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Facto Post – Issue 13 – 29 May 2018

Facto Post – Issue 13 – 29 May 2018
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
Back numbers are here.
Respecting MEDRS

Facto Post enters its second year, with a Cambridge Blue (OK, Aquamarine) background, a new logo, but no Cambridge blues. On-topic for the ScienceSource project is a project page here. It contains some case studies on how the WP:MEDRS guideline, for the referencing of articles at all related to human health, is applied in typical discussions.

Close to home also, a template, called {{medrs}} for short, is used to express dissatisfaction with particular references. Technology can help with patrolling, and this Petscan query finds over 450 articles where there is at least one use of the template. Of course the template is merely suggesting there is a possible issue with the reliability of a reference. Deciding the truth of the allegation is another matter.

This maintenance issue is one example of where ScienceSource aims to help. Where the reference is to a scientific paper, its type of algorithm could give a pass/fail opinion on such references. It could assist patrollers of medical articles, therefore, with the templated references and more generally. There may be more to proper referencing than that, indeed: context, quite what the statement supported by the reference expresses, prominence and weight. For that kind of consideration, case studies can help. But an algorithm might help to clear the backlog.

Evidence pyramid leading up to clinical guidelines, from WP:MEDRS
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:19, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Bristol meetup

You have previously attended or expressed an interest in attending a meetup in Bristol. I am organising one for this summer - provisionally Saturday 1 September 2018. For details see m:Meetup/Bristol/3 to join the discussion, including expressing preferences about dates and venues, see the talk page at m:Talk:Meetup/Bristol/3. Thryduulf (talk) 18:35, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Single subsections

Your comments (including the "best known role" example) would be of value at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Single subsections where that's been re-opened.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:54, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Your comments on my talk page

Yes, I do see what you mean about this, but having been told off previously for 'assuming' self (and adding {{own}} based on information on file description pages previously, I was using the approach that had been suggested at the time, which was to ask the original uploaders to confirm/claim their uploads. Yes this may seem tiresome or bothersome, but in many instances it's produced the desired result, which is uploaders confirming own work really is own work. I'd reach the end of a batch of requests so I am not going to continue trying to improve the encylopedia until you and others can come up with ONE consistent procedure for brining old images upto current standards. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:03, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Proclamation: Rex is authorised to edit my image pages

Celtic knot

Per a suggestion here, I hereby solemnly authorise you to add {{Cc-by-sa-3.0}} or {{own}} or any other parameter to any image page where you feel I may have forgotten to do so. Thank you very much. Bishonen | talk 08:17, 6 July 2018 (UTC).

Thank you, Chère. I'm sorry I haven't had the chance to sort it yet, but I've been away at the Celtic Knot Conference for the last two days. It seems that ShakespeareFan00 has already responded to your plea by adding the authorship to the files in question, and I thank him for solving the problem now. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 20:07, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Did he? Well, that's good. Was it just the authorship he wanted? There was a whole clutch of curly brackets in his original message. Fixing my typo and changing the header for this, so that you and I will be able to find it if it's ever needed to forestall another ANI thing — see [1]. You were all the way up in Edinburgh? Hope it was fun. [Bishzilla tries to disentangle the Celtic knot. Very complicated!] Bishonen | talk 20:35, 6 July 2018 (UTC).
It was fun, but it was Aberystwyth this year (two and a half hours drive each way) - wmuk:Celtic Knot Conference 2018. --RexxS (talk) 20:49, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
It warms my fairly Gaelic heart that there is such a thing as the Celtic Knot Conference. (Even after looking at it and seeing that it's not really about Celtic knots but about Celtic languages in wikispace, which is probably more important than a conference about drawing or carving the art).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:48, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Collapse

