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October 2016

The Rambling Man arbitration proposed decision posted

 Done
 – Commented in favor of clemency toward both sides, at the talk page.

A proposed decision has been posted in the open The Rambling Man arbitration page. Please review this decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. If you are not a party, you may opt out of further notifications regarding this case at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/The Rambling Man/Mass Message List. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:36, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

The article Christian Rudolph (disambiguation) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Per WP:2DABS

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Boleyn (talk) 14:33, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Boleyn: Yeah, that makes sense, as long as both article actually have the mutual disambiguation hatnotes.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  05:31, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for responding. I've added a hatnote on the primary page, but not the other way round (see WP:NAMB). If you think I've missed something and it should have a hatnote though, let me know and I'll look at it again. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 15:55, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

@Boleyn: I prefer to use them on bio articles because the names are intrinsically ambiguous. Any given reader may have arrived at this page following a piped link that just read "Christian Rudolph" and might be surprised at whose bio they arrived at, but will not know whether the page they want is Christian Rudolph, Christian Rudolph (athlete), Christian Rudolph (German runner), or what. Especially in a case of two sportspeople, ambiguity remains present in the situation, for the reader, even if the string "Christian Rudolph (billiards player)" is not itself ambiguous on its own, in a contextual vacuum. Helping the reader always trumps robotically following a vague rule like NAMB that is often overapplied.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  16:07, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Vani Hari

 Done
 – along with a bunch of article cleanup.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Vani Hari. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Citation cleanup tool?

Thanks for the work in the citations for Vani Hari. What tool(s) are you using for that? --Ronz (talk) 16:54, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@Ronz: Just BBEdit. Any high-end, programmers' text editor with regular expression search-replace support will do.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  07:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. Yes, I need to get some editing tools together. At least you didn't suggest vi or emacs ;) --Ronz (talk) 16:17, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
I detest them both. In command-line *n*x, I just made do with nano or pico, though I'll use gedit or whatever GUI editor the OS gives me if there is one, for fancy stuff. I do most of my stuff in Mac OS X, thus BBEdit, which I've used since the Mac System 7, back in Ye Olde Tymes.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  07:24, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

RfC for page patroller qualifications

 Done

Following up from the consensus reached here, the community will now establish the user right criteria. You may wish to participate in this discussion. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:44, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't often thank people for their votes because I'm not sure it's the prpper think to do, but even with what appears to be developing into an overwelming consensus, yours was the best and most succinct of them all to date. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:11, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
Disregard
 – Already speedily closed.

I see you were involved in a November 2015 ANI case. I invite you to the case request. --George Ho (talk) 18:23, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:James Watson

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:James Watson. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

As you're more in touch with the MOS than I am...

Is the sprinkling of Chinese characters throughout articles, such as at Lu Yi (Tang dynasty), permitted? I run across these occasionally and have always wondered. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:08, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

@Ealdgyth: That's way too much. It should be done in the lead for the subject, and is often done with words (about which we have no article), but it need not be done for proper names mentioned in passing, most especially those about which we have articles (whose own leads give them in Chinese script). The purposes of including the Chinese script are a) search (find the article via the Chinese name), and (for words) b) specificity, since our transcription to things like ma is not precise (there are something like 8 Chinese words with different tonal pronunciations that can be rendered ma in roman script). I would raise this at MoS subpage for Chinese subjects and see if the guideline needs clarification (or raise it at the main MoS talk page if too few people respond at the subpage's talk page).  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  19:43, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
I brought it up at the article's talk page.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  09:38, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Do we need a Category:Festschrifts or Festschriften? --Orange Mike | Talk 00:04, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

@Orangemike: I would suggest consulting a series of (not just US, or just UK) English-language dictionaries. If the majority of them support Festschrifts as a legit plural in English, then go with that as the most natural for English-language readers; otherwise, preserve the German Festschriften.

