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Credo Reference

  • Results from counting links to highbeam.com from dumps of external links are archived at Highbeam results.
  • At above, Ocaasi asks for a similar analysis for links to credoreference.com (see WP:CREDO). The first accounts from that project appear to have been available around March 20, 2010, so would like a count of links before that date, and counts at some periods since.
  • It looks like the earliest enwiki external links dump available in August 2012 is for July 2011 (20110722).
  • I have EL dumps for: 20110620, 20110901, 20120211, 20120307, 20120403, 20120502, 20120601, 20120702. I will download 20110722, and might ask at a couple of places whether anyone has earlier dumps (not optimistic). Johnuniq (talk) 08:30, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

For removing that post from my page. I don't normally remove posts from my talk, but that one...it was fairly creepy. :) OohBunnies! (talk) 11:40, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I was thinking of explaining to the user that it was me who removed their post (since you were too nice to do so), but I guess we can ignore it for the time being. Johnuniq (talk) 01:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Re: David Suzuki

I made the addition to the page about J. Philippe Rushton describing David Suzuki as a "media personality," because for over the last decade that best describes his activities. Originally, the page described Suzuki as a "geneticist," but Suzuki has done no recent science in the field nor has he published any papers on the subject. Instead, he has published a series of general science books, many of which are children's books.

Suzuki is best known for hosting the CBC television show "The Nature of Things" (which I often watch and enjoy), in which he reads from a script and does voiceovers for wildlife footage. Prior to that, he hosted the CBC-AM programme, "Quirks and Quarks," in which he interviewed scientists in the news. As the host of television and radio shows, I think that the description "media personality" is quite appropriate, since it covers more than one medium.

To describe him as a "geneticist" is, I believe, highly misleading (as if he were Craig Venter), because he does no work in genetics, but I did not wish to contradict the opinion of whoever wrote the original article, so I added "media personality." If you object to that term, how else would you describe the host of television and radio shows and someone who frequently appears on broadcast media? What term would you prefer? "Popular recognizable figure"? "Voiceover artist"? "Canada's answer to Bill Nye"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ybravura (talk • contribs) 02:18, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Please explain your concerns at the article talk page (Talk:J. Philippe Rushton). If we discuss things here, other editors may not notice (and two other editors have joined in the editing). Johnuniq (talk) 04:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

VLAN

In Virtual LAN you made the comment that "While VLANs are commonly used in modern ethernets, using them for the original purpose would be rather unusual."

Could you clarify this? What was their "original purpose" for which they are now rarely used? (Please reply on Talk:Virtual_LAN.)

Martin Kealey (talk) 06:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

It took me quite a while to work out what you mean—the quoted text is in the article Virtual LAN. It was this edit at 15:49, 4 December 2010 which introduced that text into Virtual LAN, and that was by someone else. I agree that the text is confusing, but it is clearly referring to the "three different spanning trees" as the original purpose (a piece of history that I know nothing about). If you would like to propose something on the article talk, or want to just edit the text, please do so and I'll join in if I get a chance. Johnuniq (talk) 07:34, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Credo Reference

I'm sorry to report that there were not enough accounts available for you to have one. I have you on our list though and if more become available we will notify you promptly.

We're continually working to bring resources like Credo to Wikipedia editors, and this will very hopefully not be your last opportunity to sign up for one. If you haven't already, please check out WP:HighBeam and WP:Questia, where accounts are still available. Cheers, Ocaasi 19:13, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Credo Reference results

  • Previous discussion is at Highbeam results.
  • The results below include all links in articles, provided they were like credoreference.com/something or www.credoreference.com/something or corp.credoreference.com/something.
  • Once I had the scripts working it was simple to run them several times so the following table shows more data than needed.
All links to credoreference.com/something in articles
Date Unique articles Unique links Total links Method
20100101 58 61 75 history
20100301 59 62 76 history
20100601 71 77 93 history
20100901 76 85 102 history
20101201 88 100 119 history
20110301 88 100 119 history
20110620 129 137 163 table
20110722 137 145 172 table
20110901 145 152 180 table
20120211 159 175 209 table
20120307 158 175 209 table
20120403 159 174 207 table
20120502 160 174 208 table
20120601 165 178 213 table
20120702 166 181 215 table

The earliest enwiki external links dump available in August 2012 is for July 2011. I already had the June 2011 dump, but none prior to that date. The history method results were found by making an assumption and doing some tricky stuff. I listed the articles containing Credo links in August 2012, then downloaded the wikitext for old revisions of those articles, at the dates shown above; the results were obtained from counting links in those old revisions.

