and better reviews. ϢereSpielChequers 11:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I participate in GAN reviews far more than FAC, chiefly because it's easier, and I can throw about 95% of the MOS out of the window and just concentrate on the essentials described by Iridescent above. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:04, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I have never done a Good Article Review, but my understanding of that process is that you are supposed to cover the entire criteria. For FAC you can do just the criteria you choose to do, so I prefer FAC because I can choose to cover the aspects of FA criteria that interest me re that article, and leave others to do things such as MOS compliance. ϢereSpielChequers 16:55, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but it's to some extent cancelled out by the fact that there's very little in the actual GA criteria (as opposed to the made up rules some reviewers try to enforce) that's very complicated—the GA criteria are intentionally simple, and boil down to "is this article following the fundamental basics with which every Wikipedia editor ought reasonably be expected to be familiar, and which every Wikipedia article is theoretically supposed to be following anyway?". At FAC there are more specialist things like source review and paraphrasing analysis which genuinely are best left to people experienced in that particular niche area. My main objections to the GA process are the inconsistency (the single-reviewer model makes log-rolling much easier, and there's no GA equivalent to the FA Delegates to whom one can appeal for final rulings if you think a reviewer's being inappropriate), and the general meaninglessness of GA status. ‑ Iridescent 19:05, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

OK chalk me up as someone who has yet to submit a second article to the GA process after my first experience, over a decade ago. ϢereSpielChequers 14:56, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I think everyone has a similar story, along the lines of "the GA reviewer made so many stupid demands, I pulled the nomination and instead nominated it direct at FA where it passed without any alteration". Because GA reviewers operate alone, there's far more scope for them to make stupid comments than there is at FAC where other people will see it and point out that they're being unreasonable. (It cuts both ways; the GA process also gives more scope for a nominator to throw a "how dare you not pass this!" temper tantrum than does FAC. I've certainly seen my share of nominators acting like a dick at GAN to an extent that would have a delegate quickfailing them for disruption at FAC. There's a decent chance that in the past I've been acting like a dick at GAN to an extent that would have a delegate quickfailing me for disruption at FAC.) What I'm saying is that when the reviewer actually understands the criteria instead of reviewing on the basis of "does this conform to my personal opinions?", the GA process can be useful.

If I were in charge then (assuming we kept the B-class/A-class/GA/FA distinction, which if I were actually in charge would definitely not be a given) I'd replace FAC and GAN with a unified "requests for assessment" and have the same group of reviewers dish out both GA and FA status. I think that would boost participation in both processes, and have the added benefits of demystifying the FA process and reducing the scope for abuse at the GA process. I doubt it will ever happen as it would be a major cultural change, and if there's one thing Wikipedia hates it's cultural change. ‑ Iridescent 04:50, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

I thought you were in charge. I agree with merging the processes and teams, but I think there would be a benefit to keeping both GA and FA grades, though with a bit more clarity as to the difference between them. Perhaps, and I know this would be contentious, adding a minimum number of sources, or length to FA. Having a three outcome process GA, FA or neither should in theory be less abrasive, "I grade it as this level" rather than "fail", and it should result in people getting clear advice as to how far their GA was from FA standard. ϢereSpielChequers 12:00, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Originally the MOS was created to prevent edit wars over style -- such as the infamous one over AD/BC vs. CE/BCE. In the times I've reviewed articles for GA, I've always focused on the question "Does this article cover the subject adequately & reasonably explains it?" As for style, as long as things like footnotes, spelling, dates etc. are consistent, I'll fix the occasional errors (instead of flagging them to be fixed) & ignore the larger issues. If a given article has serious style/spelling/grammar problems that can't be ignored, or the submitter adheres to some bizarre style I've never seen before, my inclination is to have the person take it to the Proofreaders' Guild for help before I do any further work. (More importantly, I only take on articles for GA review that I believe have a reasonable chance of passing, so I have yet to encounter any bizarre style issues. I don't like rejection & I suspect neither do most people, so I'll leave that chore to someone else.) -- llywrch (talk) 18:14, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

This rant against GOCE/LOCE was over three years ago, but my opinion of it hasn't changed and nor I suspect have many others. It has a legitimate role in "I'm new to Wikipedia and I've just written a page about my favourite band, can someone look over it and show me how to format it" and "I'm not fluent in English but I've just translated a page from another language, can a native speaker check my grammar" situations. By the time you get to GA/FA level, "toxic" is an overused word on Wikipedia but sometimes it's the word that best fits and this is one of those times. While there are some fine and decent people among their ranks, most of the ones who take it upon themselves to "improve the prose style" of articles on topics they don't have a strong understanding of give the general impression of being the kind of pettifogging drones who think they're performing a public service by uploading photos of their local bus shelters to Google Maps. ‑ Iridescent 19:05, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Nevertheless, if an article submitted to GA is so poorly written that I think it needs help with the writing, that's a big warning sign that the content in the article is not going to pass. (And if I think it's not going to pass, I'm not going to put in the effort to ask my public library to find copies of the cited sources to verify facts.) Either you know how to use the English language before you submit anything to GA or FA, or don't bother submitting. -- llywrch (talk) 23:38, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Which is why GA has the quickfail process, to allow any editor to boot any given nomination out of the review queue without further discussion if it's obviously not going to pass in its current state. (The quickfail clause was in the original version of Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles back in the days of yore when giants stalked the earth, and its current wording was formalized in this RFC; it's not some recent afterthought that reviewers and nominators aren't aware of.) That reviewers tend to ignore the standards and processes and review on the basis of "is this a topic I find interesting?" and "do I like the nominator?", doesn't mean the standards and processes aren't there. ‑ Iridescent 09:56, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Iri, I got so swamped with both a series of minor IRL irritations, and pressing Wikipedia work, that I have not been able to return here; I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel, and after finishing up a few things, may be able to get back here in a few days. I forgot how busy Fall becomes for me IRL ... Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:46, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

No rush at all – as you can probably tell from my contribution history, IRL irritations have taken up my time since roughly May. I try to pop my head in every few days to answer questions on this talkpage, but I'm not even pretending to check my watchlist any more, let alone get involved with anything substantive unless someone specifically askes me to comment on something. (I'm keeping a weather eye on the blossoming UCOC public and community relations disaster, but that's mainly because I don't want to have to play catchup later regarding something that's potentially going to be the first genuine existential threat to Wikipedia since 2002, rather than my having any particular desire to get involved.) ‑ Iridescent 19:38, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I've been vaguely following the ideas above that are meant to reinvigorate – if you will – FAC. As an additional idea, I've been doing a lot of source reviews at FLC and hope to gradually start doing more in FAC (although FAC source reviews seem to usually take longer than FLC ones) any thoughts about having a marker of some kind next to each nomination to show if it has received a source/image review yet? (I suppose maybe this could be extended to having a marker that shows where it stands with supports and opposes, but that may be more problematic since not every support involves a thorough read through or following comments) Aza24 (talk) 23:35, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

For image reviews it might make sense, although the existing list of nominations needing image reviews seems to work. In some ways we don't really want to encourage people to perform image reviews, as it's a specialist skill that's more difficult than it seems—the fact that the limited number of people who are good at it tend to wait until it looks likely that a nomination will pass, rather than waste time reviewing something that's going to fail anyway, is a feature not a bug.

Source reviews are a slightly different matter, since sourcing is one of those areas in which all Wikipedia editors genuinely aren't equal. Most FAs form part of a series by the same author or group of authors; if someone has successfully got United States one-dollar bill, United States two-dollar bill and United States five-dollar bill through FAC, then when the same editor(s) submits United States ten-dollar bill using the same sources, it's a pointless rubber-stamp exercise conducting a full source review. Yes, it's one of those things that can make FAC look like a cosy club of insiders rubber-stamping each other's work when you come across something like Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Triumph of Cleopatra/archive1 where something has passed without source review, but reviewers are so short on the ground that it's not good for anyone if they waste their time reviewing something they know is going to be compliant. SandyGeorgia is better placed than me to comment as she's been the one to actually make the decisions, but to me the fact that the delegates know who can be trusted not to misquote, fabricate or take things out of context and have the leeway to make that call is one of the reasons the FA process is so much more resilient than GA.

(Needless to say, this is yet another of the many areas of all the major projects that will descend into chaos if the WMF ever manage to impose their proposed ban on "treating editors differently based on accomplishments, skills or standing in the Wikimedia-projects or movement" on the projects. We won't even be the worst-hit project if this nonsense is passed, since we at least both have some resilience in our community structures, and have the numbers and prestige to win a battle of wills with the WMF if they're stupid enough to try to impose an unworkable policy by fiat. Can you imagine the Shit Bucket Challenge the admins on Commons will have to go through if T&S bans them from deeming certain people as 'trusted' and consequently every single upload needs to be scrutinized as if it had come from a brand new account? To put things in perspective, I'm by no means particularly active at Commons, and at the time of writing I've uploaded 40,898 images there.) ‑ Iridescent 17:37, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Adding a timestamp so you don't archive ... because ... I will get back to this, I will I will <she says again>. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:46, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

ease-of-editing break (1)

Alright, where was I?

First, WAID did weigh in on the methodology used in that chart, and it was as I suspected, and not me "at the center of the universe because your name appeared on every failed FA nomination as the closer, so every who ever commented on an FAC is counted as having "interacted" with you". It measured the sum of "I post to your talk and you also post to mine", so yes, was an indication that we all used to talk more to each other, rather than my name appearing on archived FACs. That was my sense since my talk page back then was the second busiest after Jimbo's, while Jimbo's talk was not two-way (he didn't go to other editors' talk pages as well). We had a community, we talked to each other, we knew each other. That is gone. Now we ping each other. Very impersonal. So I continue to believe this side effect of the ECHO system is contributing to alienation and increasing depersonalization on Wikipedia.

I've spent more time lately (after mostly an eight-year absence) to try to re-engage and understand the current dynamic at FAC (most of which baffles me), in relation to your suggestion that the assessment scheme needs a complete re-do. Besides that being the sort of thing that is very difficult to accomplish on change-resistant Wikipedia, I am not yet sure if I agree or if it would be beneficial. I do agree that the brokenness at FAC is in bad need of fixing. Seeing how FAC is stagnating has me at least curious. We don't seem to have any alternative, but I can't (usually or easily) distinguish between most GAs and A-, B- or C-class (depending of course, as always, on who passed the GA).

I can't agree with much of this: Plus, of course, there's the small handful of people who get their kicks from hanging around FAC making unreasonable demands, one of whom in particular has bullied multiple people away from ever participating in FAC again. There were a lot of legitimate criticisms about the way FA used to be run—it was totally against the spirit of Wikipedia for a project to be run by a de facto dictator—but it at least meant that there was a mechanism for assholes to be shown the door so we didn't have the culture of smug "I'm determined that this will fail and will do anything I can to disrupt the nomination" obnoxiousness we sometimes see nowadays. I think we disagree about which were the bullies in that scenario. And I'm suspect of anyone who tries to run off reviewers (particularly as they themselves are pushing the deficient noms of their buddies up the grease pole), because a) Coords can ignore faulty reviews, and b) without strong reviewers, the star has no meaning. And I would need to see some examples of how you considered that Raul's behavior was "dictatorial" or that he was ever successful in seeing the congenital assholes being shown the door. My experience with Raul was that he NEVER told me what to do or how to do it or engaged in anything inappropriate backchannel or unduly exercised authority in any way; he let the Wikipedia work like a Wiki. And you know how things ended when we both tried to deal with not one, but three, sockmasters attacking FAC. (We were beaten down by a later discredited arb.) So what behaviors did you find "dictatorial"? I'll catch up on the rest of the long discussion in a bit ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:29, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

There are nominators who unfairly lash out at reviewers, but there are undoubtedly reviewers who approach a given FAC with the clear intention of being obnoxious as possible. I'm reluctant to give specific examples since it unfairly personalizes things (plus, three of the people who were regular involved in this kind of incident have left Wikipedia and can't give their sides of the story), but "I'm going to be as annoying as possible in the hope either that the nominator withdraws it in frustration, or that the nominator loses their temper and gets themselves blocked forcing the nomination to be closed" has been a reasonably regular tactic—for all kinds of debates, not just FAC—ever since Mattisse added it to the Wikipedia playbook. ‑ Iridescent 20:05, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

And what Raul and I did in those situations was to use the restart button. All of the hostility went to a diff, the nom was restarted, and moved to the top of page. It worked, not only to get the FAC focused, but to send a message to Stop This Shit. Current Coords won't do that. Beats me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:15, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Get consensus for the delegates to clerk FAC much more aggressively, in particular moving off-topic and tangential discussions to the talkpage. I don't know why they think they need consensus for this; it's their job. I am at a loss for why it's not being done, as we used to. I suspect it's because they are all exhausted and just don't have the stomach for it, or because that same group of bullies would have had their heads if they dared interfere with their TFA machine. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:22, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't feel inclined to wade through the archive looking for the discussion, but I know that a few years ago there was a "how strictly should the delegates clerk?" discussion (I can't remember if it was a formal RFC or not). The delegates can't be blamed for not clerking if they've been told that there's a consensus they shouldn't clerk and should restrict themselves to promoting/archiving. ‑ Iridescent 20:05, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I take your word for it, and don't doubt it. But I bet those same bullies were behind it. Regardless, what is missing here is Raul's leadership. If the Coords were in fact constrained as you say, there is no leader now who can step in and say, "this isn't working", we need a fresh look, we need to consider doing A, B or C ... there is no one who takes initiative (and after only a month of asking questions, they are already tiring of me ... so if the FA process dies, at least I tried). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:17, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Because we've all been using the Wikipedia:Nominations viewer script for so long we've probably forgotten even installing it, we can lose sight of just how incomprehensible and off-putting the FAC page I have never used the nomination viewer, have no idea how to use it, always read the ENTIRE FAC page top-to-bottom, every day (unless I was traveling), and still do it that way. I don't know how a Coord can have the big picture if they don't do it that way. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:24, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I suspect that among the regulars there, you're in a small minority; Nominations Viewer is one of Wikipedia's most frequently used scripts. I find it absolutely invaluable both in allowing me to skip over topics on which I know I have nothing useful to say without having to scroll, and for giving an at-a-glance summary of the level of participation in each nomination and on which way the wind is blowing (if I see something has no supports and six opposes, I know it's unlikely to be worth my while reading on).

