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This Month in Education: April 2013


Headlines

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If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription · Distributed via Global message delivery, 21:37, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 April 2013

Aboriginal Centre for Perfroming Arts

Hi Tony could you please help start the article for ACPA (the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts? It is the biggest indiginous arts enterprise in Australia and they do full on Opera, Ballet, Pop etc. It gets about 2M funding a year but needs more exposure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asdak waa (talk • contribs) 02:11, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

CISPA: should we be concerned about this?

I see a fuss being made about the passage of this bill through the US House of Representatives. I appears to invade online privacy. To what extent should we be concerned about it? Tony (talk) 02:19, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Script error?

Hi Tony, just to let you know this edit introduced some errors to the FC Zbrojovka Brno article, particularly the managers section and changing "2007–Nov 08" to "2007 – Nov 8", when the "Nov 08" actually refers to 2008. I don't know if anything can be done about this in terms of the script, but in this instance I have manually corrected the data. Thanks, C679 09:27, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much for spotting this, Cloudz. I'm right onto Ohconfucius about it, and will go check the article again now. Tony (talk) 09:36, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
There isn't much I can do about such a string. I watch out for those. I'd also add that I raised at WT:FOOTBALL a few weeks ago, and I was told by one of the members that it wasn't ambiguous. Well it is, what's more, at best it's missing an apostrophe and it's non-compliant with WP:MOSNUM. Thanks for fixing it. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 09:38, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Cloudz, in a few minutes can you check my copy-edit of the opening section? "top flight" is weird to me ... please change it back if my "top rank" is no good. Tony (talk) 09:40, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, was caught up in the categorisations, the edit seems mainly ok, however football clubs often take plural pronouns, "they" instead of "it", so I am inclined to change that back. Also the part you commented out is problematic, the meaning should convey that the situation was the same for third-placed Sokolov (as were). You can see how I edit it and hopefully I strike a good balance.
I'd also like to add that not only was the "08" off in the diff mentioned in my original post, but some others put commas in places where they shouldn't be. Hope the script creator is aware of this too. Thanks, C679 13:32, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
And also "top flight" and "relegated" are standard terminology in (association) football. Thanks, C679 13:33, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks; I did notice "tier" used in para 2, though, which is much more standard for non-experts. Perhaps keep to that word throughout, or if you'd prefer "flight", you could (gloss it in parantheses) first time? I can go look at it tomorrow to check, if you like. Tony (talk) 13:59, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Tony1. You have new messages at Christian75's talk page.
Message added 20:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Christian75 (talk) 20:35, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Bad script edit

Hi Tony1 - when you ran the script in this edit, it incorrectly changed an infobox template parameter. Could you please let Ohconfucius know which script you ran so he can fix the script? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:38, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Also, please remember that in North America, they're called playoffs, not play-offs. Canuck89 (what's up?) 00:28, April 22, 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, I've fixed it. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 01:54, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick service! GoingBatty (talk) 02:26, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
I actually prefer playoffs. Can't we use that for all varieties? Just as I now use the American innovation nonlinear, not non-linear ... Tony (talk) 03:00, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 22 April 2013

Neighouring Ukraine

Hi, you had a problem with the epithet? I don't understand. And if it's to be removed (I don't think it should), the "the" has to go with it. Tony (talk) 12:43, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I thought it is obvious. Macedonia is not neighboring the Ukraine. Not even neighboring anything that is neighboring the the Ukraine. Or do I misunderstand something here? --denny vrandečić (talk) 14:42, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
"noun: a person living near or next door to the speaker or person referred to; a person or place in relation to others near or next to it." But it's no big deal ... I'll fix the grammatical glitch now. Tony (talk) 15:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC) ... ah, you've done it already; thanks. Tony (talk) 15:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

WP:RY have you even read it before making 100 million changes to the world article???

WP:RY have you even read it before making 100 million changes to the world article???

"& N D A S H ;" is part of the world articles - voted on my numerous admin editors and yet you send out your bot to endlessly destroy the world articles

do you have any idea how much trouble you are causing???--68.231.15.56 (talk) 14:38, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

look just once i am going to try and hold my temper and explain the magnitude of the error you are making

go here WP:RY#Format

now attempt to edit that section and and in the edit window look at the text for dates

it is all " & N D A S H ; "--68.231.15.56 (talk) 14:50, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

further all the dates are linked because these articles are calanders

they are intrinsically date oriented and exempt from date linking prohabition

yet you remove the date linking from the world articles endlessly

if you have a problem with the agreed upon method then try and gain consensus and change WP:RY - But until you get consensus there you are just an endless vandal--68.231.15.56 (talk) 14:55, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what your post is saying, but could you please not press save for each line here? It's clogging my inbox. I don't know what a "world article" is. Can you provide an example of what concerns you? I'm not sure whether you're talking about the replacement of hyphen interruptors with dashes in lists (mandated by WP:MOS) or the removal of year-links (long ago established as the norm, and also mandated by the styleguides). And if it's you who are involved in an argument with another anon user in this ANI thread, could you please calm down? Tony (talk) 15:03, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
wrong - "mandated by WP:MOS" - no it is not - WP:RY gives the structure for the world articles - an example of a world article is 2013 in the Philippines - the main world article parent is 2013 - date linking is not given by year-links because year-links are excepted also by WP:RY also for the reason i gave in above--68.231.15.56 (talk) 15:13, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
further all the dates are linked because these articles are calanders - they are intrinsically date oriented and exempt from date linking prohabition - yet you remove the date linking from the world articles endlessly

--68.231.15.56 (talk) 15:14, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

These articles are not regarded as calendars. The criterion for whether those items should be linked are at mosnum. Please try to avoid being so combative? If a date or month or year is to be linked in one of those articles, the contents of the target link need to be "germane and topical to the subject". I'm unsure how 2 February is relevant to the Phillipines. This has been accepted by the community, and "year in X" articles do not use links in this way pursuant to a widely established consensus in 2009. Thank you. I'm going to bed. Tony (talk) 15:21, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

i like how you are dismissive even thou you are flat out wrong i will quote an admin about date linking - "On the contrary, you are the one violating the guidelines. Although there is an error is WP:LINKING and MOS:UNLINKDATES, the RfC changing the guideline specifically exempts "timeline" articles "intrinsically chronological articles", such as this one. It is hence left to the local consensus on this article, which has been against unlinking for some time. If you can establish consensus for unlinking on this article, go ahead and unlink. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:59, 26 November 2011 (UTC)"

--68.231.15.56 (talk) 15:28, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, Arthur Rubin was not representative of community consensus on this matter, and wrote that some time ago when a few people found the new consensus hard to accept. Arthur has since accepted that "year-in-X" pages are not included in the "intrinsically chronological" category, on the talk page of User:Colonies Chris, and tomorrow I'll find the diff for you, if you wish. Day–month, month, month–year, year, decade, and century articles (and explicitly calendar-related articles, mostly from different cultures) are excluded, and form a highly linked network. In addition, purely chronological articles are exposed to millions of viewers on the main page every day. Year-in-X articles sometimes have a prominent navbox in which links to purely chronological pages can be included, although I myself would recommend linking laterally in such navboxes to year-in-related-issue articles, which are likely to be much more useful to readers. You might wish to focus on auditing those navboxes instead, which would be within community consensus, and consistent with the site-wide style guide. Please ask more questions if you wish, but could you wait 10 hours, since I'm going to bed. Tony (talk) 15:41, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
as for your example i guess i have to spell it out to you - lets say that the link is as you said 'February 2 "John Smith" was born' occurs in the 2011 article - then thus in the February 2 it would say '2011 "John Smith" was born' - now let us assume as in your example above 'February 2 in the Phillipines "John Smith" was born' occurs in the 2011 in the Phillipines article - then thus in the February 2 in the Phillipines it would say '2011 "John Smith" was born - now wait now you are about to say that there is no such article called February 2 in the Phillipines - guess what? some day there will be! there will be 366 such articles about given dates in the Phillipines - if you cannot see that one day there will 366 articles for every country on the planet some day i feel sorry for you - it is just that no one has bothered to write them yet and populate them with data - now wait now you are about to say that the thing we were actually talking about was a date link of February 2 within the article 2011 in the Phillipines - guess what? some day all the date links that should currently exist will GET CONVERTED to February 2 in X - but until such time as 366 articles for each country of the world get created all us wiki editor will have to settle on the next best thing which is 'February 2 "John Smith" was born' occurs in the 2011 in the Phillipines article.--68.231.15.56 (talk) 15:55, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
You're both wrong. I don't think that Tony's edits are vandalism, but the last (MOSDATE) discussion I participated in suggested that Year-in-the-United-States (but not Year-in-Canada or Year-in-the-Phillipines) is "instrinsically chronological". Furthermore, the explicit en-dash probably should be kept in the year-in-X articles; that would be a different style guideline, and local consensus (assumed by silence) can easily override that. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:01, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
there is a reason Arthur why i say they are indeed "vandalism" - tony never acutally adds content to any article year in X and then comes along with his bot pushes a button and wham 1703 thur 2013 in Canada get changed at say 5234 changes per article - now we, inlcuding me, whom actually editor those articles on a daily basis are supposed to do what go thru 300 articles about Canada and revert all 5234 changes???--68.231.15.56 (talk) 16:11, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Tony specialises in copyediting prose, and rarely "adds text" to articles. I'm sure Tony would happily copyedit these articles if he saw any potential to them, such as those that were nicely woven together by some prose and sourced current affairs analysis that bound together the individual 'coincidental' events that pervade these articles. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke 16:22, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
I often copy-edit and adjust linking manually. Anon, I don't operate a bot. And I haven't "whammed" through 310 Canada articles; might have been a few. Do not revert the changes without gaining consensus, please. Tony (talk) 16:24, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
User talk:Colonies Chris/Archive/2013/Apr#Removing date links i see this but see only Deb arguing for date linking and Arthur does not appear there--68.231.15.56 (talk) 16:35, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Why should I comment on someone else's talk page, who is not on my watch list? It's clear, however, that Tony does not have a local consensus, and, if he thinks he has a global consensus, he should be able to point to a discussion. I'm not saying he's necessarily wrong, just that I don't remember seeing a discussion which supports his POV on the "... in the United States" articles. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

It's Not What It Looks Like!

If you're talking about the enormous wordcount of my edit to your advice page, then take a deep breath and relax: Your article is still there-- all of its message, all of its ideas, all of its meaning. My edit's wordcount is enormous because I timed out while writing it, and instead of hunting down all my individual edits, I copied everything in the edit box to my clipboard, opened your page, clicked "Edit," selected everything in the edit box, pasted the text that I'd copied from my clipboard over it-- at least, I intended as much. The prose should be 'tighter,' and I hope that you like what I've done. Of course, your article could still be there, and my edits could have been utterly useless. For that misjudgment, I apologize, and humbly ask to know of my errors in greater detail.

-Duxwing — Preceding unsigned comment added by Duxwing (talk • contribs) 17:56, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks, Duxwing. But I was alarmed. Some of the changes you made looked like slight improvements (but not all, in my opinion). I'm a bit confused now. I can go back and incorporate some of those changes, then? Tony (talk) 02:58, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Great! I'll wait for your 'buzz'. Duxwing (talk) 02:43, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Linking issues at racehorses

Thanks for taking an interest. Without coming over all Uriah Heep I am just a humble content guy trying to improve the coverage of my area of interest. I wonder if the policy of not linking obviously understood terms might be vulnerable to cultural bias. Do we assume that everyone using WP is an educated, intelligent anglophone? Maybe. I also wonder about what might be termed "Temporal bias", by which I mean that the things that seem self-evident now might appear less so in the future. You see, I am rather idealistic about this project and expect it to be around, in one form or another, for a long time.

To be more specific, terms like Great Britain and United Kingdom have meant different things at different times. Would a link be acceptable if it helped to differentiate between these? Tigerboy1966  14:39, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not easy in some cases, and yes, it's all about linguistic and cultural background. I'd not link unless it adds clear value. Sometimes linking is like prose, I've felt: a complex skill. You've asked exactly the right questions. Opinions vary as to what is assumed of readers: I've heard of the seven-year-old test, but that's obviously for a native-speaker. Great Britain and United Kingdom ... I'd link to a more specific article or section if at all possible (sometimes it's quite satisfying to nail one) ... United_kingdom#Etymology_and_terminology, ah, or Terminology_of_Great_Britain#Terminology—there's a lot of choice, so I'd try to match it with the particular context. And there's Early_modern_Britain ... a wealth of choice our readers need to be funnelled down for the most powerful knowledge-networking. The "See also" section at the bottom is great, because you don't have to pipe to smoothly integrate the link into the grammar of the sentence, which is possible sometimes, not always. And there you have the space to add brief advice (not much used, unfortunately ... like *[[Kingdom of Great Britain]] (the entity from 1701 to 1801)). That's likely to get more hits than a pipe to bland old "Great Britain" in the main text, which people glaze over at. Problem with See also is that it's a bit dissociated from the specific context, although I always think articles are there to be read through, rather than diverted from, especially early on; and that if a reader is serious about networking through related topics, they'll read through anyway.

Above all, it's suspected by a lot of editors that readers don't really use the internal linking system as much as we think they might; so I like to focus them on fewer rather than more, to use our skills as editors to show them what the most important knowledge-tracks are. Good linking practice, I think, is under-recognised as a new art we hardly knew about 10 years ago. It can make all the difference. I'm still learning more about its potential! Tony (talk) 14:55, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

And I notice you've raised an important dimension in the temporal aspect. Yes, iPad will eventually not be linked much at all; but there was a time when you'd have linked its first occurrence in every article. Like updating events and bios, linking can be tweaked as part of maintenance: items move into and out of appropriate linking over time. So much more interesting than paper publishing. Tony (talk) 15:03, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful response. I tend to spend a lot of time gathering references and writing the articles, but my approach to referencing is a bit mechanical: I tend to link some terms without really thinking about how useful they would actually be to the reader. I've made a start by changing the anachronistic "United Kingdom" to "Kingdom of Great Britain" in the pre-1800 articles. I suppose that if WP had been around 200 years ago we'd be having lively discussions about whether we needed to link "Holy Roman Empire".  Tigerboy1966  18:57, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Interesting task...