The table method results were found by extracting the information from dumps of the external links table at the dates shown above (same as done for the Highbeam links).

The last row shows results from the external links dump for July 2, 2012. There were links in 166 different articles, and there were 181 different links, giving a total of 215 links.

Let me know if more is wanted. Johnuniq (talk) 01:37, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

This is really great John. I'm so glad I have you provisionally on board as resident data guru for these projects. Am I correct in noting that the increase in links to Credo over the last year is fairly paltry, pathetic even? We have 400 users with access and they've contributed on average 1/2 a link per user? Ocaasi t | c 15:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I'm confident the numbers are approximately correct (although they are wrong by ±5 or so due to weirdnesses like someone entering a link with a typo that would not be counted, or I noticed one case where [http:link http:link] had been used (the URL was entered twice), and my code counts that as two links). Also, the history numbers will be slightly wrong because someone might have added links to an article in April 2010, but those links were removed later).
Total links from July 2011 to July 2012 rose from 172 to 215—an increase of 43 over a year (not much!). My guess is that the Credo sources are somehow different in nature from those at Highbeam, with the latter being more suitable for referencing facts typically found in articles? An enormous difference. As a sanity check, LinkSearch shows there are currently 355 *.credoreference.com links in all namespaces (and some of those links would be just credoreference.com without a "something" following, and so are not counted by my script). Johnuniq (talk) 02:08, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, how did you do this? [1]... and this?[2] I'm assuming it's a script of some sort, but even with my (somewhat of a) programming background, I wouldn't know where to start getting that done. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 01:43, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

  • Ha, yes, that's why I'm here as well! Mind you, I've done a lot of that work by hand (including the first two sections) but this is something else. Also, thank you for cleaning that up. Drmies (talk) 01:57, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Those two edits are pretty amazing, and I half expected something to break. What's really impressive is that MediaWiki can show the diff in a reasonable amount of time. However, the edits were just search-and-replace using a sophisticated text editor and regular expressions. No scripting, just crossed-fingers! (I did a local diff of the before-and-after prior to Save for a bit of a sanity check.) Johnuniq (talk) 02:01, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

FYI

Maybe this will help. Discussion at last, anyway. Rivertorch (talk) 06:14, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Wow—what an excellent reply you gave them. They would have received less help if they'd chosen my talk! Thanks for info, and we'll see what happens. Johnuniq (talk) 07:14, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

An invitation for you!

Hello, Johnuniq. We are in the early stages of initiating a project to plan, gain consensus on, and coordinate adding a feature to the main page wherein an article will be listed daily for collaborative improvement. If you're interested in participating, please add your name to the list of members.

 Happy editing! AutomaticStrikeout 21:15, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, and I will have a look. Johnuniq (talk) 08:44, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

New SPI

Finally got around to it, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cosmic Disturbance. Dougweller (talk) 05:52, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I don't know what CANVAS has to say about SPI reports, but I have endorsed the request. Johnuniq (talk) 08:44, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
You're the one that noted it in the edit summary, so you should be told and are a relevant party. I didn't suggest that you do anything. Dougweller (talk) 11:19, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
Sorry for the misunderstanding as I see that my reply above looks like some kind of admonishment—that was not my intention at all. I was genuinely unsure of whether I should add an endorse, but as you say I did revert one user and mention the other in my edit summary. Johnuniq (talk) 11:32, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Genre articles

Not sure how much hassle it is, but I'd be interested in checking Jagged's edits to the genre articles I put through GAN:

There are a lot more genre articles, which I assume he's edited, but I think that's a big enough starting point... bridies (talk) 14:45, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Following show changes (successive edits in one diff) made by any of: Jagged 85 or 193.164.132.6 or 93.97.55.135.