I put back in at least the bit about discourage pre-/auto-collapsed content in the body, since we know that's a legit accessibility problem, and MoS's main page addresses it. There's not an accessibility problem in content being collapsible at the reader's own option; that's simply an option that won't be available to or usable by everyone. I don't disagree with you philosophically about auto-collapsed navboxes and such, but the are ingrained and the community clearly considers them permissible, especially since their utility to people with screen readers and such is minimal anyway; they're rather like images in that respect. I want to make sure we avoid a WP:POLICYFORK; we can't have one MoS page contradicting other guidelines. If we want to say that pre-collapsed elements should be banned, that's something that'll have to be done via WP:VPPOL, probably, and I would give it a very low chance of success. We might, rather, be able to restrain the use of this technique in more high-profile case like collapsed lists in infoboxes. I'm going to address that at the WT:INFOBOX page right now, as part of a larger discussion on i-box standards.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:19, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: I am acutely conscious of one editor with whom I've collaborated in the past who has privately admitted me that they have MS and find controlling a mouse difficult and sometimes painful. It is a genuine effort for them to click a mouse button in order to follow a link and they try to minimise that as much as possible. I find it irresponsible for editors to collapse content willy-nilly with no thought for the extra problems they introduce to some people with disabilities. I have no desire to ban collapsible content: I accept there has to be a trade-off between aesthetics and empowering those with certain impairments, but I maintain that we should be doing our our best to discourage the use of pre-collapsed content unless it is really necessary. When you solve that problem, let me know and I'll be first in line to support your solution. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:42, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
We're on the same page, then.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:47, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Is this a thing that could be managed by a gadget or js or css or similar? Set your preference for always expanded and never have to expand an autocollapsed item again. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 13:48, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
JavaScript yes, CSS not so sure. Although it would be possible to put together a set of CSS rules that override all of the display:none; declarations, the existing JavaScript may still override those. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:33, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
It'd be a JS thing, since the collapsing functionality is done with JS. "Just use JS" isn't an answer for the accessibility problems of pre-/auto-collapsed blocks, since screenreaders and such generally don't have JS support.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:27, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
So, "You can't get there from here"? · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:01, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Yeah. Pre-collapsed stuff is also simply missing in the mobile version, unless that changed very recently.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:16, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@Pbsouthwood: I just checked, by looking at New Mexico in the mobile version, and the auto-collapsed navboxes are simply missing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:19, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Peep

Not sure why that WT:MOSBIO thread is getting tense. I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. I really do think that sub-thread is pretty silly, and wandering off-topic. That doesn't mean I think you're a silly person (though I frequently call myself one!).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:17, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I know you're not trying to pick a fight, lol, and of course I can be as silly as anyone, despite my great age. It's all part-of-the "rough-and-tumble" of debate and I hope you don't take offence – "what happens in MOSBIO stays in MOSBIO"! The thread will remain tense because there are a group of editors who want to remove Basque and Catalan descriptions from every Spaniard, and another group who are fiercely proud of their heritage and insist on it being recognised. The first group say that MOSBIO dictates the open sentence has to read "<Name> (<Dates>) is/was a <Country of citizenship> <Occupation> ..." which rules out Basque and Catalan descriptions from that opening position. I don't think that's helpful to readers, and often doesn't follow how sources describe the subject, so I want to see that rigid interpretation changed.
Anyway, I'll try not to poke at you again: just collapse that bit of the thread as "off-topic" when you're fed up of it. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 11:51, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
We are of like mind again, then, on both parts of this. I enjoy spirited debate, but many 'pedians take it the wrong way and I try to member to user-talk about it from time to time to make sure no one's toes are bleeding. >;-) I agree on the summation of the underlying dispute; it really needs to be RS-tied. If someone identifies, and strongly RS-identified, as Spanish, WP should use that; and if they're all about being Galician or Basque, and happening to be a citizen of Spain, make that clear. All this "do it only one way or the other" stuff is a mistake.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:05, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 14 – 21 July 2018

Facto Post – Issue 14 – 21 July 2018
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
Back numbers are here.
Plugging the gaps – Wikimania report

Officially it is "bridging the gaps in knowledge", with Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town paying tribute to the southern African concept of ubuntu to implement it. Besides face-to-face interactions, Wikimedians do need their power sources.