Now here's an intriguing one, see Paul S. Walsh which is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Paul S. Walsh/archive1. I am pondering how easy/difficult it is to make/ensure it is neutral and encyclopedic in tone....Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:55, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Overlinking

Hi there TONY, AL from Portugal "here",

thanks for your kind words. Yes i completely understand your approach, but here's my two cents: everybody knows what a cigarette is in English i believe, ages 9-99, but if you wikilink that, people may be "tempted" to read that article and "cultivate" themselves more on that subject, instead of just reading about their footballer (field where i edit 99,99999% of the time) of choice at a given time.

I totally understand the approach of overlinking where you link (example) FC Barcelona once then can't do it again in article, but i am at a total loss with this other overlinking bit.

Keep up the great work, i'll "wiki-see" you around --AL (talk) 14:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Bold

Did you want to add a closing ' to make "Oppose" bold at Talk:Loomis, Okanogan County, Washington? Apteva (talk) 02:29, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 April 2013

Thanks for your comments about Freedom for the Thought That We Hate

Thanks very much for your comments about Freedom for the Thought That We Hate at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1.

I've done my best to address these comments, and responded at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1.

As I stated at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1, these were quite helpful comments and I think the article now looks much better after I went ahead and implemented all of them.

Thanks again,

— Cirt (talk) 15:20, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Update: Thanks very much for stating: "Nice to see one of our main experts in the US Supreme Court preparing a nom." -- I really appreciated that!!! I went back through the article per your comments and suggestions by others at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1 and copyedited and made changes directly implementing your most helpful suggestions. Perhaps you could reevaluate your position at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Freedom for the Thought That We Hate/archive1? Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 18:17, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

A small problem with a recent edit

I have just partly reverted this edit of yours to Joseph Diaz Gergonne - among other alterations, you had altered a piped link to Nancy, France to an unpiped link to Nancy. Unfortunately, Nancy, France was the correct target and Nancy is a disambiguation page, so I have changed just this back. PWilkinson (talk) 17:23, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you indeed, PWilkinson. That was an error. Tony (talk) 00:57, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Copyeditor's Barnstar
Thanks very much for all of your help with successfully getting Freedom for the Thought That We Hate to Featured Article quality. I really appreciate the assistance in getting this article about freedom of speech to FA. — Cirt (talk) 23:33, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

<red face> Thank you, Cirt. I normally try to keep some distance, though, since I made critical comments at the FAC page. I look forward to your continued work on US legal topics—it might be a model for writers in other jurisdictions, which are rather poorly served in some cases. Tony (talk) 04:26, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 May 2013

Quick style query

Hey Tony. I have a quick question regarding something stylistic. When referring to a country's government as an entity mid-sentence, should one write "Government of [country name]" (capitalized G) or "government of [country name]" (lower-case g)? I've seen both used— sometimes interchangeably—though I'm sure one of them is preferred in professional prose. This is in American English, for what it's worth. Thanks in advance! Auree ★★ 20:37, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Hylian, both Chicago Manual of Style and Oxford's New Hart's Rules say to minimise unnecessary capitalisation. en.WP's MOSCAPS says the same, not surprisingly. While you still do see rampant caps for position names ("Chief Garbage Collector" is the usual joke) and government names, the tendency is to downcase. I think writing "the federal government", "the Indian government", and the state government of Thuringen, Germany, are preferred at the sentence level by the major guides. This would be my choice, personally. Tony (talk) 03:13, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
Many thanks; I'll keep the minimized capitalization in mind as a rule of thumb! Auree ★★ 18:57, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Tony1. You have new messages at Diptanshu.D's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

DiptanshuTalk 15:08, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

The first wiki-concert

Hi! Please express your opinion on the meta:Grants:WM UA/Free Vocal Music concert, as the wiki-concert is planned on May, 15, and we need to know the GAC decision at least a day in advance. Thank you! WMUA Executive Director --Perohanych (talk) 21:41, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Brand New

Hi Tony. I struck the oppose !vote you added on behalf of Noetica, and gave my reasons there. Just wanted to stop by here and make sure you didn't think it was anything against you. Let me know if you think I handled it poorly. Thanks. Dohn joe (talk) 19:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

This Month in Education: May 2013


Headlines

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription · Distributed via Global message delivery, 17:02, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 May 2013

May 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Yekke may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 09:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Damn, manual editing glitch. Fixing now. Tony (talk) 10:26, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Decarboxylative cross-coupling may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "()"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 10:41, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 May 2013

A barnstar for you!

The Writer's Barnstar
That Signpost article on the WMF board was terrific; concise, thorough, and informative. Keep up the good work! Go Phightins! 02:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

De-linking - Reply

Hi there TONY,

If you must... --AL (talk) 15:59, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Woolwich attack

I didn't write that section. I have tweaked it a couple of times. I inserted the bit about the time that the police had been called, which was wrongly placed within the section. I have just removed the offending "the" and the extra comma. Would you check it? If you are a stickler for grammar and clear expression, you might find other necessary changes.

In various places I have simplified sentences into the most basic statements possible, eliminating the "When this happened that happened" stuff. It's hard to get people to write simple facts without trying to construct ideas out of them. The avarage Wikipedian would make a very poor witness!. Amandajm (talk) 13:28, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

It's very tricky to describe all of those sequential events from sources, isn't it. I don't have time to look at them right now, but your further scrutiny would be much appreciated, since this unfolding event is of such high profile. Thx. Tony (talk) 13:41, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
Yoo Hoo! Can you get back to the punctuation etc when you have he time? Amandajm (talk) 13:53, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
How did the meet at Sydney Uni go? I was too busy setting up an exhibition to get there. The exhibition more than paid for itself, thank goodness, but my son took all the profit and put it towards his new amp.
Amandajm (talk) 13:59, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
A bit hard for me to attend things in Sydney now: I moved out in February, and it's 100 mins in a car each way. Your son sounds like he needs curbing. Tony (talk) 14:06, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
Well, I hope it's pleasant, wherever you are living. I miss Newtown terribly. Leaving the carillon behind was bloody awful! The Ibanez kid is doing OK actually; he sold six of his 9 pics at the exhibition (but of course it was Mummy who paid for the framing!)

Amandajm (talk) 10:22, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

For your email; responded. – SJ + 17:51, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Also, seeing this for the first time (and hearing echoes of similar comments on other small wikis): "strongly encourages editors to upload [files] onto the English Wikipedia..." --> we need a place for long-standing open global problems; a bit like "Perennial proposals" but for project-wide bugs that cannot simply be passed over until there is supermajority consensus to act. – SJ + 17:53, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
Not a bug: more like corrupt administrators. Tony (talk) 02:34, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Requesting an opinion re: Caption punctuation

At the FAC for Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book, Eric Corbett believes that the period of one of the captions should be removed. I know that he knows his stuff, but I can't wrap my head around his explanation; it appears to be a grammatically complete sentence to me, and I thought such captions required a period. Mr Corbett has suggested I ask you for a second opinion or explanation. Would you be willing? Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:09, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 May 2013

Talk:Encyclopædia Britannica

Hi, might you consider revisiting your !vote here as it has been established that it is a Latin ligature rather than a relic of Old Norse.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 13:36, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

That won't change my opinion in that forum, though. Tony (talk) 13:56, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Everything Tastes Better with Bacon

Hi there, Tony1, I hope you're doing well! :)

You previously participated in an FAC for Everything Tastes Better with Bacon.

It's subsequently had additional copy-editing through Guild of Copy Editors and a once-over by FA Writer Tim Riley.

I've nominated it for consideration a 2nd time at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Everything Tastes Better with Bacon/archive2.

Your input would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Everything Tastes Better with Bacon/archive2.

Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 19:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Dates

Hallo Tony, I'm not sure where you have appeared from. In the particular case of changing the dates in the citations to newspapers like The TImes i think the concept is just daft. 'Nuff said? Eddaido (talk) 14:08, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Can you take a look at WP:MOSDATES, please, which is designed for within-article consistency. It doesn't matter that the newspaper, for its own readers, might use a certain format. We don't write the article on the newspaper using the newspaper's font and font-size, either. Tony (talk) 15:16, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Plenty of people do daft things all the time – like smoking, for example, which is not illegal. I guess you are free to not like what I'm doing, but it's totally consistent with guidelines. <End of troll-feeding>. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 16:19, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Having made it "official" does not stop it being in fact daft. Your sensitivity is very telling. Eddaido (talk) 00:17, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
OK, Tony, Amandajm (talk) 05:13, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Formatting of temperatures

Your current round of script-assisted edits, such as [1], are putting a space between a temperature-value and its degrees unit. For example, that edit changed "-78°C" to "−78 °C". MOS is to use a non-breaking space there, "−78&nbsp;°C", so that the units stay with the value during line-wrapping. DMacks (talk) 15:14, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi, the script certainly changes the hyphen to a minus sign, which is the minimum expected of scientific writing standards. The ISO (and Wikipedia's house style, MOSNUM) both insist on the spacing, which I perform manually. I really think I shouldn't have to stoop this low with scientifically literate text; but I do. And the fact is that we still don't have an easy shortcut for non-breaking spaces, which makes it a pain for someone like me, and more importantly glugs up the text for the "anyone can edit" visitor. Not ideal. Would you like to help in hunting down wrongly formatted temperatures?
However, I'm going to ask for the non-breaking space to be introduced into the script. It doesn't seem like a feature that would result in false positives. Tony (talk) 15:20, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
I have no idea what the script is, but from the outside, "it seems easy" that it could
s/(\d)\s*°/\1&nbsp;°/
in pretty much any language. Definitely important to get the minus signs correct, and not "worse" to have a breakable space vs no space at all in the mean time. DMacks (talk) 15:26, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! DMacks (talk) 17:58, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Lots of weird in Oxymercuration reaction

[2] converted "oxymercuration-reduction" to "oxymercuration–eduction"--no idea how that happened, and decapitalized the "S" in the book title "Organic Syntheses" (part of a general tendency/overly zealous decapitalizing of "common words" that happen in names and titles[3]?) DMacks (talk) 12:09, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

My sloppy typing. Now just to get this right, it's a sequence of oxymercuration and then reduction ... I'm pretty sure I understood that, and some examples were dashes already. Can you confirm? Tony (talk) 12:14, 4 June 2013 (UTC) And if "Organic Synthesis" had been italicised, as journal titles must be, I'd not have mistaken that. Thanks for spotting. Tony (talk) 12:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it is a sequence of two reactions, so an en-dash is correct. We actually have a {{OrgSynth}} citation template to standardize ref-links to it, but I know I've gotten complaints when I switch ref formats on existing entries:( DMacks (talk) 12:22, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-05-27/Foundation_elections

Hi, I asked a question here about most of Meta being in English. What exactly were you counting? Almost all discussions there are in English, but most mainspace pages are in other languages (at least partially). πr2 (t • c) 02:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

If most discussions are in English, by implication most coordinating efforts and exchanges of ideas are too. Interpreting this fact by using in the broadest possible conception of files makes me wonder what constitutes a constructive dialogue on Meta. And what about the distinction between relevant files and secondary translations, which simply reflect passively the results of the English-language discourse on the original. Therefore, I'm not surprised with your main space finding—but doesn't it miss the point? Tony (talk) 09:28, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Do you think we should have discussion pages in many languages, or just one multilingual discussion page? Part of the problem with having comments in all languages is that someone might post in a language almost no other Wikimedians understand (e.g., Xhosa). In the past, I've wanted to have translations of discussions (from and into English and other languages), but everybody seemed to like having separate language noticeboards. πr2 (t • c) 15:26, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
P.S.: by discussion page, I meant something like m:Meta:Babel, m:Wikimedia Forum, or even RfCs, not creating new Talk namespaces. πr2 (t • c) 15:27, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Another weird corner-case

This edit changed a hyphen to an endash in a doi= field. That value is a machine-readable token for a database and has to remain as whatever the DOI system wants, not something subject to our MOS or other editor-choice stylings. DMacks (talk) 10:16, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks: I've alerted Ohconfucius to this glitch. I'm also going to pick your brains on your talk page about some chemistry nomenclature, hoping you have time to educate me in a few surface features. Tony (talk) 10:54, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Almost all changes from hyphens to dashes are from the dashes script. I have reperformed an edit using only dashes.js, and can confirm that that dash change is not from one of my scripts. All I can advise is to make a note of it on the dashes talk page so that the issue is addressed next time the script is updated, and to exercise more care and check changes within the |doi= field. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 11:43, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 05 June 2013

Hi, Tony!

I have discovered a very successful way of dealing with articles that are causing me to lose sleep: remove them from my watchlist!

