User talk:Philoserf/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about User:Philoserf. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

WikiProject Backpacking

This is on my watchlist and I will try to help out but I am old and busy. Keep up the good work. --Bduke (talk) 07:38, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Glad to be useful. Following my own interests. Each of us can be, however busy, as we find the moments. —philoserf (talk) 08:00, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think I've really left that project, just haven't worked on anything related to it for a while. Daniel Case (talk) 19:54, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Great. I wasn't in a position to know your intent. Glad to join you in this work. —philoserf (talk) 17:23, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm just beginning to realize the amount of work that you put into this project and hope my comments yesterday were helpful and not too annoying. Rwood128 (talk) 11:38, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation! I'm happy to put my name down, however with everyone at home under lockdown, I am a little snowed under with technical support. I'll definitely try and squeeze some time in; outdoors-y topics will be all the more relevant in the coming months. TheFreeman193 (talk) 16:07, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

TheFreeman193, Glad to have you whenever you have time. I am here more partly because I am outside less with the lockdown. Hit me with any questions anytime. The project space is shaping up. I hope anyone interested can find something to do from that main page. —¿philoserf? (talk) 16:39, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll let you know if any come to mind. I see the firelighter page is looking extremely thin, so I'll pad that out with some of my chemistry background, as a start. TheFreeman193 (talk) 16:49, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Center

Whether or not <center> is deprecated, it functions. Running around blindly removing it, without doing anything to preserve the function it performs, makes things worse, not better. Please stop. E Eng 23:49, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree. I didn't see the utility here. Happy to be reverted if another editor has a different opinion. There are ways to achieve the same result as center. Perhaps you can use one of the alternatives yourself. —¿philoserf? (talk) 00:24, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:HTML 5#center —¿philoserf? (talk) 00:51, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry if I came on a bit strong, it's just the thought that we're all gonna die makes me crabby. E Eng 04:29, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

No worries fellow editor. If you see the my favorite poem on my user page you will know I am right there. —¿philoserf? (talk) 04:40, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps you've heard the aphorism, Insanity is hereditary – parents get it from their children. Mr. Larkin's advice breaks that tragic cycle as well. E Eng 01:07, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

You removed centering with this edit and this edit (and probably many more), changing the original editor's intention. It is probably better to replace it with <div style="text-align: center;"> or one of the other non-obsolete centering methods listed at mw:Help:Lint errors/obsolete-tag. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:40, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Greetings Jonesey95. I am considering which ones to remove. I may make another run through on another day for those that I decided to leave in place. In that future run I would use a suitable replacement. I have reviewed the page I linked above. edit: I have also read the one you shared now. Thanks for the link. In the cases where I removed the tag it didn't seem to me to impact the page content or design negatively. As I said in my reply to EEng, I am happy to defer to another editor with a different opinion of center on an specific page. My apologies if I removed one you believe should have rather been converted. —¿philoserf? (talk) 17:55, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I linked to two articles where your removal of the tags negatively affected the format of the article. I did not have to look at more than five of your contributions to find those, so it seems likely that there are many more. Two very experienced editors have asked you to stop removing working center tags instead of replacing them with updated code. That should be enough to persuade you to stop those edits. If you need advice about how to replace center tags effectively or how to fix other Linter errors, feel free to ask for help. I have fixed many thousands of Linter errors, so I know a few tricks. I have also found Wikipedia talk:Linter to be a good place to get help with tricky replacements. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:54, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Message received. I have removed no HTML center tags since your first message. I appreciate the education. —¿philoserf? (talk) 19:58, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

FYI: You may see me making some WikiGnomic edits on obsolete center again. I will be preserving more of them with modern equivalents even if my editorial judgement leans toward removal. —¿philoserf? (talk) 19:43, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Cascadia Wikimedians User Group

Hi Philoserf, I noticed from your description on your user page that you live in the territory of Cascadia Wikimedians User Group. You can find information regarding Seattle meetups at Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle. The current president of CWUG is User:Peaceray. I hope that you will be able to attend events online or in person. ↠Pine (✉) 07:04, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Pine, Thanks for the heads up. See you at the Wikimedia Café. —¿philoserf? (talk) 00:07, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