Let me know if there is anything more I can do. Johnuniq (talk) 21:00, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Here are some more genre articles, to which he's made 10+ edits:

I know you're pressed for time ATM, but would appreciate some magic diffs at your leisure. bridies (talk) 12:44, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

No problem—I'm glad to do what I can to help remove this enormous problem which is probably the most damaging thing I've seen done to the encyclopedia. In the future, please provide a list of articles titles (I don't need links, but it must be the real title, not the title of a redirect because my program then gets the history of the redirect page).

I have made a list (on my computer) of the articles Jagged has edited since 2010-06-23 (when the RfC led Jagged to move to other topics). That's 3806 articles! Just counting those since 2012-01-01 gives 2232 articles. I was thinking I might prepare a list of edits to all articles since a certain date, but those numbers are overwhelming. I might try to work out how many edits were made to each of the articles, and see how many articles would have, say, more than ten edits—perhaps that would be a manageable number.

Here are the results for above:

Good luck cleaning all this! Johnuniq (talk) 23:39, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

  • You might consider just pasting up a list (or lists) of those articles (or as many as is feasible). Video game editors could then scan for the most potentially damaging ones: that would be higher traffic articles obviously, but also anything to do with history, genres or mechanics. Jagged85 was much less harmful adding descriptive info on obscure games in those games own articles, than distorting history (of video games) articles with them. Of course, the occasional (or perhaps not so occasional) overblown claims may be found in obscure game articles, but readers are less likely to see them there than in higher traffic genre and history articles. If this clean-up must be done manually, then my preferred method would be to scan such a list and find such articles, then check out the contributors page. If Jagged had made say less than 10 edits, I'd find them and nuke them; more than that then I'd ask you for magicked diffs (in batches of 10 or so) and use those to find and nuke his edits. Presently I'm having little trouble just chainsawing them out, as Jagged tended to add extraneous stuff with no business in the article. That might change when I get to articles largely of his doing though... bridies (talk) 11:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)

Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.

Steven Zhang's Fellowship Slideshow

In this issue:

  • Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
  • Research: The most recent DR data
  • Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
  • Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
  • DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
  • Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
  • Proposal: It's time to close the Geopolitical, ethnic, and religious conflicts noticeboard. Agree or disagree?

--The Olive Branch 19:10, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Timeshift9 (2nd nomination)

Hi Johnuniq. Because you participated in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Timeshift9, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Timeshift9 (2nd nomination). Cunard (talk) 05:57, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Smithfield Foods

Hi there--you responded to my post on the NPOV noticeboard about the Smithfield Foods article. I was wondering if you'd be willing to take a look at a new intro section I worked up for the article on my Sandbox page, which includes updated information and takes out misinformation. I've included proposed sources for the material, but am open to other sources, if you think they are more appropriate.

Thanks for your help, Kkirkham (talk) 15:16, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I am super busy (working on Module:Convert), so won't be any help for a while. If it were easy I would do something now, but it looks like there is a strong-minded editor involved there at the moment, and just calmly explaining things at Talk:Smithfield Foods might be all that is achievable. It was at NPOVN (permalink) that I made my first comment, dated 16 August 2012, and I still have not examined the article. Some advice: proceed very slowly and calmly. Study everything said to you, and wait before responding (and re-read what you are responding to before making a reply). It is important to get involved in any discussion, and address any points made (but do not make frequent responses—perhaps reply to any direct questions quickly, but apart from that one or two messages a day is about right). I will get a chance to look at the article at a later time (not soon), but I can see that issues will be ongoing. Johnuniq (talk) 01:13, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Convert testing

I've started work on a set of testing pages at Template:Convert/testcases/bytype which compares the out put of the convert template and the sandbox. It's not much use at the moment, but will be later on when the lua version is copied over to here.