The problem with Flow was that it was hideous and inflexible, but the basic principle that Wikipedia's long discussion pages—be they user talk pages, FAC or the drama boards—are horribly off-putting to a generation raised on lazy-loading websites where one only sees the most relevant content unless one specifically chooses to see more, is thoroughly sound. I stand by my point that to people viewing WP:FAC in its natural state, the page looks horribly daunting. For someone coming in from the relatively calm environment of GAN, as I assume most of the prospective new FAC nominators and reviewers are, being confronted with the mess that is the FAC page (126,069 words / 741 kb of text—or a little more than the whole of Atonement, if you prefer—at the time of writing) I wouldn't blame any of them for deciding they have better things to do than try to make sense of it. ‑ Iridescent 20:05, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I can't see it as you see it because I have never installed that thingie, but you are probably right from a reviewer point of view. From a Coord/Delegate point of view, I still can't see how one can keep up with overall trends without reading the whole page, top-to-bottom, as I did. I only watchlisted those that were likely to end up in hot water, because I didn't need to watchlist. I processed the entire page almost every single day. And, when people needed to withdraw, or needed urgent attention, I sure wasn't getting bombarded by those Gosh Darned Pingie Thingies-- they came to my talk page, where a ton of TPS helped with routine answers. If the Coords are feeling overburdened now (and they sure do seem to be, even though the volume they are processing is considerably less than I processed), I am again blaming the ECHO system, because they are probably being pinged right and left, rather than having TPS help them deal with routine stuff as I did. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:22, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

(Sorry, got distracted by the trainwreck below and only just noticed this.) I think that gadget is fantastic from a reviewing point of view—it allows me to skim past discussions about things like the bird articles where I know I'll have nothing useful to add, or where I've put the individual discussion on my watchlist so I don't need to see it on the parent page as well. FAC is one of the few cases where the unlamented WP:FLOW harebrained idea would potentially have actually been useful.

That page is unmanageably large and I firmly believe its length and complexity scares off potential participants. The decline in participation has counter-intuitively made the situation worse, not better. Fewer participants may mean fewer nominations, but it also means fewer reviewers; what discussions there are hang around for weeks and steadily get wordier and wordier as people argue but there's insufficient participation to get a consensus either to promote or archive. (As of today, the FAC page comes to 685kb and 115,000 words. The FAC page at the height of the Golden Age may have had twice as many open nominations, but it only came in at 100kb / 18,500 words.) ‑ Iridescent 22:03, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

School A7s

Hi, can you explain to me what is the story with RFA candidates being asked or going out of their way to demonstrate that they know that schools can't be A7'd? It's like an RFA shibboleth. What is that about? Why is it so important that admins know that schools can't be A7'd? Why schools? Lev!vich 05:23, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Well it certainly makes more sense than an "Admin readiness score" which checks whether you have been editing at least 80 days and have made at least 80 edits, and credits you for pages created that have since been deleted. EEng 05:30, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

How can there possibly be anything wrong with that tool, EEng? It is labeled "Powered by Wikimedia Cloud Services". Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:45, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I score 1203 out of 1300, for what that's worth. Regarding the "at least 80 days and have made at least 80 edits" part, remember this tool is primarily intended for use on small wikis—on a big project like en-wikipedia, the nominator is hopefully already going to know the candidate. Not every project has such high activity levels as we do.

I actually think that "pages created that have since been deleted" is a useful metric. Right back to my earliest time here I've always been sceptical of any prospective admin who hasn't had something on which they've worked deleted, or at least nominated for deletion. Putting significant amounts of time and effort—and sometimes actual money—into something, only to have some drive-by editor declare it "non-notable", is arguably the most dispiriting experience one can have on Wikipedia. Being able to demonstrate that one can empathize with those in this situation and will make allowances for the fact that someone who's just had their month's-worth of work summarily deleted might be in a bad temper, instead of primly plastering "you're not being civil" templates, is IMO an important qualification for adminship. ‑ Iridescent 06:09, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

You've got points for having a userpage, that's cheating and needs to be deducted. Or copy-paste 1KB of something from somewhere and brag about the perfect score, whichever you prefer. Usedtobecool ☎️ 14:20, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

✓ Done; I am now officially perfect. ‑ Iridescent 15:25, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Yet another user gaming the system to increase their chances of becoming an admin... Lev!vich 15:30, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't talk to lowly 874s. ‑ Iridescent 15:38, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of "gotcha" tests at RFA, but this seems like a reasonable one. While nobody can be expected to remember everything, it's reasonable to expect any prospective admin to have read the blocking, protection and deletion policies.

Regarding "why schools?", the original RFC is here; the TL;DR summary is "not all schools are notable in Wikipedia terms but a large enough proportion of them are, that it's reasonable to assume that no deletion is ever going to be wholly uncontroversial". (It's similar to the argument I've used previously regarding railway stations. Schools are significant enough institutions within their communities that it's reasonable to operate on the presumption that any given school is going to have been the topic of repeated media coverage—if nothing else, the "council gets approval for new school" and "new school opens" articles in the local paper. Consequently the burden of proof is reversed from its usual Wikipedia position, and it's down to those who want it deleted to demonstrate that it's not notable in Wikipedia terms; that in turn means that the deletion is never going to be a page with no practical chance of surviving discussion, the only circumstance in which speedy deletion can be applied.) ‑ Iridescent 05:52, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Goody, another fun test "This tool was originally developed by ScottyWong for use on the English Wikipedia" in fact. I only got 919 - 9 100s, & only 19 for the other 3. At least no zeros. Btw, I think the "pages created that have since been deleted" may include those just renamed or merged - I scored 120+ & I can't believe I've had that many actually deleted. Johnbod (talk) 15:12, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I can't work out what it's counting—looking at your page creation log, I can only see one redlink in the entire history. (If they're counting anything other than actual articles it's a fairly pointless metric; most users who've been around any length of time will have racked up dozens of temporary userspace sandboxes and so forth.) ‑ Iridescent 16:57, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, yes - 30 January 2020 Johnbod talk contribs created page Category:Narashima temples - a typo! Johnbod (talk) 20:35, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

You need 72 deleted pages to score the maximum; an editor who'd had that many actual articles deleted would likely not be admin material. So, it is indeed counting all pages. It's not trying to count the U1's and G7's, I don't think. I think moving pages over redirects is one way to "delete" perfectly good pages. What else? Adding talk pages to articles that are later deleted? Or maybe it is indeed counting G7s and U1s with the rationale that a user will have done plenty of experience-gaining in the time it takes to rack up that many of those. Usedtobecool ☎️ 17:34, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Having yourself renamed would be the quickest way to achieve a high score; every page in your userspace and every talk archive would immediately become a deleted page as far as the database is concerned. ‑ Iridescent 17:37, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Slightly oddly, I only score 1,133. I lose 100 for not having a User page, despite, er ... having a User page. I presume my "Deleted Page" 100 score is due to the fact I often create articles in userspace and then move them to article space with no redirect, leaving them as deleted articles. Black Kite (talk) 18:59, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Even more slightly oddly, part of the score is "Blocks administered", meaning how many people you've blocked – a kind of Catch-22 providing built-in proof that those already admins qualify to be admins, and those not already admins should stay where they are. EEng 19:20, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

So it's like that proposed WMF trustee rubric. Lev!vich 19:22, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Back on the schools question: It's important to remember that when we're talking about "schools", the school-notability promoters are specifically thinking of fairly large, reasonably modern, and formally constituted school organizations, exactly of the sort for which 'the "council gets approval for new school" and "new school opens" articles in the local paper' is a reasonable expectation. They aren't thinking about anything in the homeschool/dame school/religious school line, in which a willing teacher collects a few kids from the village and teaches them reading, deportment, or how to be a priest. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh, definitely; by "school" I'm talking about actual regulated-by-the-local-education-authorities schools, not a handful of kids being homeschooled in a shack, or a bible study class. The same is the case with my go-to railway station example, in which by "railway station" I mean a building (or at least a structure) at which trains regularly call to pick up and set down passengers, not a flag stop in rural Nebraska 100 miles from the nearest town at which in the 1890s a passing train stopped once a week to drop off coal for the local farmers, or the nominal "stations" in rural Canada which literally have no infrastructure at all but at which the trains will stop on request. ‑ Iridescent 18:45, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I've had an article nominated for deletion, and I've also been nominated for deletion myself—I'm sure not if the latter earns me extra points or not. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:14, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

If there is a competition, I had indeed an article about myself AfDed, an article which I have created AfDed, and another one nominated for speedy deletion (the first two before I passed RfA, the last one when I was already admin). All three survived. Possibly there were more of my articles AfDed (and survived), but I do not remember the numbers.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:55, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I've had the dubious distinction of having two articles I had a hand in getting through DYK get deleted at AfD a significant time later, leading to the unusual situation of having a successfully closed DYK template with a redlink. (The former has since been restored) Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:24, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Dont get my hopes up....

I missed the 'draft' bit in the deletion log and experienced a frisson of joy thinking you had finally snapped and deleted the main page. Alas, it was but for a brief moment before my eyes focused. Only in death does duty end (talk) 20:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Deleting the main page is sooo 2000s. All the cool compromised admin accounts change the content model instead. ‑ Iridescent 20:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Elaborate

I prefer succinct. I prefer straight to crooked. Simplicity to sophistry, --Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:00, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

You'll need to give me at least some idea what this is about as I have no clue at all. Is it some kind of reference to my warning at User talk:EEng#How? If so I stand by it; putting "née" in the wrong place once is a good-faith mistake, carrying on once it's been explained that it's wrong is no different to any common-or-garden vandal messing around with facts.* With most editors—particularly most new editors—I wouldn't come down as hard as this under the circumstances, but given this thread this is not an editor whose Wikipedia career is likely to go well unless and until it's made clear to them that Wikipedia is a collaborative environment and not their personal website. ‑ Iridescent 16:12, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
*I personally think the use of "née" should be search-and-replaced out of existence except in the case of direct quotations—it's an archaism that survives as a coy affectation among a tiny subset of pseuds who've read too much Jane Austen, there's no advantage to saying "Jane Smith (née Doe)" instead of "Jane Smith (born Doe)", and since it means nothing to anyone outside that tiny subset MOS:COMMONALITY says we should be using "born" whicb is universally understood—but that's a conversation for another place,

List of Drifters characters

That page was separated from the its main page and it even have the move template in its talk page on. The two sources found copied from us. Mobilepubliclibrary copied this on May 24, 2019, three years after after the show ended and that character list was written. Aminoapps 02/12/17, two months after December 23, 2016 the day Drifters ended. So they copied from us, not the way around. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SpectresWrath (talk • contribs)

Agreed, looking more closely at the history; restored. If you're going to copy-and-paste between Wikipedia articles, please attribute it in the edit summary, rather than just a note on the talkpage! ‑ Iridescent 16:56, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

ImADork

OK, I'm in VE, did the first deletion easily (wow), and now all I want to do is change the FAC promoted date at May Revolution. I have the entry up, and cannot figure out what buttons to push to edit the cell. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:12, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Ah ha, got it ... double click! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

In a way it's a shame that the first incarnation of VE was so bad that everyone who got their fingers burned by it now refuses to go anywhere near it. For some things like making a big change to a table, resizing images by dragging the corner until it's exactly the right size, etc, it genuinely is more useful than the wikitext editor, but so few people are willing even to touch it (and it's soooooooo damn slow) that nobody knows these features exist. Assuming that—like most sane people—you keep it permanently disabled, you can switch it on for one-off use on those rare occasions you want to use it by clicking "edit" on any article, going up to the url and changing &action=edit to &veaction=edit – doing it this way, you can even force it to run on pages where VE is normally disabled like user talk pages. ‑ Iridescent 16:30, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Wonderful in theory, sucky in practice. Turns out you only deleted the FAC column from the first section (I split the page in two earlier because it is so huge), and when I try to delete the FAC column from the second section, it gives me odd error messages ... maybe it is timing out? Can't tell. Not very user friendly. Are you able to delete that column? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

✓ Done. Because VE is an amateurishly-written piece of crap, written by nerds with powerful computers and superfast internet connections who don't appreciate that it crashes normal people's computers, you need to wait patiently for the "this process is slowing your browser" error messages to clear if you're trying to do anything more basic than fixing a typo—but it's still a lot easier than manually editing a huge stack of markup line-by-line. ‑ Iridescent 16:50, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Iri ... you won my first-born. But I think you've won him before. Now you have him with COVID. I am going to stay away from VE, but glad it worked for this purpose! Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:23, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

And it turns out my Visually editing was incompetent: [2] [3] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:08, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

What Izno sees

you can switch it on for one-off use on those rare occasions you want to use it by clicking "edit" on any article, going up to the url and changing &action=edit to &veaction=edit If you use the 2010 wikitext editor, there is a button at the right of the toolbar that looks like a pen which will put you in VE mode. There is subsequently a button in the VE toolbar in a similar position (though not same due to the submit button) with the same appearance that you can use to return in the same editing session, at least whole page editing. My memory says it does not work for section editing going in the VE to WTE direction. --Izno (talk) 17:06, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I loathe the 2010 toolbar with a passion—to me it combines all the drawbacks of the 2006 toolbar and VE without any of either's advantages. I just tried switching the 2010 toolbar on as an experiment and I can't replicate this—the only icon I can see that looks like a pen is the one to switch on syntax highlighting. ‑ Iridescent 17:17, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

It's there on the far right. Maybe it does not display at all for section editing? Or perhaps not on pages on which VE is disabled? --Izno (talk) 20:05, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

What I see

I'm not seeing what you're seeing – see right (vanilla Vector so it's not a skin issue). Could it be a gadget or script you installed at some point? I've taken the liberty of recaptioning your screenshot, so it's clear to anyone else watching which is yours and which is mine) ‑ Iridescent 20:32, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I may not be sane, but I use VE almost exclusively. I do have a very fast PC and a fast internet line, so I have no problem believing others don't find it as useful as I do, but for me it's been a big productivity boost. It's not just tables, though I agree it's invaluable for that; simple text copyediting and fiddling around with references is much more efficient for me in VE, and that's most of what I do. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:57, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I think it really depends what you want to use it for. For relatively routine things like copyediting text in reasonably short articles, it's probably superior to the Wikitext editor, expecially for editors who aren't familiar with the Wikitext editor and its quirks and consequently don't automatically parse the codes in their head. For anything complicated such as formatting quote box and {{multiple image}} templates, it's slow, confusing and unwieldy, unless you have a particular attachment to error messages and to watching progress bars inch across the screen. For some things, like standardising the format of citation templates, when editors try to edit using VE the result tends to literally be worse than if they hadn't edited at all. (I'm no fan of the wretched WP:LDR reference format at the best of times, but watching people try to handle LDR pages using VE has a certain grim comedy value. And for anything that uses any kind of complicated formatting such as separate "footnotes" and "references" sections, it's literally unusable (and I mean "literally" literally, not figuratively—here's [[Phineas Gage]] in VisualEditor for example, imagine you've spotted a typo in one of the footnotes and see how long it takes in VE to try to correct it). Unless and until the WMF can get VE to handle Wikipedia articles as they actually are, rather than the spherical cow articles that all follow a consistent format and only exist in the devs heads, VE is just going to be a tool that actively frustrates new editors and drives them away when they find it literally impossible to perform even fairly basic tasks using it. ‑ Iridescent 20:25, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Ya, I use VE also for copyedits, adding images and general restructuring. Anything that requires reference changes more complex than mere copypasting is right out. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:35, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

(ec) I agree with all those criticisms, but having used it for years I reflexively switch to the text editor when I run into one of those situations, perhaps rolling my eyes a little as I do so. It would be nice if VE could be enhanced to fix some of those problems, but given that it has to live on top of a pre-existing text-edited corpus I don't expect that any time soon. I might disagree on "reasonably short articles", unless Radiocarbon dating and History of US science fiction and fantasy magazines to 1950 are short in your view; I regularly edit those in VE, and the latter was built almost entirely in VE. I might also disagree on "routine", depending on what you mean by that: categories, images, adding/editing citations, and moving text around from section to section are all things I would prefer to do in VE. For categories I could understand an experienced editor not wanting to use VE -- I know there are tools for semi-automating those kinds of edits. I've tried those tools, but I work on one (or a few) articles at a time, so by the next time I want to use HotCat or whatever the tool is I've forgotten how it works. I also think you're right about a new editor who runs into LDR or sfn being very frustrated, but I'd say they'd get equally frustrated with the wikitext in those cases.

