User talk:RichardW57

Hello, RichardW57 and a belated welcome to Wikipedia! I see that you've already been around awhile and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may benefit from following some of the links below, which help one get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking

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Reading bird tracks

Hi Richard. I was kind of doubtful about that too, but the original makes no sense, and I assumed that my edit was what was intended. Please see what you can make of it. Nakashchit (talk) 06:56, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Importing

I see you're copying a ton of templates to the incubator and just wanted to tell you about WP:IMPORTing which copies the entire page history to another wiki. This is probably simpler and more reliable. Good luck with your project! --Trialpears (talk) 19:00, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Trialpears: Close. I actually copied them two to two and a half years ago, but only realised that I should have recorded the copying at source in the wake of complaints that Amaryllis Gardener had not been recording what he had copied to the Scots Wikipedia. Can I comparatively rapidly use the process to add histories up to the time of the copying. There are a number of issues:

The date of copying varies from file to file.
For the half-linked templates, the current name starts with a lower case letter, while of course the originals' names start with a capital letter.
There are also a number of main space articles from the Thai Wikipedia to link in the same way. However, their file names between the Thai Wikipedia and the incubator are generally quite different. For these, we don't even have the starting point of {{copied}} being on the Thai Wikipedia. --RichardW57 (talk) 20:56, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The good news is that the modules' names are the same.

There are linking comments of the form

ᨻᩮᩬᩥ᩵ᩋᩈ᩶ᩣ᩠ᨦ ᩐᩣᨧᩣ᩠ᨠ [[:th:page name]] ᨣᩴᨯᩪᨷᩕᩅᩢᨲ᩠ᨲᩥᨡᩬᨦᩉ᩠ᨶ᩶ᩣᨶᩢ᩠᩶ᨶᨻᩮᩬᩥ᩵ᩋᩁᩪ᩶ᨴᩦ᩵ᨾᩣ
เพื่อส้าง เอาจาก [[:th:page name]] ก็ดูประวัตติของหน้านั้นเพื่อรู้ที่มา

They may contain additional text at the end. Would it be possible to programmatically make the stitching? It's conceivable that @Octahedron80: might be persuaded to do the programming. He has bots running on several Wikimedia projects, so I think he's capable. --RichardW57 (talk) 20:56, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Octahedron80, Alifshinobi, and Trialpears: I've made a limited importation request for {{ping}} and {{copied}} at incubator:Incubator:Import_requests. --RichardW57 (talk) 12:31, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, looks like you know what you're doing. Just thought you should know about that option. --Trialpears (talk) 14:45, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, @RichardW57:. --A.S. (talk) 15:49, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Alifshinobi: The importation request has been turned down, so civilised {{ping}} will have to wait. I believe I know exactly what to do. I have implemented {{copied}} and its module in both Wp/nod and Thai Wikipedia. The good news is that all our Wp/nod templates now comply with CC-BY-SA. --RichardW57 (talk)

Hi Richard, I see that you are adding "copy attribution" to the Help talk:Citation Style 1 page for various citation templates residing in the English Wikipedia copied to incubator. While this is not wrong (given that the talk pages of these templates redirect to this central talk page), I think, what would be more important is to add the attribution to the discussion pages of the new incubator locations, so that users there learn where it came from. Actually, when merging articles/moving contents within the English Wikipedia itself, it is good practise to document such actions on both ends, but if only one location would have to be chosen, documenting it at the target location appears to be more important, so that the information about the origin always remains attached with derivative work(s). I think, this would also apply to your copying to incubator, or have you read different advise elsewhere? You wrote "en:Template:xyz" in the initial edit summaries, but this might not give enough clues on the origin (revision, date) to everyone. Just a hint... --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:24, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Matthiaspaul: Actually, the legally important place is at the talk page of the source. It tells admins (or whoever) not to delete the history - I hope they do check the talk page before deleting pages. *I* wrote where I took things from in my edit summaries, thinking in terms of traceability and change tracking. A lot of people won't know how to use Wikimedia revision numbers. I have put origin comments in the source files, as they are quite capable of being separated from their histories. The ':en:' has only recently started being put in comments, in accordance with the instructions referenced from {{copied}}. --RichardW57 (talk) 15:19, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I find that I had occasionally used ':en:' in the comments two years ago. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I will consider copying {{copied}} template instantiations to the talk pages. However, I would do this in slow time. My first priority is bringing us into compliance with CC BY-SA. --RichardW57 (talk) 15:19, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While I still think the attribution at the target is more important than that at the source, you bring up a good point for documenting it at both ends (as, fortunately, is good practise to do, anyway).

