User talk:Mlaffs/Archives/2009/January

Review

Hi Mlaffs,

When I review people I do so from the perspective that they might be considering a run at adminship in the not to distant future. This is a different type of review than a typical editor review. Also, when I perform these reviews, I do so fairly flow of thought. In other words, if something comes to mind, I write it down.

• You indicated that you thought your lack of pure article creation would hurt. At first glance, I don't see this as being a major problem, you have a lot of experience in the mainspace. Granted, it looks like you prefer to work on lists and minor edits, but you have a lot of mainspace edits.
• The thing that is absolutely going to kill you is that you don't participate in any talk spaces. While you have over 1600 edits in article talk space, there is not a single article where you have more than 3 edits. You only have 157 edits in the user talk area... that includes your own area. You only have 59 edits in the wikipedia talk space. Communication skills are of paramount importance for admins.

I am not in the mood to work on wikipedia tonight... I promise to do a more thorough review of you later... but right now, I'm turning off the computer.---Balloonman ^PoppaBalloonCSD Survey Results 05:44, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for having a look — much appreciated.

I've really had two or three major areas of focus since I started editing. In the early days, it was the missing article project, which accounts for many of those edits to article talk space — tagging television articles for missing infoboxes. Since then, it's pretty much been disambiguation and, beginning in the summer, specifically disambiguation involving broadcast call signs. The majority of my edits through July, August, and September were toward a personal goal of cleaning up all the incoming links to those pages, which ended up being a huge success.

The net result is that, while I've done some collaboration when it came to trickier call sign issues, the vast majority of my editing has been extremely non-controversial. I've done some posting at WT:WPRS, WT:DAB, and more recently at WT:BIO and WT:MOSNUM. I read the Afd discussions each day, usually two days after they go live, but I usually only add my thoughts where I think I have a relevant argument that hasn't been made or hasn't been made enough. I drive by the Rfa discussions, but I don't often feel that I have much new to add by the time I get to them. I've also been an interested party for a couple of issues at AN or AN/I, both involving edits by a particular bot/bot operator. For the most part, I've tried to stay out of a lot of the drama areas and away from the third rails of Wikipedia — perhaps a little counterintuitive for someone interested in the mop, but also not, since I don't imagine that being how I'd look to be using it.

Anyway, thanks again for the initial thoughts — look forward to hearing more when it's convenient for you. Mlaffs (talk) 17:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

100.1 FM

Might need to add K261CO under 100.1 FM. It's a transmitter that broadcasts KDUV-FM on 100.1 FM.--JoeCool950 (talk) 03:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, and about 50 other six-character call sign retransmitters at that frequency alone. I'm not sure if it makes to include them or not — I'm worried that they'd overwhelm the page, none of them have their own article, and it's debatable whether or not anyone would be looking for them. It's a fair question, though — maybe I'll throw it at the radio station project and see what they think. Mlaffs (talk) 03:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

That sounds good. I'm not going to add the station itself again, but thought I'd point that out, so the radio station project could look at the station also to see what they think. Let me know if you hear anything. I was the one that added that KDUV Bakersfield, but glad you took it off, since it's a transmitter station on 100.1. Hopefully get everything worked out for that frequency.--JoeCool950 (talk) 03:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation tags

I'm not sure how AWB works, having never used it myself. However, I just wanted to give you a heads up that a couple of the disambiguation talk pages that you tagged with {{Template:DisambigProject}} already had {{Template:WikiProject Disambiguation}} on them, which redirects to the one you were adding. Don't know if that's an AWB bug not recognizing that a valid template existed on the page already or what, but I thought it was worth dropping you a note. Mlaffs (talk) 17:21, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey there thanks for the message; AWB automates the task but still requires the editor to "approve" each edit manually. I had it programmed to automatically skip pages already having {{Template:DisambigProject}} but I was manually skipping pages that had {{Template:WikiProject Disambiguation}}. Looks like my eyes glazed over and I missed a couple in this case, so thanks for the catch ;) But not to worry, as a rule I'm not adding duplicate banners. Thanks again! — TAnthony^Talk 19:52, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom case

Thanks for pointing out the error in my figures. I have now reworked them. I don't think Lightbot is going around fully delinking dates at the moment. However, I have done an edit count on Light bot, which gave me 40,000 edits from 1 to 15 January, so I have used that figure as 'potential' speed. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:18, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

No sweat - it seemed funky to me, and I think it's important that everyone is able to state their case correctly. I think a potential speed is probably more around 100,000 to 150,000 per month if it's running full time, but we're really talking orders of magnitude here. It's not really the key issue.