I'm not trying to evangelize -- just raising the visibility of content-editors-who-really-like-VE. I can't believe I'm the only one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:44, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, but you and I aren't its target market. We know enough to know when (and crucially how) to switch to the Wikitext editor. Because there are so many commonplace things that break VE (basic things like "making a comment on a talkpage" and "adding a reference to a statement in the infobox" will cause VE to fail, we're not talking arcane techniques which only an advanced editor would use), we're essentially presenting new editors with a Kobayashi Maru scenario when they sign up. When they get the "which editor do you want as the default?" dialog box, they get the choice between having to learn a complicated editing system with a steep learning curve, or having to learn a simplified editing system and a complicated editing system with a steep learning curve.

VE is a useful additional tool for experienced editors, but by even suggesting it to newer editors we're creating the online equivalent of allowing people to take their driving test in an automatic in a world where the only cars on sale are stick-shift. ‑ Iridescent 07:09, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

"Useful additional tool for experienced editors" is a reasonable description, though for me it's the primary tool, not the secondary one. I think my main point is that I never see VE described with even so hedged a positive phrase as yours, which has always seemed slightly irrational. As for new editors, the only time I've been to an editathon and sat with a new user was prior to VE, but the outcome contained nothing that would not have been easier with VE. I vividly remember explaining what square brackets did, and what curly brackets did.... I think I apologetically told them (an intelligent forty-ish theatre geek) just to stick in {{reflist}} without worrying about it and memorize it for any future articles. Of course you're right that there are common tasks that VE is completely unable to do, but just being able to do those tasks in wikitext doesn't change how discouraging raw wikitext is for most new editors. VE's absolute limitations should be contrasted with wikitext's practical limitations; both are severely limiting, but in different ways. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Obnoxiously, I have to disagree. Wikitext was developed as a way for non-techies to do markup using only stuff right there on the keyboard, like (square) brackets and apostrophes, without having to learn HTML or other commands. Even though ref tags strictly speaking break this rule (I can hardly be the only one who sometimes forgets to close them, and it would have been hard for me to remember how if I hadn't done some basic HTML on LiveJournal), what makes it complex is the templates: the curly bracket stuff, with all the unforgiving parameters inside it, is like stepping off from a wading pool into deep water. That's why I abominate the WMF pushing citation templates in their training materials, let alone harv and sfn on top of citation templates. I started the hard way, as I suspect many of us did at that time (2008, after the citation templates had been developed): I copied an article and its edit code into a word processor and used it as a template; you can see here the mess caused by the word processor using smart quotes and by my not knowing the trick about putting messy ref names in quotation marks. I laboured my way through the infobox; if my example had also used citation templates, I might not have bothered trying. It's my view that the templates have made wikitext complicated; the rest of it is quite easy to learn if you have a standard English-language keyboard (to me, far easier than "click on this thing and while holding it, pull down this menu that's cleverly hidden over here). Yngvadottir (talk) 10:45, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Yngvadottir, the WMF doesn't run editor training events. Which training materials are you talking about? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:00, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

The videos on how to do referencing; most of the welcome templates now link to the WMF-produced materials that (a) require learning from a video, a big accessibility problem, and (b) present referencing as if there's only one way to do it. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:50, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Pages such as Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia contain videos that are entirely about wikitext because they were made in 2010 and 2012, before the visual editor was available. There was talk a few years ago about creating videos for the visual editor, and eventually, a long-time editor got a grant to make some, but I don't know if they exist or have ever been used. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:57, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Not to put words into Yngvadottir's mouth but I know she doesn't like making unnecessary edits—if I understand correctly, her issues aren't that the videos only cover wikitext, but that there isn't an adequate text-based alternative to the videos (something I can entirely sympathize with, "we don't have written instructions where you can pay extra attention to the parts you consider important and skip the parts that aren't relevant or which you already know, you'll have to watch this video" is one of the fastest ways for a company to lose me as a customer and I can't be alone in that quite aside from people with vision problems who literally can't watch the videos) and that they don't make it clear that they're a demonstration of one particular style rather than the "correct" referencing style so they mislead new editors into thinking they're being helpful if they go around changing existing reference styles to match the {{cite book}}/{{cite web}} system they're being shown. ‑ Iridescent 16:16, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You're not the only one who uses it Mike; I regularly edit in VE. When I first started here 6 years ago, I only used the Wikitext editor. I was already very familiar with HTML markup, so it took me little time to familiarise myself with our watered down version and I'm ordinarily sceptical of WYSIWYG editors because I have often found that they over complicate the markup they generate and introduce all sorts of errors. But as I became familiar with VE when that was rolled out, I found (like you) that it was IMO superior for copyediting and article content work generally. Off-wiki, all my writing is done in MS Word, so perhaps I just find it easier to proof-read on-Wiki in VE. I also discovered that you can copy and paste a table from Excel straight into VE, which has transformed my editing. I think I agree with Iridescent's view that new editors may struggle with aspects of it and that you often have to edit with both VE and Wikitext, so in that sense, it's not great as a solution to editing full-stop; but I have to say I'm rarely doing the sort of editing which requires fully switching to the text editor. For instance, I'm sure people who do lots of categorising have better tools for the job, but I don't pay much attention to categories so when I have to add them (during article creation, or else someone will slap a big tag at the top) I usually find VE's category tool very handy. Most of my recent article work has been done almost exclusively in VE. It is perhaps helped by the fact that I don't use citation templates, which probably explains why my only major bug bear is that it's a pain to add {{Refn|group="n"|....<ref>cite</ref>}} tags to generate footnotes. Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 10:52, 23 November 2020 (UTC).

Noswall59, you can also drag and drop .csv files into the visual editor. Most editors seem to find adding citation templates easier in the visual editor, because if you give it a URL (e.g., nytimes.com, books.google.com, etc.), ISBN, doi, or similar identifiers, it'll try to automagically construct the template for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Completely agree; I drop URLs into the hopper all the time. I usually have to fix a title and mess with the date formats, but it's all there organized for me to work with. Much easier than wikitext. Re Noswall59's comments about the {{Refn|group="n"|... tags, I now find the text version of the citation so inefficient to work with that I create the citation (that I want to be inside the note) in the wrong place in the article, in VE, then switch to wikitext and copy an existing Refn, and cut/paste the wrongly placed citation into the Refn. Having a way of adding notes in VE would be near the top of my wish list. Perhaps I should add that my preference doesn't come from a lack of familiarity with tags and coding, etc.; even in as nerdy an environment as Wikipedia I'm probably fairly near the "more technical" end of the user spectrum. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:15, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

By "if you give it a URL (e.g., nytimes.com, books.google.com, etc.), ISBN, doi, or similar identifiers, it'll try to automagically construct the template for you", aren't you just describing the "autofill citation" button? I've never tried it in VE but how does this differ from clicking the "cite" button in the wikitext editor and pasting in a URL? ‑ Iridescent 05:59, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

RefToolbar has never worked consistently for me. I go to cite journal, paste in a DOI or PubMed, and click the magnifying glass... and nothing happens. There's no error message, just nothing happens. Pasting the same thing into VisualEditor's box will produce results for me. Also, the citoid service can often match multiple identifiers, so you start with a PubMed id and end up with the DOI, ISSN, and PMC links, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:57, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Shameless appeal to TPS regarding a unique referencing scheme

Since Help:Footnotes doesn't have an active talk page and Iri has weird writing chaps watching it who might be familiar with more novel uses of citation schemes, question: is it possible to nest or stack different ref schemes within each other? Messing around with an idea on User:David Fuchs/sandbox, but the gist is an article that heavily uses audiovisual sources. For verification purposes, it's helpful to link specific timecode and/or actually quote the excerpt, but with a standard {{reflist}} scheme that would mean duplicating the ref call for each use, which results in an ungainly number of almost identical/mostly duplicative reference calls, just with a different at= or quote= call at the ends. My brainstorming idea is to call the timecodes with a different footnote scheme, e.g. the sandbox, where ^[3] is the podcast/video/whatever and ^[i][ii][iii] etc would be the specific timecode. But just trying to nest {{notelist-lr}} within {{reflist}} doesn't work. You can of course stick the other footnotes in the same section or another as the sandbox draft is currently set up, although that disjoints the ref calls from their mother ref. The obviously simple answer to this is to do Harv or manual referencing and just have a bulleted list of references at the end that you can stick the {{notelist}} template into, e.g. [] which is marginally more work. So is there a way to do what I want the easy way, or is this entire project just overthinking things and I should just deal with the duped refs like a reasonable adult? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:08, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

What's wrong with {{sfn}} and friends? --Izno (talk) 17:12, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Nothing innately, but if you're dealing with sources that are primarily web-based and single-paged, I've always found sfn and company an ill fit for those articles. I use it for more academic or historical articles where websites and the like are a distinct minority, but the specific hypothetical articles I'm talking about are more towards the pop culture vein where it'd almost exclusively be single-page web-accessible sources. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:27, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with mixing in sfn et al when there's one specific source that could use it on a page. If a quality assessor comes along and says, "thou must use it for all", you just make a case this is a reasonable exception to whatever arbitrary expectation they have. (I doubt there are any such editors in that sphere who wouldn't recognize it as valid a priori, but I cannot claim the same about all editors.)

On an objective note, I think what I was seeing regards the alternative was not LISTGAP compliant. On mlbile so I can't check.

Lastly, on an aside, the appearance of the alternatives section is how the new book referencing from WMDE will look. (Probably the biggest reason I was cued to suggest sfn.) --Izno (talk) 17:39, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I would probably use {{sfn}} with |loc= for the appurtenant information. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:50, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure there's a better example but Lion Versus uses mixed sfn in this way. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:57, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

This can certainly be done and, as with many fiddly citation queries, the best way may be to abandon all forms of template, although I can't quite see that this is actually necessary. Johnbod (talk) 17:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

At Clarice Phelps#US Navy, a similar issue was handled by using {{r|p=}} to reference audio timestamps. Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:44, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks peeps for the input. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:02, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, with anything relying on audiovisual sources I'd just take one of the existing television FAs and copy the referencing system from that. There's no point reinventing the wheel when so many people have already sat and thought "what's the best way to cite a bunch of timestamps?". ‑ Iridescent 20:34, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

AfD for deaths due to COVID-19 and related RfC

Hi. Thanks for commenting at the recent AfD for the above list. There is now an ongoing discussion around the best way to split the list, if any, if you wish to comment further. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 17:34, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Too much of an exercise in turd-polishing for me. I don't have the energy or the interest to take Sandstein's supervote close of the AfD to DRV (yes there were a lot of "keeps" but as far as I can see they were all variations on "keep, it exists" and not a one of them made a policy-based argument), but it's down to those who wanted to keep it to clean up the mess. ‑ Iridescent 18:14, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

RFC on 17th-century historians

I wonder whether the talk-page stalkers here could answer the ostensible question at Talk:Constable of Chester#Request for Comment: Is Tristram Risdon an allowable source? So far, the conversation is about whether it's good to block people over OR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

That's because the real problem isn't using 17th century sources ... it's an editor's behavior and problems that aren't QUITE to the point of driving everyone into doing something about it. The RfC was filed as a pointy exercise in being a PITA, quite honestly. -- Ealdgyth (talk) 21:50, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

What Ealdgyth said. An RFC on the usability of old historians as sources would be impossible, as the circumstances are different each time. Even the most uninformed and biased historian can be useful as a primary source for what people thought at the time (Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote an unmitigated stream of pure bullshit, but one couldn't write a historiography of Britain without citing him). For some topics antique sources have value because they're written by people with a better understanding of the culture of the time than modern historians. There are also quite a few topics where the old source is of such high quality that nobody else has ever bothered to write anything better, and a lot of topics where the primary sources have been lost so the views of old historians are all we have, and every subsequent work on the topic is just a case of somebody paraphrasing the earlier historians.

I agree entirely that Talk:Constable of Chester#Request for Comment: Is Tristram Risdon an allowable source? isn't a valid RFC and people shouldn't be commenting there as it's only encouraging a disruptive editor to keep disrupting. (The RFC is mis-framed; the issue isn't whether Risdon is a reliable source as he obviously isn't, the issue is in which contexts an obviously unreliable source is still a legitimate primary source for background and how to highlight the fact that we're quoting something we know is likely to be inaccurate.) The back-and-forth on that talkpage is a textbook example of why WP:DNFTT exists. ‑ Iridescent 18:25, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Link of the week

From Indo-Saracenic architecture: "They partly reflected the British aspiration for an "Imperial style" of their own, rendered on an intentionally grand scale....". Any thoughts as to a different target? Johnbod (talk) 21:41, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Megaproject maybe, although that's more about dams and high-speed railways? This Is Not My Area but I'm singularly unconvinced that "Indo-Saracenic architecture" is a genuine architectural style in its own right—not a single one of those pictures looks remotely different to the generic 'cod-Byzantine with a touch of Gothic' typical 19th-century British civic building. (You could recaption any one of the photos in the article as "Midland Railway terminus" or "Catholic church in a reasonably prosperous Northern mill town" and nobody would raise an eyebrow.)

The best (non-Neelix) example of a redirect not leading where one would expect that I know of is currently Sex with ducks. ‑ Iridescent 22:30, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

That's certainly (fairly) true on a large panorama photo, as the article says. We know from the Houses of Parliament that Victorian architects used stylistic "skins" much like WP pages do. A railway station needs to be a certain way. But the ornament and smaller aspects of the structure use Indian-derived stuff in a very eclectic way. There's one of Brighton Pavilion, which would I think raise eyebrows as a "Midland Railway terminus" or "Catholic church in a reasonably prosperous Northern mill town". Probably there need to be more detail photos there, rather than the grand prospects the local love (I think I've weeded out the by-night shots at least). Johnbod (talk) 01:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Even Brighton Pavilion wouldn't be totally incongruous as a Victorian railway terminus; some of them were equally architecturally eccentric (and I'm intentionally ignoring the low-hanging fruit of the London termini). The similarity doesn't surprise me—both classical Islamic architecture and post-Wren British architecture were consciously taking Constantinople (in some cases through the prism of Venice) as a template, and most of the elements like vaulting, domes, and pointed windows are natural consequences of enclosing a large space with minimum internal obstructions whether that large space is a place of worship, a town hall, a mausoleum or a railway station—but I do struggle to see how (e.g.) chatris and chhajjas are specifically Indian rather than the Indian terms for elements common across the world. Something like Chichester Cross or Herentals Lakenhal (a redlinked World Heritage Site, if anyone's still complaining that all the low-hanging fruit has been picked) wouldn't have raised an eyebrow had they turned up in Mughal Rajasthan. ‑ Iridescent 10:35, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

It's not the form of the chatri, but the prominent placement of a number of small ones on the roofline of a much larger building, which is a distinctive Mughal device, copied in many IS buildings, even up to Lutyens. There are some Western comparators, especially in prodigy houses like Burghley House or Longleat, where they are probably reminiscences of the vanished wooden pavilions on the roofs of late medieval castles. But the detail of the ornament will be very different. Many IS domes are nothing to do with "enclosing a large space with minimum internal obstructions" and are actually a nuisance in terms of the interior arrangement, designed instead purely for the external appearance (arguably a very Indian thing to do, at a deeper level). Many of the grandest IS buildings, with the widest facades, are purely office buildings, and we know those don't need a huge dome in the middle, or a facade you could run drag races along (though the Louvre is a French equivalent). Johnbod (talk) 17:36, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

When God Writes Your Love Story Featured article review

I have nominated When God Writes Your Love Story for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Commented there. My views are presumably of no great surprise. ‑ Iridescent 18:08, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Which one of us is the “mucky-muck”? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:05, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd imagine both of us—that's a ScienceApologist account, and I can't imagine either of us are on his Christmas card list. ‑ Iridescent 21:13, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

The Hindu says the Indian government has threatened us - I'm not sure where to post this so more people know

See [4]

The Wikipedia page on India-Bhutan relationship had reportedly incorrectly depicted the map of Jammu Kashmir. The government has asked Wikipedia to remove a link from its platform that has shown an incorrect map of Jammu and Kashmir, according to sources.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT has issued an order under Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000 directing Wikipedia to remove the link, they added.