These are the major free online English dictionaries of which I'm aware:

Dicts list
  • TheFreeDictionary.com – Farlex; has entries from The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Collins English Dictionary (UK, HarperCollins), Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary (UK, K Dictionaries Ltd / Random House), and Dictionary of Unfamiliar Words (Diagram Group), and sometimes the Farlex Trivia Dictionary. In separate tabs, also provides special dictionaries: medical, legal, acronyms, idioms, and encyclopedia and topical-dictionary entries, as applicable for specific entries.
  • Dictionary.com – has entries from The Random House Dictionary (US) database, as well as short ones from Collins English Dictionary (UK, HarperCollins), plus often other works, including an etymological dictionary and (when applicable) a slang one
  • OxfordDictionariesOnline.com – seems to be from the same casual-English database as the Compact Oxford English Dictionary and OUP's other smaller volumes; this is not the OED (US$200/yr), and is missing most of the academic information and the more obscure entries. It has both British and American English in separate sections (linked to each other), and it is worth looking at both entries – sometimes they differ markedly.
  • Dictionary.Cambridge.org – fairly comprehensive, but the parts-of-speech information is lower quality for words like as and like than in Oxford's, and it otherwise isn't always as good, though sometimes has more specific definitions. Has both British and American in different tabs.
  • YourDictionary.com – entries from The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Webster's New World College Dictionary (formerly Houghton Mifflin, now Wiley), YD's own privately developed database, and (at the end) Wiktionary.
  • Merriam-Webster.com/dictionary – based on their Collegiate Dictionary, with short entries, and missing 300,000 words and much entry-specific material from their unabridged edition (subscription-only). Principally American, but notes some British usage.
 — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  05:55, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
@Orangemike: Was that any help?  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  09:33, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports). Legobot (talk) 04:23, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

New Usercheck

Resolved
 – Updated to the new version.

Hello: if you are receiving this, you have transcluded Example (talk · message · contribs · global contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · user creation · block user · block log · count · total · logs · summary · email | lu · rfas · rfb · arb · rfc · lta · checkuser · spi · socks confirmedsuspected | rfar · rfc · rfcu · ssp | current rights · rights log (local) · rights log (global/meta) | rights · renames · blocks · protects · deletions · rollback · admin · logs | UHx · AfD · UtHx · UtE), I have created a Usercheck with more content, that I plan to update with more when I come across it, as of right now Usercheck-Super has only three more things than Usercheck-full, but as mentioned, I plan to update it, the three things I mentioned are pending changes log, giving all of the revisions you have accepted or rejected, Abuse filter, which gives you the ability to examine your edits, and get many details about an edit, along with Articles created, which links to a page which gives a breakdown of all the pages you have made. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

@WikiPancake: Wouldn't it make more sense to just add these to the existing Template:Usercheck-full (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)? The probable ultimately result is that WP:TFD will merge them. Anyway, I updated my transclude to use {{usercheck-super}}.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  23:14, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
User:Iazyges requested to have this sent to you by mass messaging. I'm a MMS sender, not the person who wrote this, so you'll have to contact lazyges himself. I have no such involvement in this. Thanks! WikiPancake 📖 08:18, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
@Iazyges:: Pinging you then. :-)  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  13:47, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish:, sorry for the late reply, due to my admitted newness to templates, and the code changes involved (taking code from other places, or else trying to make it myself.) are "complex" (at least to me) I decided to branch out and make my own, as I considered that the new additions went above and beyond just full, due to the level of insight into your abilities and past given. (Especially on edit filter and articles created), I also plan to expand it significantly, as I mentioned earlier the code changes/formatting takes a bit of work, so being able to adjust it quickly is helpful. I hope I have answered satisfactorily, if not feel free to re-ping me. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:04, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
@Iazyges:. No big deal to me, just saying what will probably happen; one of TfD's major functions is merging redundant templates. Anyway, such development can generally be done on a template's sandbox page (e.g. Template:Usercheck-full/sandbox).  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  04:25, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Editing News #3—2016

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Did you know?

Did you know that you can easily re-arrange columns and rows in the visual editor?

Screenshot showing a dropdown menu with options for editing the table structure

Select a cell in the column or row that you want to move. Click the arrow at the start of that row or column to open the dropdown menu (shown). Choose either "Move before" or "Move after" to move the column, or "Move above" or "Move below" to move the row.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has mainly worked on a new wikitext editor. They have also released some small features and the new map editing tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the list of work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, releasing the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving language support.