One thing I have noticed is that some of the conversion options allow for multiple unit outputs, for example:

  • {{convert|1|yd|m ft}}: 1 yard (0.91 m; 3.0 ft)
  • {{convert|1|oz|kg lb}}: 1 ounce (0.028 kg; 0.063 lb)

Just something to think about. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow. I have added that to my list of impossible things. I've just spent a couple of hours looking for a clean way to handle Unicode minus signs on input, and some other related stuff. Lots more to do in that area before I look in detail at the very interesting tests you are creating.
Test cases are good because I can use them to capture the output from the current Template:Convert, and use that as input for a test script I have. That allows me to do local tests. Johnuniq (talk) 12:04, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Hang on, I just noticed {{convert|1|m|centemeters|lk=on}}. What's that? Johnuniq (talk) 12:09, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
Answer: It is a nonsense page created by a VOA at Template:Convert/centemeters (I requested a speedy delete). Johnuniq (talk) 09:24, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

The above links are here so I can find them. Johnuniq (talk) 10:19, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Dope for the drongo

G'day, fresh back from porridge, and find I can't edit comfortably any more. Everytime I open a page I get a new edit window with different values (B I,advanced, special characters, help cite. i.e. BI and a set of operational tags on top, and no access below it to the usual mark up options. Which means I can no longer link and have to manually write out all thinks like ref, blockquote etc. Would you know off hand what's happened?--Nishidani (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Welcome back. Various experiments are being conducted on the rats who occupy Wikipedia—I haven't followed the details, but you are probably seeing a random improvement to the interface. I rarely use the edit window (apart from copying out wikitext to work on in an editor, then pasting the results back in), and I often have Javascript disabled so do not see a lot of the enhancements. The place where people complain about things like this is WP:VPT—the section here looks relevant. If that doesn't work, let me know.
One day when feeling dangerous, you might like to try WP:WIKED which is greatly loved by some editors as it allegedly adds various improvements. OTOH I see it says that it does not work on Internet Explorer and Opera, and it looks too busy for my taste.
BTW do you have a strategy for dealing with the occasional glitches that occur when editing via the edit window? Like an edit conflict, or a network problem, or a server problem (there have been a few lately). In Firefox at least, you can usually get back to your edit window and copy the wikitext from there to something like Notepad so you don't lose your work, then try to save it again. Johnuniq (talk) 00:52, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
As expected, eminently lucid, but, following the links, I shrivel in fear - the only thing that intimidates me is stuff like that. A fellow once tried to murder me, but I was pretty cool under the stress, confident I could outrun him, but I'm afraid my courage fails me here. I'll just wait a while and hope for the best. It's quite extraordinary. I open to edit, and it's Rafferty's rules whether I'll get the mark-up help or not. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. So I have to laboriously copy the [] [[]] stuff from the text above, if it's there, and then plonk it down on my additions. And I'm using an old version of Explorer, which every intelligent person tells me is ratshit. Still I trust the boffins will fix this bizarre randomness that hits people like me. Cheers Johnno, and thanks Nishidani (talk) 17:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

"Boilerplate" WP:AN/I discussion notice

I'm sorry that it had come to this. Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--Shirt58 (talk) 11:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, but are you sure you are notifying the right person? If this concerns the ANI report on Edward de Vere, I am uninvolved, apart from the fact that I posted the first response to the report. The two editors mentioned in the report were notified by the OP. Johnuniq (talk) 11:26, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Yup. I was plainly being overly officious. But better to be overly officious than being underly officious![dubious – discuss] --Shirt58 (talk) 13:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Changed WP:ATTACK to guideline

I figured I'd let you know since you were the only one that raised objections, but your objections seemed to be more toward making it a redirect rather than guideline. You can revert me if you feel strongly about it. Gigs (talk) 17:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks ok, so long as WP:Attack page stays and is not made a redirect to some obscure CSD item. Johnuniq (talk) 01:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Followup RFC to WP:RFC/AAT now in community feedback phase

Hello. As a participant in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Abortion article titles, you may wish to register an opinion on its followup RFC, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Abortion advocacy movement coverage, which is now in its community feedback phase. Please note that WP:RFC/AAMC is not simply a repeat of WP:RFC/AAT, and is attempting to achieve better results by asking a more narrowly-focused, policy-based question of the community. Assumptions based on the previous RFC should be discarded before participation, particularly the assumption that Wikipedia has or inherently needs to have articles covering generalized perspective on each side of abortion advocacy, and that what we are trying to do is come up with labels for that. Thanks! —chaos5023 20:29, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Request that topic ban be lifted