Cheers! Amandajm (talk) 09:54, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Bach cantatas and infoboxes

Hi Tony, I left a note for you at the end of this section. If you have time, I'd be quite interested in what you have to say. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:28, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 12 June 2013

Query re your 15 June 2013 edit - Angela Pippos article

Hi, I'm wondering why you deleted the sentence "He is the first child for Angela and partner Simon", from the Angela Pippos article? Not disputing it, just curious. Cheers. Melbourne3163 (talk) 11:13, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Family members, including spouses, are not normally included in a bio article unless they themselves are notable. If you really feel strongly about it, go ahead and revert. The problem gets thornier with "has two children", and "is divorced", where these states can often be temporary. Thx. Tony (talk) 11:22, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. Melbourne3163 (talk) 21:12, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Formatting query

Hello again, I can see that you are a vastly experienced and professional editor. I try to continually improve my editing knowledge and notice you changed the formatting of "7pm" in the biography section of the Angela Pippos article. Could I ask what the significance is of the revised formatting and is this an automated edit process or a manual one? I would appreciate your comments/advice. Thanks. Melbourne3163 (talk) 21:25, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

As an Australian, it bugs me too. MOSNUM prescribes a space; whereas we don't usually use spaces. Do you feel it's worth raising at WikiProject Australia to see if there's support for an either/or guideline, instead of the instistence on only spaced? Tony (talk) 02:53, 16 June 2013 (UTC)ß
I don't know where the 'space' instruction comes from, as I was brought up to write "7pm" too. But it's an automated change built into the script based on the hard space mandated by MOSNUM for which there doesn't seem to be any dispensation for derogation, like a number of things that seem to have exemptions. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 06:51, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Is it possible to remove the enforced space from the script? Tony (talk) 06:59, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, Tony. Yes, I think it would be good to have a either/or guideline, probably worth raising. Cheers. Melbourne3163 (talk) 07:24, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

This Month in Education: June 2013


Headlines

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription · Distributed via Global message delivery, 14:17, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

My talk page

Do not post on my talk page again.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:30, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd be very pleased not to. Tony (talk) 02:48, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 19 June 2013

Thanking Jarry

Jarry is stepping down from writing the Signpost Tech report. I gave him a Signpost barnstar Will you sign it with me?. Thanks, --Pine✉ 06:34, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

RFC/U on another user

About a year ago, you tried to help User:Baboon43 learn the ropes of dealing with editing disputes. One year on, there are still community concerns regarding some incivility and edit warring behavior. There is now a discussion open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Baboon43 with the goal of helping the user deal with disputes in a new, better way. I'm just informing you in case you would like to observe and comment. MezzoMezzo (talk) 12:48, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. That was part of the Tearoom project, and I was hoping to have a success on the boards. It seems not to be the case. I don't think I'll comment there. Tony (talk) 12:51, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Belated

... reply on my talk, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:22, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 June 2013

June 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Andrew Harwood (television host) may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "()"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

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  • radio 2KY]].<ref name=smh/> He next worked as a voice announcer on [[Seven Network|Channel Seven]] (now the [[Seven Network]].<ref name=smh/>

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 12:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Thx, I'll fix now. It was my attempt to make it smoother, non-repetitive. Tony (talk) 12:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
And what a good bot! Tony (talk) 14:31, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Chasm City may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

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  • by author [[Alastair Reynolds]], set in the [[Revelation Space universe]]. It deals with themes of [[identity (social science)|identity, memory, and immortality, and many of its scenes are concerned

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 08:11, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Economy of South Africa may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

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  • |import-goods = machinery]and equipment, chemicals, petroleum products, scientific instruments, foodstuffs
  • to create African 'water refugees' – scientists], Reuters Alertnet. Retrieved 21 September 2006].</ref>

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 07:27, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

For your work, and of course, your self help courses in helping me format my sentences in a more encyclopaedic manner. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:47, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Re Signpost

Hey, sorry I couldn't reply earlier, but I had left the country shortly after your reply [4]. I think this type of communication/public activity is risky currently in my country. Bloggers and Tweeps are targeted by the government, see for instance [5]. For someone writing on political articles, I bet they could sentence me to a year on the vague charge of "misusing the right of free expression". Mohamed CJ (talk) 09:07, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Your remarks augur very badly for the hope of expanding participation in ar.WP. A user group should be named explicitly for a cultural theme. "GLAM Arabic user group"? Tony (talk) 09:18, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Sorry to turn you down, but I still think it's too risky to go public. Mohamed CJ (talk) 10:01, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Of course you have to judge the situation for yourself, but there are some things you can do to minimize your risk. 1) You can still read the newspaper and add information to Wikipedia using news sources that are approved in your country. Just stay away from anything they won't print, for example, protests or demonstrations. 2) Don't write about religion. Think Hamza Kashgari. 3) If your writing in the west was at all political, you may want to distance yourself completely from that identity. If you are known by one username, you can disappear with that one and use a different one. See WP:Right_to_disappear, and especially Wikipedia:Clean start.
You might also try writing about something that isn't political, like literature or music. How many times have I seen a google doodle that pays tribute to some Arab writer or artist, only to find very little information about them on Wikipedia. Sometimes they don't even have an article in Arabic. Look at Category:Arab dramatists and playwrights for example. Or look at Ehab Tawfik. Pitiful. It looks like the Arabic article needs work too. It would also be nice to be able to find poetry and literature in the original Arabic, perhaps with a translation or recording. Neotarf (talk) 11:40, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
Neotarf‚ thanks. I hope this thoughtful advice is helpful to Mohamed and other Arab-speakers ... and even to WMF units dealing with interlinguistic matters. Tony (talk) 07:44, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
The danger is very real, even more so for Muslims, since the charge of apostasy can be added. It is easy for westerners to try to minimize this danger, but in some areas this carries a death penalty, and the exact situations that can trigger official scrutiny are not knowable in advance. But it is precisely because of the censorship, and the risks that people do take to add this information to the Wikipedia, that information becomes even more valuable. You might also consider editing with an IP, or from a public WIFI. Neotarf (talk) 11:44, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
My situation has nothing to do with religion, it's purely about politics (which happens to be my favorite area to work at here). If the situation improves, then I'm more than ready to participate in publicly advocating for Wikipedia. Just yesterday a 17-year-old boy was sentenced to 1 year for "insulting the king on twitter"[6] and he wasn't even using his real name. There was an era here when it was relatively safe to express your opinion, but it didn't last long. The best I can hope for currently is to continue to do what I do unhindered. Thanks to both of you for advises and I'm sorry if it was a disappointment. P.S. Editing from an IP is equivalent to publicly identifying yourself. Mohamed CJ (talk) 16:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

User_talk:Inglok#Grammar

Tony - have you heard of this construction...I often drop "the" in this scenario....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:29, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 July 2013

July 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to James H. McClure may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

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  • Daily Mail]] as a sub-editor. From there, he moved to the ''[[Oxford Mail]]'' and then to the ''[[Oxford Times]''.

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 05:46, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Question for you

AN/I

Information icon Hello. Please participate in the current discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Wehwalt (talk) 09:09, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Explanation

Per your query "Unsure why this wasn't a legitimate comment in this context." That comment was directed solely about my conduct, and was correctly moved to my user talk page. It has no place whatsoever on the article talk page. See WP:FOC and WP:NPA (both policies). If we remove the parts that are out of place, we have:

Apteva, yes, there are a lot of things you fail to see about wikipedia article naming. Why do you press for such changes, given that your views are so out of step with the how titling work here? How can want to move a title that is just precise enough to say what the article topic is to one that is ridiculously ambiguous? How can you interpret the popularity of this article as an indication that it is named wrong? Your logic makes no sense.

Leaving us with absolutely nothing. We are not to use article talk pages to either berate or praise editors. That is what user talk pages are for. We are not to attack others for their arguments, they are their arguments. We can explain our own arguments, we can disagree with the arguement, but not express it as differing with an individual, and if we have a question about the argument, we ask it of the argument, not the editor, or the group, not the editor. Your use of @Apteva, for example, was completely inappropriate, and never done in a threaded discussion (the only use is for example in WP:AE discussions where threaded discussions are forbidden). Use a diff if you need to to explain what you are referring to, not an editors username, and definitely not the word "you". We need to find a way to get the editor in question to "sit up and act straight", and not be encouraging their personal attacks. It is really not that hard to write sentences that do not include the word "you". Just focus on the topic and not on the editor. Apteva (talk) 17:15, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm guilty as charged concerning the occasional praising of editors on article talk pages. I did it only last week, and it seems to have a positive effect on my and their morale, and social cohesion. Why not respond to Dick's critical comment there instead of scrubbing his text? I think he has a point. Tony (talk) 00:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
Because it detracts from the purpose, which is consensus development, or more generally, coming to a decision. There are basically two types of collaborative decision making, parliamentary and consensus, and neither ever allow directing comments to or about the participants. Here is what a summary of Roberts Rules of Order says: "All remarks must be directed to the Chair. Remarks must be courteous in language and deportment - avoid all personalities, never allude to others by name or to motives!"[7] If the editor in question has a point about the naming they are welcome to express it, but it must be devoid of personal attacks. The place to either criticise or praise an editor is on their talk page, and we do need to encourage as much praise (wikilove) as possible, to make all of us feel welcome here. Praising an individual editor in a discussion has the affect that it is exclusionary and a diversion from the topic at hand.
It is never appropriate to reply to inappropriate remarks, as that is just adding an additional inappropriate remark (don't feed the trolls). The only exception is if there are a large number of editors participating inappropriately, and then a short reminder is made simply to stay on topic, and is never directed to any specific editor or editors. Apteva (talk) 02:30, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
So I'm forbidden from saying nice things about editors. Right. Tony (talk) 02:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
No, of course not. Just place them on their talk page, where they belong. The other place they can occur is if that editor and only that editor is being discussed at AN, etc. Apteva (talk) 03:13, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
So I'm forbidden from saying nice things about editors on article talk pages—for example, when I think they've been doing a fine job. Tony (talk) 03:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
Not if you want to be helpful. It is exclusionary, and does not contribute to the discussion at hand. That is why comments are always directed to the group and about the topic, instead of to and about participants. Parliamentary procedures and consensus decision making both follow the same rules on the issue and for the same reason – it works, and the opposite does not work. Consensus decision making is not new, having been around for about 400 years, although it originated because the thought was there was only one correct decision, and the process existed solely to find out what that was, with the idea that initially only one person might have that correct answer. Today we use it for a completely different reason, so that we can be more inclusive of all participants. Parliamentary decision making is much newer, but is about 200 years old now. Apteva (talk) 03:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Threaded discussions on policy or article talk pages are often long and confusing especially if it is heated. More is the case especially when the discussion thread fragments, and other respondents either don't indent properly. In such cases, markers like "@Apteva" are not only desirable but I'd say was indispensable to identify the party to whom one is responding. One can be concerned with discussions with any mention of "you" or one's username, but IMHO, it's highly possible and probable that this objection on the part of some is verging on the paranoid. ;-) -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 03:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
  • And please don't get me going on about parliamentary procedures. There is an editor at WN who insists on referring to Wikipedia as "the other place", much to my annoyance. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 03:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Diff's can be used if necessary, but no responses are never to a particular editor, and only about a particular argument. Parliamentary is important to bring up because it is the only other method of collaborative decision making that exists, to my knowledge. If discussions are getting heated, that in itself is a problem. Markers like that are necessary at WP:AE where threaded discussion is not permitted, but are never appropriate in a threaded discussion. Some editors are far more sensitive than others about personalization, and the solution is to never do it, so that no one is offended. Apteva (talk) 04:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
      • I'm all for trying to keep things collegiate and not descend into the personal realms. "but are never appropriate in a threaded discussion" – I think that's where we part company. Markers are ubiquitous in many different discussions. [You] do not need to go far to find them in RfCs AfDs, where people habitually use the construction as substitute for restating the entire rationale. Now Notifications gives us positive reason to use the markers either as pings or links to draw the attention of the other editor. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 04:52, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
      • So a "personal attack" is now defined as "any sentence that contains the word 'you' or an editor's name"? That interpretation doesn't seem to be getting a lot of traction in some quarters. [8] I see also Apteva is using other editors' sigs again, in this case making it look like Dicklyon posted something in a place where he did not post it. [9] Neotarf (talk) 07:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

This is not about personal attacks, but is about keeping conversations on topic in order to build consensus. Our advice about using the word you, though, WP:AVOIDYOU, does appear on the NPA page, which points out that "Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done." That boomerang was one of Wikipedia's stupidest ever blocks. Thinking that notifications is a justification for naming an editor is absolutely absurd, and is just plain illogical. No matter how many times someone sees an editor named in a threaded discussion, RfCs, AfDs, they are all totally inappropriate and the practice needs to end. Apteva (talk) 14:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

  • Er, "stupid" is but your opinion. [You] keep on launching ANIs like that one, and chances are it's going to come back and hit [you] like a boomerang every time. "the practice needs to end". I would wish you every luck in making that happen. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 14:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Right now the issue of civility enforcement is being discussed in an RfC, and we will need to see what the result is when it is closed, which could be years from now. Apteva (talk) 14:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

So the next time anyone gets the urge to thank someone in a threaded discussion, please do it on their talk page instead. The results are infinitely more better. Although I suspect the grammar of that sentence is somewhat lacking. Apteva (talk) 14:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

  • How about this for a response to your general order to the community: no.

    The trouble is, Apteva, that "keeping conversations on topic to build consensus" seems to mean to build the consensus that you want. This might be why so many editors come away upset after interactions with you (oops, I used the banned word, or is "you" ok on my talk page?). This is especially true of structured environments such as RMs, where you have at times employed fairly aggressive tactics to get your way. "one of Wikipedia's stupidest ever blocks"—in the larger scheme, I'm not sure I agree.