For what it's worth, despite the rancor and drudgery associated with this at MOSNUM, particularly as related to certain users, I hope it's clear that not everyone that has a concern about this issue is climbing the Reichstag. I'm a little disappointed that there's been a lot painting in the absence of colour and all colours, when there's actually a decent amount of grey here for some of us who aren't MOSNUM regulars. Or there is for me, at least, not presuming to speak for anyone else. :>) Mlaffs (talk) 04:36, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

• 3 edits per minute sounds possible. And yes, I largely have to agree with you. Just like any other dispute, there are two sides, although there may be non-aligned and other innocent bystanders. MOSNUM can be a very boring yet intimidating place: so much talk, fussing about really quite trivial issues at times. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:50, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you seen this yet? I nearly choked on my waffles. - Dravecky (talk) 13:26, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, there's some interesting reading there, as there is throughout that page. I actually like the remedy proposed there - I think the idea of being able to tag a date so that bots, AWB, etc. pass by it is a great idea, particularly if we're given enough time to implement it before the automated edits resume. The one thing I really don't like is the constant denigration of the "con" side - the idea that this whole exercise is a fit of pique by two nuts. Even if there hasn't been overwhelming community engagement on the issue, there have certainly been a handful of editors completely outside of the usual MOSNUM gang who raised concerns on Lightmouse's talk page, at AN, and at AN/I, you and I among them - it's more than a little insulting to be dismissed as a crazy, just because the Rfar happens to have been launched by a user who's, let's just say, a litte strident about the issue. I just haven't had enough time to sit down and put my thoughts together, but I'll probably do that tonight and add them to Workshop talk page. Mlaffs (talk) 16:11, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I personally loathe the thought of having to manually tag 15,000 radio station articles in two weeks (with explanatory commentary!) for the convenience of a bot whose owner refuses to acknowledge policy, common sense, and his own promises at ANI. That would be roughly one edit a minute for 16 straight hours a day for 14 days in a row. Thanks, but no thanks. I really don't understand the urgency to remove date links en masse when only a tiny fraction of the tiny handful of folks that participated in the RfC advocated such actions. So I really really don't understand why the total attention of the most active content creators should be diverted for two weeks in a race to prevent one unstoppable killing machine privileged bot from undoing years of careful linking. - Dravecky (talk) 16:30, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that it's more than just Lightbot (or Lightmouse's AWB scripts) doing this de-linking, which I didn't realize until I got into the meat of this debate. There's at least one other bot, and two or three other editors using AWB doing the same thing. Lightbot just happens to be the most prolific. Regardless, my going in assumption for agreeing with the tagging idea is that chronological articles - like "1969 in radio" - would be verboten for delinking going forward; that is, they wouldn't need to be tagged. That assumption was built into at least one of the proposals, and it's a pre-condition as far as I'm concerned.

Honestly, I think the de-linking is a fait accompli at this point. I think the best that can realistically be hoped for is some kind of guideline about what's off limits, a requirement that a facility be provided to steer bots/scripts away before anything more is done, a reminder that bots enforcing the MOS have to actually follow it, and some analysis about how this sort of drahma can be better addressed in the future. Mlaffs (talk) 21:20, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

P.S. - from stalking your talk page, it looks like the DYK bot problem is fixed, so you might be able to get back to your other love now. Congrats!