Hackathon mentoring table wiring

Facto Post interviewed Jdforrester, who has attended every Wikimania, and now works as Senior Product Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation. His take on tackling the gaps in the Wikimedia movement is that "if we were an army, we could march in a column and close up all the gaps". In his view though, that is a faulty metaphor, and it leads to a completely false misunderstanding of the movement, its diversity and different aspirations, and the nature of the work as "fighting" to be done in the open sector. There are many fronts, and as an eventualist he feels the gaps experienced both by editors and by users of Wikimedia content are inevitable. He would like to see a greater emphasis on reuse of content, not simply its volume.

If that may not sound like radicalism, the Decolonizing the Internet conference here organized jointly with Whose Knowledge? can redress the picture. It comes with the claim to be "the first ever conference about centering marginalized knowledge online".

Plugbar buildup at the Hackathon
Links
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:10, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks for your help. I've got a better quality PNG logo as you suggest but can't see where to upload it over the JPG. Can you point me in the right direction, or can I get it to you for revision? Kadygue (talk) 21:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page to keep the conversation in one place. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:15, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Biblical criticism

Ha ha! I AM sleepy! But I DO want to post here! I am currently trying to prepare Biblical criticism for FA review. It is undergoing peer review right now [2] and it has been suggested I add alt text to the images there. I am a relative newcomer here--been here about a year now--but keep finding there is more I don't know than I do! I haven't yet learned how to do alt-text and Gerda Arendt said you did hers, so I am here asking for help. It isn't the work that bothers me--it's being stupid about all this stuff! I've looked at the instruction page and I am a little confused still--does the alt-text go into bracketed section describing the image? Anyway, anything you can offer on this will be deeply appreciated. Thank you! And thank you for being the kind of Wikipedian other Wikipedians can recommend as someone who helps others. I am grateful for that too--whether you have time for this right now or not. Right now I am getting sleepy though... Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:57, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Jenhawk777! I've done the first half of the images for you, up to Hermann Gunkel. If you have a look at what I've done, you may find you can see how to add alt text to the remaining images. If not, don't worry, just ping me again and I'll finish the job, or review what you did if you added alt text yourself. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 19:50, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
OMG! Thank you! I got the best of both worlds this way! No wonder Gerda speaks so highly of you. Thank you thank you! Jenhawk777 (talk) 02:07, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018

Chart of the New Pages Patrol backlog for the past 6 months. (Purge)

Hello RexxS, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

June backlog drive

Overall the June backlog drive was a success, reducing the last 3,000 or so to below 500. However, as expected, 90% of the patrolling was done by less than 10% of reviewers.
Since the drive closed, the backlog has begun to rise sharply again and is back up to nearly 1,400 already. Please help reduce this total and keep it from raising further by reviewing some articles each day.

New technology, new rules
  • New features are shortly going to be added to the Special:NewPagesFeed which include a list of drafts for review, OTRS flags for COPYVIO, and more granular filter preferences. More details can be found at this page.
  • Probationary permissions: Now that PERM has been configured to allow expiry dates to all minor user rights, new NPR flag holders may sometimes be limited in the first instance to 6 months during which their work will be assessed for both quality and quantity of their reviews. This will allow admins to accord the right in borderline cases rather than make a flat out rejection.
  • Current reviewers who have had the flag for longer than 6 months but have not used the permissions since they were granted will have the flag removed, but may still request to have it granted again in the future, subject to the same probationary period, if they wish to become an active reviewer.
Editathons
  • Editathons will continue through August. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.
The Signpost
  • The next issue of the monthly magazine will be out soon. The newspaper is an excellent way to stay up to date with news and new developments between our newsletters. If you have special messages to be published, or if you would like to submit an article (one about NPR perhaps?), don't hesitate to contact the editorial team here.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 00:00, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Accessibility