Hi Johnuniq,

I've made a request that the topic ban be lifted [3]. I hope I can count on your support. NinaGreen (talk) 18:09, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

article created by banned user

what would be the procedure for dealing with Bias in Mental Testing, an article created and primarily edited by the sock of a banned user? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:54, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Even if Zeromus is a sock, something I do not believe is yet settled, the book in question is clearly notable per the following sources: [4] [5] [6]. There are other sources, such as Jensen's recent obit and sources included in the article presently that point to this book as being of a significant encyclopedic interest. From a notability standpoint the article should remain. It needs some rewriting and could use some expansion from a dedicated researcher, but if you are suggesting that it should be deleted then that is not the correct approach.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
There is no good way to proceed. TDA is correct that the article will probably be kept because of the mentions that such nonsense inevitably provokes. An argument could be made for redirecting it to Arthur Jensen where the book is mentioned, or to an article where all the black/white IQ arguments could be canvassed, but I don't think either would fly. The problem for editors seeking some balance in the way IQ is covered is that two entirely different types of editor would oppose such consolidation: the team using Wikipedia to promote the belief that "blacks are dumber than whites", and a group of good editors who strongly believe in freedom, and who tend to favor as many articles as possible with as many points-of-view as possible. Certainly the argument that the article should be deleted because of who created it would set off a firestorm of indignation, so I think we'll just have to declare this round as a win for the POV pushers, and someone will have to monitor the many associated articles forever in an attempt to restrain the UNDUE (and frankly absurd) suggestions that IQ can accurately be measured in all cultural groups, regardless of background. At least now that Jensen no longer warrants BLP (thanks for that link TDA, I have purposely stayed away from the topic for some time), those unthanked workers defending the encyclopedia in this area will have one less piece of nonsense to deal with (many DUE refutations of Jensen's ideas by credentialled scientists have been opposed on the basis that they violate WP:BLP). Johnuniq (talk) 22:55, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Six messages, one after the other, seemed slightly neurotic, though I'm technically interested in how you can do that the way he did it, i.e. one message coming in, with 5 others, identical, attached to it, so that it registered as 6 messages, as a kind of to-and-froing, as though he had, on each occasion, been answered. Nishidani (talk) 11:03, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

That's possible with some mailing software: it's like forwarding a message (your own message). It is absurd that a new account can send an unlimited amount of email, and people have pointed that out (some unfortunates have received hundreds in a day). To deal with it, I would suggest adding a rule to your mailing software so that it moves messages from Wikipedia to a dedicated folder where they can be reviewed when in the mood (and easily deleted). That's easier to do than it sounds, so ask if interested. For future occurrences, perhaps find an admin to whom you can forward an example, then let them deal with it. Johnuniq (talk) 02:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Information

I noticed your username commenting at an Arbcom discussion regarding civility. An effort is underway that would likely benifit if your views were included. I hope you will append regards at: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Civility enforcement/Questionnaire Thank you for considering this request. My76Strat (talk) 11:14, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Johnuniq. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/TimedText:Gaucho_eu_sou.ogg.en.srt.
Message added 10:40, 4 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

—Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:40, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I am working on Module:Convert (very heavy going atm), and am only dropping in from time to time to possibly react to things near the top of my watchlist. So, while I would like to help I have to be realistic and admit that I won't do much. However, if you want, notify me of any developments (like if a discussion starts somewhere). For reference, this concerns my comment that some guidelines will be needed for dealing with the Timedtext namespace at the above linked MfD. Johnuniq (talk) 22:12, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

DNA Replication

I see you are/were a regular editor at the DNA Replication article, and I'd like it to be a Good Article on Wikipedia. Please comment [Talk:DNA_replication#WP:GA_Candidate|there]]. Thanks! --HarshAJ (Talk)(Contribs) 14:03, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm watching and will attempt some minor assistance if possible, but I'm busy elsewhere. Johnuniq (talk) 06:41, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Appreciation

John, you are a good person to have spent so much of your time on thankless tasks like cleaning up after Jagged88. Don't think we don't appreciate it, for we do indeed.