WikiProjects

Hi, thanks for your edit at the WikiProject Desk hiding dead sources! They can probably just be deleted, but that was the right action to do. =) It seems you're interested in WikiProjects: if you would like to hop on as a co-writer of the WikiProject Report I would love some help! I'm working on revamping the Report and perhaps it might revive WikiProjects as a whole. Anyways, just wanted to drop by and say thanks! --Puddleglum ^2.0_{(How's my driving?)} 01:58, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Puddleglum2.0, While I have had an account and made my first edit in 2005 it is only the last month that I have been active. As I looked around and began to learn the ropes I saw the WikiProject system. I also some research from a few years ago that found that editors participating in WikiProjects do more work and last longer. I found a project that matched my current interests. Wikipedia:WikiProject Backpacking. I have since worked to revive it, wire it up to the article assessment system, spark up all the bots that serve the project system, and attempt to recruit some editors to the cause. I am only now ready to begin improving the articles in our scope. I suppose that means I am an ally in the work of revitalizing the WikiProject system. Yet, it remains that, I am an inexperienced ally. If you have recommendations on how I might help please share them. As I hid those dead resources it occurred to me that my beginners eyes will not last long and there are more broken remnants I have seen. I can mark them so as I find them. Perhaps with banner I have seen on Wikipedia namespace pages kept for historical reason. It also occurred to me that should we leave the resources HTML commented out there should be some words to describe why for our future selves and other editors. Okay. I have gone on enough. Salute. —¿philoserf? (talk) 03:16, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, it's kind of late here so I can't go into detail, but if I think of anything I'll certainly tell you. Good luck with the backpacking project! Yours, --Puddleglum ^2.0_{(How's my driving?)} 04:50, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Rating articles

Hi Philoserf, Your enthusiasm is highly contagious. I went a little berserk yesterday and worked on improving various hiking/backpacking related articles and ended-up starting the Greater Patagonia Trail article. You will have seen that I gave it a High importance rating. That is somewhat contentious, and is probably too high, especially as it is an unofficial trail, or really more a collection of existing tracks. This is a very subjective area, as I'm realize more and more. Thus, my initial reaction was that you were overly generous in giving the English Coast Path a B. But, on further thought, there is probably not that much more room for improvement, without duplicating material in regional articles. I've been pondering the way some short articles are rated. For example Gaitors is listed as start class (see also Spats). Well how much more can be said about these exciting topic? Perhaps sections on other religions, gaitors on Everest (though the invention and history need attention)? Shouldn't Gaitors, and Spats, be at least a C. I've a feeling that there are lots of similar start class articles that are under-rated: short articles where there's limited room for expansion. Best wishes, Rwood128 (talk) 11:45, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think the phrase highly contagious should be thrown around casually nowadays. E Eng 01:32, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree Gaiters at least approaches C-class closely. I think ratings on trails will settle in over time. This weekend I added a lot of trails in English speaking countries outside the United States. I am certain I have set the importance too low for many. I await an editor with experience until I prioritize time to research subjects in regions I do not yet have direct experience with. Anyway, you will see them arrive in the next runs of the bot brigade. —¿philoserf? (talk) 15:30, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I just took a quick look at your recent edits and I agree with almost all. There are two queries. I wonder if Talk:Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne shouldn't be higher. I added Talk:GR 10 (France) recently as high, because it's a famous and important European route (Cicerone, the British publisher, for example, has a guide book). Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne is a more challenging version of GR 10, and an equally important backpacking route. I also see that while you edited Talk:Scotland's Great Trails you didn't add it to the Backpacking Project. This article, is the equivalent to that for England and Wales's Talk: National Trails. Rwood128 (talk) 18:31, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Not tagging the Scottish trails was just a miss. Updating and reviewing the rankings you mentioned. —¿philoserf? (talk) 19:13, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

—¿philoserf? while I much appreciate what you are doing, I think your "B" assessment for East Coast Trail was too generous. For one thing the excessive use of "primary sources" banner is still there. Indeed I am planning on reviewing that, and trying to make other improvements. Also thanks for notifying me of the update of the list. As you can see from my editing of ECT, what is Mid for the project as a whole can be High for an individual. Actually I got involved with this article because I was planning to walk this trail, which is local for me, and found the article weak. Rwood128 (talk) 13:10, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

PIRG and US PIRG separation?