The matter had been flagged by a Twitter user, who highlighted that the Wikipedia page on India-Bhutan relationship had incorrectly depicted the map of Jammu Kashmir, and asked the government to take action.

Sources said taking cognizance of the matter, the ministry issued an order on November 27, 2020 directing Wikipedia to remove the map as it violated the territorial integrity and sovereignty of India. --Doug Weller talk 10:35, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I have no opinion whatsoever about that dispute and am fairly sure I've never heard of Aksai Chin before today; I semiprotected the page without prejudice in whatever version it happened to be on at the time of the protection, because the sockpuppets were frantically edit-warring. On a quick flip through our maps of other countries with active territorial disputes (Crimea, Golan Heights, Taiwan, Nagorno-Karabakh, West Bank…—that is, not on-paper-only disputes like Gibraltar or North Korea) I can see what the Indians are saying; we're not consistent about how we show disputed territories on maps. (Our Argentina article shows the Falklands and the Antarctic Peninsula as "claimed, not controlled", for instance.) If there's genuinely been a formal complaint I assume the WMF will lock the pages down as an office action until it's resolved. Probably the best place to discuss it would be Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics, which I assume most editors with an interest will have watchlisted, although it won't be any help when it comes to SPAs recruited on Twitter. ‑ Iridescent 10:53, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

There's been a discussion there for a while; rather a storm in a teacup that's being vigorously stirred by POV parties. Johnbod (talk) 14:36, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

There's an even noisier storm in an even smaller teacup at Talk:Bhutan–India relations#Indian government said to threaten Wikipedia over map, complete with commentary from an uncharacteristically sensible Jimmy Wales. I'm sorely tempted to issue every single person involved a WP:ARBIP warning and then block every person who carries on shouting. (At least in the case of Crimea, Jerusalem, Norn Iron etc the nationalist POV-pushing is based on genuine grievances of genuine people. As far as I can tell, this is a territorial dispute over an area whose only populated place is a gas station.) ‑ Iridescent 15:12, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Nah, WP won't need to remove it. If they did, China would start blasting orders as well. Firestar464 (talk) 03:35, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

That's not quite the case—now I have time to look at this in detail, I'm fairly confident that I semi'd it on The Wrong Version. Allowing a precedent for "Regarding disputed areas, maps on Wikipedia only show the line of control and don't give any indication of the de jure boundaries" would have opened huge cans of worms in Donbass, Palestine, Ossetia, Transnistria… What we don't do is base our content decisions on threats by governments to block us if we don't rewrite articles into their preferred versions.

On a purely practical matter, I doubt the Indian government has really thought through the implications of this particular threat. If they insist on Aksai Chin (claimed by India, administered by China) marked as a disputed area, then logically we should be marking Arunachal Pradesh (claimed by China, administered by India) as well, and given that Arunachal Pradesh borders Bhutan that's going to be much more visible on an India–Bhutan map than a couple of tiny green shaded areas at the opposite end of the country. China (and Taiwan; this is one of the few things both versions of the Chinese government agree on) would be as within their rights to complain about the replacement map as India was about the original. ‑ Iridescent 07:25, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it was the wrong version :). That editor was doing something pretty iffy: reverting to add the map back in, then arguing the map needed to be deleted or Wikipedia would be blocked in India by government order. Maybe they thought they were making sure we weren't disposing of the evidence? I diagnose it as a first-year law student whose mom is a minor government official. —valereee (talk) 11:08, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd guess more likely a rather ham-fisted self-appointed agent provocateur; I'd be willing to bet a reasonable sum that at least one of the SPAs editwarring to remove the map will be the same person. Per my comments elsewhere I think on this particular article every version is the wrong version. Not having a map at all is wrong in that readers who don't already know where India and Bhutan are will be confused, but since this region contains India, China, Bhutan and Nepal, and the India-China, Bhutan-China and India-Nepal borders are all disputed (plus when it comes to the Chinese ones Taiwan also has their own opinion on each dispute, and this is all before we even get onto the status of Tibet) it's literally impossible to create a map of the area which somebody isn't going to find offensive. ‑ Iridescent 21:06, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Quite. Not only no right version but no right map. :) —valereee (talk) 21:25, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• While I get the geopolitical sensitivities of stuff like this, especially when coming from actual governments and not crazed internet nationalists, I’ve always wondered if our dispute resolution process for this type of stuff is too idealistic. In regards to the crazed internet nationalists at least, I’m sorely tempted many times to take a “let crazy people on the internet fight their wars with each other so long as it doesn’t bother anyone neutral” approach.
  Though, with India-Pakistan (and to a lesser degree Israel-Palestine and adjacent disputes) the insanity of some nationalists has reached real life. I’ll add that part of the reason South Asia is so bad in terms of real life implications is that most of the editors in the area live there. Israel-Palestine most of the combatants on Wikipedia are Americans. he.wiki and ar.wiki editors typically don’t edit the topic for fear of getting blocked because of ethnic or non-Latin usernames. Whatever ones thoughts on the United States, it’s certainly a safer place to be an internet combatant in a nationalist dispute than South Asia or the Levant. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:40, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

If you’re Venezuela, even if you are in the US or the UK, chavismo will track you down and go after your family back in Venezuela to shut you up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:10, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

The let crazy people on the internet fight their wars with each other so long as it doesn’t bother anyone neutral approach wouldn't work, since there are too many cases where there's no alternative to picking a side. (In one sentence, neutrally tell me which country Jerusalem is in, the name of the Ukrainian capital, and whether Kosovo is a country and if so whether it's called Kosovo or Kosova.)

To take a real-life example with no connection to South Asia (that's been the topic of some recent unpleasantness on Meta for other reasons): the idea of "written Scots" as "modern-day Scottish dialect written out phonetically" is a recent innovation by Loyalists in Northern Ireland in an effort to block the Irish Language Act by forcing everything that would be translated into Irish to also be translated into Scots. (People in actual Scotland write in standard written English regardless of their speech, in the same way that Londoners don't write in MLE, Alabamans don't write in Southern etc—even the Scottish National Party and the (nationalist-run) Scottish Government work in standard English.) By treating "Written Scots" as a language, the WMF is implicitly endorsing one side in a long-running and fairly nasty ethno-religious dispute. That is a relatively trivial example—everyone involved in that particular dispute has bigger fish to fry than feigning offence over an obscure WMF project and the IRA is not about to suddenly declare war on Wikipedia—but it's a good example of how unintentionally inflammatory people can be when it comes to ongoing conflicts, even when everyone's acting entirely in good faith. (And also of how culturally insensitive people in other parts of the world can be when they try to be helpful; I'm fairly sure most of the people involved in sco-wiki were Americans thinking they were supporting some fuzzy romanticised notion of Bonnie Scotland and weren't even aware they'd stepped into the cesspit of Northern Irish religious conflict.) ‑ Iridescent 09:20, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I know it wouldn’t work in most cases; but it’s certainly an appealing fantasy when the same crowd of people are endlessly fighting on the same talk pages and coming up with similarly contrived diffs to try to get the other in trouble. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:49, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

What would potentially work to some extent is to make it much easier to fork within the wiki, so people can find alternative versions of pages to suit their particular worldviews if they genuinely find reality unpalatable. At present, the only alternatives are all-out crazy sites like Rationalwiki and Conservapedia, so it's an all-or-nothing thing and there's no place to accommodate people who sincerely believe that MMR vaccine damages your brain, but don't believe that the moon landings were fake, that global warming is a hoax, or that Donald Trump / Jeremy Corbyn / Marine Le Pen / Elon Musk / the Global Proletarian Revolution is waiting like the King Under the Mountain to rise in triumph to redeem humanity. Thus, the model of Wikipedia (and all the media) has a tendency to actively push otherwise sensible people who happen to believe one crank theory off into the loonosphere. This is technically possible; it's the model Knol used, and could have worked if Google hadn't decided that on reflection "the focal point for every lunatic on the planet" wasn't something that was likely to appeal to their advertisers. (Just to make it clear, this is definitely not something I would support Wikipedia doing—I think it would be a total waste of time and be virtually impossible to moderate. What I could make a decent argument for is that it would be sensible to have a {{noindex}}ed parallel wiki, into which we could shove the various cranks and POV-pushers to argue among themselves, if they came up with anything actually useful we could re-import it back into mainspace. That's the role Wikipedia was originally meant to have in relation to Nupedia after all, so it's not as if we don't have a precedent.) ‑ Iridescent 20:31, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes. I wasn’t trying to imply the US was safe in all cases, just that in the specific case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, many of the people fighting that particular fight on Wikipedia are in the US (or similar western location) and have relative security compared to many of the people editing South Asia. I know several editors from the region who won’t touch it for both RL and on-wiki reasons. Compared to the South Asian conflict on Wikipedia, where a large portion of the editors live in South Asia, there’s been relatively less impact on Arab-Israeli editors in terms of RL things. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but the local sheriff is unlikely to take the complaint of an internet crank complaining you’ve named a scorpion the wrong name and thus insulted an entire nation seriously. The local cops in South Asia, on the other hand, might call you in. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:49, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

As people on this page often discuss image use in Wikipedia articles...

...figured that folks may be interested in Fumarole mineral (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), as while I was writing that I found some spectacular images uploaded by Ppm61. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:53, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Fascinating, but I'm not sure how many of them would have a practical use outside their niche context. If you don't mind dealing with the crazies who frequent it, you could try nominating them at WP:FPC. (If you want really spectacular images of completely mundane things, Commons:Category:Nudibranchia is the place to start.) ‑ Iridescent 20:36, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think these images have much use outside of illustrating the minerals and fumaroles. I've pinged Adam Cuerden as a FPC regular to see if some of these images stand a chance to pass there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:41, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

A pair of nudibranches in Yap, Micronesia

It was the Category:Nudibranchia that got this tpw's attention because I know how difficult it is to find quality images for our articles, especially underwater images. I also work on Commons (OTRS agent), and have participated in FAC as time permits. I just cleaned-up some images for SusunW as a tpw of GRuban. Long story short and for future reference, I have contributed some of my work to Commons over the past decade, a few of which have accidentally become Picture of the Year finalists (must not be many scuba divers on WP), so you could say there may be some semblance of quality there. I also accidentally made it as a finalist in the Wikipedia:Wiki Science Competition 2017 in the United States with Paddlefish 5-Day Embryo To Hatching. Categorically, many of my images are in Category:Photographs_by_User:Atsme, or you can find the ones I forgot to categorize by checking my user uploads. I also have some stupid banners available here which includes various images at the bottom of the page, but not all are what I uploaded. Happy hunting! Atsme 💬 📧 19:21, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, Nudi pictures do tend to attract viewers... --GRuban (talk) 19:29, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

As do photos of your wrasse. Seriously, though, I've frequently been struck by how much similarity there can be in the appearance of corals growing on a reef, and crystals of minerals. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:03, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Cite Unseen update

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Redundant WP:AN/EW report

Iridescent, I'm sorry that I left a 3RR report at AN/EW about Hosumyng123 at what seems to have been the same time you were blocking them. Please feel free to either summarily close or remove it. Thanks for your help and for being a valued admin. Seasons Greetings to you and yours. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

And to you… It's no problem at all, I think we posted at virtually the same time. I'll leave the thread on the noticeboard until the bot archives it, just in case anyone wants to review or overturn it (it does happen). I do feel bad blocking someone who's obviously a good faith user trying to help, but this could pretty much be captioned "the road to an indefinite block", and hopefully a 24-hour block will allow the editor to calm down and do their own research into what is and isn't appropriate. (I did consider a partial block from article space, to allow them to ask questions on talkpages and Teahouse/Help, but from experience partial blocks just confuse editors, who see the "indefinite" part and think they've been site-banned.) ‑ Iridescent 17:48, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Yep to the last bit, if I partial block anyone now I tweak the block notice to say "You may still edit any other article" (i.e. [5]) unless it's obvious what's happened. Black Kite (talk) 18:10, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Season's greetings

Probably y'all are familiar with this one but it's my main approximation of a beautiful winter landscape Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:02, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, and the same to you. No, I'd never even heard of such a thing—I'm now curious as to how long they take to form, why one doesn't see anything similar in other arid cold regions, and why if they're formed by the sublimation of water there aren't all kinds of weird mineral residues left behind during the sublimation process. (Penitente (snow formation) doesn't explain; yes, I know I could probably look all of the above up somewhere.) ‑ Iridescent 17:38, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Best wishes for the holidays

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Adoration of the Magi (Jan Mostaert) is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 12:11, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, and the same to you. Oddly I must have seen that painting at least half a dozen times—I assume the Rijksmuseum has it on permanent display—but I have no memory of it at all. ‑ Iridescent 14:55, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I can't say I have either - it is relatively small. Johnbod (talk) 16:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Also, it was given a full restoration during the 2003-2013 rebuilding closure, so may have rather dark before that. Johnbod (talk) 23:12, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I suspect it's more an artefact the the RM building is just too big and (understandably) has a bias towards the Netherlands, and the endless procession of "bowl of fruit and dead animal", "Christ Child in anachronistic landscape", "church interior" and "stern dignitary staring at you" does have a tendency to blur together. It's probably heresy against something, but IMO the Oldmasters Museum is a better place to visit unless one has a blinding urge to see The Night Watch. (For anyone claiming the low-hanging fruit has gone, Brussels has eight major art galleries; their articles respectively come in at 140 words, 169 words, redlink, 1407 words, redirect, 146 words, redlink, 469 words.)