I'm now working mainly on Simple English, where I have more scope to write articles without assorted lunatics running interference. Not all our articles are versions of the articles on this wiki. I completely rewrote our page on evolution, for example, and if you'ld like to see it press here: [7] Cheers, Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:28, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

It's very kind of you to remember me—thanks! Congratulations on simple:Evolution: it's amazing what can be achieved without a bunch of cooks stirring. Some revisions of Evolution have been quite painful to view, and at times there appeared to be competitions for who could write the most opaque yet technically correct prose. I've devoted a lot of time to doing not very much—mainly hoping to help good content builders (and thanks for your excellent content), but lately I have enjoyed returning to programming with tremendous efforts to convert the {{convert}} templates to Lua code (a new system to augment templates with a scripting language, and which will probably be used here next year; when I get over some severe stumbling blocks, I will resume activity here). Johnuniq (talk) 03:11, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
BTW, you may not be aware of the humorous final act. After a sufficient number of editors objected to Jagged's abuse on history of science pages, the user agreed to leave that topic and work only in something completely different. So, they started on gaming and related articles. After a year or two, the gamers noticed that the edits were putting an undue slant on topics, and were dubiously sourced, or were sourced to references that in fact did not verify the assertion. A short time after that, Jagged was banned and won't be editing again. A few of us noted ruefully that an editor could create mayhem on articles related to science, but don't cross them gamers! There's nothing interesting to see, but I updated WP:Jagged 85 cleanup with the info. Johnuniq (talk) 06:33, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
That's both interesting and amusing. Some of our tribes are obviously tougher than others! Macdonald-ross (talk) 21:54, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Michael Aldrich

I noticed that you contributed to the discussion (2 years ago) on Talk: Michael_Aldrich. I found myself reading that page after reading what looked like self-promotional-puff on several Wikipedia pages. As a regular reader and very occasional contributor to Wikipedia I hesitated to jump in to what was an energetic dispute. Also I am not practiced at reading all the various background talk and policy pages so I may be missing things. However it seems that discussion of this problem just went quiet in 2010 leaving poor quality content on many of the pages that you mentioned in an item in on 04:23, 14 July 2010 (UTC). While some of those pages have recovered there is still a problem on: Cable television, Electronic commerce, Infomercial, Michael Aldrich, Online shopping, Prestel, Rediffusion and Videotex.

I made a couple of tiny edits in the style of changing "invented [the whole category of] ..." to "demonstrated an example of..." but there seems to remain a problem created by contributor(s) whose agenda is the promotion of an individual's reputation at the expense of explaining the subject. I have hesitated to do any more myself as I simply don't have the time to fix all those pages and certainly don't have the time to handle the likely backlash that repairing the pages would provoke.

Any advice you might have on how to proceed would be welcome. Grow (talk) 15:19, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for taking this on (I hope)! I have been ignoring a lot of the nonsense here lately, but the excessive claims regarding Aldrich need attention. The good news is that that the last contributions from the fan appear to have been in August 2010, so cleanup should be drama free.
My suggestion would be to continue as you did here (where a wording tweak removed "and thus invented teleshopping"). I read some material about Aldrich, and it seems very likely that he is an extremely talented person with a long list of significant achievements, so I was reluctant to engage as strongly as is appropriate when facing the standard SPA who uses Wikipedia to promote someone dubious. However, as I tried to explain at the time, there are lots of cases where people cannot agree on who "invented" something (probably because the discovery arose from a complex web of interactions, with simultaneous and independent development in several different regions), and Wikipedia should not make any value judgments without extremely good and independent sources.
I'm busy elsewhere, but would be happy to offer opinions on any particular problem that you encounter. Feel free to draw my attention to any page where you think I might help, particularly if you meet opposition. Happy editing! Johnuniq (talk) 03:48, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

..