• Out of interest,I just wanted to understand the need/desire to preserve (so many) links. What dates in a typical radio station article do you think so important to mark up before links are removed? AFAICT, Chris' tagging proposal is independent of the delinking issue in that it would work just as well for unlinked dates as for linked dates.. Ohconfucius (talk) 13:02, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Fair question — it's actually not specifically about radio station articles for me, although they're what happens to be on my watchlist right now because of the disambiguation work I've been doing. I'm concerned about most of the series of 'year in X' links in general; it could just as easily be 'year in baseball' or 'year in music' as 'year in radio'. I'm fully on board with the idea that, in most cases, a link to a bare year like 1976 isn't very useful given the state of most of those year articles. However, in an article about a song or an album, 1976 in music might well provide some useful context. In an article about a baseball player or team, 1976 in baseball might well provide some useful context. A placement of that link in a "See also" section, as has often been suggested, would be an appropriate way of delivering that context. However, if it's used consistently in that manner across the scope of a project, I also feel that it's appropriate as a piped link in an infobox, a table, or a list, as MOSNUM envisions. In the end, I actually don't think it will end up being that many links in the grand scheme of all the date links that exist. If Lightbot had been skipping piped links in those three areas, as it should have been given the wording of its approval at BAG, I'd be a lot less concerned about this issue. Not unconcerned mind you, but certainly less so. Mlaffs (talk) 15:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I see the issue raised above particularly for infoboxes, where space is often at a premium. The RfC showed that people dislike piping [[year in xxxx|year]], but infoboxes 'may be' an exception.

I would point out that, in my travels, I have encountered some very creative use of date linking and piping which entirely destroys DA and/or which violate WP:OVERLINK. Quite a few of these involve the use of [[year in xxxx]] links, such as February 12, 2003. I think Lightbot became a bit unpopular for delinking those types of piped year links - it should arguably delink the entire date string but that would be against its approval. I have also noticed, for example, that there is an almost epidemic tendency to link and overlink to [[year in music]] for example in discographies and articles about musicians, and [[year in film]] in filmographies and articles about actors. I believe this problem should be cured, notwithstanding your concerns. In addition to all that, it is conceivable, in articles about prolific actors with long careers, that this could still "justify" a very long string of such low-value links to the 'see also' section, although it is another topic. In such a case, links to [[year in film]] for each and every year of the actor's career add little or no encyclopaedic value to the article, because filmography (usually already included or linked to) or link to other of the actors contemporaries, or imdb would be more useful.

I would still contend that, because of the scale of the problem of overlinking, it is far easier for the project to agree to remove these in a wholescale manner and for editors to introduce re-link in a more intelligent fashion. Here on WP, it's often judged preferable to delete an article because it is a complete mess and start over again. I can say that, through my experience of having gone through over ten thousand articles, that I believe the same principle should apply to removal of these links. In that sense, I believe Colonies Chris has proposed a solution which is acceptable, although I still have some misgivings that this is a cop-out from intelligent linking. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Radio

When you make updates to Canadian radio stations, could you also keep an eye on whether the articles include reference or external links to CRTC documents? The CRTC recently made a change to their URL format, such that the "/archive/ENG/Decisions/", "/archive/ENG/Notices/" or "/archive/ENG/Hearings/" part in the middle of any given document URL is now "/eng/archive/" (same format for all three types of documents). I've updated the majority of them with AWB, but I'm not absolutely certain that I've caught every one, so could you just quickly check to ensure that there aren't any remaining links to the old URL format when you're checking radio station articles for other necessary revisions? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 21:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

No sweat — I end up touching the Canadian articles much less than the U.S. ones, but I'll try to remember to keep an eye open when I do. I assume the "Decisions", "Notices", or "Hearings" part is still in the link? Mlaffs (talk) 22:24, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, no, that part isn't in the links anymore. The document number itself differentiates what type of document it is (for example, a decision's document number always begins with db before the year), so the rest of the new URL format doesn't separate the types of documents anymore. Bearcat (talk) 22:27, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Glad I asked — I'll see what I can do! Mlaffs (talk) 22:40, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Thank you for voting in my RfA, which passed with 80 support, 2 oppose, and 1 neutral. I appreciate all the comments I received and will endeavor to justify the trust the community has placed in me. R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:17, 24 January 2009 (UTC)