Looking in at the FAC for Sandringham House I noticed your approving comment that no elements of the page were collapsed by default. This worries me as regards a few of my own contributions. If you have a moment, would you mind looking at, for instance, Les nuits d'été and letting me have your advice on the presentation of the texts and translations? This is not the only article on songs or song cycles etc where I have laid the texts and translations out thus, but if it causes problems of accessibility I'll of course want to do what is needed. Tim riley talk 08:56, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tim. The relevant guidance is at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility #Users with limited CSS or JavaScript support and Wikipedia:Manual of Style #Scrolling lists and collapsible content. In a nutshell, there's a chance that some readers or re-users won't be able to get at the content if it is hidden by default, because the show/hide won't work for them.
It's worth noting that the collapsible functionality doesn't exist for mobile viewers anyway (for that very reason). If you look at Les nuits d'été in mobile view, you'll see that there's there's nothing hidden and no ability to collapse the lyrics. So around half of our readers see all of the text from the start.
I do appreciate the reasons for wanting to collapse the lyrics, so I guess you have to balance the convenience/aesthetics of hiding some text for half our readers against the possibility that some readers may have problems with that. I've no way of knowing how many are likely to be affected, so it's a difficult one to weigh up.
If you do decide to present the text uncollapsed, then it would be sufficient to add |expanded=yes to each instance of {{hidden begin}}, which would allow the block to be hidden/shown, but would ensure that it was visible when the page loaded. That would retain at least some of the functionality that you have provided.
I hope that helps, although I'm sorry that I've not been able to be definitive in my response. It's possible that some of my talk-page stalkers may also be able to offer advice as well. All the best --RexxS (talk) 10:33, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Support for collapsing on mobile is coming soon. --Izno (talk) 13:24, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Thank you so much. That's most helpful and I'm v. grateful. Tim riley talk 13:35, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
(watching and musing:) for such texts, would wikisource be an alternative, - because I'd imagine articles in other languages might profit from having these texts? Another possibility without collapsing: putting the texts in footnotes? Or in a section at the bottom, in case there's no reference to a text in the following section? (I tried something like that in Max Reger works, for pieces with several movements which would be too much within the tabl, - see Op. numbers with a link, such as 7, 8 ...) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:48, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Additional empty line in template

Hey! I’ve just converted another template on German WP to Lua, the de:Template:Infobox Chartplatzierungen, and it works fine overall. However, now the template seems to create an additional empty line at the beginning. Since the infobox is usually preceded by a comment, this leads to an additional space that was not there with the old template code (see for a typical example de:Giusy Ferreri). 

<!-- comment -->
{{Infobox Chartplatzierungen

I don’t get where this line is coming from; in the Lua function I start directly with ret = "{|…", just like the old template did. What have I overlooked here? Best regards, XanonymusX (talk) 11:58, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi XanonymusX The odd thing isn't that you get an empty line above the template. I would expect that because of the newline that follows the comment. The odd thing is that you didn't have it before. Anyway, the really simple solution is to eliminate the newline between the comment and the start of the template like this:
<!-- siehe [[Wikipedia:Formatvorlage Charts]] für Hinweise zur Box und zu den Chartquellen -->{{Infobox Chartplatzierungen
I've just made that change to Giusy Ferreri and it eliminates the extra line. I can't think of a solution within the Lua or template code for those sort of problems, so I'd just recommend fixing them in articles as they crop up. At its simplest, a comment followed by a newline produces a newline unless the MediWiki software can recognise the case and suppress it. If that's not happening (perhaps because the Lua output isn't parsed the same way as pure wiki-text), then removing the newline is always going to be the easiest fix. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 12:26, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Well, that was exactly what I was saying to the others earlier today! :D No idea why there never was an empty line. I could think of leaving the first line of the table outside the function, just as normal template code (need to try that later to see whether it indeed suppresses the new line), but I think that isn’t good style. So I guess my colleagues can continue the fixing, we just need to find a good compromise (there was some arguing about these edits just last night). Probably putting comment and template name in the same line is the best solution (or maybe we should remove these comments completely, I never got why they were so important, but I’m not the inventor of the infobox). Anyway, thanks for looking into this, good to know that I’m not the only one puzzled by this behaviour. Best regards, XanonymusX (talk) 12:47, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
@XanonymusX: I suspect that somewhere in the parsing of the wikitext, the parser checks for something like newline{| and suppresses the newline so that we can have a single blank line in the wikitext after hatnotes and before an infobox. My theory is that the point at which the Lua module is evaluated comes after that check, so it doesn't happen in these cases. Of course you can always put the comment on its own line inside the infobox without causing any problems like this:
{{Infobox Chartplatzierungen
<!-- siehe [[Wikipedia:Formatvorlage Charts]] für Hinweise zur Box und zu den Chartquellen -->
| Bild = Giusy Ferreri.jpg
But I guess that's a matter of personal taste. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 13:00, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T201466
After some discussion on deWP, I have filed a bug report on Phabricator. Maybe this is something that can be fixed (or at least we should obtain some more information on the issue). Best regards–XanonymusX (talk) 21:16, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Peer review newsletter #1