Regarding the way to proceed: Sounds good to me. Thanks.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 09:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, for by-passing readers, who, like me, did not know anything about the "Amaryllis Gardener at the Scottish Wikipedia" issue, it can be read up here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Large_scale_language_inaccuracies_on_the_Scots_Wikipedia

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 09:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please also link to a brief explanation of the scale and purpose of the copying. Regardless of whether the project is ongoing or has been abandoned, it would be considerate for those of us puzzled by the watchlist activity to give a brief explanation, perhaps here. Johnuniq (talk) 23:47, 5 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Motivation

@Johnuniq, Alifshinobi, Octahedron80, and Matthiaspaul: My main project was to produce a more complete version of Tai Tham alphabet (but in Northern Thai, not English), one that actually gave enough information to write a Northern Thai word in the Tai Tham script on the computer character by character. From looking at the Northern Thai Wikipedia in the incubator, it had become clear that a great many people did not actually know how to. (This is a black mark against the Unicode Standard's editors.) I have produced such an article - incubator:Wp/nod/ᨲ᩠ᩅᩫᨾᩮᩬᩥᨦ, in the two writing systems preferred by those who requested the incubator project, with an automatically generated version incubator:Wp/nod/ตั๋วเมือง in the writing system used by the majority of the speakers of the languages. (The spelling in the latter probably needs review.) I re-used the text of Tai Tham alphabet, mostly supplying my own references for the details and giving page numbers, as the contents lists of the books cited is not as useful as one might hope. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For how I went about it, I was guided by the two principles that articles should be verifiable and that templates and modules should be documented. I used {{cite book}} for references. I eventually devoted less and less effort to importing the documentation, as that task ballooned. Importing the documentation of a template frequently required the importation of further templates. There is still work to do on switching the citation system (CS1) from English to Northern Thai. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is a second project, which is to support the multiple writing systems of Northern Thai. At the very least, I want it to be possible for someone to write an article in one system and for users to be able to read it in another. I started looking at Wiktionary about two years ago to see how it handled the transliteration - for it is surprisingly complex, and I ended up spending much more time on Wiktionary. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Roll on to the present day, and the outing of Amaryllis Gardener at the Scottish Wikipedia. I then find that one of the complaints about him is that he had copied the English Wikipedia without heeding the requirements of CC BY-SA. I read up on the requirements at Wikipedia:Copying_within_Wikipedia, and realised that we at the Northern Thai Wikipedia were delinquent. While I had mostly recorded the source of the templates and modules I imported (by copying and pasting), I had done nothing to secure a record of authorship, which the section Hyperlink says I should. The section tells me that the template {{copied}} has been created for that purpose. A translation of it is in use on the Chinese Wikipedia. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

About half the articles at the Northern Thai incubator are translations of the start of the corresponding article at the Thai Wikipedia, but none of them acknowledged their source. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am worried about the reaction to the Scottish Wikipedia affair. Audits are being planned for small Wikipedias, though there is no mention of the incubating Wikipedias being audited. As it would be a shame to lose the work that has been done on the Northern Thai Wikipedia due to breaches of CC BY-SA, I am taking corrective action. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Extent of Importation

I imported about 120 templates, 40 template documentation files, and about 50 modules. About half the template name space consists of imported files, and nearly 90% of the module name space. The unimported modules are for transliteration. For comparison, I have been told that importing {{ping}} from the English Wikipedia would need about 100 files. If there is any truth in that, it would be as a result of the elaborate documentation. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Corrective Action