Wikipedia

Commons

Wikibooks

Wikinews

Wikiquote

Wikisource

Wikispecies

Wiktionary

Wikiversity

Wikidata

Wikivoyage

Wikimedia incubator

While we're on the subject of fine art, just gonna put this here. I hope this reassures anyone who might still be under the impression that the WMF pisses donor funds up the wall on pointless pet projects. ‑ Iridescent 07:42, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Appropriately, the one for Commons does appear to include an erect penis, a photo of somebody's cat, and a completely unidentifiable blob. Never let it be said the WMF don't know their audience. ‑ Iridescent 07:47, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

You forgot the comical conical tits. EEng 08:10, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

And what looks suspiciously like an ejaculating penis in each corner… ‑ Iridescent 08:13, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

And that covers all the most active categories at Commons. (Although I'm pretty sure that the unidentifiable blob is a selfie of someone with red hair.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:10, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

... with best wishes for a much better year in 2021.

X

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

X Have a happy holiday, and may you and yours come out of this wretched year well and sane! Regards, Simon Adler (talk) 05:22, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks, and the same to you ‑ Iridescent 06:24, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Article that needs merging

Hi, could you please do something about merging this article List of unsolved deaths (before 1900) to the List of unsolved deaths. The AFD was closed on September 24, but no merge has yet taken place and it is now October 17. I do not know how to do merges, so that is why I thought I would ask you to do it, so please do so if you can. Davidgoodheart (talk) 00:10, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Not a chance. That's not a straightforward history merge, that's something that would require a huge amount of work to integrate two separate lists and to impose a consistent style across the unified list. I also couldn't do it with a clear consicence, since I'd consider List of unsolved deaths pretty much a canonical example of a ridiculous Wikipedia page that has no business existing, and by making substantive edits to it I'd be implicitly endorsing it. The official estimate of the US Department of Justice for the number of unsolved murders in the United States alone is 250,000, and the US is a relatively peaceful and stable country with a reasonably functioning justice system. Taking countries with a history of disappearances into consideration, let alone wars—and bearing in mind that most countries have histories centuries or even millennia longer than that of the US and often very qustionable systems of investigation and patchy record-keeping—for it to be encyclopedic, such a list would quite likely be larger than the rest of Wikipedia combined. (There were 30,000 disappearances in Argentina between 1976–1983 almost all of which are still unsolved, to put some perspective on this.) If you try to limit the bloat by imposing a notability bar on which deaths are included, then you'd be introducing both a strong element of original research and a massive dose of systemic bias, since you'd by definition be skewing the list towards the elites of Europe and North America where records are more likely to have survived, and to people from English-speaking countries who are more likely to get biographies on the English-language Wikipedia. (This is indeed what has already happened; looking over List of unsolved deaths, what you actually have there is List of unsolved deaths of white people.) ‑ Iridescent 16:04, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Surely you jest. You can't actually expect our readers to do without such useful content as:

• Damendorf Man, is a German bog body discovered in 1900 in the See Moor at the village Damendorf in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Only his hair, skin, nails and his few clothes were preserved, along with traces of some bones. He was found with a leather belt, shoes, and a pair of breeches. The man's identity and cause of death are unknown.
• On June 21st, 1905, the New York Central Railroad's flagship passenger train, the 20th Century Limited, derailed in an apparent act of sabotage in Mentor, Ohio, killing 21.

EEng 19:02, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh, indeed. There could theoretically be a legitimate use for a page along the lines of List of people for whom the cause of death has never been established and where the uncertainty is actually historically significant listing people like Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln or Horst Wessel where the disputed nature of their fate had genuinely significant consequences—but a laundry list of "people who are dead but the exact circumstances aren't known" is getting into List of people by name (yes, that page genuinely once existed) territory. I'd go so far as to say that when you go back more than a couple of hundred years and particularly when you get back into antiquity, nobody's cause of death can be given with any degree of confidence. ‑ Iridescent 19:24, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

In a brief moment of boredom and to test my "when you go back more than a couple of centuries every death is unsolved" hypothesis, I've done some Original Research of my own and checked the biographies of the 30 monarchs of England, on the assumption that if there's one person for whom the time and cause of death is always going to be of paramount importance, it's a hereditary absolute monarch. From the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the end of the Kingdom of England in 1707, we have have (with those for whom the circumstances of the death are "solved" bolded):

1. William I, "either fell ill or was injured by the pommel of his saddle";
2. William II, shot, but unclear whether the shooting was intentional or accidental;
3. Henry I, "a surfeit of lampreys";
4. Stephen, an unspecified stomach disease;
5. Henry II, a bleeding ulcer;
6. Richard I, assassinated;
7. John, "probably fictitious accounts that he had been killed by poisoned ale, poisoned plums or a surfeit of peaches";
8. Henry III, "died" (no cause suggested);
9. Edward I, dysentery;
10. Edward II, "most historians believe that Edward probably was murdered";
11. Edward III, stroke;
12. Richard II, "thought to have been starved to death in captivity on or around 14 February 1400, although there is some question over the date and manner of his death";
13. Henry IV, "some grave illness, medical historians have long debated the nature of this affliction or afflictions";
14. Henry V, died suddenly at age 35, cause unknown;
15. Henry VI, "possibly killed on the orders of King Edward";
16. Edward IV, "the cause of Edward's death is uncertain";
17. Edward V, disappeared without trace, possibly smothered with a pillow;
18. Richard III, killed in battle;
19. Henry VII, tuberculosis;
20. Henry VIII, cause unknown but bonus pseudointellectualism points to whoever described him as having "increased adiposity";
21. Edward VI, "the cause of Edward VI's death is not certain";
22. Mary I, "weak and ill", possibly cancer but not established;
23. Elizabeth I, cause unknown
24. James I, dysentery;
25. Charles I, executed;
26. Charles II, cause unknown, possibly a kidney disorder;
27. James II, brain haemorrhage;
28. Mary II, smallpox;
29. William III, pneumonia;
30. Anne, stroke.

So, of 30 people of whom we can be absolutely certain that every detail of their life was chronicled and of whom the exact circumstances of their deaths were of paramount significance since they could be grounds for a declaration of war or be interpreted as evidence of the displeasure of God, only 12 of their deaths are "solved" (or 13 if you accept lamprey overdose as a genuine medical condition), and of that 12, six were in the final century of this 641-year period when medical science was more advanced and when an increasingly-strong Parliament made plots and cover-ups less of an option. If we can't even get close to 50% "solved" with kings in a country with a strong tradition of record keeping, reasonably advanced medical science, and where the absence of wars and natural disasters means the full historical record has largely been preserved, we're certainly not going to approach that figure with people of lower status or who lived in countries where the records are incomplete, let alone when we get into the chaos of battlefields. (There are more than 100,000 people still listed as "missing in action, death unconfirmed" from the Battle of the Somme; there are four million Soviet soldiers from World War II who never came home but were never reported killed and consequently it isn't known if they were killed in action, deserted and took new identities, or were captured by the Nazis and killed in the camps). ‑ Iridescent 15:52, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh god, the old "list of". I can come up with some useful lists, like List of women printers in 18th-century England, but the vast majority of those articles are absolute crap. I'm waiting on a hypercorrective fan of Moby-Dick to write up List of novels with hyphenation considered superfluous. Davidgoodheart, what do you say? And yes, it's lampreys and ale for dinner. Drmies (talk) 21:21, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't underestimate the number of wars in England during those years. The Anarchy, The First Barons War, the Wars of the Roses, the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution all saw changes on the throne, and some other deaths were rather convenient to some powerful people. Well documented people but with lots of people wanting them dead. BTW One of my wife's greatuncles is among those 4 million. ϢereSpielChequers 17:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Gee, thanks Iri. Heh. --Ealdgyth (talk) 12:33, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Facepalm. Davidgoodheart, my comments above pointing out that at a conservative estimate there are upwards of ten billion unsolved deaths in human history was supposed to be an observation that such a list is inevitably either going to be indiscriminate and consequently violate the Five Pillars, or have arbitrary "importance" criteria and consequently both constitute original research and act as an echo chamber for systemic bias. What it definitely wasn't was a suggestion that the list should be expanded even further, let alone that you should start adding content sourced to other people's blogs to high-importance historical articles. ‑ Iridescent 17:29, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

WereSpielChequers, medieval and early modern England had some vicious wars, but with the exception of the Harrying of the North there was very little of the sacking and burning that characterised Continental warfare; the wars were invariably fought between rivals for the throne (or those wishing to abolish it), all of whom expected to win and didn't want the value of their new kingdom diminished. Plantagenet records have largely survived; to this day you can still go inspect stack upon stack of dusty pipe rolls should you so desire. ‑ Iridescent 17:35, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, that's interesting re the pipe rolls and the relative paucity of sacked towns. I was actually thinking of a certain statue complex where we have the estate lists of the statues owned by Charles I, The Commonwealth and Charles II but because of some considerable turnover of staff, there is an element of uncertainty as to which statue is which comparing those inventories. More to the point, going back to the dead monarchs, there are several where I suspect that the official version of events may have been written by people who stood to gain from the unfortunate death. Was "surfeit of lampreys" code for "the old boss is dead, meet the new boss"? ϢereSpielChequers 09:56, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

"Surfeit of lampreys" would be a very odd claim to make if one were covering up a murder since by its nature it invites question; Ealdgyth will know better than I but I believe the traditional term when covering up a medieval poisoning was "apoplexy". Remember these people took the Bible literally; if he dropped dead immediately after eating the lampreys it would have been a perfectly reasonable explanation that he'd been smited for gluttony. (Henry died at 67, a fairly ripe old age for the period; it's not like he was struck down in his prime. Plus, the only people who stood to gain from his death were Stephen and Matilda, both of whom were famously unprepared for the fact—neither was even in England at the time.) ‑ Iridescent 16:43, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

It must be proof of my age, but I remember when stating "old age" was an acceptable explanation for cause of death -- which IMHO would apply to Elizabeth I. The intended explanation being that said person did not die prematurely from an act of violence, lack of food or shelter, or a preventable disease. (Or what Vikings allegedly called "the straw death".) -- llywrch (talk) 16:48, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

She died at 69, she wasn't some wizened crone; even for the time that was below the average life expectancy for a male aristocrat who'd reached majority and women live longer than men. "Average life expectancy" is always misleadingly low when it comes to the old days, as it's skewed by the high infant mortality rate and the huge numbers of people either in dangerous professions or who lived in squalid conditions. For a wealthy individual who'd survived into adulthood and wasn't either living in a war zone or a known heretic, life expectancy in medieval Europe wasn't significantly different then and now. We'll never know as the histories were written by people loyal to James VI&I who wanted to ensure a smooth transition, but what appears to have happened was that after Cecil died she just lost the will to live. ‑ Iridescent 20:01, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

First, that looks like an interesting book, one that would prove useful in writing biographies of ancient Greeks & Romans. Too bad Springer charges outrageous prices for their books nowadays. But as to the table you point to, taking the average of the averages (less the figure for the Black Death), an aristocrat who survived to age 21 could expect to live an average of 45 more years; Elizabeth lived to 69; thus she did not die "early", but what was accepted then as an expected lifespan. From my memory of how the word was used, the term "died of old age" was applied whenever the person was "old" & died from natural causes. In any case, it's not a formal diagnosis for cause of death. YNNV. -- llywrch (talk) 22:00, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Springer charge silly prices, but Henry Oliver Lancaster was a big-shot in medical statistics; most decent-sized university libraries will have it.

While the 14th century is obviously more skewed by disease, the 16th- and 17th-century figures will be distorted as well; they're based on English records, and between 1550 and 1700 England had a full-scale nationwide influenza pandemic in 1557 and outbreaks of bubonic plague in the 1560s, 1590s and 1660s each of which wiped out about 1⁄4 of the population in the areas they reached. Plague has a particularly skewing effect on statistics, as unlike influenza it doesn't primarily affect people with weakened immune systems who are on their way out anyway. (In terms of death from disease, the plague epidemics of the 17th century segue neatly into the cholera epidemics of the industrial age, but cholera is a disease of poverty and overcrowding so didn't have a significant effect on aristocrats.) Which is all a long-winded way of saying "Good Queen Bess wasn't particularly elderly when she died so it's not reasonable to just ascribe her death to old age". (The fact that the royal diet in the period would have consisted primarily of red meat, fat, and this newfangled imported luxury called 'sugar', probably did her no favors.) ‑ Iridescent 08:17, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

We're both getting sidetracked on her age, when the point I was trying to make in the original post was this. Outside of medical (or medically-informed) circles, when giving a cause of death, the reasons would fall into some category of violence (e.g., accident, murder, warfare), or impaired health (e.g. pneumonia, plague, famine), or, if there was no specific agent & the deceased lived a reasonably long period of time, a miscellaneous category labelled "old age" or "natural causes". Inevitably people die; no cure for that has been found. Thus if there was no preventable cause, yet some cause must needs be given, either "old age" or "natural causes" fits. ("Failure to thrive", which I believe is the cause you are arguing for in Elizabeth I's case, has only recently been accepted as more scientific than, say, "from a broken heart".) -- llywrch (talk) 20:32, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it a sidetrack. If anything it's demonstrating my point: when judging any records from before the advent of modern medicine, even the most well-documented deaths are often "unsolved" by present-day standards since unless the cause of death was unambiguous ("beheaded", "bubonic plague", "savaged by bear") the science often just didn't exist to determine the cause of death and it wasn't unusual for the circumstances of politically sensitive deaths to be covered up. We don't know and never will know whether Elizabeth's heart just stopped beating, she choked on a midnight snack, or she gradually got heavy metal poisoning from the Hampton Court piping. Given the politics of the day it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that she slashed her wrists, or she'd died of a sexually transmitted disease and the fact was covered up; it's also not impossible that James felt that with Cecil dead and no longer promoting his cause Elizabeth would decide Arbella Stuart had a better claim, so had his agents smother her in her sleep before she had the chance. "Unsolved death" is a hopelessly vague term which encompasses a significant proportion of all the people in the historical record. ‑ Iridescent 14:18, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

So, "a surfeit of lampreys" and "a surfeit of peaches". Sounds like fun times. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:27, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Yum

Remember, these folks were biblical literalists; the wealthy being smitten down for gluttony would have seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation. Bear in mind also that people in those days had less of an acquired tolerance for sugar and that diabetes and gout were both untreatable conditions; death or debilitating illness following on from overeating would have been something the court chroniclers were very familiar with. The curious thing isn't that they believed in death from a surfeit of lampreys, it's that anyone who'd ever eaten one lamprey would ever want to eat another as it's truly horrible (think the look of a severed penis and the taste of phlegm). ‑ Iridescent 18:40, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

I'd rather think of just about anything else! (Loud sounds of gagging and retching!) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:47, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Where can I go to get help with editing?

Hi, do you know where I could get help with adding entries to list like The List of fugitives from justice who disappeared and ect.? To do all this editing by myself is very hard, and I could REALLY use some help. Davidgoodheart (talk) 08:10, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

For basic questions, the best place to start is Wikipedia:Teahouse; it's aimed at new editors which I appreciate you're not, but it's staffed by people who are used to answering questions from people who are stuck or who don't understand Wikipedia's sometimes-confusing jargon. For more complicated questions, the Wikipedia:Help desk might be able to help.