    I see that you've again reverted Dicklyon's comment—one that I don't believe is inappropriate. Tony (talk) 15:00, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

    • Yes, the word you works on user talk pages, which are more like a conversation and the purpose is rarely collaborative decision making. And no it has nothing to do with my position, but is solely an expression of how to work together. As I mentioned, these principles are 400 years old now. They are very new to a lot of people, who have never been involved with any form of collaborative decision making, though. Apteva (talk) 21:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't believe Dicklyon's comment is at all inappropriate. But, in light of WP:HARRASSMENT I would question whether continually posting on someone's talk page after they have asked you not to post there might be interpreted as baiting. [10][11] In fact, under the circumstances, the latter looks like a bit of grave dancing. Neotarf (talk) 14:57, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Just to let you know Tony, ignore Apteva. Saying something nice is recommended on this project - after all, Wikipedia is a community. Yes, we comment on content not the contributor, but saying "that's great wording, Bob ..." is a comment on the content. See Apteva's talkpage for more about how wrong his bizarre edits suggesting otherwise are (✉→BWilkins←✎) 16:33, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
The problem with saying something nice is that it is exclusionary. Say there are five people participating, and one of them gets complimented. How does that make the other four feel? Left out. And how does it make the one complimented feel? Depends on who they are. For many, it makes them feel good. For some it is an extreme annoyance that they were singled out and attention was put on them instead of on the topic under discussion. As mentioned, how editors respond to being named varies enormously from editor to editor, and the safest thing to do is do the correct thing, which is to put the compliment on that editor's talk page, and not inline in the discussion. Saying "that's great wording" is perfectly acceptable, and recommended. Adding ", Bob" is completely out of order. Apteva (talk) 04:04, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Malke 2010

Tony, the core issue here seems to be not only a lack of understanding of NPA, but also a faulty AGF-ometer. Like you, I had observed overnight the interaction with Graham87, which concerns me (I had his talk watchlisted after noting the difficulty in reaching him during the arb case I diffed at the ANI,[12] and noting his recurring insistence on unusual sections in medical articles). I will be extremely busy through mid-August, but should things not improve and should an RFC be indicated, please ping me ?? I found some reference somewhere that User:Moonriddengirl had once mentored him, but he removes so many talk page posts that it was difficult to verify that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:56, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Sandstein

Thanks for your support. Are you able to let me or ANI know what recent other outrages Sandstein has committed? Especially interesting will be examples of his going on the warpath against people who question his judgment as that is the issue I have raised. I know he has a lot of enemies but I haven't been watching his actions closely enough to know which he has made recently and why.--Peter cohen (talk) 01:09, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I'd rather you posted on the page in question than here: if I have anything further to say, it would be proper for me to mention this post. Thanks. Tony (talk) 01:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I've posted more or less the same thing there. I thought that as you had already joined the thread then it would be okay to ask it here.--Peter cohen (talk) 01:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Clarification

Would you be so kind as to add "as nominator" to your !vote at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#RFC on governance of the FA forums? The proponent of anything is assumed to support it without voting separately. Thanks. Apteva (talk) 03:09, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

  • If you check back the original proposal in the history, you will find his signature there. Someone in their wisdom purged it, and made numerous other changes and I don't think Tony wanted to war with that person. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 03:42, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
    Yes, I am only discussing changing:

Support

Limit of one paragraph, maximum 50 words. No replies here; please use the discussion section below.

  • Tony (talk) 10:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

To:

Support

Limit of one paragraph, maximum 50 words. No replies here; please use the discussion section below.

  • Tony (as nominator) (talk) 10:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

or words to that effect. Apteva (talk) 03:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Let me choose my words carefully. ... No. Tony (talk) 03:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. We recently had someone who just crossed out like this the support vote, of the nominator, but doing that was even worse. Apteva (talk) 04:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 10 July 2013

Start Snuggle

IRC office hours for wiki-mentors and Snuggle users

Hi. We're organizing an office hours session with the Teahouse to bring in mentors from across the wiki to try out Snuggle and discuss it's potential to support mentorship broadly. The Snuggle team would appreciate it if you would come and participate in the discussion. We'll be having it in #wikimedia-office connect on Wed. July 17th @ 1600 UTC. See the agenda for more info. --EpochFail(talk • work), Technical 13 (talk), TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:08, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

File:Mantis eating a Common Bushbrown (Mycalesis perseus) butterfly.jpg

Isderion is edit warring/ vandalizing my work. Could you help/advise me on this regard? JKadavoor Jee 06:31, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Tony for your valuable response. JKadavoor Jee 16:49, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
Please see this too. JKadavoor Jee 16:58, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
It is not me alone; there are already so many established users expressed their discomfort about the current stands of Commons.
  1. Moonik
  2. Jebulon
  3. Archaeodontosaurus
  4. Slaunger are a few among them. JKadavoor Jee 17:41, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

This Month in Education: July 2013


Headlines

To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

If this message is not on your home wiki's talk page, update your subscription · Distributed via Global message delivery, 22:48, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 July 2013

Signpost inaccuracies

OK, I know that neither your nor The ed17 (talk · contribs) wrote this, but a) it's not clear who did, perhaps Keilana (talk · contribs)?; b) it's unfortunate no one copyedited since false impressions were spread simply because of poor writing/grammar; and c) it's typical of what I've come to expect of The Signpost.(see grammar corrections here.) A page which got 1,000 views cast Brianboulton (talk · contribs) in the role of "quickly devolving into ... " (via an incorrect preposition-- a copyedit matter), and Fuchs and me as edit warriors (via "continued") when neither of us engaged in the edit war that followed our first BRD cycle. Seriously ... 1,000 editors have now read false information about Brian, Fuchs and me ... it is this kind of reporting that has gone on for so long and has put me off of reading The Signpost. If they are going to write something about someone, how about running it by those editors so they can have a chance to see what falsehoods are being spread before they go to print? When I wrote the Dispatches, that's the courtesy I offered. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Sandy, I hardly read that section, which looked a bit short, actually. And after the mammoth effort required to write the lead story (right up to deadline), was disinclined to touch it. I didn't really want to be referred to in the text, either. Same for Ed, I guess. It's a COI issue that just needs to be managed. It would have been good if someone had come along and improved it earlier, but I understand that you're busy, like many of us. Tony (talk) 03:13, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I could tell you hadn't read it, because of the basic grammatical issue impacting Brianboulton. And I knew/expected that The Signpost would skewer me, while The Ed's edit warring would escape mention. That is all fine and expected. The reason I'm here is to again request that you all notify people when you are discussing them in The Signpost; as I've said in the past, that would help avoid these kinds of issues. I've just spent some time checking Wikipedia:Notifications/FAQ, and as far as I can tell, notifications don't work in Wikipedia space, only in talk space, so I had no idea an article making false statements impacting me had run. Don't professional publications typically solicit feedback from folks they are reporting on-- particularly if they are about to skewer them with inaccurate info? In this case in particular, we have a COI situation already delicate because of your involvement and with The Ed's long-standing animosity, but issues like these that can be professionally addressed and easily resolved are often complicated over there because there are still some Signpost writers who haven't even evidenced basic competency in writing Wikipedia articles, much less journalistic articles (I just browsed the Newsroom page and see that trend has not remitted-- I understand we are short on good editors everywhere and poor writing at The Signpost probably can't be avoided, so please-- just notify people!). I see that News and Notes in now being developed off-Wiki, so that accountability is removed; in the absence of anything else or a response from you, I assume Keilana wrote that article. Anyway, I only came by to ask that you please begin notifying people when you write about them in The Signpost-- the corrections were easy enough and I could have done them sooner had I known. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:43, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
I'm pinging Ed about your concerns here. He's in charge, and (as I implied above) the task of writing those major NAN pieces just about kills me, so my purview is pretty narrow on the day. Tony (talk) 10:48, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
I'm sure pinging Ed will help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:57, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sandy, I think your comments here are quite disingenuous, and I wish you would drop your inexplicable vendetta against me. I'm sorry my copy wasn't perfect, that's because we were short on time and I chose to take care of a problem at work rather than hunt down a copyeditor to do a rush job. You insinuating that I don't have "basic competency in writing Wikipedia articles" is nasty and unfounded as well, I really don't appreciate your snide comments like that. However, I don't think I misrepresented anything that anyone did, and I certainly didn't do so out of COI or maliciousness. I was obviously not a participant in that discussion and don't have strong feeligs about it. Furthermore, I was unaware that notifications didn't work in Wikipedia space and assumed that people would know I had mentioned them. I would have appreciated a notification of this discussion myself, I just happen to have this page on my watchlist so I could participate. I get that you have concerns, but if you have an issue with something I did, take it to me, don't go to people who weren't involved in writing the piece. Keilana|Parlez ici 15:22, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

So let's support each other, and be kind to each other—all of us. Tony (talk) 15:31, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that would be nice :) Keilana, I did not say you don't have "basic competency ... "; that there have been long-standing issues in that realm at The Signpost doesn't mean the comment was specifically aimed at you. What is aimed at you is that, if you are going to make statements that impact editors' reputations, I don't care how busy you are in real life-- either don't accept the task of doing the writing if you are too busy to do it correctly, or take the time to get your facts right and please ... the only take-home message here ... notify the editors you are writing about. That you still don't see that you misrepresented is a concern; I do not appreciate gaining a reputation for editwarring, when I don't. "Buddy bias" can be sub-conscious, and the tone of your post here indicates you probably did have some bias in that writing, which caused you to overlook the fact that you misrepresented three good editors in your writing. Again, the take-home message is that same can be avoided by instituting a practice at The Signpost of letting editors know when you are discussing them. As to notifying you of this discussion, I am still trying to understand the new Notification system myself, but my understanding is that I did notify you by linking to your name. Did that not work? I am coming to the conclusion that the new Notification system is fairly useless, but I thought by linking to your name you would be notified. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:40, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
Well, if nothing else, we can agree that the Notifications system sucks. :) I still don't think I painted you as an edit-warrior. All I said was that David made a change, you reverted him, and then several editors reverted each other, which is an accurate statement - looking at the history, I count 5 editors involved in an edit war, which did not include you or David. I don't know what you want from me with regards to bias - I doubt you could find anyone willing to write a brief report on this discussion who hadn't become friendly with at least one person on either side. I'll try in the future to make my prose more clear to avoid any misunderstandings. Keilana|Parlez ici 21:14, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
It's not the prose I'm worried about-- mine is as bad or worse than the next person's-- I am asking that you all notify. This instance could have been avoided with a few simple prose adjustments (as shown in the diff above). Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Notifications work in Wikipedia space. If you're not getting them there must be some other problem — uh, could you have them turned off? Bishonen | talk 09:10, 23 July 2013 (UTC).

All's well that ends well

File:MYANMAR BEER AT THE NEW DOREEN RESTAURANT YANGON MYANMAR JAN 2013 (8492498537).jpg

Thanks from Myanmar. 203.81.67.123 (talk) 13:23, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

sheesh

You deserve more than barns or stars for venturing into indonesian soccer crap, you'll find there is a very large mount of indonesian score board itis idiots who dont have english mucking around in there with over linking, too many flags, and no content - enjoy... sats 08:43, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

oops there was only one in your recent batch - even the sight of one showing up is enough for me to break out into the talk page derision of the vacuous collection of articles... sats 08:50, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
At the moment, it's a year-link focus. Looking at categories related to Indonesian football, it's hard to find a concentrated list of articles needing treatment. There's no wikiproject. If there are a few editors who could be contacted about this, let me know. Tony (talk) 08:52, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
In the past I have simply made sure they have wp:football, and WP:indonesia on their talk pages - probably the yearlinkstuff might pass them by - its more the hollow results oriented articles (ie zilch substantive content), rather than a format issue... as for the eds - it tends to be the contributors of the results, flags and overlinking who are adding to them... more or less a lost cause to get a squeek out of them unfortunately... sats 10:28, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
Let's be pleased they're not on the DYK or en.WN main-page drip with these quick-and-dirty stubs. Tony (talk) 10:30, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Good work

The Signpost Barnstar
Thank you, Tony, for the frighteningly large amount of work you do for the Signpost's "News and notes" section. Your efforts are greatly appreciated by both me and the movement as a whole. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage 10th anniversary

Hi Tony, Wikivoyage is celebrating its 10th anniversary today by Wikivoyagers all around the world. It would be nice if you mention about it in the next Signpost newsletter.

--139.190.159.228 (talk) 13:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm alerting the Signpost's editor in chief, The ed17. Tony (talk) 14:56, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Hyderabad FAC

Hi! Whenever you have time, can you please re-visit the FAC for Hyderabad, India? Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 01:15, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

We have answered all the quaries given by you at Hyderabad FAC, kindly find some time and please let us know if those are enough. Regards :) --Omer123hussain (talk) 04:58, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 July 2013

"X-Cops" reply

Sorry to get back to you so late. Thanks for the comments on the FAN page for "X-Cops". I changed what you suggested. How does it look now?--Gen. Quon (Talk) 00:35, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

July 2013

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Out of context bullshit

The links are to WMF's own logs. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:09, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I never doubted that. But you're crossing the line of poor taste. You can make your point about ArbCom with a better example, can't you? Tony (talk) 13:12, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
It is disturbing how aggressively and how often posts are blanked around here. Is this the dystopian future we were warned about? If the Signpost is ever to be considered credible, discussion of the foundation which runs Wikipedia cannot be suppressed.24.19.234.62 (talk) 19:22, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
We allow a relatively open range of comments, but I typically only allow a soapbox to get so high before cutting it off. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:14, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
It's probably a bad idea to host a news outlet in a Wikipedia environment, since "soapboxing", "point [making]", and "outing" are things a free press does all the time. There is also a massive conflict of interest in being simultaneously a Wikipedia administrator, a coordinator of a Wikipedia project and the editor of the Signpost. It would seem to me that these roles should be strictly separated, and this is an excellent illustration of why.24.19.234.62 (talk) 21:30, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
We operate in as wide of a latitude as we possibly can. Where's the COI there? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:34, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
That's like the CEO of Exxon also being a congressman and the editor of the Washington Post.24.19.234.62 (talk) 21:44, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, tell me that again when I'm making millions of dollars from oil while legislating policy and covering myself in the Post. (1) admins are just editors with a couple extra tools, tools that I rarely use. (2) coordinating a project is, um, nothing similar to setting policy. There's literally no comparison you can make. (3) sure, there's a comparison, if you think that a tiny, Wikimedia-focused outlet can actually be compared to the worldwide scope of the Post. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:54, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
Sure, it's tiddlywinks, but lacks credibility even on this scale. Generally, people who are part of a management structure, for example. an administrator or a project coordinator, are going to want to defuse controversy which surrounds it. This is the opposite of what a journalist wants to do. If you ever have to ask yourself how your actions on the Signpost will affect your standing among fellow administrators, that's a conflict of interest. It doesn't mean you grow horns on your head and acquire an evil laugh, just that there are considerations which pull you in different directions.
I'm not a journalist, but trying to think like one, and looking at this case you're reporting on, the thing that leaps out at me is the evidence page appears to have been heavily censored:[13][14]. Why not the headline, "Evidence deleted in Ironholds case"?24.19.234.62 (talk) 22:02, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, I've never thought about what people think of me. Frankly, I don't really care. I may be an administrator, sure, and a coordinator in what is by far my favorite topic area, but I'm not part of the regular structure, something that has served me well in the past. As for why not, we operate within the constraints of Wikipedia, which means not contravening the BLP policy. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:32, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
ArbCom is irrelevant. The point is that WMF's CEO creates a hostile work environment for women, following the example of Ironholds. IRC scandals damage Wikipedia. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:22, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
To be honest, I think the environment is equally hostile no matter what your gender. Eric Corbett 22:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Overlinking