Recent changes

  • You can now set text as small or big.[1]
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  • At many wikis, you can now add maps to pages. Go to the Insert menu and choose the "Maps" item. The Discovery department are adding more features to this area, like geoshapes. You can read more on MediaWiki.org.[5]
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  • Image galleries now use a visual mode for editing. You can see thumbnails of the images, add new files, remove unwanted images, rearrange the images by dragging and dropping, and add captions for each image. Use the "Options" tab to set the gallery's display mode, image sizes, and add a title for the gallery.[7]

Future changes

The visual editor will be offered to all editors at the remaining 10 "Phase 6" Wikipedias during the next month. The developers want to know whether typing in your language feels natural in the visual editor. Please post your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on mediawiki.org. This will affect several languages, including Thai, Burmese and Aramaic.

The team is working on a modern wikitext editor. The 2017 wikitext editor will look like the visual editor and be able to use the citoid service and other modern tools. This new editing system may become available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices in October 2016. You can read about this project in a general status update on the Wikimedia mailing list.

Let's work together

Do you teach new editors how to use the visual editor? Did you help set up the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki? Have you written or imported TemplateData for your most important citation templates? Would you be willing to help new editors and small communities with the visual editor? Please sign up for the new VisualEditor Community Taskforce.

If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Surrender (military)

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Surrender (military). Legobot (talk) 04:24, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Joe Clark

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Joe Clark. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

 Done

Maybe you can bring this discussion back from the dead. Please. The existing ban on links within quotations is Exhibit A for why people dismiss MOS. EEng 02:54, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

I commented. Supported your version against mine. I actually prefer mine for clarity, but the gist is close enough and I would rather see something come out of it than get "the right version" when all that's at stake between the versions is some semantic nit-picks.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  09:14, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Question...

Resolved
 – Gave rationale at the RM.

Is this request a 'yay' or 'nay'? I was leaning more towards 'nay', but I'm not quite sure. Thanks, Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 04:51, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Going with "yea" on that one.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  08:22, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, makes sense! Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 04:52, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Battle of France

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Battle of France. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Systemic bias

 Done

Template:Systemic bias has been nominated for merging with Template:CSBArticles. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. KATMAKROFAN (talk) 02:51, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Commented at that page. @KATMAKROFAN: I've only seen two of your TfD nominations so far, and had to oppose both of them as a inappropriate and ill-considered. I would suggest that you observe TfD in detail for longer before wading in there. I see from your talk page that others are taking issue with your CFD and MFD listings as well, plus successfully deleting a lot of your redirects at RfD [8]. WP:XFDs require experience. You've only been here a few months, and don't seem to have absorbed enough of it yet. You'd probably do better to focus on creating and improving content rather than nominating things for removal or providing dubious navigation.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  03:37, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Al Jaffee

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Al Jaffee. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Battle of France "OTHERCONTENT argument-to-avoid"