What you will need to do in either case is be clear what kind of help you're looking for. Is it advice on deciding what is and isn't appropriate for inclusion, advice on how to identify reliable sources and cite them correctly, advice on general writing, or advice on formatting and markup? If it's the latter, are you using the Wikitext editor or the VisualEditor—that is, when you go to edit the page do you see a box full of markup code that begins {{Also|List of fugitives from justice who are no longer sought|Lists of people who disappeared}} {{short description|Wikipedia list article}}, or do you see this? (I'll give the general tip that, if you're not already using it, you'll find editing table-based lists like that page roughly a million times easier if you do so in VisualEditor even if you're fully competent in Wikitext. VE handles the table coding for you, meaning you don't have to worry about what table formatting codes like ! data-sort-type="isoDate"| mean and where to put them.)

I will repeat what was said a few sections up, that almost all the time this kind of open-ended "List of people who…" article is a really bad idea and virtually impossible to write or maintain in a manner that complies with Wikipedia's rules. To add to that, writing about living people accused of criminal acts is a really, really, really bad idea and I can't emphasise that strongly enough. Unless you're very, very confident in your ability to write about sensitive legal issues without violating any one of the US and California law that covers Wikipedia's servers, the libel laws of wherever you live, and Wikipedia's own non-negotiable internal rules regarding writing about living people, I'd really recommend finding something else to write about. ‑ Iridescent 21:51, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

David, please pardon me jumping into the conversation, but I would like to strongly second the advice that Iridescent is giving you in the last paragraph. People have been cautioning you for years that "missing persons and criminal suspects" is a topic that calls for very sensitive editing and careful sourcing, including here and here. Please carefully consider the advice. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I have to concur with Iridescent and Newyorkbrad - this really isn't the sort of article you want to do work on unless you are very sure of your ground - and given this discussion, I don't really think you are. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 23:46, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Imma fourth this. Even some of the more seasoned editors like me tend to avoid such sensitive topics. And while I don't tend to pour across editors' histories, the conjunction between what Ritchie and Newyorkbrad are noting above and these prior exchanges look like a bad omen. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:34, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Okay then maybe I will not write this anymore. But please tell me why you keep these articles and let people edit them since your are claiming that it is so risky? Also all I was going to do was ask people to add existing articles to the list, do you think that I should even do that? Davidgoodheart (talk) 02:45, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I personally think most open-ended "List of…" pages of this type shouldn't exist. Most of them are inappropriately indiscriminate, and even those that aren't are rarely of much use to anyone, and that's the case even with completely uncontentious open-ended lists like List of minor planets, let alone contentious topics with real-world ethical implications such as the ones under discussion here.

The short answer as to why such pages are kept, is "for rather long and boring reasons to do with the early years of Wikipedia, all Wikimedia projects have an inherent bias towards keeping material once its created, as deletion criteria are based on notability rather than either ethics or utility". (That sounds complicated, but it basically means "if you can prove that someone has written about a topic, it's difficult to get the Wikipedia article on that topic deleted even if it's problematic".) The longer answer is that Wikipedia is ultimately a hosting service for the writing of its editors, rather than a publisher in its own right; there is no "editorial board" as such. (If you write something libellous in the New York Times, the New York Times gets sued; if you write something libellous in Wikipedia, you get sued.) As such, except in the most extreme circumstances there's no body to police what the community does other than the community itself. The basic principle of "Assume good faith" cuts two ways; it stops people from interfering with you unnecessarily, but it also means that people will generally assume you know what you're doing and leave you get on with things even when it's potentially dangerous. And I know we keep hammering this point, but what you're doing is dangerous; you're making claims about living people and live criminal cases. It's possible to write about such things on Wikipedia, but only if you're very sure you understand reliable sourcing (since the defense in a lawsuit would be "I only summarized what independent reliable sources say"). It's fairly clear you don't yet understand reliable sourcing—when it comes to this kind of sensitive BLP, a rough rule of thumb is "a website is almost never going to be a reliable secondary source"—and if someone does complain, it's you the lawyers will come for and the Wikimedia Foundation will give them your details if they receive a subpoena. (This whole legal argument is quite aside from the ethics of the whole thing. "Is everything I've written provably true beyond doubt, and if not am I making it absolutely clear both that it's unproven, and exactly who is making the allegation and why?" is the way you should approach these things.)

As a general rule, unless and until you become very experienced, anything relating to living people is best avoided on Wikipedia. Even with apparently uncontroversial topics like sporting figures it's very easy to accidentally say something that isn't true, given both how easy it is to make errors and how much misinformation is circulating out there. When it comes to sensitive issues like criminal cases and missing persons investigations you really are walking on eggshells and I'd never recommend anyone touch these articles no matter how competent they are. Wikipedia's open-editing tertiary-source model is just not a good fit for some topics. ‑ Iridescent 10:16, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

As a practical example, one of the first significant bits of cleanup I did on an article was Ian Gillan, because I had his autobiography to hand. A few years later, everyone and their pet dog has fiddled with the article, adding (at best) updates or (at worst) unsourced or questionably sourced POV claims or bits of trivia, which I got so fed up of, I took the article off my watchlist. Fast forward a few more years, and there was an interview with Gillan who had seen the article, wished we hadn't used that autobiography as it's out of date and needs rewriting, and spotted at least three things in it that were, not to put too fine a point on it, libel. A moving target is hard to hit, on in this case, if you plan to spend quality time on a BLP and wish to maintain it, your sanity may end up taking a hit for it. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:52, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

I had a similar experience in my early days trying to impose some kind of balance on Mary Lou Lord, someone who's just-about-notable as a singer in her own right but whose fame (as opposed to "notability") derives almost exclusively from an incident regarding which everyone involved disagrees what actually happens and spent the 1990s and early 2000s fighting it out in the tablouds and sympathetic blogs. It's died down now as everyone involved is now fading somewhere in Hollywood, but Talk:Mary Lou Lord is still one of the great trainwreck threads. ‑ Iridescent 13:26, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

• Davidgoodheart, I will echo the advice I gave you on this talk page almost exactly three years ago: if you want to make this your hobby online, you need to seek professional legal counsel in your jurisdiction and potentially California. I’m not going to get into the wiki-side of things, but you’ve basically chosen one of the most risky topics to write about around. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:45, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
  • You have convinced me, I will no longer write about 'living' people accused of criminal acts ever again. It's just way too risky! Davidgoodheart (talk) 21:06, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Don't feel you can't write about living people—even those accused of criminal acts—at all; the important thing is not to say anything that's controversial or that could be potentially challenged, without an absolutely reliable source. For this kind of topic, "absolutely reliable source" means serious studies published by recognized academic experts in the relevant field; the question to ask yourself is "if this person—or the victim's family—challenged me as to why I'd included that, could I both point to exactly where I'd copied it from, and explain why I'd chosen that particular source to copy? ‑ Iridescent 14:25, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Okay then perhaps I may still edit those cases. By the way I remember that you said that your were not a lawyer, well this person is a lawyer and this is what he says about libel: YouTube legal advice. Please watch this and let me know of what you think about what he has to say about this issue. Davidgoodheart (talk) 01:31, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
        • Facepalm. I am not a lawyer, in the sense that I have not sat the bar; I am someone with more years than I care to count of experience regarding criminal and civil law. (When you see variations of "IANAL" or "TINLA", it doesn't mean "I am not competent to discuss legal issues"; it's a disclaimer that although the person saying it is discussing a legal situation they're neither providing formal legal advice nor creating a legal relationship, and that you should verify with a professional any legal suggestion given prior to acting on it. This is particularly true in a context like Wikipedia which operates in literally hundreds of different legal jurisdictions. I may not have the relevant piece of paper on the wall, but on the subject of "how to balance public interest with privacy/defamation issues on a high-traffic website" I'm wholly confident my opinions are valid.)

          In this thread alone you've (thus far) been advised by the editor-in-chief of the Journal of In-Chambers Practice, one current and one former member of Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (the people who deal with how Wikipedia handles problematic editing), one of Wikipedia's most active CU/OS's (the people who deal with how Wikipedia handles legally or ethically sensitive content), and Wikipedia administrators with a combined total of 64 years experience. I would venture to suggest that we are better qualified to advise you on the issues regarding Wikipedia editing than a tangentially-related video you've found on YouTube, and we are all telling you the same thing.

          In regards to your specific question regarding "what I think about what he has to say about this issue" (transcript here to save anyone else having to waste three minutes of their lives watching it), I'd say the fact that you think this is relevant is proof that you don't understand what the issue is here. The issue here is nothing to do with reputational damage to businesses or First Amendment rights—you are accusing living people of crimes, and publishing sensitive personal information about living or recently-deceased people, without due regard to whether it's appropriate to do so or to whether it's appropriately sourced. A lack of malice may, as he says, reduce your exposure to punitive damages; it does nothing to reduce either your or the WMF's exposure to legal action per se, or the potential reputational damage to the WMF of our republishing sensitive content taken from blogs, tabloids, and other Wikipedia pages.

          This is all assuming that you live in and that the people about whom you're writing live in the US, which famously has the laxest defamation laws in the world. If you live anywhere else or if you're writing about people who live anywhere else (particularly countries like England and Wales or France which have a de facto presumption of guilt in defamation cases, meaning the onus is on the author to prove that what they've said is true regardless of intent), writing about living people without ironclad sourcing is putting both yourself and the WMF at serious risk.

          If you want a genuine example of how this plays out in the real world, in one case material about a living person was added, correctly cited, to a Wikipedia article. The source used was then retracted and taken off-line, and the statement cited to it was correctly removed from the article. Because the claim—which had been added at the time entirely in good faith and correctly cited to a reliable source—could still be viewed in the article's history, the Wikimedia Foundation was successfully taken to court, even though everyone involved had acted entirely correctly with regards to what information was publicly available at the time. That is, when you make a contentious claim about a living person even if you cite it to a reliable source, unless you're absolutely certain that the source will never turn out to be incorrect and have to be retracted you're potentially writing defamatory content. Unless it's routine coverage like updating sports statistics or album release dates, writing about living people on Wikipedia is rarely a good idea if what you're saying about them is in any way controversial or could be construed in any way as controversial.

          (And of course, this is just the legal side of things. Forget the defamation issues for a moment; approach writing about a living person—whether on Wikipedia or elsewhere—with "how would I feel if someone were saying this about me or a member of my family?". Striving for a neutral point of view doesn't mean existing in a moral vacuum; every time you say something negative about someone on a website that averages 850,000,000 unique visitors per month on the English-language version alone you're potentially ruining somebody's life.) ‑ Iridescent 19:01, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

          • _{This type of conversation is why I have your page on my watchlist...a chance to learn. Thanks to all. Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 05:21, 3 November 2020 (UTC)}
            • The threads do veer wildly off-track at the moment, don't they? (I concede that it's deeply hypocritical of me to start "do you know who we are?"-ing barely a week after saying I have no time and never have had any time for people pulling this "do you know who I am?" shit on this exact same page, but at least I had the foresight to allow an except in the limited circumstances when it's genuinely justifiable like relevant experience or a particular technical skill qualifier.) ‑ Iridescent 09:31, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
              • From my perspective, the objectionable "do you know who I am" statements originate from someone who claims prideful authority, based solely on a title or position. (Applies to WP & "RL"). Counseling others, based on years of experience and a long memory, is not objectionable. Providing advice, "with sources", is akin to saying: "Here is a nest of venomous vipers, avoid it! Others have died, or suffered grave injuries." So, relevant experience....Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 08:12, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
          • Necro-posting, but because I just saw this and David tends to come back to your threads, I'll add this: everything Iri said was true, but going to a YouTube video of a lawyer is not at all the same thing as requesting professional legal counsel in your jurisdiction and/or California. Your situation is unique to you especially in cases involving sensitive material about other people. Getting general advice from a lawyer on YouTube is not a good way to figure out what you can and cannot legally say about missing or disappeared people and the people who knew them. Each of those cases is so unique that any media company would have their counsel reviewing what can be said before it was reported. The one advantage you have over the Washington Post is you have less assets to be an attractive target, but someone can still make your life hell in the courts, even if you are judgement proof. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:13, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: I agree and this is why I am not going to write about these cases anymore, It's just NOT worth the risk! Davidgoodheart (talk) 01:01, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I just wanted to let you know that I will still do what Tony told me to do and go see a lawyer in the early New Year, and that you have now given me new insight about things that I wasn't aware of before. I will discuss this with you more later. Davidgoodheart (talk) 19:57, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Out of sheer curiosity, re it's you the lawyers will come for and the Wikimedia Foundation will give them your details if they receive a subpoena, has the Foundation ever done this before? I've only really looked in Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation, but the only example there is this and at a skim it looks like the Foundation actually fought it? (they lost, but it was a UK order, so at a skim it seems like he never managed to get it enforced). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:07, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes. The WMF only gets around 60 requests a year for the private information of its editors and the number of times they actually comply is in single figures (twice last year, both in the US; in the first half of this year, a single instance in France), but it does happen. (For comparison, Facebook and Google each get around 200,000 requests per year and comply with around 2⁄3 of them, although obviously the sites aren't directly comparable; the WMF isn't operating an encrypted messaging service and consequently isn't as attractive to criminals and doesn't track its users' locations or contacts so is less likely to hold information about which the spooks would care.) Every six months the WMF publishes a breakdown of which governments are coming after them and how many users they've been forced to throw under the bus. Unless you're uploading a stash of child pornography, confessing to a crime, leaking military secrets, or making a very credible threat either of suicide or to commit a murder, I wouldn't worry unduly about it. The WMF has an extensive FAQ page on user information requests, if you're interested in the processes involved and the applicable legislation. ‑ Iridescent 06:23, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Have a happy holidays and all the best. Davidgoodheart (talk) 06:25, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Greetings of the season

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott		Happy holidays
		Dear Iri, For you and all your loved ones, "Let there be mercy". Wishing you health, peace and happiness this holiday season and in the coming year. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:52, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks—hoping next year won't be as dramatic as this! ‑ Iridescent 06:25, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Natalis soli invicto!

		Natalis soli invicto!
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free. Ealdgyth (talk) 14:54, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, and you likewise… (An "is that really Sol Invictus or is that actually Apollo?" about that image just sent me down something of a rabbit hole; I've now discovered Pessinus which I'd previously never heard of.) ‑ Iridescent 15:41, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Happy Holidays

	Season's greetings!
	I hope this holiday season is festive and fulfilling and filled with love and kindness, and that 2021 will be safe, successful and rewarding...keep hope alive....Modernist (talk) 13:30, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks; likewise to all the above… ‑ Iridescent 15:42, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Requesting review of your speedy deletion of The rumba kings

Dear Iridescent, I wanted to please request that you undelete the page for musical group, The Rumba Kings, since myself and all the bands I've been part of have pages on wikipedia, for many years. This is the relevant band in my career, as it is my band (owned by myself and one other member), and is current. I added references to the Allmusic guide, which all releases are in their database, as well as other verifiable information. I provided 100% true and accurate information. The Rumba Kings is the most important and relevant musical group in my career and history. I am kindly hereby requesting that you please undelete the page, and fix the name so the first letters are all in caps. I'll gladly made any revisions to page if you request them. Thank you for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliusbear007 (talk • contribs) 00:07, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Problem is, for a band to have a Wikipedia article it needs to be important to the whole world, not merely to its members. From the way the page was written, there is absolutely no indication that the band was important or significant, and that per WP:CSD#A7 is a legitimate reason to delete the article on it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

@Juliusbear007, to expand on what Jo-Jo Eumerus is saying, Wikipedia isn't a music directory (or a directory of anything else), and is a "tertiary source", meaning that we only repeat what other independent sources have written about any given topic. (Thus, for instance Alice N' Chains qualifies for a Wikipedia article not because the Wikipedia admins are making some kind of value judgement that it's more important than its successor groups, but because it contains an explanation of why the band was significant, it has a reference section which demonstrates that independent reliable sources consider it important, and each fact is cited to which independent source it came from.) The article I deleted (the link is admin-only but I've included it for the convenience of any other admin who wants to check my reasoning) was unsuitable for inclusion on Wikipedia on multiple grounds:

1. It didn't include what we call a "credible claim of significance or importance"—that is, an indication as to why this is a topic Wikipedia should be covering;
2. It didn't demonstrate "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" (something we often refer to as "notability" for short)—that is, proof that external observers consider the topic important and have written significantly about it;
3. Most importantly, it was an article about living people that didn't include a single reference, which violates our policy on biographies of living people and is automatic grounds for deletion.

