User talk:Mikeblas/Archives/2018/July

Mentioning editors by name in summaries

I'd like to concur with the comments above. It's a bit... jarring to be called out by name for a good-faith edit (my recent citation fix, which inadvertently created a duplicate citation, which is not really a big problem, and I left the article better than I found it). I believe, in turn, that you are doing this in good faith, but I honestly don't see what purpose it serves. Just as a data point. Thanks, and I do appreciate your fixes. Jessicapierce (talk) 03:21, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Fixing referencing errors removes visible errors from articles. Your edit left a message, in bold red letters, that said "Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name ":0" defined multiple times with different content (see the help page)." Before your edit, the page didn't have this error message; after you edited it, it did show this message. It's hard for me to think that's any kind of improvement. You didn't check the results of your edit, and didn't repair the error the parser was trying to bring to your attention. The reference you happened to add (repair, really) was to the same source as another, which is the uncommon case. The common case is that a reference in the article is left obscured by this error; it's not visible. We don't know if the reference is correct, and can't tell if it actually supports the related material in the article.

I think that verifiability is the most important aspect of the encyclopedia. References bring verifiability, so I think it's very important to fix such problems; I've fixed more than 3000 so far, just counting the duplicate referencing errors type. There are many other types of referencing errors.

I'm very surprised that duplicate referencing errors aren't considered important. I can't imagine leaving a big red error message on a page after on of my edits and not fixing it. Yet, I regularly encounter such errors that have been on a page for years, sometimes since the article was first added to the corpus.

I mention editors in the edit summaries for two reasons. One is to aid detecting the edit in a script I've been working on that helps me study the problem of bad references in the encyclopedia. The other is to draw attention to the problem of bad references and careless editing. I hope that you can consider making articles error-free with regard to referencing semantics is important, and will consider checking the results of edits that you make. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:21, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

I appreciate that you work on clearing Wikipedia of errors - this is something I regularly do as well. I do use the preview function and check my edits before submitting. You have caught one of my (hopefully) very rare oversights. I was repairing the missing bracket of "ref name=":0">", and I am quite sure I would have checked that spot in the article before submitting, but you're correct, I totally missed the red error message lower down the page, caused by the duplicate citation.

I'm not sure if you realize it, but your tone is very scolding, especially considering we're on the same side here. Had I trashed the page entirely, I'd see your point. But I made a simple human error in the process of fixing multiple things on that page, one of many hundreds and thousands of pages I've made small fixes on, over the years. I don't really think something at this level necessitates a conversation at all.

Anyway, this isn't the hill I wish to die on. Thanks for your many fixes, including my error. Jessicapierce (talk) 02:49, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you find my tone scolding. You've asked a question and I've answered it; I tried to do so as plainly as possible. Despite starting the conversation, you're now wondering why the issue warrants a conversation at all. I don't think there's anything wrong with making mistakes; everybody does it. But there can't be anything wrong with correcting mistakes, either, right? Mentioning someone in an edit summary isn't pejorative. Why did you assume it so?

Nobody's dying on any hills today. Maybe that's the issue: having a contribution made to Wikipedia changed isn't anything serious. -- Mikeblas (talk) 09:18, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

A third reason is to ask that editor to check my work. Duplicate refernece names can be pretty ambiguous to resolve. The correct fix isn't always obvious, and I might make an error in estimating which version of the reference as the intended one; or which references should be anchored to which actual citation. Flagging the editor who made the change gives them the opportunity to check my work. -- Mikeblas (talk) 17:44, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

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Saman Kunan

As a contributor to Talk:Tham Luang cave rescue#Saman Kunan article you may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saman Kunan. Regards, WWGB (talk) 02:12, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

An RFC

Hello, I don't know if you can help, but this request for closure has been waiting more than three weeks and the Request for Comments is more than two months old. Can anything be done to resolve it? GPRamirez5 (talk) 16:09, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Berbers

Your edit comments: really?!! I tried to stay cool, but you're insisting. Why "due to edit by Arminden"? I didn't introduce any of those repetitions. None. So do get off this horse, please. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 05:27, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi there! In this edit, you removed whitespace from the "Berber People" and "Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background" references. Except you only removed the spaces from one definition of those references. Your changes created two different definitions. If we look at the version of the page before your edits, we see no errors in the "References" section. Checking the version of the page after your edits, we find that there are errors for the "Berber People" an "Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background" references.

In this edit, a similar problem occurred. You removed some whitespace from one definition of the "Berber Speakers" reference. Before your edit, there were a couple definitions of that reference but they were the same, so that version of the page showed no referencing errors. The version after your edits shows the message "Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Berber speakers" defined multiple times with different content" message because of the multiple, different definitions of that reference.

I hope that helps explain why the repairs I made were necessary. Before saving edits to a page, I think it's a good idea to preview the page to make sure there are no new errors in the references section. -- Mikeblas (talk) 06:29, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I beg to differ. Whitespace changed nothing. Before I came in ([1]), if you search in that version ([2]) for <ref name="Berber people"> you find it 3 times with all details repeated identically, and <ref name="Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background"> twice. Simple as that. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 07:18, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Reference definitions are equivalent only if they're precisely equivalent, including whitespace. You're right that there were multiple references with the same name before you made your edits, but they were precisely equal. You edited one of the definitions to have less whitespace, and that made it no longer an exact match for the other definitions, resulting in the error message about duplicate reference definitions in the article. Thus, it really was your edits that caused the error. If you wanted to remove the whitespace from those reference definitions, you could either remove the whitespace from all the definitions with the same name (so they matched and didn't cause an error), or delete the other definitions and just leave references, and fix only one definition. I think the second approach is preferable, because, as you've discovered, a second definition is often a surprise. -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:38, 23 July 2018 (UTC)