OK. Thanks. --Lemur12 (talk) 11:06, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

You are most welcome! Tony (talk) 11:13, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

DYK-Good Article Request for Comment

Query

Hey Tony, do you know of a script or AWB module that can deal with overlinking? --John (talk) 20:31, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

That looks interesting and I will definitely try it, but I also wanted to be able to quickly assess and address "real" links that are used too frequently in an article. At the moment I have a fairly laborious work-around in AWB, but it's a pain. Any thoughts? --John (talk) 21:12, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
Most of the terms (and circumstances) unlinked by the script are "real world" terms that often get overlinked according to my experience (and Tony's). If you can show me your famous workaround, perhaps I can offer some suggestions. I can also easily adapt the regex rules of my script into an AWB module, if you're interested. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 02:52, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 July 2013

FAN Responses

Hello! I don't know if I ever successfully got a hold of you. I was wondering you had seen the changes I'd made to "X-Cops", per your suggestions, and if there was anything else you'd suggest.--Gen. Quon (Talk) 23:24, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Revert

Tony - what was up with this revert? I would have done the same if there were any two-comma-wanting editors who had not re-expressed their opinion in the survey section that was added by dicklyon in the middle of the discussion. How is that not equitable? Dohn joe (talk) 03:14, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't matter which side. To start with, one of your insertions is from an editor who is topic-banned from such discussions. There is no verficiation of either. And as an aside, I do believe you yourself have removed a proxy insertion into a previous discussion. Tony (talk) 03:32, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't aware that Apteva had been topic banned - I won't add his !vote back in. As for BDD, they clearly opined very plainly on the topic several times before dicklyon opened the survey section, including the lines directly below the survey section; that seems pretty darn verified. And as for the Brand New edit, you may recall that I didn't remove your relation of N's thoughts from afar - just the proxy !vote. I stand by the idea that someone who voluntarily removes himself from our community has forfeited the right to participate actively in it. I know you two are wikifriends, and I know you feel that he was hounded away, and I truly do sympathize with you because of that. I don't, and never have had a bone to pick with you, Tony. Dohn joe (talk) 05:15, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
That's fine if you want to sift through MOS for everyone who has ever objected to the single comma; otherwise, proxy !votes should not be posted there. Tony (talk) 05:27, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
I have no desire to sift through the MOS to look for any kind of comma supporters. All I did was go through the current discussion and look for people who contributed to that one discussion before the survey section was added, so that the survey would accurately reflect the history of the discussion. That's why I don't consider it a "proxy vote" - I intentionally did not go outside the bounds of the current discussion. I understand that there might be an appearance of bias, though, since the opinion in question coincides with mine, so would you consider re-inserting the reflection of BDD's intent in the survey? I would greatly appreciate it. Dohn joe (talk) 05:45, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
I believe it would be proper for you to make a request of anyone who expressed an opinion above, rather than inserting a proxy !vote. Tony (talk) 06:02, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Noetica

Wikipedia talk:Missing Wikipedians#Noetica (version of 04:22, 6 August 2013) may interest you, and it may interest Noetica, who may be watching this talk page.
—Wavelength (talk) 04:26, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm unsure why you posted this message, though. Tony (talk) 04:30, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
I posted it because you may wish to watch that page and its talk page, and also because Noetica may be watching your talk page. In retrospect, I sense that posting it here may have been excessive.
—Wavelength (talk) 04:39, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
I doubt it: last I heard he was extremely busy, helping clients to write high-level text. Tony (talk) 04:52, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

CP

You added Idiom dictionary to Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2013 May 29, but the "source" you listed is a Wikipedia diff. Did you insert the wrong url?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 19:17, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Question

As an expert on grammar, do you have any advice for the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2013/September#Commas in metro areas? We have kind of an odd situation there, dealing with metropolitan and micropolitan areas in the United States. The census bureau provides data every ten years, and the Office of Management and Budget picks a bunch of areas every so often and defines them either as metropolitan or micropolitan areas, and defines which cities and towns are included in each. For example, Las Vegas has a metropolitan area that they call the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV Metropolitan Statistical Area, and one including Dayton, Ohio, called the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area. There are 939 of these,[15] and of these we have a little over 100 articles of the format [[city, state metro/micropolitan area]]. None of these are contained within the named city. Clearly if someone writes the sentence, Dayton, Ohio, is part of a metropolitan area, a comma is needed after the state, but what about the sentence, the Dayton, Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area includes Dayton, Ohio? Is a comma required between Ohio and Metropolitan? Thanks. Oh, we also have two articles of the format city, state, metro/micropolitan area, but one of those was moved to that title today. Apteva (talk) 08:20, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

You overestimate me. I've never liked the bumpety-bump of two successive commas in this situation, if avoidable (just as we break logic on one level by not writing "... in the U.S.." at the end of a sentence, bowing to the English distaste for the doubling. If I had my way, it would be "... Dayton, Ohio is part of ...". The previous example would take the second comma more easily: "and one including Dayton, Ohio, called the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area"; cf. "and one including Dayton, called the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area". Tony (talk) 08:33, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
Tony - having seen your reply here, I was surprised to see your !vote on the second comma issue. If you agree the second comma is unnecessary and "bumpy," why not stand up for that position? Dohn joe (talk) 17:18, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
Because I've thought more about it: ambiguity is worse than bumpiness. Tony (talk) 02:49, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
But where is the ambiguity? "Canandaigua is the second-largest city in the Rochester, New York metropolitan area." Any reading of that sentence that includes "New York metropolitan area" as a phrase renders the sentence effectively meaningless; there is no reasonable ambiguity to resolve. A second comma does not improve the understanding of the sentence, and it actively impairs its readability. I think your initial thinking on this issue was correct. Dohn joe (talk) 20:57, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. If this was French, we could just ask the academy. "The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language. Its rulings, however, are only advisory, not binding on either the public or the government.[citation needed]" Apteva (talk) 16:11, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Humble request for assistance in a dispute.

Hi there. I found your userpage by searching through the edit history of the Manual of Style, in the hopes that I could find someone well-versed in journalistic style and naming conventions.

I'm currently involved in a dispute with some other editors over the naming of the "big.LITTLE" article. As far as I can tell, they are all computer-programmer types who know a lot about technical stuff but very little about correct English. The dispute began when in passing, I casually renamed the article from "big.LITTLE" to "Big.little": As it is not an acronym, it seemed like an obvious error. Then a huge debate ensued.

So if you feel like you have the necessary writing education, or whether you know someone who does, I'd be grateful for a professional opinion.

InternetMeme (talk) 11:47, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm busy until tomorrow. I believe Dicklyon has expertise in this kind of thing, and is a scientist himself. Tony (talk) 12:36, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Hey, thanks for replying. There's no real hurry with this issue. It's good that Dicklyon has experience with this kind of thing, but the fact that he's a scientist means that he may not have a great deal of expertise when it comes to the arts and language, as it's rare to find someone with a degree in both those fields.
I'm specifically looking for someone who has expertise in language or journalism. I guess it's possible that Dicklyon is qualified in this area as well though, I guess. InternetMeme (talk) 13:04, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I do have experience and interest in style and naming policies and guidelines and such. This one is a lost cause. If you really thought the more English-like style was widely used in sources, you needed to make that case (which after checking sources, I would not agree with), following BRD, rather than edit warring. Telling all the others there that the MOS mandates it, and that their opinions are irrelevant, while move warring over it, doomed your case, and made it an unattractive case for people who support the MOS. Abusing the MOS as a hammer can only harm it. Dicklyon (talk) 16:02, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, I definitely think we need someone with a journalism degree to look at this. My perspective, having spent a lot of time referencing Britannica, I've never seen a title have more than one uppercase letter per word. I was also taught this rule in an introductory language course. It is simply not done. Obviously it's not fair to expect you guys to take my word for it, but I think that kind of thing is second nature to anyone with a journalism degree, which is why it's necessary to get them to weigh in on the issue. InternetMeme (talk) 11:57, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
See Category:Wikipedian journalists.—Wavelength (talk) 14:52, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Monthly Updates userpage

Hi Tony1, much respect for all your work on WP but how about getting rid of your user page on "Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes"? I typed "WP:Updates" into the search box, a reasonable thing to do I thought that others may well do also, and there it was - not touched since 2008. --Noyster (talk) 22:07, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Sure. How to do it? There's a template somewhere, I think. You're welcome to do the honours. Tony (talk) 01:28, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Bach trip

Stalking Gerda Arendt, I noticed your intention to visit Leipzig (which is in Saxony, not Thuringia – where Erfurt, Eisenach, and Weimar are must-see places). I've just been there (during the recent floods) and I stronly recommend you put (at least) 2 days for a visit to Dresden aside – it's much more spectacular than Leipzig (although the 2 Bach churches there & his grave made my hair stand on end). Bon voyage – Gute Reise -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:43, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I know that Leipzig is not in Thuringia. Unfortunately there's not really time for Dresden ... it's several hours by train, and Halle (Handelhaus) and Köthen beckon while I'm in Leipzig, as well as the primary reason for going, yes, the two churches (and the Bachmuseum). I'll keep it in mind if I feel a day-trip to Dresden is manageable, though, of my three days in L. I'm then staying in Eisenach (within reach of Muhlhausen) and Arnstadt (within reach of Ohrdurf and Dornheim), and will spend a half-day in Weimar as I pass through. Ehrfurt doesn't have much Bach attraction (wasn't the church burnt down?). This planning has made me realise the extent to which the Wikivoyage model needs updating. Tony (talk) 14:57, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 07 August 2013

Re:Reminder

Hello, Tony1. You have new messages at Paul MacDermott's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Paul MacDermott (talk) 14:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Comment requested

Since you provided some editing on the article, I was wondering if you might weigh in on the discussion about whether or not to delete it

Doug Turnbull (author} Bides time (talk) 22:00, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Xuxa twist?

I noticed that your recent edit was not like your previous ones [16] [17]. Was that from a mouse malfunction? Or perhaps it might be worth testing a concept where certain non-STRONGNAT articles are style-toggled every 3-4 months. Will await your thoughts either way... Dl2000 (talk) 00:25, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

My error—now fixed. Thx. Tony (talk) 01:36, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Re:Dashes script

Hello, Tony1. You have new messages at Paul MacDermott's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Paul MacDermott (talk) 14:08, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

En dashes in ranges style change

I'm curious what consensus you were citing when you made this change. You seemed to think that the example "1492? – 7 April 1556" was inconsistent with the previous wording of the style guide. However, you missed (as I almost did) the hidden-in-plain-sight space after the question mark. Contrarily, the example 1–17 September, would not be possible if your change were made. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 07:13, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

The previous wording was ambiguous (at least one space in both endpoints, or one?). The 1492? example proved the point: one endpoint has an internal space in that example; whereas in the other examples both endpoints have internal spaces. I'm hoping the wording is less ambiguous now. True? Tony (talk) 07:51, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
"1492?" has a space after the punctuation, so both endpoints do have spaces. According to the style, without the question mark it would be "1492–7 April 1556". Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 08:17, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
No, "7 April 1556" has two internal spaces; therefore "1492–7 April 1556" needs to be "1492 – 7 April 1556". Tony (talk) 08:19, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
Both sides need "at least one space" If that weren't the case, wouldn't 1–17 September, February–October 2009 be wrong? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 08:47, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
Because the endpoints—to take your first example—are not "1" and "17 September"; they are "1" and "17". Tony (talk) 11:23, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Concertized

Worried that I'd have to trout myself, I pulled some old revisions to the article. As it turns out, the Wikipedian who made this edit is the one that invented the word "concertized" :-). My dictionary informs me that it is a real verb, at least in North America, but it means to give a concert. He may have meant "constituted". AGK [•] 13:05, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I first thought ... ah, several laws coming together (in concert) ... but re-read the sentence and realised it was simpler. I hope I've chosen something safe enough – I have someone who's closer to this topic looking over my shoulder, actually, and there were no noises emanating when I changed it. :-) Tony (talk) 13:12, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 August 2013

Commas, again

Tony - I just made a similar post at dicklyon's talkpage (and at the comma debate as well), but I wanted to draw your attention to this authority, too, since I know both of you give great thought to issues of style/grammar. Don't you think that Garner's description/guidance/analysis of using dates as adjectives really hits the mark as to placenames as well? The earlier cites I found were much more oblique. Here, he really comes right out and says that a) most stylists use one comma; b) one comma is grammatically/stylistically more sound (and why); and c) few, if any, guides address the specific issue of date/placename as adjective. Doesn't that cut right to the heart of the debate? Dohn joe (talk) 21:00, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Dohn, I've got Garner—it's quite good, although a bit uneven. I've noted that page you link to. Tony (talk) 14:22, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

This Month in Education: August 2013



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FAC

Hey, I went a bunch of times through the article and combed and re-combed it. Sorry for bugging in, but I would really appreciate if you could let me know if you think the article is still below par. Thanks, Nergaal (talk) 02:32, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

I would of course have to defer to you, the Superior Emperor and Chief Everything Officer of the Galactic Society of Deofbuscation via Reverse Circumlocuation and Antiesquipedalianist Unobscurantism. :-) W Nowicki (talk) 19:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Tony. :)

There's a very specific procedure for listing pages at WP:CP, much like at WP:AFD. If you want to list an article for review there, please first tag the article with {{copyvio}}. It will generate a template for you to place at the copyvio page (and give you a link to show you where to place it) and also give you a template to notify the editor. This notification is really important. Listings at WP:CP are not supposed to be closed until the contributor of the content has had at least a week's notice. If you forget what template to use, all this can be found at Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#Instructions_for_listing_text-based_copyright_concerns. I'm afraid that the instructions at the bottom of the page are messed up because of the backlog. :/

I went ahead and looked at the article you listed, and this one is okay. :) If you look at the link, at the bottom of the article that includes the problematic section, you'll see "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer) This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. Last updated on Friday October 10, 2008 at 20:22:45 PDT (GMT -0700) View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit" Not all content on reference.com is from Wikipedia, but quite a bit of it is.