I know my explanation above looks complicated, but it can be summed up fairly simply: "Whatever the subject, Wikipedia is only interested in what reliable sources with no connection to the topic have to say about it, and every statement needs to be referenced to where the information came from to allow readers to check for themselves if they doubt it". (Don't worry about formatting references and so on if that's causing difficulties; as long as you can give a URL for a website, or the name, author & page number for a book or magazine, we can fix the citation formatting for you.)

If you feel you can rewrite it into a form that meets Wikipedia's policy, I'm more than happy to restore it and make it into a draft article, which will be invisible to search engines but will allow you to work on it to make it compliant with Wikipedia policy. I won't restore it as a Wikipedia article, though, as if I do so it will just be immediately deleted again by someone else.

Per your comment that it is my band, I strongly advise you to read Wikipedia's guidelines on editing with a conflict of interest even though they're quite lengthy, as when you're writing about a topic with which you have a connection there are a lot of specific rules you have to follow to protect both yourself and Wikipedia.

If you want to formally appeal my decision to delete, we do have a formal procedure for appealing against deletions. It's written for experienced Wikipedia editors so the instructions are a bit technical, but if you want to appeal and you're having difficulty with the WikiCode markup let me know and I (or anyone else watching this page) can file the appeal on your behalf. I do advise that it's very likely to be a waste of your time since in my opinion the article fairly clearly violated multiple Wikipedia policies, but I'm obviously only one person and it's possible that others will disagree with me. ‑ Iridescent 07:20, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Now at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 December 26#The rumba kings, for the benefit of anyone watching. ‑ Iridescent 15:38, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

link corrected. Kablammo (talk) 16:13, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Minor ENGVAR point

I was looking at MfD and came across one of your comments. As a minor observation and point of interest, I think the word "remit" used as a noun is BrE to the point that many Americans will not recognize it. Before Wikipedia, I recall having encountered it only on Yes, Minister. I'm curious if anyone else has a similar reaction when the word is used on-wiki. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:02, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Interesting. I have been on a number of committees and have heard "within the remit" used. Not often, but enough to surprise me that the dictionary says it is a primarily British usage. (If you are referring to def #1 as a noun.) Killiondude (talk) 20:19, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I've always wondered whether remit in this sense is somehow related to charge (as in "The new supervisor's most important charge was to reduce absenteeism"). EEng 22:21, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Its generally (within the UK) used in that context in a more specific inclusive/exclusive manner. Unlike say 'scope' which some of my American colleagues use in the same context. Scope for us has a more general "the scope of the project" indicating wider goals rather than "within the project's remit" indicating clearly defined boundaries within which certain actions are permitted. To use your example, we might say "The new supervisor's charge was to reduce absenteeism" to indicate the overarching goal. "Within the supervisor's remit were <functions a, b, c> to achieve a reduction in absenteeism". Only in death does duty end (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

It isn't common, but I hear Only in Death's usage here (NYC) as well. If I were to define it I'd say it's akin to duty. My duty/remit within the project's scope is to organize the data on facet C. StarM 02:51, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I've certainly seen it in this sense in American English, particularly in technical papers ("our remit did not include…"). It's not quite synonymous with "scope", as the remit is narrower ("The scope of my committee is to find ways to reduce costs, my remit within it is to identify overspends on software"); probwbly the closest synonym would be "purview" but that's probably even less likely to be understood. Living in a country where since 1998 the news has been utterly dominated by the technicalities of governance, subsidiarity and collective responsibilities, and for the past year has had more of the same plus a hefty dose of medical ethics and international co-operation agreements, it's hard to remember that there are parts of the world where "remit" as a noun isn't an absolutely staple term of basic language.

@EEng, if you actually care and it's not just a rhetorical question, both modern meanings derive from Latin remitto ("send back" or "allow to go back"); e.g. "si nullam partem Germanorum domum remittere posset, at ne quos amplius Rhenum transire pateretur" ("if he could not send back to their country any part of the Germans, he should at all events suffer none of them any more to cross the Rhine"). The noun meaning "area of authority or responsibility" derives by way of a Middle Scots verb meaning "to transfer to another jurisdiction ("To þe cowrt off Rome he past To be assoilȝede fra þine was he Remyttit hayme in his cuntre"), which shortly after the Union of the Crowns becomes an English noun meaning "referring of a matter to a particular jurisdiction" ("Remit of the Process of Treason to the Lords of Justiciary").

If you really want create confusion between different varieties of English, the word you need is "moot", which has almost exactly diametric meanings depending on where you are. ("This topic is moot" can equally well mean "this topic is irrelevant" and "this topic is the sole matter currently under discussion".) ‑ Iridescent 14:26, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I can't say I cared, really, but I had long wondered. EEng 14:51, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I hear 'moot' and think 'Hobbit', so any use of that word means I will likely not be paying much attention to the rest of the conversation because I am now thinking about how Jackson was a genius for leaving Tom Bombadil out of the LOTR films... Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:19, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

That depends on how you look at it. Omitting all the elements like Bombadil, Numenor and the Druedain made for a much more accessible series, but it did drastically shift the whole feel of the movies away from the books. The films made LOTR into an absolutely straightforward good-vs-evil grail quest, whereas one of the strengths of Tolkein's writing is the way in which all these half-explained semi-random elements create a backstory without ever quite explaining it, in which Aragorn and pals are the descendants of a pack of thugs whose claim to Middle-Earth is based on conquest from its original inhabitants (whose culture they've spent the past millennium trying to suppress) and whose claim to the land is ultimately no more legitimate than that of Sauron or the Witch-King. (Tolkein spent his life denying that LOTR was an analogy to the real world, but he was literally the world's leading expert on the period in which the Anglo-Saxon conquerors were in the final stages of a genocide but hadn't quite finished the job; he knew exactly what he was doing.) On a purely practical side, while Jackson omitting the back-story certainly streamlined the LOTR movies and allowed him free rein to make up his own story to pad out The Hobbit, it also cut off the possibility of a Silmarillion film series, which could have extended the milking of the cash cow to a degree which would have made George Lucas blush. ‑ Iridescent 17:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The opposite of "within the project's remit" is, of course, "outwith the project's remit". My guess is very few people here would write or understand that, which is a shame. Best definition here. -- Colin°^Talk 18:25, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

"Outwith" is one of those words like "barm", "lunch", "po'boy" or "twat" whose use in (or absence from) standard English is an instant geographic signifier. North of a dotted line roughly between Morecambe and Middlesbrough it's pure standard written English ("if you are calling from outwith the UK, add 0044 to the start of the number"), anywhere south of that line it draws the same kind of blank stare as Brits in America trying to buy pies. ‑ Iridescent 16:39, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

In the US soft drink as the default word for a sugary carbonated beverage is limited to North Carolina and a small portion of Indiana. My favourite US instant geographic linguistic tell. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) – Outwith gets a nice, albeit brief, mention from the brilliant Lynne Murphy here. Oh, and what would happen, please, if I attempted to buy pies in the US?? I am intrigued. DBaK (talk) 17:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

A baked fruit pastry. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:18, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Motherhood and apple pie

(edit conflict) If you tried to buy "pies" in the US, in most places you'd get sweet open-topped flans made of fruit or nuts, usually made large and served in slices; in a few places you'd get a pizza. The concept of "pie" in the British (or Aussie, Irish etc) senses as "small round sealed pastry stuffed with questionable brown meat" or "bowl filled with stew and topped with a layer of either pastry or potato" doesn't exist. (If you really want to confuse Americans, try ordering pasties.) "Mango" is also a good one for a specific regional tell in the US. ‑ Iridescent 17:20, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Americans have a very clear idea of what pasties are, but we would certainly be confused if someone ordered them in a family restaurant. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:05, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Blimey! I had no idea. Thanks, both, very much. DBaK (talk) 17:34, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

In some parts of the Midwestern U.S., pasties in the Cornish sense of the term are a delight, subject to certain theological disagreements over whether they should or should not include rutabaga ("swede"/"neeps" to you brits). This comes from miners from the U.K. coming to Wisconsin and Michigan to work our mines, and bringing the pasty concept with them.

--Orange Mike | Talk 16:33, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

But consider "as American as apple pie". Our illustration is quite recognisable as a pie to my English eyes. Meat pies may be a different matter but, as it's near Christmas, what about the mince pie... Andrew🐉(talk) 17:36, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

That's not at all what I'd consider a typical apple pie in any part of the US in which I've ever lived. American apple pies are larger, usually open-topped or lattice-topped, and then cut into individual wedges. (See the illustrations on the official apple pie recipe of the US Department of Agriculture, who presumably ought to know.) An American would look equally bemused if you presented them with an English mince pie and described it as a "pie". (Parts of the US do have "mincemeat pies" which are broadly similar to English mince pies, but again they're baked large and served cut into wedges; describing something two inches across as "pie" just wouldn't happen.) ‑ Iridescent 17:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The shared concept of "pie" is something encased in pastry, at least at the bottom & sides, with a filling. Historically, England probably had a higher proportion of sweet pies than is now the case (or the favourite medieval mixtures of meat and fruit) , but apple pie and fruit pies generally are certainly not an American monopoly. Open-topped pies were usually called "tarts". The rest is just detail. Johnbod (talk) 18:06, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Sure, you can buy sweet pies in the UK (if you specifically ask for sweet pies rather than just "pie"), but that's not what I said; I said there's no American equivalent to the dish referred to as just "pie" without qualifiers in Britain (note, for example, that the BBC website disambiguates "pie" from "sweet pie"), which is true. American cuisine—even in places with strong English and Irish influence like Boston—just has no equivalent to what you'd get in these islands if you ordered "pie". (If you really did some searching in larger cities you could probably find something approximating to a football pie in bakeries catering to East European immigrant communities, but it wouldn't be called "pie" and probably wouldn't even have the word in its name.) ‑ Iridescent 18:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

"Pie" pretty much always needs qualifying in England, unless made very clear by the context - you'd never see just "pie" on a menu or chalked-up bill of fare. Pork pie, Meat pie, Steak pie, mince pie .... In proverbs etc it can just be plain - the type is unspecified in "Who ate all the pies". Johnbod (talk) 23:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Oops - apparently the context makes that one fairly clear - Who Ate All the Pies?. Johnbod (talk) 01:01, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Where are you getting you'd never see just "pie" on a menu or chalked-up bill of fare from? There are probably 20 pie places within a half-hour walk from me, all of which invariably use "pie" on its own to mean "unspecified meat pie" and "chicken pie", "fish pie" etc to disambiguate non-standard pies. (I don't know if you still work for WMUK, but if you do here are the delivery menus for your local Maureen's, G Kelly and Manze.) ‑ Iridescent 07:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

That must be very localized to East London, I've never seen that. What's actually in the 1st and 3rd. I have never worked for or at WMUK - please don't go putting that about. I used to be a trustee, until about 2013. Johnbod (talk) 19:15, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

If it's untrue I obviously retract it, I thought you were (at least at some point) WMUK's treasurer. "Pie" meaning only "ground meat pie" unless it's qualified with another ingredient definitely isn't exclusive to East London; I don't know how far north it reaches, but here's Maldon,one in Manchester and the Lakeside food hall as a couple of non-London examples—this Google search will bring up a big stack of examples of menus that just have "pie" without qualification. (It seems to be mainly a Kent and Essex thing, I imagine it's a trend spread by the postwar displacement of Londoners to the New Towns.) ‑ Iridescent 19:55, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Well it is untrue. I was "Honorary Treasurer", which in charities always means the trustee with oversight of financial matters. Only multimationals have paid "Treasurers", usually dealing with cash & deposits, under the CFO/Finance director. Johnbod (talk) 22:48, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I’ve never had an open-topped fruit pie, and I’ve seen a lattice-topped one in person maybe three times in my life, and always thought it was a weird way to do it. I actually assumed it was British, not Americans, who did it that way. They aren’t sold in the grocery stores either open or lattice in any of the states I’ve lived in for fruit pies. These type would all be closed-top: cherry, apple, blueberry, peach, rhubarb, raspberry, would all be closed. Pumpkin, pecan, chocolate, and lime/lemon based pies would be open top. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:45, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

In my experience, there are lattice-topped fruit pies in the US, less common than closed-top but not rare. I agree that open-top fruit pies are extremely rare. There are also fruit pies topped with crumble rather than crust, such as apple pies that Americans call "Dutch". Then again, an open-top pie with a graham cracker crust and a cream cheese filling is always called a cheese cake. A cheese pie will be understood to be a cheese pizza, which can also be called a tomato pie. (My impression, but I might be wrong, is that "tomato pie" is fairly specific to NYC.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:29, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Italian tomato pie doesn't even mention NYC. MB 06:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Philly tomato pie isn't quite the same thing as pizza; that's a big, cool slice of doughy bread smeared with tomato and without cheese (other than maybe a light sprinkling), more like a giant bruschetta than a typical pizza. Tryptofish is correct in that pizza is referred to as "pie" in NY (a quick sampling of the menus of NYC institutions shows "pie" used consistently). I don't think "tomato pie" is in common use in NYC, the "tomato" part is implicit; order a "cheese pie" and you'll get what Pizza Hut or Dominos would call "cheese and tomato pizza". ‑ Iridescent 06:54, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I based my speculation on the fact that everyone I can remember saying "tomato pie" did so with an NYC accent – obviously, I'm not a reliable source (nor a reliable sauce). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:43, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

People currently in NY/NJ are better placed than me to say what the current situation is—I haven't lived there for 30 years—but at least in my time "tomato pie" was something you saw in Philadelphia and upstate places like Utica and Syracuse rather than NYC itself. At least back in the 80s, in NYC if you asked for "pizza" you got a slice, and if you asked for "pie" you got the entire pizza. ‑ Iridescent 19:58, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I attest that in current Pacific Northwest North American usage, pie typically denotes a unit of the dish pizza: "For pizza night this week we made three personal pies and a cheesy bread." Pie can also indicate a sweet baked good, usually 9 inches (23 cm) in diameter, often in apposition to cake. I have never heard the term "tomato pie", but am familiar with the dish "pot pie" as a very thick meat stew encased inside pastry. In reply to TonyBallioni's remark about lattice-topped fruit pies, I have seen lattice tops communicate two distinct meanings: "Look how long I spent on this pie"; or "I didn't have enough dough left for a complete upper crust". Neither of these is common in a retail context. Folly Mox (talk) 06:46, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I miss Australian meat pies/sausage rolls from my time there. Pie Face had a short lived run here in midtown and oh what a treat. I think the closest we have to meat pies is chicken pot pie, which is not something I'm a fan of. Now I just want a po'boy for "lunch" although I think the word that really belongs on that list is "tea". Beverage or meal? StarM 18:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm in the southeast; breakfast in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, dinner in the evening, tea is a beverage, supper is a snack before going to bed. There's a nice little map here. ‑ Iridescent 18:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you all who commented on the use of "remit." I accept that it may be more common in the US than I was aware of, but to me it will always conjure up Sir Humphrey and Bernard discussing the history of the DAA.