Hi Philoserf, this is Dan Cook. I am being paid by US PIRG to improve the Public Interest Research Group page. Thanks for your input on my last edits! Quick question: The page title and the infobox do not exactly agree. Do you think it would be better to have a separate page entitled US PIRG, with that infobox included there, rather than on the current page? Or is it best just to leave it as is? Thanks in advance for your thoughts. DanDavidCook (talk) 15:39, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

DanDavidCook, Greetings. I am fairly new ‘round here. From what I have managed to glean a split should result in two strong articles. At least class-c quality. Two weaker related articles may get merged back together—or worse, proposed for deletion. I have only made a quick first impression of the PIRG page. I’d need to look at it more closely to evaluate if it should be split or reorganized. So far, in my Wikipedia editor experience, I have concentrated on small tasks that take me all over the encyclopedia to see what is here, how it changes, and how other editors interact with each other. For example, I saw your initial request come in then watched it to see what the community would do. I do not envy you your task. Perhaps take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Organizations, review some articles across a range if quality classes. That might give you an idea of what success will look like for your subject. If it were already better classified it would help. See Category:Organizations by subject and Category:Organizations by location. —¿philoserf? (talk) 17:55, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

User:Philoserf Thanks for the detailed response. I agree that it is best to leave it as one article; I have some of the same concerns that you expressed. It is not something the US PIRG folks asked me to do, but they asked me to look into it before they update the logo in the info box. I appreciate your enthusiasm for the editing work and your willingness to discuss issues like this. I'll take a look at the organizations article. DanDavidCook (talk) 18:20, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for accepting my suggested edits! Really appreciate your help! DanDavidCook (talk) 21:14, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

DanDavidCook, no problem. The article is improved. —¿philoserf? (talk) 21:15, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Correcting PIRG info box

Hi User:Philoserf, seeking your assistance once again. The info box on the PIRG page does not match either the topic of the page or the correct details of US PIRG. My thinking is that the best way to solve it is to treat the info box as an aid to those who want to know about the organization US PIRG. To make it accurate, the formation date would need to be changed to 1984, and the Founder Ralph Nader would need to be deleted. (Nader had nothing to do with the creation of US PIRG.) All the other information is accurate. Would you be willing to make these updates, or would you prefer that I use the Simple COI edit form? Thanks! DanDavidCook (talk) 21:45, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

DanDavidCook, Can you lead me to a source on the founding. I find items like this: [1] —¿philoserf? (talk) 22:40, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

sources for US PIRG founding

Hi there, I think we should go with 1984. My research suggests the idea for a national lobbying organization was formalized in 1983 but the organization was not incorporated until 1984. It's public filings--nonprofits must file an annual 990 form reporting to the IRS--list 1984 as the founding year.

In 2015, US PIRG filed form 990 with the federal government for its 2014 fiscal year. On that form its founding date is listed as 1984. I think we should cite that since it's an official form. You can find the 2014 form here: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/u-s-pirg-education-fund/ You can check the other forms on this page; they all list 1984 as "Year of formation."

Are you familiar with Guidestar? It's information comes from those same public documents filed by nonprofits. US PIRG is a nonprofit and its Guidestar page says 1984: https://www.guidestar.org/profile/04-2790740

Let me know what you think. Not a lot of coverage of its founding, but generally public documents are acceptable. DanDavidCook (talk) 23:41, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Name error

Hi there! Thanks for going through all those RPG articles with a script. There were too many for me to go through and check personally, but as for the ones on my watchlist, I did notice several times involving the same reference where it edited the name field like so:[2] It should be "|last=Appelcline|first=Shannon" so I am going to correct the ones on my watchlist which came out like that, but I'm sure I will miss instances where the other articles are not on my watchlist. Just letting you know, since the script probably cannot tell a first name from a last name. BOZ (talk) 12:45, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

BOZ, I didn’t just hit ‘em with a script. I was doing a quick evaluation of a range of related articles. I used the gadget, ProveIt and the Citation bot as I did so. I expect ProveIt’s reference normalization made the change you mention. In the specific example you cited above it seems to have been unable to split author into first and last. I will keep an eye out for that when I use it again. Now for the real work of seeing if many of those stubs/starts can be expanded with good sources before they get proposed for deletion. —¿philoserf? (talk) 17:40, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Test

This is a test. This is only a test. —¿philoserf? (talk) 22:11, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Raphaèle Herbin and citation style

