User talk:Nathan Obral/Archives/2020/January

Disambiguation link notification for January 9

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Disambiguation link notification for January 20

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited XEWW-AM, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page W Radio (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

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Formatting issue

If you don't mind, what browser/device are you using? Levdr1lp / talk 19:23, 27 January 2020 (UTC) Comment stricken. Levdr1lp / talk 19:52, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• No worries! I predominately use Google Chrome on desktop and utilize the "Visual editor" mode. It allows for better inclusion and cleanup of references, and to make sure nothing is being broken code-wise; they rolled that feature out over the past few months. Some of my edits still take place on the iOS Wikipedia app, but very, very rarely now, this morning was actually one of those exceptions. Nathan Obral (talk) 19:48, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Never mind. I missed "app" in your edit summary, so clearly you weren't accessing the Wikipedia website via a browser on iOS, but rather the Wikipedia iOS app itself. I believe the {{AM station data}} and {{FM station data}} templates are supposed to allow/account for a single external bullet-point asterisk, but apparently there's an issue with this formatting when viewed on the app. It's not a major issue, but I wonder if this might be something MediaWiki people can address. Levdr1lp / talk 19:52, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Your edits at WLS-FM

Greetings Nathan Obral,

There are a few issues with your edits on this page that want to address with you directly, rather than try and hash it out in edit summaries.

You changed the coords in the Infobox back to 41˚52'44"N, 87˚38'09"W. However, on the station's information page at the FCC website, the new NAD83 coords are listed as 41˚52'44.10"N, 87˚38'8.2"W. The only other coords listed are the old NAD27 coords (41°52'44.00"N, 87°38'08.00"W) and the NAD83 Tower coords (41˚52'44"N, 87˚38'8.0"W), so I don't see where you're getting the coords you added. Note that since the FCC has finally updated the coords for FM stations to the NAD83 coordinate system, we should be using those since they will map correctly on worldwide mapping services including Google Maps and Bing Maps.

Regarding your comment in the edit summary about the presence of the coords in the summary section: The coords you removed are the Tower coords, while the coords in the Infobox are the transmitter coords. While there is very little difference between them, note that they are not the same. That's why I added them and identified them as the location of the station's broadcast tower. I don't see a problem adding any content from the FCC.

I also take issue with the following wording in your edits in the summary: "the station serves the Chicago metropolitan area". The FCC is very specific as to the wording it uses regarding a community of license, which a station is licensed to serve. WLS-FM might claim that it serves the Chicago metropolitan area in its marketing, but that statement doesn't conform to FCC data. According to the FCC, WLS-FM is licensed to serve Chicago, not the Chicago metropolitan area. More information about this is available from the FCC here. I always use the FCC's wording if I'm editing the lede sentence, since that information is verifiable. In fact, the statement that the station serves the Chicago Metropolitan Area is unsourced, and as such it can be challenged and removed per WP:Verifiability.

I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond before I attempted to revert or otherwise change your edits, in the hope that we could avoid an edit war. I appreciate the edits you did in the History section. That section does need work.

Pageographer (talk) 11:10, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• So the correct coordinates are 41°52′44.10″N 87°38′8.2″W? I wasn't sure what to make of two different sets of coordinates, as they looked the same, so I deferred to the other set. I already have corrected the coordinates to the new set in the infobox. Typically in ledes, I write that the station is licensed to the COL and serves the respective metropolitan and/or market area (e.g., (the station) is licensed to Chicago, Illinois [...] and serves the Chicago metropolitan area), if there's a more appropriate way to phrase the metropolitan area being serviced, I'm fine with it. Nathan Obral (talk) 20:09, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• • Yep, the coords in the shaded box on the station info page are the new NAD83 coords that we should all be using. They are the transmitter coords. (Disclosure: I have a bachelors degree in geography, so I'm writing about this with some authority.) Thanks for updating the coords for WLS-FM. Having read my original posting, what's your position on including the Tower coords in the summary? The Tower coords are not always available from the FCC, and to be honest I've included them in the past since the FCC was still using the old NAD27 coords for the transmitter as recently as the end of 2019. Since NAD27 coords do not map correctly on Google Maps or Bing Maps (the FCC still needs to update these to NAD83 for AM stations, so the appended NAD27 on those pages should remain for now, I think), I made it a point of including the Tower coords since they have always been NAD83, which maps correctly. Perhaps including the Tower coords now for FMs is unnecessary? If so I still think that we could mention where the tower is located, such as the top of the Willis Tower.

• • Following up on your comments about the lede sentence. If you would like to include the broadcast area, it could read something like "...licensed to serve Chicago, Illinois and broadcasting to the Chicago Metropolitan Area" or similar. This might make more sense if the station is licensed to serve a nearby place, such as Joliet, and including the text about the metro area would be helpful to a reader not familar with Chicagoland. It could read like this: "...licensed to serve Joliet, Illinois in the Chicago Metropolitan Area". I think the linking of the words "licensed to serve" with the community of license would ensure WP:Verifiability, since if a reader goes to the FCC page for WLS-FM, it's clearly stated there next to the calls "IL CHICAGO".

• • One last thing, regarding some of your edits I reverted on WBEB. The FCC no longer, for the most part, uses "call letters" but rather "call sign". For instance, have a look at the FCC's FM search query. The first field is labeled "Call Sign". I think the FCC largely switched to using call sign within the past 20 years. For me this is again a verifiability issue, in using the same wording as the FCC.

• • Thanks again for your reply. I found the resolved discussion regarding the bolding of call signs and italicizing of brandings, so as I edit more pages I will start fixing those. I admit that I'm one of the editors that has been doing that--for years--so it's going to take me a while to fix them on all of the pages I've edited in the past, but I'll get around to it. Please feel free to comment further on any other issues, especially where we've been reverting each other's edits. We both like to edit radio station pages so we're likely to edit the same pages eventually. Pageographer (talk) 03:51, 28 January 2020 (UTC)