Seasons greetings to you and yours
Dougweller (talk) 14:15, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, and best wishes for your new year. Johnuniq (talk) 02:14, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Mail

{{you've got mail}} Halo Jerk1 (talk) 04:48, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Got it thanks. I don't see anything urgent, although I agree the situation needs to be monitored. I'm inclined to leave this alone for a while as I imagine one of the other editors on those pages will take suitable action when required. In general, I would suggest visiting WP:ARBCOM where there is a section on contacting the committe which includes the address arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org for email, and a simple statement like "please consider user X who may be inappropriately editing at page Y" would be sufficient. Including a URL link to the user page and the article page would be helpful. Sorry I'm not going to do more at the moment, but if you like, contact me if you have a specific question. Johnuniq (talk) 06:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

My thanks

Hi John. Thank you very much for your comments at DRN. Coming from you, an editor I greatly respect, they are a great honour. Happy New Year by the way. :) Take care. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 23:42, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Dr.K. I greatly appreciate your kind remark, although I'm pretty sure I haven't done enough to deserve it! I often notice your great work.
Happy New Year! Who knows, perhaps there will be an outbreak of sanity here, and we can spend less time battling obviously unsuitable editors. Johnuniq (talk) 08:13, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Lol. An outbreak of sanity. What a great concept. I think it should be right at the top of my New Year's wish list for this place. :) Thank you also for your kind words. It very was nice talking to you after such a long time. All the best. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 16:46, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for archiving 'Protect, Protect, Protect', but...

Thanks for archiving the 'Protect, Protect, Protect' stuff, thus hopefully at least partly protecting the subject of that article. But I was wondering would it be technically possible to restore the rest of that Talk Page? The point is that, at least if a lot of other readers tend to behave like me, I think that would make people less likely to go to the archive, and thus less likely to find that 'arguably potentially libelous or harmful' section. Tlhslobus (talk) 17:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's technically possible (by editing the archive and talk pages). However, it's not necessary and would be resisted by some editors such as myself unless there were a really good reason. If such a good reason existed, that reason would require having the text permanently removed (WP:OVERSIGHT), not just moved to an archive page to reduce its visibility. It is certain that there will be more disruption in the future, as other drive-by editors add inappropriate remarks, and they will be handled. My advice would be to not worry about it because it's outside our control and is a side-effect of how Wikipedia works. Besides the material in question is extremely mild as it only contains very vague suggestions that certain edits have been oversighted—much worse problems afflict lots of articles. Furthermore, nearly all the other material that I archived was entirely obsolete or junk or both. Johnuniq (talk) 00:50, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I've taken the matter up with an Oversighter. I'd appreciate it if you could please delete this discussion as it's now potentially unnecessarily somewhat indiscrete (I'd delete it myself, except I fear that might be impolite, given that it's your Talk page)Tlhslobus (talk) 12:24, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to be disagreeable, but I see no reason to delete this section. However, if you manage to persuade someone to oversight the archived article talk page comments, I'll have another look. I should have mentioned that I don't think it is a good idea to take admin time by asking for oversight of a harmless discussion between a few good editors where all they are saying is "it would be a good idea for this BLP article to be protected". I just put the name of the subject of the article into Google: first hit is Wikipedia, while the next three hits all mention the gossip (with many more following). Hiding some harmless discussions here is pointless. Johnuniq (talk) 22:11, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Don't worry, you're not being disagreeable, merely doing what you think is the right thing, and you may well be right. I agree there is no need to delete this section if it can't enable somebody reading it to discover the identity of the person we are discussing by checking through your recent edits or mine. I assumed it would, but perhaps I am mistaken. You presumably think that there's no point in trying to prevent that anyway, for reasons similar to your view that your Google shows there's no point in deleting the archived stuff. But I often look up subjects by going straight to Wikipedia without going through Google, and I suspect I am not alone in doing this, so I do see some point in it. As far as I can see marginally reducing the number of people who are aware of the claims quite likely marginally reduces the risk of harm to the subject of the article, and/or his loved ones and/or perhaps also to people whose mental health is not robust and who may be distressed by reading the allegations against their favourite celeb, or whatever. And on the other hand I can't see how keeping the stuff can do any good whatsoever. But I seem to be in a minority of one on this matter, so I expect that I shall soon decide to throw in the towel once again (I had already thrown it in, and only got interested again because you archived it, making me think, foolishly it now seems, that maybe I wasn't just going to be unhappily wasting more effort)Tlhslobus (talk) 23:31, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback|WT:VAND|Some errors in "Edit summary" section|ts=14:58, 19 January 2013 (UTC)}} Forgot to put name 14:58, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