I undid your changes to Raphaèle Herbin. First of all, the article is written using Citation Style 2 (the {{citation}} template) and you changed it to use Citation Style 1 (the {{cite book}} template); as WP:CITEVAR says, don't do that. Perhaps less significantly, the article is also written with its references at the end, and you changed that to put the reference text in the middle of the article text; that's also a violation of WP:CITEVAR. Second, the article deliberately used reviews of her books as references, because the reviews are reliable sources: something written by someone else and properly published that discusses Herbin or her works. You changed them to citations to the books themselves, which cannot be used as sources in an article about Herbin because they are works by her and not about her or her works. Again, don't do that, please. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:32, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

David Eppstein, Thank you for the heads up. I am still learning Citation repair. I will watch for this in the future. —¿philoserf? (talk) 06:08, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

David Eppstein, FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CS1_maint:_ZBL —¿philoserf? (talk) 06:11, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's in that category because the review https://zbmath.org/?q=an%3A06897811 still has a temporary zbl number. Or, as you would see if you looked at the link to the category that you just posted, Articles are listed in this category when |zbl= is assigned a temporary identifier; a temporary identifier has eight digits without punctuation. Temporary identifiers should be replaced with persistent identifiers as soon as they become known. In this case, there is nothing to repair; the temporary id is correct for now, until zbl assigns it a more permanent one. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:23, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

David Eppstein, Again thank you. I read that text but misunderstood what I found at Raphaèle Herbin. I will be careful. I intend to learn from my mistakes, not repeat them. —¿philoserf? (talk) 18:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Footnote style on Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease article

Hello Philoserf! I noticed you changed the footnote style for a reference on the Rabbit hemorrhagic disease article. It now no longer matches the footnote style used for all the other references on the page. Is there a reason you feel this is necessary? If not I will change it back to match the others. Thank you, Rabbit Vet (talk) 17:41, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

As a reference for you, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Variation_in_citation_methods. In short, you should not change the citation style of an established page without first engaging in a discussion about why you want to do so. Thanks, Rabbit Vet (talk) 17:45, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Rabbit Vet, I was fixing an issue with display authors. Was it vauthors and I used first/last? I didn’t change a CS1 to a CS2, or visa-versa did I. If so it was inadvertent. i will review my change. —¿philoserf? (talk) 17:48, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Rabbit Vet, I am sorry. What style am I changing. I can’t see it. Diff —¿philoserf? (talk) 17:52, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

That's okay, I'll fix it. Rabbit Vet (talk) 17:54, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Rabbit Vet, Thanks. From your edit I can see what you meant. More attention to detail and consistency then I was used to seeing. There are a lot of very inconsistent article citations out there. I appreciate your diligence. I am trying to raise the bar by cleaning some of the tens of thousands of citation errors. I will try to notice when an article is as consistently cited as this one and take my attention to detail up a notch. —¿philoserf? (talk) 18:32, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Question about Talk page goodness

I have seen you put some talk page goodness on some of the pages I follow, such as on this one, and appreciate these adds. Are you doing those adds manually or do you have a bot or something else to help with them? I have not seen the first two you added, and think they may be beneficial on other pages as well. Thanks. --- FULBERT (talk) 20:00, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

FULBERT, I was doing the manually. I stopped for the moment because an editor had an objection that is being discussed at the Village Pump on policy. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:02, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

FULBERT, here is the updated snippet I was using. it takes into account the feedback from the pump.

redated

—¿philoserf? (talk) 20:09, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Can you link to the discussion there that raised this? I have not added many of these, so will be interested to understand where the concerns were from. Thanks. --- FULBERT (talk) 20:06, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

FULBERT, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Mass_enabling_of_talkpage_archiving —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:11, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Philoserf, Thanks! FULBERT (talk) 14:14, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Re recent Christos Papakyriakopoulos edits

Hi, regarding recent edits to Christos Papakyriakopoulos, reason I set |pmc= is that there's an ongoing issue with bots wanting to add incorrect PMCs to certain citations, as happened in the edit following yours, so I set the PMC value like that to prevent it. I have reported the bot issue and hopefully there will be a resolution, as I agree it is not ideal to have to set dummy parameter values like that. Thanks Rjwilmsi 11:04, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Rjwilmsi, Thank you for letting me know. I am cleaning up other citation errors and warnings. I am sure to see this again. —¿philoserf? (talk) 15:46, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

reFill & citation bot

Hi. I notice you use reFill. Whilst it's a useful tool, it's not foolproof. It hasn't been updated since |deadurl= was dropped in favour of |url-status=. Additionally, it will sometimes convert a bare ref to cite journal but not add |journal=. Both of these cause errors on the page such as [3]. Citation bot will also sometimes change template types to cite journal without adding the journal. Could I ask you to check for these errors when using these tools. Regards --John B123 (talk) 20:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