Thanks for being conscientious about such issues! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:59, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Tippett

Hi, Tony, I was hoping that my efforts to upgrade the Tippett article would inspire your attention. Please keep up the good work as time allows – it will save me a lot of time in the final polishing, when the expansion is complete. I expect the article to keep me busy for several weeks yet. One small point: I see you have added nbsps into the page numbers. I never do this - don't see any point, since the page references don't occur in the text. Please don't feel you need to do this. Regards, Brianboulton (talk) 10:47, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Non-breaking spaces: sure ... I've never known what the protocol was. Tony (talk) 10:54, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 August 2013

The Signpost: 28 August 2013

Congratulations

100000 Edits
Congratulations on reaching 100000 edits. You have achieved a milestone that very few editors have been able to accomplish. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts. Keep up the good work!

If you like you can add this userbox to your collection.

This user has been awarded with the 100000 Edits award.

```Buster Seven Talk 11:53, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

MfD

Please consider posting a reply to Dank at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes. Thanks! -- Jreferee 06:42, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 September 2013

The Signpost: 11 September 2013

What do you think of this?

What are your thoughts on this closure? GabeMc (talk|contribs) 20:08, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Question about date formats

Hi Tony, I hope all is well with you.

I wonder if I could ask you about spaced/unspaced en dashes in dates. Is the following correct (all in the same article, in case consistency is an issue)?

  1. c. 2000–1700 BCE
  2. c. 20 BCE – 50 CE
  3. c. 64 BCE – c. 23 CE

That is, no space when two numbers are together; otherwise a space? I feel reasonably sure about 1 and 3, but less sure about 2. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:14, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Tony, thanks, that's very helpful, and I hope you're having a lovely time! SlimVirgin (talk) 20:07, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
Slim, just before I shut down the connection here: No. 1 does imply that both ends of the range are "c." (approximately), since the closed form treats them as both the same WRT to the "c." and the "BCE". "c. 2000 BCE – 1700 BCE" would indicate that only the first is approximate, and the second definite. This is such a minor point, and so fussy, that I think most writers would miss it. I think it would be necessary to repeat the "BCE". Tony (talk) 20:26, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
Okay, that makes sense – if we're going to do it, we may as well do it right. Thanks for taking time out of your trip to help me with en dashes. :D SlimVirgin (talk) 20:38, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history coordinator election

Greetings from WikiProject Military history! As a member of the project, you are invited to take part in our annual project coordinator election, which will determine our coordinators for the next twelve months. If you wish to cast a vote, please do so on the election page by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September! Kirill [talk] 17:41, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

This Month in Education: September 2013



Headlines

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Sarocharu

Thank you so much for the Interference and for trying to settle the issue between users such as between Me and Ohconfucius. Consensus reached in that Article's Talk page Discussion and i'm changing the Date formats to those Indian articles i contribute daily to DMY per Ties, Strong NAT :) Raghusri (talk) 11:06, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Please assume good faith. And I'm sure you're aware of the guidelines for changing date format (in particular, "ties" and "retain"). Thank you. Tony (talk) 12:43, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 September 2013

Tippett

Hi, Tony, many thanks for your continuing watch and help on Tippett. Just to let you know, I'm more or less done with the biography material, and am working (when I can) on the "music" sections – hard going. Then I'll be doing the lead. Brianboulton (talk) 09:05, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Brian, thanks, and nice work. I'll pop in a few times today to lightly edit the bio sections; and I'll take a look at the music section without editing, I think. Yes, it will be the most challenging part of the article. I have Kemp at home, but won't be back until Sunday. Mmmm, I also have a peer-reviewed article by Peter Denison, who visited him in the late 70s and did the walk around the property with him. I'll hunt it down.

The Signpost: 25 September 2013

2C-H listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect 2C-H. Since you had some involvement with the 2C-H redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). —[AlanM1(talk)]— 21:17, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Dashes and Wikisource

Please note that this edit broke four interwiki links to Wikisource. Editing within the {{cite DNB}} template is not appropropriate, and the Wikisource title convention, for the DNB, is hyphen not endash in titles. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:44, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) This can easily be fixed with REDIRECTs at Wikisource; now done for Bourn, Palmer, Turner. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:27, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Script-assisted fixes

Hey, Tony. When you made some script-assisted fixes at Little Nemo today, you changed a bunch of dates in refs from YYYY-MM-DD to MMM D, YYYY, even though WP:DATESNO allows YYYY-MM-DD for refs (in fact, all my FAs passed with YYYY-MM-DD dates in the refs). Also, you changed a "#4" to a "No. 4", even though MOS:POUND makes an exception there for comic books. I assume these are exceptions that aren't written into the script? Curly Turkey (gobble) 05:11, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Replying on your talk page now. Tony (talk) 05:13, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't know if any discussion ever took place re the pound sign exception, but its usage is in universal usage amongst the basement nerds.
It's my secret hope that the "phone-number dates" will someday become the norm in the Anglosphere. They are in Japan, where I live (and where they're hard-coded into the language), and they're the easiest to sort electronically. Oh, and ditto 24-hour time. And metric. And world peace, and a cure for cancer. Curly Turkey (gobble) 05:52, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
24-hour time. And metric. And world peace, and a cure for cancer—oh now yer talking; we're on the same page there. But ISO dates are hard for your average reader to parse at normal reading speed, partly because the middle number has to be translated into a month (requires thought unless you do it every day) and partly because there's the dmy/mdy duality (especially for non-Americans) to interfere with the order in which the last two components are processed. It was originally favoured in space-constrained spots on WP; I can see at least some rationale for that. But ref lists aren't really space-constrained. Enuff gobbling by me. Tony (talk) 06:09, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
I guess what it comes down to is that I like taking advantage of the MoS wherever it'll let me get away with it. "MMM DD, YYYY" is a major botch in the language, and I like to do my part to erode it. Curly Turkey (gobble) 08:18, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
That's interesting to know where you're coming from, CT. I guess a lot of people outside North America, including me, think the md,y is undesirable coz it has to have that comma (jostling numbers), and doesn't go from small to big or big to small linearly; so coming from a dmy environment, people wonder why bother with ISO. In Japanese, then, they say the date in ISO fashion, yes? Has it been that way for centuries, or is it a modern artefact? Tony (talk) 08:24, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
I can't say with perfect confidence that there's never been another way of ordering dates in Japanese, and Google isn't helping me there. All I can say is I've never come across a Japanese date, even under older dating systems, that wasn't YMD. And yes, it' s spoken that way, too. Apparently, it's the same in China and Korea (which makes me imagine the Koreans and Chinese picked it up from the Chinese, along with the written language). Curly Turkey (gobble) 11:32, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
Do they say the month as a number or as the month name? Tony (talk) 12:21, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
As a number: １月 "ichigatsu" is "first month", or January. They used to have names for months, but they've long fallen out of use (I imagine since they adopted the Gregorian calendar in the mid-19th century). They didn't get quite as far as numbering they days of the week, though---they're named after heavenly bodies ("Sun-day", "Moon-day", "Mars-day"...) My understanding is they didn't have weeks until they westernized in the 19th century---before then they had arcane ways of determining the month's irregular days of rest. Curly Turkey (gobble) 13:55, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
That's fascinating. And I wonder whether it was the introduction of railways (with timetables) that prompted changes to the way the language dealt with time. That was certainly the case in England, and then elsewhere in Europe, according to Tony Judt's wonderful essay on railways.

I'm emailng you concerning a WMF issue, because you're in Japan. Tony (talk) 01:38, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Yep, it's the same for other east Asian languages, notably Chinese. There, Monday is 'day of the week one', and so on. It's now more deeply ingrained in the culture than Confucius (I jest), so you can pity people of the big-endian cultures have parsing little-endian dates, let alone the rather illogical and redundant (comma, that is) middle-endian dates. I would have no issue with that yyyy mm dd format as such, but this being en.wp, it's a hard sell to most occidentals except for nerds. I would welcome having that as one of the "standard formats" instead of md,y. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 02:09, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
I'd've thought it was the nerds running the show ;) Curly Turkey (gobble) 04:50, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
At least the nerds know something. Sadly, most of the people who run the show are just wannabes who know nothing. -- Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 05:29, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

John Edward Brownlee

Hi Tony,

I noticed that you have been involved with the John Edward Brownlee articles in the past and I thought that you might be interested in the current featured topic candidacy for these articles. Any constructive comments you would be willing to provide there would be greatly appreciated.

Neelix (talk) 20:05, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

October 2013

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Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Albert Band may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

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The Signpost: 02 October 2013

Calling in the professional

Tony1, not sure we are simpatico, but would really appreciate if you could peer review/ce Fluorine. It's got a lot of cool layout and content. Your help on the Lead and first major section would help brushup what the reader sees first. Know you can make the words sing.98.117.75.177 (talk) 17:41, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Recent edits to David T. Ansted

Hello, and thank you for your recent contributions. I appreciate the effort you made for our project, but unfortunately I had to undo your edit(s) because I believe the article was better before you made that change. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions. Thank you! Epicgenius(give him tirade • check out damage) 15:55, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 09 October 2013

This Month in Education: October 2013



Headlines

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RE: Your revet

Hello! The reverts I made were for the IPs from Guatemala that was rangeblocked several times for disrupting Wikipedia by linking dates on Latin music albums despite repeated warnings to do so, as well as adding unsourced release dates and singles. It seems I made it seems mistakes with the mass reversion for I apologize for the inconvience. Erick (talk) 05:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

No problem! I hope those changes in duration times were OK. I don't know the topic. Cheers. Tony (talk) 06:16, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

heresay

Tony, If you're going to continue to say things like "Toddst1 has a record of bad behaviour not befitting an admin" and "This is certainly not the first time I've seen Toddst1 involved in abusive behaviour" you should be able to show that WP:ADMINABISE has in fact occurred and that your comments are being constructive. If you truly think I'm such a shitty admin, I suggest starting an WP;RFCU/A.

Instead what I see is, whenever my name is mentioned on ANI lately, you come up with these hollow pearls rather than investigating whether I have abused any administrative privileges or what the circumstances in fact are.

In the case with TWC, it is more than clear that while I have been less than diplomatic with this highly and serially confrontational editor, I have not used *any* administrative privileges, which makes it impossible for me to have abused them.

I have made 75,000+ edits on 34,000+ unique pages and made about 24,000 administrative actions. I've made quite a few tough calls and indeed screwed up a few times. Despite a few issues (which everyone has), I have a record of good behavior. If you look at the percentage of my edits with which folks have taken issue, they are infinitesimally small. However small that is, it still leaves room for improvement which I continually aspire to.

However, continuing to make hollow comments like those can be considered personal attacks and with the serial nature over several ANI discussions is starting to look like harassment. Please stop.

Respectfully, Toddst1 (talk) 14:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry to have upset you; I'm surprised, and I really don't want to see you upset. I won't say anything more about that issue, but may I put in a plea that there might be some way of mollifying this difficult user? I'm wondering why TWC is reacting as s/he is. It would be worthy of admiration if you were able to find ways of settling things down by solving that puzzle. Tony (talk) 14:59, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your positive response.
As far as why TWC reacts this way, I've run across a number of editors with a similar pattern. I have no idea what the causes(s) of these types of reactions are, but when folks talk about how "I lay my vengeance upon thee," there is clearly a serious problem.
While I wrote WP:ANIISLOUSY for the benefit of new admins, it speaks to one of the points you made in your last point on ANI with regard to ANI favoring harsher penalties. I *did* put forward a much more focused remedy which was not received well, and subsequently retracted.
Thanks again and I look forward to working constructively with you in the future. Cheers! Toddst1 (talk) 15:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 16 October 2013

The Signpost: 23 October 2013

Books and Bytes: The Wikipedia Library Newsletter

Books and Bytes

Volume 1, Issue 1, October 2013

by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs)

Greetings Wikipedia Library members! Welcome to the inaugural edition of Books and Bytes, TWL’s monthly newsletter. We're sending you the first edition of this opt-in newsletter, because you signed up, or applied for a free research account: HighBeam, Credo, Questia, JSTOR, or Cochrane. To receive future updates of Books and Bytes, please add your name to the subscriber's list. There's lots of news this month for the Wikipedia Library, including new accounts, upcoming events, and new ways to get involved...

New positions: Sign up to be a Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, or a Volunteer Wikipedia Librarian

Wikipedia Loves Libraries: Off to a roaring start this fall in the United States: 29 events are planned or have been hosted.

New subscription donations: Cochrane round 2; HighBeam round 8; Questia round 4... Can we partner with NY Times and Lexis-Nexis??

New ideas: OCLC innovations in the works; VisualEditor Reference Dialog Workshop; a photo contest idea emerges

News from the library world: Wikipedian joins the National Archives full time; the Getty Museum releases 4,500 images; CERN goes CC-BY

Announcing WikiProject Open: WikiProject Open kicked off in October, with several brainstorming and co-working sessions

New ways to get involved: Visiting scholar requirements; subject guides; room for library expansion and exploration

Read the full newsletter


Thanks for reading! All future newsletters will be opt-in only. Have an item for the next issue? Leave a note for the editor on the Suggestions page. --The Interior 20:49, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

A beer for you!

Love your "pet hates" section! I am right there with you. TiMike (talk) 00:33, 29 October 2013 (UTC)


That's nice to know! Tony (talk) 05:03, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

News and notes

I was thinking about the possibility of lending a helping hand with the News and notes section, FYI. Would you have any recommendations about how to start off doing something small? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 18:33, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

"England, UK" vs "England"

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:UK Wikipedians' notice board#England, UK or just England? on a topic you have recently discussed elsewhere. Please have your say if you wish. Thanks, Bretonbanquet (talk) 22:05, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Signpost

The sex tourism article just turned my stomach. But thanks for writing it. Liz Read! Talk! 21:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

It is nonsense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.110.223.98 (talk) 22:22, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 October 2013