There is no need to notify editors about a talk page discussion, and particularly not with {{talkback}} (unless a couple of days has passed and attention from the editor seems vital). After checking that I generally don't do crazy stuff, my edit summary might have prompted a question, rather than a repeat of the edit that I reverted. I see that another editor has explained at WT:Vandalism#Some errors in "Edit summary" section. Johnuniq (talk) 02:52, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution discussion

I have removed the large DR notice for Golden Ratio, and have added a comment at Talk:Golden ratio#Structural dynamics mentioning that dispute resolution is not suitable for a case where there is a clear consensus. Johnuniq (talk) 02:36, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

More bovver maestro

How does one, as I have occasionally observed, make an interwiki link to an article on a person which exists in another wiki language. I.e.if one wishes to link S.P.Tolstov to the Sergei Pavlovich Tolstov on the German wiki f'rinstance? Yours dumbly Nishidani (talk) 14:49, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Are we talking about de:Sergei Pawlowitsch Tolstow as the target (somewhat different spelling)? That link can be piped—S.P. Tolstov (same target). Is that what you mean?

In view of the excitement emanating from your part of the world, and as a reward for whatever mischief you are currently engaged in, please review this article. Johnuniq (talk) 22:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Fanks, guv.Bumf? Ay, that's roight up me alley. I haven't read it yet (bookmarked) by Rabelais has a marvellous solution for the problem, using a goose, caught neck and tail as one straddles the blighter, to wipe Pantagruel's coit. I hope he didn't miss that.:) Nishidani (talk) 22:53, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:ANI

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Mathsci (talk) 11:51, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

talkback

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Convert testcases

Just to let you know, I've updated the subpages at Template:Convert/testcases -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:02, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm going to put a note on your talk about some changes I made. Johnuniq (talk) 02:35, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

regarding WP:WIS

Maybe I never stumbled upon the rule but is there one that says that project pages can't have four shortcuts? For reference.[8] Cheers, — -dainomite   06:53, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

It's standard to use the talk page where an edit took place, not the talk page of a user. That allows others who may be interested to more easily notice and follow the discussion if interested. However, since you are here, there are several redirects to WP:5P, and only a small number are listed as shortcuts. One example is WP:5, and WP:WIS is the example you suggested (the latter was last edited in March 2009, so it has not been a shortcut for almost three years). The aim of a page like 5P is to be helpful, and the only consequence of listing multiple shortcuts is to confuse readers—which of them should they use? Should they look for some documentation to decide, or inspect each redirect to see if there are any clues? There is just no reason to list every redirect as a shortcut. Johnuniq (talk) 07:03, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm here at your talk page because as WP:OWNTALK puts it... "While the purpose of article talk pages is to discuss the content of articles, the purpose of user talk pages is to draw the attention or discuss the edits of a user." Now, since I'm here about a revert you made and not the content of the page I think I have come to the right place. What you're saying is there is a "standard" somewhere... and I was wondering where that standard is that says that four shortcuts aren't allowed. Afterall, there are plenty of project pages with five shortcuts... — -dainomite   07:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
I'm doing some complex stuff with Module:Convert at the moment (that involves trying a few things, and using "Preview" to see results, and the orange bar appears when doing the Preview). So please raise this at WP:ANI if you think there is something wrong with my edits (which is what "draw the attention or discuss the edits of a user" is hinting at, although it uses overly polite language which obscures its meaning), or at WT:5P if the concern relates to the content of that page. There have been a number of disagreements about how many shortcuts is good in the past, although I don't want to take the time to find any at the moment. If wanting to continue the discussion, may I suggest addressing what I said? I'm thinking of my claim regarding "confuse readers" and "no reason". Normally a change to a page is made due to a reason, not due to an absence of a reason to the contrary. Johnuniq (talk) 07:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Lua requests

Hi Johnuniq, I noticed you've been a prolific Lua script contributor at Module:Convert, Module:ConvertTestcase, Module:Convertdata, and made small fixes to others. I just created a request page for Lua scripts at Wikipedia:Lua requests and it'd be great if you could watchlist it to assist anyone who needs help with Lua scripts. Thanks! Dcoetzee 00:52, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. I noticed you created that and am already watching. Johnuniq (talk) 01:31, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
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