John B123, Thank you. i had noticed the deadurl but not the journal issue. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:32, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

No problem. There's also a few other quirks that happen on odd occasions, refill doesn't add |archive-date= when filling a url from archive.today, citation bot will add |publisher= and |doi= to cite arXiv, which doesn't support those parameters on so on. It's always worth previewing and checking for errors when using these two tools. Regards --John B123 (talk) 20:41, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

John B123: Since I am on a citation error and warning hunt I am sure i will see all the things eventually. I have cleared one Citation maintenance category, too many more to go. —¿philoserf? (talk) 01:27, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Refill

Hallo, Please check that when you use Refill you end up with an improved reference. I don't think this edit helped. I'm not sure where the info about MKH computer services and James Kirbie comes from, presumably it's where the LDWA data is hosted, but it's not a useful part of either reference. I got much the same when I put the URL of the Register into the reference box and clicked on the "autofill": it needed manual editing to get a decent reference. I've rejigged the sentence completely and I think it's better than it's been for years. But I hope that you do look at the changes which Refill is suggesting and make sure that they are sensible: it is obviously easily confused as in this case. Thanks. PamD 17:20, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

PamD, I am aware of some of the issues with reFill. The reason I have been using it is this. As i cleanup reference/citation issues I am encountering dead bare refs with no valid archives. I know that IAbot will rescue the citation formats one day when they need it. Too many bare refs are dead and never rescued. So, truly dead.

I can understand if the display differences are an issue. I will consider that in the future. —¿philoserf? (talk) 17:27, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

This isn't just a "display issue": there were two different refs, one to the Register and one to the LDWA home page ( which was better replaced by a link to its article). After your edit there were two uses of one ref which displayed confusing extraneous info and led just to the LDWA home page, losing the link to the Register. Not an improvement. PamD 05:20, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Removal of references

Given this diff

The link is not dead.
If it was dead, it should have a {{dead link}} template added
..or an archive URL from any of 20+ archive providers (were they checked?)
If no archive, it can still kept as a valid reference.
Removal of citations is typically not done unless the citation does not verify, it is blacklisted or some other reason
After it was removed there was no cite to replace it and no {{fact}} tag added.

I would agree the citation is more informational than anything else, providing readers pictures of the tomb. But it is certainly not a dead citation. -- GreenC 16:16, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

GreenC, I had interpreted the item at the archive differently. I expected something more substantial. Perhaps I was wrong. Thank you for explaining your expectations. I will include them in any future evaluations as I continue maintenance. —¿philoserf? (talk) 16:21, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Fixing my error

Hello, Philoserf! Thank you for catching and fixing whatever it was that I did to garble the reference in the Abu Nuwas article!! - Jkgree (talk) 15:38, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Jkgree, No biggie. That’s why we are here. I am becoming a citation gnome. —¿philoserf? (talk) 16:42, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

P.S.-- My grandparents lived in Jamestown when I was very young. I remember we would take a l-o-n-g ride from Buffalo/Amherst to visit them, and I was amazed that I could travel that very long distance and go into a new house and there was a photo of me on the mantelpiece!!! That was strange, wonderful and unfathomable to me. - Jkgree (talk) 15:52, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Jkgree, greetings. I come from Swedish families. Your’s may have known them. Paul Rinaldo and Carolyn neé Carlstrom. Lived there until I was ten and again for a few years just before the 10000 Maniacs got signed. Let’s see. Al Ayers was my other grandfather. He was the physics teacher and baseball coach at the high school. Nice to touch upon home in the Southern Tier. —¿philoserf? (talk) 16:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