The real-world example I actually experienced of a word with two opposite meanings is the verb "table" (in the context of meetings or parliamentary procedure). At a Canadian witness's deposition, he was shown meeting minutes stating that an important subject was "tabled." The American lawyer asked, "why did you table that subject instead of discussing it?" The witness answered "it says right here we discussed it." The two of them talked past each other until I pointed out that they were speaking different languages: "tabled" (or "laid on the table") in British (and sometimes Canadian) means "brought before the meeting for consideration," while in American it means the opposite—"put aside and not considered at this time."

An on-wiki example of ENGVAR confusion occurred when a British arbitrator wrote that ArbCom was "seized of" a given topic, which is good BrE but meaningless in American, resulting in this. And although it's not a regional variation, another auto-antonym that causes real confusion is the verb "sanction," as came up here. Maybe it's a wonder we all understand each other as often as we do. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Indeed it is a wonder. I just burst out laughing when I read your comment and realized that this in-depth examination of pies was, in fact, initiated by your question about "remit" – a fact I had completely forgotten! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:47, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Particularly since the Echo system was switched on, one that regularly raises my hopes in edit summaries only to dash them again is "resign". One that operates in the real world as well but is a specific pest on Wikipedia where we've decided two contradictory meanings weren't enough so added a third is "oversight" ("the oversight team failed to provide oversight owing to an oversight"). ‑ Iridescent 06:35, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

U5 on userpage-sandboxes

Hi Iridescent. I see that you reverted my U5 nomination of User:Hamjabinhoque1. Userpages used as workspaces is a widespread problem that I encounter almost daily. For several years, I have nominated many userpages as U5 when they've been used as sandboxes/draftspace articles. Several admins such as Fastily and Jimfbleak have deleted them, as they would seem to agree with this interpretation.

I'd like to discuss the proper way of handling the inappropriate use of userpages, since it's so common. Whether it's deleting via U5 or another criteria, or something else - it really doesn't matter to me. I'll be happy to follow whatever consensus is arrived at, and see it applied evenly. If you could suggest the most appropriate forum for such a discussion, I can start a thread. Thanks. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 17:28, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

If other admins are deleting things like this as speedy deletions under U5, then in my opinion those admins are doing so inappropriately—admins are only allowed to delete pages as speedies in the most obvious cases (direct quote from policy), and consequently I'd consider the speedy deletion of pages when there's any reasonable possibility that there's a legitimate case for keeping them to be out-of-process. It's not at all uncommon either for new and newish editors to use their user page or user talk page as a sandbox, nor for new editors or editors who up-to-now have only used VisualEditor to make copies of the wikitext of existing articles to experiment with.

If it had been on the page for years abandoned or if the creator were indefinitely blocked, then it might be deletable at MfD, but you literally tagged this for deletion within hours of its creation—by doing so you're effectively saying "fuck off, you're not welcome here" to someone who may have been a good-faith new editor experimenting with markup. (Many if not most of Wikipedia's editors got their start by messing around and experimenting; it's just that it's more obvious now because it's harder to edit as an IP, so early screwups follow more recent recruits around like a permanent Mark of Cain). The disintegration of the en-wiki editor base may have stabilised but we're still operating at half our peak; we're not in a position where we should be driving away potential new editors. (One could theoretically make the argument that that particular page was deletable as a copyright violation since it was copied without attribution from the lead of Liberland, but realistically we're not going to sue ourselves.)

Speedy deletion is only applicable—in userspace or elsewhere—for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion (and that is formal written policy). As a general rule if you can plausibly imagine that anyone other than the creator could potentially contest the deletion were it taken to AfD/MfD/PROD, then it doesn't meet the "no practical chance" criterion and consequently speedy deletion is rarely going to be appropriate. On this occasion it doesn't really matter, as subsequent to this the user in question started vandalising so their time on Wikipedia is likely to be short, but in general unless something is blatantly inappropriate, it's always a good idea to leave user sandboxes alone. (A useful thought experiment—whether you're an editor tagging things for deletion or an admin patrolling the backlog—is "is this page's continued existence actively damaging anything?".)

Disclaimer on all of the above that this is my personal opinion and not policy (other than the parts marked in green) but I'm fairly confident that my interpretation of WP:CSD is both in keeping with the wording of policy, and with the intention of the original authors of the deletion policy. Remember that every one of these goofy user names has a real person on the other end, and every deletion tag is potentially going to annoy and upset that person. Deletion is often necessary, but it should always be the last resort, and unless something is blatantly inappropriate or blatant misuse of Wikipedia as a hosting service (such as keeping results of a fantasy football league, or someone expecting us to host their CV) speedy deletion is rarely going to be appropriate in userspace. This page is very heavily watched; don't be surprised if a bunch of other admins (whose attitudes may be very different to mine) also chime in. ‑ Iridescent 19:27, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Frankly, my impression is that U5 has always been a problem criterium because it's so foggily defined. Unlike say G12 where it's usually pretty clear if something's an irredeemable copyvio or not, "Pages in userspace consisting of writings, information, discussions, or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals" isn't so easy to define (although I notice that it says that stuff falling under WP:UPYES doesn't qualify as U5 and UPYES mentions experimentation) Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:17, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, but how do you define "experimentation"? I could easily imagine that if I were a student who wanted to play around with formatting and templates, I might just copy-paste an essay of mine so I had some text to play around with, at which point I'm immediately technically using Wikipedia to host inappropriate content. If it's not already clear, I think the intent of WP:U5 was clearly intended only for "here is a 10,000-word biography of my cat" situations, not things that could be interpreted as an inappropriate essay but are fairly clearly a clumsy but good-faith attempt at drafting an article. As I always say when it comes to cleaning the CAT:CSD and CAT:EX backlogs, if you're not declining at least 1⁄4 of them you're probably doing it wrong. ‑ Iridescent 20:28, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

(adding) Putting the RFC that led to the creation of U5 here, seeing as I'm talking about the spirit behind its creation. It wasn't what you'd call widely-supported, and everything that's wrong with it was foreseen at the time. ‑ Iridescent 20:39, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Pinging Fastily and Jimfbleak, just because I had mentioned them earlier.

Might an acceptable compromise be moving the bad userpage content to a subpage, or the user's sandbox, that one of us creates on our own? WP:USERPAGE seems pretty clear that the root level userpage is meant to be about the editor him/herself. Of course, a wholesale copy of an article, even in good faith, needs to comply with WP:COPYWITHIN. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 02:47, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Drm310: What would be the purpose of doing that? Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:55, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad: The purpose would be to spare a good-faith but new/unfamiliar user the perceived harsh punishment of a speedy deletion, while not exempting blatantly promotional material eligible under G11 or copyrighted material under G12.

I recall being rebuked once for not simply blanking a userpage with inappropriate content as a WP:FAKEARTICLE. There was no consensus on that approach.

If this needs to be a wider community discussion, we should probably move it somewhere else. I don't know where it should go, to be honest, but it probably deserves wider exposure and not cluttering up Iridescent's talk page. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 05:24, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Drm310: But why not simply ignore these pages, unless one is doing actual harm? Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:42, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

So other than Kudpung, I’ve probably had the most impact on new page stuff on Wikipedia in recent years from a policy perspective (I say that recognizing I’ve done a lot less recently, but I was a significant force behind getting WP:ACPERM through and the revised WP:NCORP was something that I had a fair amount of impact on as a well, among some other things.) I’m not saying that in a do you know who you’re talking to sense that I know Iri loathes, but just to set the background that I’m not some random arch-inclusionist admin who is trying to defend keeping stuff outside of policy. If anything I’m more sympathetic than most.

With that background: I’ve always found patrolling most users pages systematically to be pointless. They don’t index. Anything that’s actually an issue (spambots and repeat spammers) is caught by multiple edit filters that the small wiki people patrol religiously on all projects (including ours). Realistically anything that’s actually problematic in user space will be dealt with under G10, G11, G12, or the oversight policy. Finding U5 pages that are quirky but don’t really impact anyone just seems like a waste of time, regardless of how you read the policy. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:55, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd go with that. Nominating for deletion anything that isn't actively damaging is just wasting the time of admins, since (with the exception of the abusive admins who run "delete all" scripts on CAT:CSD) an admin needs to read every single page tagged for deletion and in each case consider if there's a viable alternative to deletion, and the time that takes adds up very quickly. ‑ Iridescent 06:50, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

"If it had been on the page for years abandoned or if the creator were indefinitely blocked, then it might be deletable at MfD" -- If that were the case (and perhaps the content was slightly problematic; otherwise there really is not a problem just leaving it alone), {{inactive userpage blanked}} would be the best solution. Regardless of age, seeking the deletion of pages like this (especially regularly) at MfD would likely be fruitless. That aside, I fail to see why "userpages used as workspaces" are necessarily a problem and generally concur with Iridescent's interpretation of the criterion in question. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 07:36, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd envisage the use case for MfDing an inactive user's userpage rather than blanking, as being primarily for potential BLP issues. We (rightly) are very lax when it comes to NPOV on genuine drafts—"write down everything you think you know about the topic, then try to find a source for every statement and delete anything you can't source" is a well-established technique—but if for whatever reason it's abandoned between the writing and the sourcing stages we're left hosting something that's potentially defamatory.

There's also an argument that when it comes to WP:LTA cases it's preferable to delete their userpages so the old revisions don't serve as some kind of shrine for copycats. In 99.9% of cases as far as I'm concerned this idea is complete cack, but I concede that in some cases damnatio memoriae would actually have served a useful purpose either by preventing copycats, or by discouraging the original disruptive editor from trying to sneak back in. (I could make a much better case for deleting WP:LTA itself, which by now is less a useful page—every competent editor knows how to spot a disruptive editor—and more a combination of the high-score table of the Wikipedia Fuckwittery Championships and the briefing slides for Disrupting Wikipedia 101.) ‑ Iridescent 15:47, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

The existence of LTA pages, which are almost exclusively created by people who are not CUs or admins involved at SPI, have been used on non-English projects in the past as justification for releasing the IP addresses from CU data because people were under the impression that IPS listed on them were CU-confirmed. This has since been corrected and isn’t happening to my knowledge anymore, but that’s the one thing I can say an LTA page has actually achieved. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:54, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

There was a case for it in the old days, when AGF was taken to much more of an extreme—it's not that long in the great scheme of things that only Jimmy Wales was allowed to block editors, and the only reason admins were given access to the 'block' button was to allow them to carry out Jimbo's orders if he demanded someone be removed. In that context, publicly building a case was the only way to demonstrate that someone was a genuine crazy and not just someone who happened to be having a lot of bad days. This hasn't been the case for years, but the "keep, it exists" brigade turn out in force should anyone suggest that it serves no useful purpose any more and is potentially damaging. ‑ Iridescent 17:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I for one sometimes find long-term abuse pages useful as a central place to collate information on vandals in cases where some of their edits when taken in isolation might seem relatively innocent but when they are seen as a whole form a troubling pattern (e.g. the boy band vandal, the frwiki-based time thief). This is especially relevant with highly dynamic IP addresses/ranges, like this /64 from the time thief ... and yes, I'm very much aware of the recent IP-hiding thing). I went and tracked down the history of the long-term abuse page/concept and added it to the current location of the early anti-vandalism history at Wikipedia:Requests for investigation; I also modernised the talk page archives there and found a good chunk of previously obscured text from 2002 to 2004. by the time of the creation of the long-term abuse concept the blocking policy was a little stricter than it was at its creation, but certainly not what it is today. Graham87 12:44, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying that LTA pages on occasion have their uses. As well as the "low-level but constant disruption" cases you mention above, they're also necessary for LTAs like Mattisse whose pastime is to be polite and helpful until they've befriended some people then to wade all-guns-blazing into a controversial topic in the hope that her 'friends' will follow her into the fight and get themselves blocked, and as a consequence we need something we can point to when people in good faith ask why we've hardblocked an account that's apparently been nothing but helpful. What I object to is the general high-score-table nature of WP:LTA—and particularly WP:Long-term abuse/Full—which in my opinion just makes "getting on the list" a target and consequently incentivizes low-level assholes into becoming high-level assholes. If we have to keep LTA pages I'd much prefer we do what we did with (for instance) WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Betacommand, where we keep a central log of the disruption and the previous discussions so we have it if we need to explain the background to somebody, but don't add it to any kind of central listing. ‑ Iridescent 07:38, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I certainly delete user pages, but I think it's nearly always as G11, or for other clearly inappropriate use. I think an obvious draft can be moved, just as I'd move a draft page titled as Draft:UserName to Draft:ActualTopic. I wouldn't like to say that I've never deleted a user page on notability grounds, but I've tended to treat user pages like draft pages, where notability isn't normally applicable Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:35, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think we should delete pages merely for being in the 'wrong' place. If you wouldn't delete the page if the title was User:Example/sandbox, then you shouldn't delete that page when the title is just User:Example. It could be blanked or moved if necessary. But if we want to solve the underlying problem, which is that putting a redlinked username at the top of the page is A Bad Idea™, then the mw:Growth team's work on newcomers would probably work. With their new system, the username basically gets replaced by a link with information about how to edit properly, how to reach the Teahouse, etc. If you're interested, then track down my teammate mw:User:Trizek (WMF) after New Year's. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

To a point. If something's obviously a draft article I'll quietly move it to userspace, but if someone's just created a page that reads '''bold text''' ''italic text'' [[page title]] == header name == [[File:Example.jpg|thumb|Image description.]] -- ~~~~ #REDIRECT[[Target page name]] <br/> <sub>Subscript text</sub> <sup>Superscript text</sup> (which isn't infrequent) then it's clearly just someone testing what all the buttons on the toolbar do and it's not only no use to anyone keeping it, it's actively counterproductive since it wastes the time of anyone else who stumbles across it and has to have the same "is this worth keeping?" thought. Common sense may have gone out of fashion on Wikipedia at the moment but there occasions where it still has its place, and deletion is definitely one of them. ‑ Iridescent 15:16, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Best wishes for the holidays

		Season's Greetings
		Seasons greetings. Hope you and yours are safe and well during this rather bleak period, though I think we will get through it. Best Ceoil (talk) 02:20, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

And the same to you, hoping you're both well in this very odd time. ‑ Iridescent 15:16, 28 December 2020 (UTC)