I have therefore used {{copied}} for all the templates that need it and all but three of the modules that need it. I'm sorting out issues with those three (name, text v. code) before I record them at source. It turns out that quite a few of the imported modules were each the work of a single editor, and therefore I have been able to use a change comment for a dummy edit to record the original authorship rather than using {{copied}}. The use of this template is the flurry of activity which looks like fresh copying. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Alifshinobi and Octahedron80: All Wp/nod modules that need it now have 'protected' attribution. I am assuming that templates and modules in the sandboxes don't really need it - it would do little harm if they were blown away while no-one was watching. --RichardW57 (talk) 11:03, 7 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have now made dummy edits to acknowledge the Thai Wikipedia as the source. The version of the article seems to be the one at the time of the creation of the Northern Thai article, though it is possible that some omitted phrases were added between the Thai article being copied and the Northern Thai article being posted. My next step, for which I hope to have some help, is for these articles' histories to be 'secured' by use of {{:th:Template:copied}}. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Alifshinobi: I have now applied {{copied}} to the copied article for incubator articles that seem to need it for incubator:Wp/nod/ᩀᩪᨶᩥᨣᩰᩫ᩠ᨯ onwards to incubator:Wp/nod/ᩌᩯᩁ᩺ᩁᩦ ᨽ. --RichardW57 (talk) 11:03, 7 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

About ᩌᩯᩁ᩺ᩁᩦ ᨽ please someone rename the title I badly made mistake on mobile and I cannot change it back. --Octra Bond (talk) 11:07, 7 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Octahedron80: I'm afraid I messed it up. Did you get a ping via the incubator about the matter? I have set up ping in the incubated Wikipedia, but I'm not sure that I've done it properly. (There is stuff in the template that should be moved to the /doc page.) --RichardW57 (talk) 14:30, 7 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Template "Wp/nod/ping" does work from the incubator. --RichardW57 (talk) 01:06, 8 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Alifshinobi and Octahedron80: I believe I have now applied {{copied}} to the copied article for all incubator articles that seem to need it. Alif, it may be worth checking that incubator:Wp/nod/ᨤᩴᩣᨹᩣ᩠ᨿ ᨶᩩᨻᩧ᩠ᨦ does not need to comply with a CC BY-SA licence. I think it is sufficiently different to the original for the original's copyright to simply not apply. The only problem is that the attribution for module Further has gone missing, for the module has been absorbed into another module. At the moment, it only affects the documentation for incubator:Template:Wp/nod/em, which needs translating anyway. --RichardW57 (talk) 01:06, 8 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

last-author-amp depreciation

Hi Richard, just a quick note to say there is a bot in approval stages that will deal with last-author-amp here: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Monkbot 17 so if you want to save yourself the bother. If you're happy getting it done now, then go wild :) Cheers, Jack (talk) 09:25, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is it progressing, or is it stuck in the approvals process? At the current rate, it looks as though the non-programming community is clearing about 4,000 a day. --RichardW57 (talk) 09:58, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. Was just letting you know in case you didn't, hoping to save you some manual labour. Cheers, Jack (talk) 19:59, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jackhynes: I see it's now progressing, albeit not at high speed. Meanwhile, the manual clearance rate seems to have plummeted - or has been overtaken by weekend browsing. I appreciated the thought behind the post. --RichardW57 (talk) 21:29, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please observe that I am performing WP:TOL cleanup on all {{Taxonbar}} pages, and that User:Monkbot/task 17: remove replace deprecated last-author-amp params is now operational. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:20, 24 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Tom.Reding: I see User:Trappist the Monk has resorted to manual cleaning up. But it's good to see we're down to no articles and just 5 templates - though how to fix them is not obvious. I suspect odd articles will be emerging for days to come. --RichardW57 (talk) 00:02, 25 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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November 2021

Please do not use misleading edit summaries when making changes to Wikipedia pages, as you did to Va (Indic). This behavior is viewed as disruptive, and continuation may result in loss of editing privileges. Thank you. - Sumanuil (talk) 23:45, 2 November 2021 (UTC) @Sumanuil: What's misleading about describing the deletion of work in progress as pointless as vandalism? Please remember that healthy editors have to take breaks from editing. --RichardW57 (talk) 00:04, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How many times do I have to say it? REMOVING NONEXISTENT FILES IS NOT "VANDALISM". - Sumanuil (talk) 01:22, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So if the roof hasn't yet been put on a house being built, it's OK to knock the walls down? Interesting concept. You did note that the section was under construction, didn't you? --RichardW57 (talk) 01:50, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I fail to see the relevance of the metaphor. Houses require roofs and walls. Wikipedia pages do not require non-existent images. Upload the images first, then add them to the article. - Sumanuil (talk) 02:08, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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