Fussing about headers

Hey. I changed the title of your Signpost piece on Wikivoyage because you made an idiom error; however, it was reverted because it's your Signpost piece.

Since you're apparently the only one authorized to make that particular edit, I politely request that you implement it. Thanks. DS (talk) 12:55, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I don't disagree, although I did look it up and it seemed to be in amongst a jumble of words that meant what I intended. Problems are first that it's been there for three days now; it's not way off the mark; and most importantly, "seedy" is amplifying the negativity of the theme more than I feel comfortable with now, given the screeching on the talk page and elsewhere. There's even an attack page at voy.en. Tony (talk) 13:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Could I trouble you to post the URL of the "attack page at voy.en", please? --118.93.67.66 (talk) 07:29, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
By all means. There you'll see a frenetic self-justification in evidence. If you put "jerk" or "dick" into your finder you'll go straight to some of the more abusive things said by the bully-boy admins at Wikivoyage (while piously talking about their "civility policy" in the same breath ... extraordinary). Other editors in that thread have expressed their outrage by insisting that I should have fixed things up while I was researching for the story; that's like the line used by nominators at FAC here in the old days—you did a critique on their prose and they'd say "fix it up yourself".

I expected screeching and scratching and biting ... it's the cost of doing business if you're going to conduct investigative journalism. The good thing is that people in the Wikimedia movement are taking notice, whatever they think of the story. While you'd hope that the Wikivoyage community itself might take a more constructive view, it appears that the alpha-males are not about to let that happen any time soon.

The thing they really got upset about was my claim that if they continue to sit around doing nothing, the site will fade away given the crowded market for online travel information. I still don't understand why they found that so profoundly unsettling. There's no sense, for example, that someone might go for an IEG grant to perform specific jobs—including programming—that could lead to improvements. I supported the migration, and I still think the site can be made to work well. That they see me as an enemy is their own illusion. Funnily enough, I don't think they realised that I was interacting on the site primarily to cover it for the Signpost. Tony (talk) 10:58, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but I couldn't help but comment that I and some other Wikivoyage admins made multiple IEG grant applications earlier this year for a number of high priority features, but these were not accepted, mostly because we couldn't provide our own manpower. The WMF has already told us we're a low priority project and they cannot offer programmers or staff support. Insofar, pretty much all the new features you see on Wikivoyage were grassroots, so we are trying with what little we have, and its disappointing you don't acknowledge that. JamesA >talk 07:14, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
A well-framed IEG project would be hard for them to say no to. There's a shortage of them. Some are very poorly framed. I'd start by going to that road map and isolating what needs to be done technically and in terms of restructuring. Gather consensus for the basis components of a project, plus you have to have someone willing to run it/apply. Then write the draft on a user sandbox at WV. I wish you luck. Take no notice of people who might say it's low priority; I don't know where that's coming from. Make it high priority with a good plan with impact in terms of the WMF's strategic priorities. Tony (talk) 07:19, 9 November 2013 (UTC) PS Start small—a single feature—and use the IEG money to employ a programmer, with the applicant the liaison person between community and programmer? Tony (talk) 07:23, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. The issue is, we have a shortage of programmers, and the WMF is unwilling to contribute manpower. Bugzilla requests go unanswered for months for the most simple things, so full-blown feature requests are simply put on the backburner. Take this as an example. I think it'd be a great way to personalise the wiki experience and encourage travel bloggers who love talking about themselves and where they've been. It's a fairly straight forward idea, but we have no one with the technical know-how to take it and run with it. I'm more than happy to get the consensus and cogs running on the community side of things, and have done so in the past, but we haven't actually got anyone to program. If you know some people who could help, I'd be happy to hear from them! JamesA >talk 08:47, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
I missed the postscript about employing a programmer myself. I would never be in a position to juggle that kind of responsibility, so I guess we were hopeful the WMF would do it for us. But thanks for the tips. JamesA >talk 08:50, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
(e.c.) James, your link reveals yet more ideas that could be implemented. Bugzilla is way behind, and I believe there's a backlog of three to four thousand issues on en.WP alone. We need more engineers. But until that happens, an IEG could be used to fund a wiki-knowledgeable engineer for an important task. I don't know why the WMF would object, as long as they had oversight. I don't know any programmers, sorry. What is also important is WV volunteers who are willing to conceive, apply, and manage such a series of incremental technical schemes. I could review any plan or application if not in a peak work period; but all I have received is abuse from the bullies there, so they'd object to any involvement. I guess that's why we're discussing this here and not there. Tony (talk) 08:55, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Alright, well thanks for offering to volunteer to look over the application. We'll be right as soon as we find a willing programmer. Editors at Wikivoyage are understandably worried at the current time due to recent events. I don't think you can unequivocally dismiss yourself of any wrongdoing or agitation, however, but I don't wish to become embroiled in the conflict. JamesA >talk 09:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 November 2013

Wikipedia_talk:Reward_board#As_we_are_going_to_keep_this.2C_do_we_need_to_tighten_the_criteria_a_bit.3F

Given it's been kept at MfD, I've reposted a proposal to tighten it. See header. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:47, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

MOS:COMMA

I have opened a new RFC at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style § RFC: Proposed amendment to MOS:COMMA regarding geographical references and dates for further discussion. —sroc 💬 08:24, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Given that your objection was to the example beginning "On …," and given that that there are now several alternative examples, I wondered if this might swing you around to support the proposal and invite your input on which example(s) you would prefer to see? —sroc 💬 08:03, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I'll try: bit stressed with client deadlines on Wednesday 13 and Wednesday 20. Tony (talk) 08:07, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
By the way, I hope I haven't offended you with any of my comments. If I have, it was unintentional and I apologise. —sroc 💬 08:07, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I haven't looked, I'm afraid, but I have a very thick skin.  :-) Tony (talk) 11:14, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 November 2013

Invitation to Sydney editathon - Saturday 23rd November

(Sorry if you've received this message before - I did a quick check but didn't see it.) There is a backstage pass coming up to be followed by an editathon in the State Library of New South Wales on Saturday 23 November. This is the first time that an Australian cultural institution has opened its doors to us in this way and will be a special opportunity because the Library is providing: one of its best rooms; its expert curators (along with their expertise and their white gloves); a newly launched website (containing new resources); and of course, items from its collection (including rare and usually unavailable material) which we can look at, learn from, and use, to improve WP articles. For example, on the chosen topic (Australia and WWI), the Library holds many diaries and manuscripts from the period.

As you can see from the Library's project page, they have connected this editathon with their own work. They have already set out a wide range of resources to make things easier for us. Please sign up on the editathon project page if you can participate either online or in person with other Wikipedians. Hope to see you there! 99of9 (talk) 10:30, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 November 2013

EN Wikivoyage

I'm sure you've much more important concerns, but just so you're aware that the shenanigans continue: https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Saqib&oldid=2472008#Warning

--118.93nzp (talk) 15:44, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Tony1. You have new messages at Stefan2's talk page.
Message added 11:48, 28 November 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Stefan2 (talk) 11:48, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

How to maximise the power of your ArbCom vote

Fellow editors, it's simple:

  • don't abstain for any candidate;
  • support as few as you can—the more candidates you support, the more you risk your really favoured candidates being beaten to the post by those you only mildly support;
  • oppose as many candidates as possible—this advantages those you support.

If you've already voted without being aware of this strategy, you can simply go back and vote again; the system will update. I recommend that you take a screenshot before pressing the save button.

Tony (talk) 10:28, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

November 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Nalini Joshi may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "()"s. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

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  • hold either position in the School<ref>http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1728</ref>), and is a past-president of the [[Australian Mathematical Society]].<ref>http://www.austms.org.au/

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  • ''' is an American filmmaker who has directed, produced or / and written music videos, short film], features, documentaries, commercials and [[television programming]].

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Thanks much

"Sir" is gone. - Dank (push to talk) 02:34, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Excellent. This is an instance of colonial resistance on both our parts. Tony (talk) 03:01, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 04 December 2013

Michael Moorcock

Tony1, When you revisit Michael Moorcock you need to do so without converting Retrieved date formats to dmy. I covered this two months ago in reply to your inquiry at User talk:P64#Linking, with instructive references. (In the Moorcock edit summary moments ago, I referred by mistake to my User page rather than User talk page.) --P64 (talk) 16:33, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Survey

As a subscriber to one of The Wikipedia Library's programs, we'd like to hear your thoughts about future donations and project activities in this brief survey. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi t | c 15:17, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions: "too dangerous, even for innocent bystanders"?

RE: your statement at the RFAR "There's the potential for editors not to see that alerts are informational, and the fact that an alert will bring one closer to being sanctioned is a risk for misinterpretation."

Yes, indeedy. I was reminded of a statement of Noetica's from over a year ago, commenting on a specific page under article probation, and went back to look it up.

"'I feel intimidated and under threat of arbitrary sanctions, given the community probation you have imposed and the censorious moves you have recently made against an editor. It's just too dangerous, even for innocent bystanders. I see little hope for improvement of the article or the situation surrounding it.' That's from my Archive 6. My view has not changed; nor have my feelings of dread."

Some of the provisions of one article under sanction: "We actually know when we cross the line; we are all intelligent people" "Don't get worked up when you get subjected to remedies such as a temporary block or ban." "Sanctions imposed may include... any other measures the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project."

Just peeking at the new draft proposal...while the old procedures have "guidance" sections for both admins and editors, under the new proposal there are "roles" for admins, but "behavioural expectations" for editors. Ah yes, children have behavior, but adults have conduct, which implies a social contract.

Same song, different tune.

And will the new procedures eliminate warnings that identify misconduct, as appears now? If so, what will replace it, secret courts as some have proposed, and lettres de cachet? A previous "speedbanning" proposal has already failed to gain traction. Interesting times. —Neotarf (talk) 17:36, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)#En dash vs. "and" for multi-state metro areas

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)#En dash vs. "and" for multi-state metro areas. Herostratus (talk) 18:21, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 11 December 2013


Your script

I don't think it's a good idea to de-link infoboxes, or leads for that matter. 1). It's totally against uniformity across music articles 2). Quick reference links for readers is the norm in infoboxes and lead and should remain for readers. Infoboxes and leads can easily be restored after running the script. Mlpearc (open channel) 13:29, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

It's widely accepted that it is a good idea not to link words such as "musician", "piano", "singer-songwriter", "vocals", "guitar"—whether in lead or infobox or elsewhere. This has a long history; I can link you to previous discussions if you wish. Tony (talk) 13:37, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Please do. Mlpearc (open channel) 13:42, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

File not showing

Dear Tony,
I checked in Firefox and Chrome in Windows and Linux, I also did not find any thumbnail. The thumbnail of that image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dadhimadhab_Mandir_-_Amragori_-_Howrah_2013-09-22_2849-2901.TIF was removed by User:McZusatz. I could not understand why it was done so! What is the benefit to reduce 25 MB space including thumbnail and original color profile and adding again 475 MB space? I did not make it .JPG because almost six times unique color would be lost! The mandir is one of the greatest terracotta architecture in Howrah district, I wanted not to loose any single color from the stitched hi-res photograph. Regards. -- Biswarup Ganguly (talk) 15:32, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Dear McZusatz,
Thank you for reverting the state of the file. Yes, I shall upload that in .JPG very shortly as you advised. Regards, -- Biswarup Ganguly (talk) 16:15, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
Ganguly, understandably—it's a beautiful picture. Tony (talk) 01:44, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 18 December 2013

Bruxism

Apologies, it looks like I accidentally reverted your copyeditting on bruxism? I meant to only take out the recent primary sources from the treatment section, sorry. Lesion (talk) 14:41, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Lesion, no problem at all. I'm glad you're working on that article (I might return soon and copy-edit a little). Thank you. Tony (talk) 14:42, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
OK I have done what I meant to do the first time now, removing those 2 primary sources placed by someone else and not removing the recent copyeditting. Lesion (talk) 14:47, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia vs Commons for images

Noted this message at the top of your talk page. I understand this sentiment, having seen what kind of admin behavior is permitted on Commons, but I would point out that images which are uploaded to wikipedia and not commons are auto-tagged by a bot for transfer, and then usually get transferred over anyway... I have seen this happen a few times... I didn't think there was any choice but to upload to commons... Lesion (talk) 14:43, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it involves a manual decision, since files that are related only to en.WP are tagged thus and not transferred. (See my three latest for the Signpost's' "News and notes" this week.) I still largely refuse to contribute to Commons after the bully-boy culture was exposed. When they do something about it I'll reconsider. Tony (talk) 01:15, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
I think it does too, and like you I wouldn't recommend anyone to upload to the Commons jungle. Eric Corbett 01:31, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
Interesting. I would like to know more about this exposure of "commons culture" problems. Where can I find more info please? Lesion (talk) 01:45, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Draft RFC

Still very much a draft, and I'm aiming for launch after the holidays, in case you want to have a look at the prose:

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:31, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Happy Holidays...

Happy Holidays
Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and troll-free. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:55, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Glad Tidings and all that ...

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 23:36, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Season's greetings from Santa and her little helpers

I wouldn't wanna fuss wif Santa or doze helpers. Tony (talk) 02:46, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

A Holiday Turkey!

What's a holiday without a funny-tasting chicken? Most flavourful they are soonest after glaring directly into the twinkle of your eye.