Introduction

Hello to all! I do not intend to write a regular peer review newsletter but there does occasionally come a time when those interested in contributing to peer review should be contacted, and now is one. I've mailed this out to everyone on the peer review volunteers list, and some editors that have contributed to past discussions. Apologies if I've left you off or contacted you and you didn't want it. Next time there is a newsletter / mass message it will be opt in (here), I'll talk about this below - but first:

  • THANK YOU! I want to thank you for your contributions and for volunteering on the list to help out at peer review. Thank you!
  • Peer review is useful! It's good to have an active peer review process. This is often the way that we help new or developing editors understand our ways, and improve the quality of their editing - so it fills an important and necessary gap between the teahouse (kindly introduction to our Wikiways) and GA and FA reviews (specific standards uphelp according to a set of quality criteria). And we should try and improve this process where possible (automate, simplify) so it can be used and maintained easily.

Updates

It can get quite lonely tinkering with peer review...
With a bit of effort we can renovate the place to look like this!

Update #1: the peer review volunteers list is changing

The list is here in case you've forgotten: WP:PRV. Kadane has kindly offered to create a bot that will ping editors on the volunteers list with unanswered reviews in their chosen subject areas every so often. You can choose the time interval by changing the "contact" parameter. Options are "never", "monthly", "quarterly", "halfyearly", and "annually". For example:

  • {{PRV|JohnSmith|History of engineering|contact=monthly}} - if placed in the "History" section, JohnSmith will receive an automatic update every month about unanswered peer reviews relating to history.
  • {{PRV|JaneSmith|Mesopotamian geography, Norwegian fjords|contact=annually}} - if placed in the "Geography" section, JaneSmith will receive an automatic update every yearly about unanswered peer reviews in the geography area.

We can at this stage only use the broad peer review section titles to guide what reviews you'd like, but that's better than nothing! You can also set an interest in multiple separate subject areas that will be updated at different times.

Update #2: a (lean) WikiProject Peer review

I don't think we need a WikiProject with a giant bureaucracy nor all sorts of whiz-bang features. However over the last few years I've found there are times when it would have been useful to have a list of editors that would like to contribute to discussions about the peer review process (e.g. instructions, layout, automation, simplification etc.). Also, it can get kind of lonely on the talk page as I am (correct me if I'm wrong) the only regular contributor, with most editors moving on after 6 - 12 months.

So, I've decided to create "WikiProject Peer review". If you'd like to contribute to the WikiProject, or make yourself available for future newsletters or contact, please add yourself to the list of members.

Update #3: advertising

We plan to do some advertising of peer review, to let editors know about it and how to volunteer to help, at a couple of different venues (Signpost, Village pump, Teahouse etc.) - but have been waiting until we get this bot + WikiProject set up so we have a way to help interested editors make more enduring contributions. So consider yourself forewarned!

And... that's it!