My grandfather was the rabbi at Congregation Hesed Abraham. I think they lived on Ellis Avenue (#46. maybe??), and I remember rolling down the hill in their backyard. This was actually a big deal because Buffalo is completely flat. My grandfather was born in Pinsk, Belarus and my grandmother in Panevezys, Lithuania. I don't know whether my grandparents would have known your family; I'm guessing your family weren't congregants of my grandfather's.😉 I am only a couple of months younger than you, and I know my grandparents moved from Jamestown in 1971. So this puts my memories of Jamestown squarely in the mid to late 60's. My grandfather was also invited to start Jewish services at the Chatauqua Institution; I think he may have spoken on the radio also. So there are some ways he may have been more known to the general public. - Jkgree (talk) 17:33, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Jkgree, Well, it was good to meet you. Cool news about the institution and the radio. We left in ‘72 ourselves. The town is perhaps half as populated as when my father was born. For my brief return in the early 80s I meet a wide variety of Jamestown folk but alas, you family was gone. Shalom. —¿philoserf? (talk) 17:54, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Be less aggressive about autoarchiving article talk pages?

I think completely emptying out article talk pages can lead to possibly duplicate discussions, which are discouraged per WP:TALK. Talk pages with less than 10 sections generally don't need archiving, in my opinion.

If you could kindly refrain from emptying out article talk pages, I would appreciate it. I'm going to undo your archiving at Talk:Hiking. — hike395 (talk) 04:12, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Hike395, thanks. I got that message. —¿philoserf? (talk) 04:16, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

"No includes" on Backpacking, List line, breaks popular pages bot

Greetings, Please see discussion at User talk:Community Tech bot/Popular pages config.json regarding why adding "No Includes" on a Title line breaks the Popular pages bot. JoeNMLC (talk) 14:36, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Archive rather than deletion on Talk page

I noticed here and two prior deletions, that you deleted text from the Talk page instead of setting up an Archive. My understanding, and I am no expert on all the rules and common practices, that doing a one-time archive action or setting up a regular archive routine using a bot is preferred for dealing with old information on the Talk page for an article. See WP:ARCHIVE. I have set up archives just once or twice, and that was for pages with huge long lists of topics that were resolved over 10 years ago. --Prairieplant (talk) 09:18, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Prairieplant, there is a very particular message from a iabot that I remove. It was never a good idea, didn’t last, and I had been advised removal was desirable. —¿philoserf? (talk) 13:40, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I know what you removed, the messages that used to be generated by bots when they changed a link for a reference and wanted a person to confirm it was correct. Now the bots make their changes in a different fashion for outdated urls, the problem of link rot. Regardless of what you removed, I do believe it is not good policy to simple delete from a talk page. Rather it is preferred to archive what was said. If I am wrong on that, I apologize. But I have not seen anything deleted from Talk pages, only archived. That is my point. --Prairieplant (talk) 12:39, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Note re WikiProjects

Hi Philoserf. hope you enjoy the welcome message above. again, welcome to Wikipedia!!! by the way, I was glad to see your message at the Teahouse about possibly reactivating a WikiProject. I'd be glad to help if I can. Please feel free to keep me posted. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 13:35, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I had noticed you digital presence as I explored the effort. Thank you for the welcome and encouragement. I will hit your talk or tag in some other appropriate place when needed. —philoserf (talk) 17:21, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Parallel universes

There is a very definite need to take care of the similarity or crossover with hiking trails project - either scoping or ways of dong things - as there might be some question as to whether there is a need for two ... JarrahTree 22:55, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. I expect we will contribute to trails. It remains in WikiProject Backpacking scope, line 1. The project had hiking trail templates. I didn't want any recently recruited members to think WikiProject Backpacking was primary for trails when there is WikiProject Hiking trails to lead the way there. There seems to be questions in some editor's minds about the utility of WikiProjects at all. In reviving Backpacking I was following my own interests which are broader than Trails. Anyway, glad to participate. —philoserf (talk) 23:29, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Excellent - activity and interest are most of what is needed... JarrahTree 00:00, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Good articles

I thought I'd bring to your attention that there is a very formal process to go through before an article can be rated "GA". Please have a read at Wikipedia:Good articles. Not sure how many pages you have rated GA, like this one, but you might want to go back and drop the rating to something that is appropriate. Any questions, please ask (here's good; please include a ping). Schwede 66 19:57, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Schwede66. If you are referring to the backpacking project articles, I have just recently activated the assessment system for the project. We will soon start rating and checking existing ratings. I will add some content tot he project assessment page to cover GA, etc. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:15, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I just went to see what had been marked GA. I must have fat fingered that one. Thanks for the cleanup. —¿philoserf? (talk) 20:21, 18 March 2020 (UTC)