Gobble gobble! Curly Turkey (gobble) 02:41, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Happy holiday season....

Cheers, pina coladas all round!
Damn need a few of these after a frenetic year and Xmas. Hope yours is a good one....Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:03, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 25 December 2013

Thanks

Thank you Tony for your tips I really appreciate it.Ahmed Mohi El din (talk) 11:07, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Season's greetings

Hi Tony, just a note to wish you all the best for the New Year. I hope it's a good one for you! Best, SlimVirgin (talk) 16:09, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

My very best to you, too, Slim! Tony (talk) 00:31, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

FC

I'd like to have more people at FP: That I can do that isn't actually a good thing. If the Signpost wants to take it up, that's great, but I don't want to force it in. Just push others to try harder. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:54, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, if you do run with it, please, for god's sake, check whether anyone else did similar. Crisco's a possibility. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:56, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Can you contact one of the authors directly? We are about to publish, but late changes are possible, if normally resisted. Tony (talk) 03:58, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
Why not save it for next week? Could do top producers of content in each type, and interview as many of them as are available? Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
It'd need a little research, but shouldn't be excessively hard; the amount of content isn't that high. Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
The publish button has been pushed, I believe. Next week would be good, if you can liaise with the other guys? Tony (talk) 04:21, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 January 2014

January 2014

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Review a redundancy example change

Hi Tony! It's been a long time. I found another word that could be eliminated in one of your redundancy exercises. As always, I would like your opinion. I made the edit already, but please feel free to revert it if you disagree. (The word "should" can be eliminated because it is part of a recommendation, which already implies that something "should" be done). Ke6jjj (talk) 20:45, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Ke6, thanks, I'm OK with that. The only drawback is that it exposes the almost archaic subjective "that it be". That particular exercise needs a good look; I'm not so happy about the end solution. Tony (talk) 10:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikilinking

Hi Tony, and thanks for dropping by on my talk page to give guidance as to what should not be wikilinked. Did you have any particular edit of mine in mind? I seem to spend a lot of my editing time in Category:Dead-end_pages trying to make edits to justify the removal of the "dead end" tag. Most articles present plenty of opportunities for the insertion of really useful wikilinks, but I must admit that there have been a few where I have simply linked a couple of geographical locations in order to justify removing the tag.

I generally try to follow WP:UNDERLINK and WP:OVERLINK. Let me address your bullet points specifically.

  • I never link dates or years – in fact, I've added a collection of regex patterns to my copy of AWB to remove links from dates and years – see, for example, this edit.
  • The "names of major geographic features and locations" should not be linked, according to WP:OVERLINK – I find this wording more useful than your reference to "commonly known" because what is commonly known depends whether you live in Wellington, Agra, Ontario, Liverpool, or wherever. Maybe I am guilty sometimes of overlinking these, as in my recent edit to Iman al-Qahtani – however, in this case the Saudi Arabian political context is so crucial to an understanding the article that a link to the country is, I think, helpful to some of our readers in this regard. This is consistent with WP:UNDERLINK which says that links should be made to "relevant connections to the subject of another article that will help readers understand the article more fully".
  • When it comes to what you describe as "common terms you’d look up in a dictionary", some of these will indeed be covered by "everyday words understood by most readers in context" (WP:OVERLINK). However, there is also provision in WP:UNDERLINK for technical terms, jargon or slang expressions/phrases to be linked, for which it recommends links to appropriate articles or to Wiktionary.

I'm sure you've come across frustrating articles which some zealous editor has packed full of totally pointless links to fingers, kilograms, water, moon, child, etc. What it really comes down to is whether my link is going to enrich readers' experience of Wikipedia, save them time, and maybe facilitate a broader exploration of a topic than they might otherwise have undertaken.

Sorry to ramble on so much. It's been fascinating to "meet" you by reading your user page (I share your opinion about Bach, by the way). I'd be interested to know if there was a particular edit of mine that prompted you to visit my talk page. Best regards — Hebrides (talk) 22:50, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Tony1. You have new messages at Hebrides's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Tony, do you have a list of words that you unlink by script? I'd be interested in a copy so that I can incorporate this step into my routine editing. I currently check automatically the usual internet-published lists of stopwords but would like to do more. Cheers — Hebrides (talk) 07:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

People from Ponce, Puerto Rico

Hello. I have been working on standardizing and providing consistency this page. If you wish to run the script on it that you ran HERE, perhaps you can do so with the date flag OFF as the date format was already correct per MOS's WP:DATE. I have undone your edit to facilitate your re-run. Regards. Mercy11 (talk) 19:21, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Puerto Rico is part of the US; it should have md,y formats. Tony (talk) 03:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't see anything in the pertinent polices that says that territoties of the U.S. should have md,y formats. Perhaps you can direct me to the one you are alluding to. Mercy11 (talk) 14:51, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikilinking > User talk:Frze

Hi, and thanks for your notice on my talk page. What did I do wrong? Please leave me a message. Thanks --Frze > talk 10:04, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Nothing to be concerned about! (I've responded on Frze's page.) Tony (talk) 12:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikilinking

Hi, and thanks for your work on the English Wikipedia. Just a short note to point out that we don’t normally link:

  • dates
  • years
  • commonly known geographical terms (including well-known country-names), and
  • common terms you’d look up in a dictionary (unless significantly technical).

Thanks and my best wishes.

Tony (talk) 08:45, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Random

Tony: Thanks, I guess, but your advice comes as a bit random without a single instance cited, you know what I mean?... Neverthless, noted. --Aboudaqn (talk) 16:43, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the note on my talk page!

Thanks for the note on my talk page! I've only been on Wikipedia since early 2013, so I still have a lot of things to learn. By the way, I was wondering what article I made changes to that prompted your post on my talk page. I have a habit of fixing typos on articles as I read them, meaning that they don't go on my watch list. AmericanLemming (talk) 20:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 January 2014

2014-01-08/News and notes

(he later corrected this statement to read "paid advocacy editing" rather than editing). - I guess you meant rather than paid editing. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 15:53, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for pointing that out, Adrian. Tony (talk) 07:34, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Overlinking?

Thanks Tony1 for the note on my talk page. Can I ask, is your note-leaving on this topic automated? I ask because, as others have said, it would be very helpful if you could list which article(s) I worked on that you thought was/were overlinked. If your messages are sent individually, maybe you could delete those items which don't apply (for example, I never link dates or units of measurement). I also wonder why your list is a bit different from the list in the guideline on overlinking. It's very good to be clear and concise, but your list has at least one different item, which makes it a bit confusing when you look up the topic.

It would be really helpful if in your standard message you could give one or two general examples of country names that should not be linked and the same for those that it is OK to link. I also don't really understand what you mean by "terms you’d look up in a dictionary " so a couple of examples of those that you should and shouldn't link would be extremely usefu in the message l too.

Is there a Wikipedia essay on "smart linking"? if not, would you consider writing one and linking your message to that essay? For some of us long-term editors the idea of smart linking is relatively new, and a good short essay might be be really helpful to us.

Thanks again, Invertzoo (talk) 16:14, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

It's manual, and actually you've prompted me to establish a better, if more time-intensive method. First, I will ration the messages to relatively recent instances, where the user is still active. Second, I'll provide a diff. Many recipients are people who come in from foreign-language WPs to create translations in English. Terms you'd look up in a dictionary? (Or even less than that: writer, author, musician, actor, fiction, book, city ... there's an awful lot of that). Countries: the clearcut ones are the big anglophone and european countries, and the other biggies like India and China and Japan. Grey areas exist there. And where a city is linked, MOSLINK's recommendation to avoid bunching links comes into play: not Warsaw, Polan, but Warsaw, Poland. It's an art, ultimately, to ration down the links so that we present what to the best of our skill are the most useful ones for some kind of notional average reader. But that process informs a lot of our writing, anyway, not just linking, and is never an exact science. Thanks for your message. Tony (talk) 07:32, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I want to thank you for notifying me about overlinking, it made me reconsider what should be wikilinked and see that some links were unnecessary. But I also want to comment on some of your link removals. You have removed several perfectly justifiable wikilinks, such as for (a first occurance of) the word Dutch to the Netherlands which clarifies the word is not referring to Germany (Deutschland in German). Furthermore, linking on Wikipedia is not merely about the definition of words, since it is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary. Of course not every first occurrence of words such as museum or writer needs to be linked, but when someone links the word writer in the opening sentence of an article, he or she is referring the reader to the article with more information about this profession. We don't need to agree on every single link, but I hope you will leave a bit more room for personal preference when it comes to wikilinking. – Editør (talk) 11:57, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, I'll go back and take a look (tomorrow, if you don't mind), and reconsider and post on your talk page about it. Thanks. Tony (talk) 12:04, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
I did finally realise, in my 30s, that Dutch is cognate with Deutsch, but few English-speakers would be interested in thinking that way, and those who are are unlikely to confuse the two. When you say that linking "is not merely about the definition of words, since it is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary", I can't disagree, except I'd remove your word merely for almost all contexts. Occasionally a WP article does define a term, an item—usually when it's technical or specialist, or the precise definition is helpful as a reminder to readers as they absorb the information in the article. In those instances it's often appropriate to link the item, but we do try to avoid relying on links alone where a definition is important, since most readers don't click on links—well, not many links. Writer and museum are words that all English-speakers native and non-native are meant to know about. It's generally accepted that we're not accommodating the six-year-old girl in Vancouver or the adult second-language speaker in Hanoi; that is, we're not a tutorial service for people who want to acquire English vocabulary. You mention "personal preferences": yes, linking is an art, not a science, which is one reason people have become interested in it as wikis mature (when they started, we just linked freely without thinking about the value of using our knowledge to select what we judge as the most useful or relevant link-targets for whatever notion of average reader we can conjure up; without thinking about the dilutionary effect; and without thinking about the visual appearance of high-link-density text and the greater difficulty of reading it. You'll start to think I'm a fanatic if I link you to a page about it I wrote years ago; I do have other interests on WP! I haven't looked at that page for a long time, and it probably needs attention; any comments you have would be welcome on the talk page there. Best. Tony (talk) 01:46, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your note on my page Tony. I agree with Editør that your note has made me think more carefully about what to link and what not to link, and that is very much all to the good. Thanks. But I also agree with Editør that links are by no means just dictionary definitions, and that when you link, you are giving the reader a chance to branch off and learn more about that subject, if they wish to. It's also important to keep a global perspective on readership and realize that for example, any American probably knows a fair bit about, say San Diego, or the BLT sandwich, and probably won't use those links, whereas someone in Tasmania or Mongolia might really want to refresh their understanding of those items. I also tweaked my previous comments to explain that (especially since there is no essay to direct people to) if you gave a few general examples of do and don't right there in your message, that would be helpful. Also if it is possible to list at least one or more of the unsuitable links we made in your message, rather than give the diffs, that would be easier for us. Sort of along the lines of the messages from the disambiguation bot which is very well put together. Invertzoo (talk) 18:38, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Open access

Hi Tony, I appreciate your effort on the Open access article, but a discussion about hyphenation has happened before (more than once!) and it settled on not using it. See also Talk:Open_access_journal#Hyphen_or_not. - Lawsonstu (talk) 15:07, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

As a reference point, the key text on the open access movement, Suber's Open Access, does not hyphenate the term. - Lawsonstu (talk) 15:09, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
As an aside, I've been wondering how to explain this point to people, because I don't really know how to talk about grammar. I think the point I want to make is that the phrase 'open access' is the name of a concept and should be treated as a single phrase/entity (a noun?). Hope that makes sense! -Lawsonstu (talk) 16:22, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 15 January 2014

The Signpost: 22 January 2014

January 2014

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Thanks Tony1 for your comment on my talk page about overlinking on the article (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cascavel&diff=next&oldid=586154280). I see what you're saying about overlinking to dates. I had been translating the document from the Brazilian Portuguese version to English and simply copied the original article's linking pattern. It seems they may have different standards on the Portuguese version. So in the future when I translate over a document from PT-->EN, I'll strip out those extraneous links. Cheers! Elshrimpbucket (talk) 14:52, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for helping me avoid linking years etc. They often wikilink them on the French Wikipedia and I'm used to it from other wikis too so I've to learn new ways here:) Best regards xx Cogiati (talk) 08:17, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I always wondered, though, why do they link to the years? I learnt to do this automatically but I never understood why linking to a year would ever be useful to anyone reading an article. Thank you for correcting my links! Cogiati (talk) 08:25, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
I never found such links useful, if I wanted to look up something I can always copy and paste to the search box on the top of the page..:) you're correct these links make the article look a mess. They also make life more difficult for people who use foreign language browser translation add-ons because some add-ons make you select some text to translate and very often if you try to select some linked words you end up clicking on them accidentally lol. So now that you told me this issue is settled here, I'll remember to remove month/year/etc links whenever I see them, I hope they could do the same in French Wikipedia too! Cogiati (talk) 08:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

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A Tesla Roadster for you!

A Tesla Roadster for you!
Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia! Gg53000 (talk) 13:11, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 13 January 2016

Signpost News & Notes

Reading the copy for this week's edition, there was not only no bureaucrats appointed in 2015, it's been 2 years since one was appointed (January 2014). This has been a subject of discussion (whether or not it is a problem) like at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard/Archive 33#Question about RfBs and new bureaucrats. Nice article this week, by the way. Liz Read! Talk! 17:55, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

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