I wish you all well on your Wikivoyages, Tom (LT) (talk) 00:31, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

[3] Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 15:59, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

colons etc

First of all, don't make me look at that stupid image, I'm sleepy already! So--either colons or asterisks. Does that mean you can't do stuff like :::*? Does it have to be ****? I'm always troubled by asterisks "breaking", as happened once already in that ANI discussion. Thanks RexxS--I'm willing to learn these things better. Drmies (talk) 23:16, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

The "breaking" point is key. I no longer use **** because it will be broken (and very quickly on a busy noticeboard). On odd-numbered days, I take the attitude that wikitext is not HTML and any problem should be fixed by a change to MediaWiki. On the other days I feel guilty. Johnuniq (talk) 03:52, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
The easiest rule to remember is just to copy and paste the list item nomenclature to which you are responding, and then add whatever kind you want. In the case of responding to something that looks like :**:::*, just copy that and add a * (:**:::**) or a colon (:**:::*:). --Izno (talk) 12:05, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
@Drmies: What John and Izno have said is exactly on point. Our system of threading is awkward, but screen reader users learn to cope as long as the posts don't switch styles needlessly. Perhaps it's worth trying to explain that lists have an opening, one or more items and an end. For example, three colons actually creates a list which is inside a list inside a list – and none of the lists are yet ended at that point. If the next post has four colons then it just opens one more list inside the other lists, and three colons followed by an asterisk is still okay, because it still has three colons so doesn't try to close all of the previous lists. However, if you leave a blank line or change to four asterisks, all of the previous lists have to be closed and a new set of lists opened (what I called "unwinding and re-winding" the levels). We don't see that, but anybody using a screen reader will hear each of the lists being closed individually, followed by the new lists being opened – and that can completely confuse the screen reader user about who is replying to whom, as well as annoying the hell out of them.
I try to stick to colon indentation wherever possible. That allows me to make a list of points inside my post using asterisks. For example, I might enumerate two points inside this post like this:
  • First point;
  • Second point.
Then I go back to my original style (two colons) without causing aggravation to the visually impaired. Using colons makes it easy to post multiple "paragraphs", which the other list styles have problems with.
I also recommend liberal use of the {{reply to}} template, and use it consistently whenever my post is not a simple reply to the previous post. Although we can see to whom we are replying by the level of indentation, a screen reader can't see that, so it is a kindness to let them know whom the reply is aimed at if it's not the previous post in the thread.
In !votes like RfCs and RfAs, which contain a list of supports or opposes with very little threading, it is fine to use asterisks or hashes as the basic style. That helps to visually identify each post, as long as each one is just a single "paragraph". Hopefully threaded discussion takes place in another section using colon indentations.
That may be quite a bit to take in, but the tl;dr is that our system has made it tough to understand why something that looks fine (like switching form colons to asterisks) to us causes problems for anybody who can't see what we see. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:48, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
Thank you so much, all of you. I'll be working on this. Drmies (talk) 17:44, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
RexxS et al, so one could call this a positive edit? If it's in the "practically useless to moderately positive" range, that would be good already. Drmies (talk) 17:47, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, Drmies, that made matters worse. If the first line starts with an asterisk, then every line needs to start with an asterisk if we want to be kind to screen readers. As Izno said, the indent of a response should match the start of what is being responded to plus an extra indent character. So this is okay:

You've deleted my sandbox ... user1

  • This sandbox looks ok ... user2
    • I simply use the sandbox for myself ... user3
      • No it isn't ... user4
      • No. If you're preparing material ... user5

So would this be (although it's a different display):

You've deleted my sandbox ...user1

  • This sandbox looks ok ... user2
    I simply use the sandbox for myself ... user3
    No it isn't ... user4
    No. If you're preparing material ... user5

My personal preference would be:

You've deleted my sandbox ...user1

This sandbox looks ok ... user2
I simply use the sandbox for myself ... user3
No it isn't ... user4
@User3: No. If you're preparing material ... user5

Note that the start of each line matches the start of the previous, sometimes with an extra character (: or *) to give an extra level of indent. That's what keeps it simple and comprehensible for the screen reader. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:19, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