Technically, the FAs I listed off don't actually violate any "rule". The template documentation was unilaterally rewritten some years back, and when the same user sought to get the relevant MOS page amended to agree with his unilateral rewrite of the template documentation, there apparently was no consensus to do so, and everyone who thought there was has been gone from the project for years at this point. Descriptive guidelines that actually do a pretty shitty job of describing how Wikipedia editors write articles, and were themselves formulated by fallacious Wikipedia editors who don't write articles anymore, should not have any normative power to overrule a standing status quo. How the template is actually used should of course outweigh how some guy almost a decade ago thought it should be used. I'm posting this here because I still really don't care which way the result goes. Hijiri 88 (やや) 11:45, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't buy it. This has nothing to do with one set of allegedly outdated norms clashing with a newer set of alleged norms (and I phrased that carefully). It has only to do with the reader-helpful use versus reader-unhelpful misuse of the template and its parameters, from a logical standpoint. None of those things were the outcome of the war; they're all after-effects that some scholars believe resulted in part because of the outcome of the war. These are contextual, prose subjects that require citations for the claims made, and are not "indisputable truth" infobox factoids. I've addressed this at the talk page of the template itself, since this has nothing to do with the Battle of France in particular. The argument you're presenting sounds very much like yet another salvo in the draining and false-dichotomy-based FAC holy war against MOS, AT, and CITE, another of these "however the 0.1% of editors who are FAC-focused want to do things is how all editors must do them, or else" stances. Well, I have about as much patience for that as I have for gouging my own eyes out, so I decline to entertain any more conversation along those lines, since I've put up with months of it already, against my better judgement, and every second of it has been unproductive and divisive. It's no wonder that three long-term editors recently quit over it, after working themselves up to near heart-attack levels of angst and drama over the "conflict", which is illusory at its core and entirely of their own making.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  05:32, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
PS: Forgot to ping you, Hijiri88. On a re-read, the above sounds a little testy. It's not personal, I'm just exhausted by all the "style warring", about 80% of it involving infoboxes, over the last three months. You and I generally get along well on WP matters, and I don't want to damage that. I just don't have an interest in more infobox-related verbal combat, with anyone. I raised the idea, at the template talk page, of clarifying this parameter with the specific goal in mind of preventing future unfruitful disputes of this sort.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  09:10, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
That's fine, but if you are tired of the warring, then shouldn't you be against the proposed change as pointless and illusory? You also misunderstood me. I don't think there is an allegedly outdated norms clashing with a newer set of alleged norms. I don't think the outdated norms were ever actual norms -- they were what one user thought should be norms. Hijiri 88 (やや) 17:53, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
Second point first: WP doesn't work that way. The entire basis of this place is we edit, and edits that stick are what consensus is. There's this arriviste misapprehension that "consensus" is what people have argued about until they're all red and/or blue in the face, but that's not it. That's what consensus sometimes devolves to when a particular matter is controversial. About 99.999% of things are not controversial and are not squabbled over. When they're things in guidelines, documentation, howto pages, information pages, policies, procedural pages, etc. (where the ratio might drop to something like 95%, as a ballpark estimate based on the number of edits I make to such pages versus how frequently they're reverted or disputed), they have a long-term effect on how WP actually operates. The very fact that something persists for years indicates that it is, by definition, accepted as consensus (unless it's in some ridiculously obscure place like a userspace essay, or a template with no deployment). If someone comes along years later and wants to dispute that outright (in your own words, that's just "what one user thought should be [new] norms") rather that subtly and helpfully refine it, the burden is on that person to show that consensus has changed. Another fact about how WP works is that every edit is made by one person; there are no group accounts. "That was just what one user thought" when first creating something here, like the template documentation in question, describes every single WP edit, in or out of mainspace, that was not the result of a prior discussion, and that's virtually everything on WP. Furthermore, this is also a WP:COMMONSENSE / WP:GAMING / WP:LAWYER matter. It's very clearly commonsensical that the parameter in question is for the direct, literal outcome of the conflict that is the subject of the article (a clear, basic fact), not for insertion of lists of aftereffects that some sources claim are partially the result of the outcome of the conflict. There's a gaping PoV-pushing and original-research trap inherent in putting any particular source's extrapolative and subjective hypotheses of socio-political cause and effect into an infobox as if it were a cold hard fact about the conclusion of the conflict itself, in Wikipedia's own voice. Given these problems, it's clearly arguing a technicality against the spirit of what we're doing and why for people to insist on their new "anything goes" re-/mis-interpretation of what that parameter can be used for, when there's a long-standing consensus that its usage is intentionally quite narrow and limited. And this is at a very widely used template, chaperoned by one of the most controlling wikiprojects on the system, who pretty much miss nothing and do nothing by accident.

The first point last: If you mean the change I proposed at the template itself, I already explained in that discussion why it's not pointless and illusory. If one more discussion – that one – will head off years of unfruitful "infobox war" fights (again, at a wikiproject that is already as notorious for territorial squabbling as it is praised for high-end output), then that discussion is definitely worth having. Especially since it itself is not an "infobox war" (a dispute about whether an infobox should be at a particular article or category of articles, or what can/should be or not be in that article's/those articles' infobox; rather, it's a template documentation clarification matter. I hope this explains where I'm coming from on this. Maybe we just won't agree on it, I dunno. Very busy lately, as my comparable lack of activity around these parts might indicate. I may not even return to the discussion in question. I pointed several relevant formus to the discussion, and the community can hash it out. Maybe consensus will actually change in favor of treating that as a freeform parameter. I seriously doubt it. Even if the parameter is not renamed, I predict the doc wording will be tightened to prevent more messes like that at the BoF article. :-)  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  10:40, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer granted

Hello SMcCandlish. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia, if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria.

  • Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
  • You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
  • Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
  • Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.

The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator.

information Administrator note You have been grandfathered to this group based on prior patrolling activity - the technical flag for the group will be added to your account after the next software update. You do not need to apply at WP:PERM. 20:56, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Noted, thanks.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  08:51, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:AzB player

 Done
 – Commented at the deletion nomination.

Template:AzB player has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 22:40, 28 October 2016 (UTC)