  • Gotcha. I see the point now; I failed to pay attention to the "opening" terminology. Thanks again Rexx; I reverted myself. Damn I wish I'd known about this earlier. Drmies (talk) 18:39, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Any procedure for handling indents needs to account for the fact that half an hour after you reply, someone will probably insert a more-indented reply above yours. And they will do that with colons because easy. That would break some of the correct examples above. Johnuniq (talk) 01:21, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

In case you're interested in a tangential topic for another user, you might try this one out. I don't know how you repeat the same thing day after day. --Izno (talk) 16:35, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Izno. I've left a brief note for Lowellian. I had the privilege of meeting Graham87 in person in 2012, and remembering how much he manages and how cheerfully he copes keeps me resolute in my determination that nobody is going to make life any more difficult for him and others in the same position. --RexxS (talk) 20:13, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Rotating things: a hint for yesterday's puzzle

If the image I see now as I type were to go at one third of the speed, it would be more obvious that for the cube to return to its initial configuration, it must turn through two complete rotations. Maproom (talk) 18:21, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 15 – 21 August 2018

Facto Post – Issue 15 – 21 August 2018
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
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Back numbers are here.
Neglected diseases
Anti-parasitic drugs being distributed in Côte d'Ivoire
What's a Neglected Disease?, ScienceSource video

To grasp the nettle, there are rare diseases, there are tropical diseases and then there are "neglected diseases". Evidently a rare enough disease is likely to be neglected, but neglected disease these days means a disease not rare, but tropical, and most often infectious or parasitic. Rare diseases as a group are dominated, in contrast, by genetic diseases.

A major aspect of neglect is found in tracking drug discovery. Orphan drugs are those developed to treat rare diseases (rare enough not to have market-driven research), but there is some overlap in practice with the WHO's neglected diseases, where snakebite, a "neglected public health issue", is on the list.

From an encyclopedic point of view, lack of research also may mean lack of high-quality references: the core medical literature differs from primary research, since it operates by aggregating trials. This bibliographic deficit clearly hinders Wikipedia's mission. The ScienceSource project is currently addressing this issue, on Wikidata. Its Wikidata focus list at WD:SSFL is trying to ensure that neglect does not turn into bias in its selection of science papers.

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:23, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Session materials

Thanks for the pointer today to For trainers/Sample sessions - did you say there are sample powerpoints somewhere which can be adapted.?— Rod talk 15:48, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Hi Rod, good to see you again. I never use Powerpoint; everything I project onto a screen is live images from a browser. The idea is that you or an assistant demonstrate the edit and the trainees can copy or modify what you've done. If you want pre-made materials, follow the links from https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/training. There's loads of stuff linked there, but the quality is uneven, and there are far too many unwarranted assumptions made about how people learn. You may find some gems among the rest of the stuff, though. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 19:03, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks - I've made a start at https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Winchester_University/Medieval_History_Wikimedia_in_the_Classroom/home including finding relevant articles. I don't yet have the list of participants, but you said something about having a "right" to overcome the problems with getting "autoconfirmed" - could you remind me what I need to do for this.— Rod talk 11:52, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
Hi Rod, have a look at Wikipedia:Event coordinator for the issues involved. It's a right you should probably have if you're going to be doing these sort of outreach events. You can apply at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Event coordinator, although if you have all of the course participants with registered Wikipedia accounts four or five days before they start editing, you won't need the ability to "confirm" them. If there's someone who missed out, I can always be contacted to do the confirmation remotely – you have my mobile phone number on my card. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 20:31, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

WiR Programme, Health Service Executive Ireland.

Hi Doug,

Just dropping a note to thank you very much for our excellent conversation earlier today. The discussion was quite illuminating and so helpful. Looking forward to working together. Ngdomara (talk) 12:21, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Sandringham House

Much appreciated. I have to say I am finding this one of my more challenging FACs! All the best. KJP1 (talk) 15:25, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

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