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Revision as of 00:30, 21 April 2021
Status: Busy 
 | Welcome to SMcCandlish's talk page. I will generally respond here to comments that are posted here, rather than replying via your talk page (or the article's talk page, if you are writing to me here about an article), so you may want to watch this page until you are responded to, or let me know where specifically you'd prefer the reply. |
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As of 2021-04-21 , SMcCandlish is Active. 
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User talk:SMcCandlish/IP
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Old stuff to resolve eventually
Cueless billiards
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Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Sad...How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
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Some more notes on Crystalate
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Some more notes: they bought Royal Worcester in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.[3]; info about making records:[4]; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:[5]; "In 1880, crystalate balls made of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol began to appear. In 1926, they were made obligatory by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the London-based governing body." Amazing Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Feats. Richard B. Manchester - 1991wGtDHsgbtltnpBg&ct=result&id=v0m-h4YgKVYC&dq=%2BCrystalate; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:No5 Balls.html. Fences&Windows 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
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No one has actually objected to the idea that it's really pointless for WP:SAL to contain any style information at all, other than in summary form and citing MOS:LIST, which is where all of WP:SAL's style advice should go, and SAL page should move back to WP:Stand-alone lists with a content guideline tag. Everyone who's commented for 7 months or so has been in favor of it. I'd say we have consensus to start doing it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 13:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
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You post at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright
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That page looks like a hinterland (you go back two users in the history and you're in August). Are you familiar with WP:MCQ? By the way, did you see my response on the balkline averages?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
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Hee Haw
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Yeah, we did get along on Donkeys. And probably will get along on some other stuff again later. Best way to handle WP is to take it issue by issue and then let bygones be bygones. I'm finding some interesting debates over things like the line between a subspecies, a landrace and a breed. Just almost saw someone else's GA derailed over a "breed versus species" debate that was completely bogus, we just removed the word "adapt" and life would have been fine. I'd actually be interested in seeing actual scholarly articles that discuss these differences, particularly the landrace/breed issue in general, but in livestock in particular, and particularly as applied to truly feral/landrace populations (if, in livestock, there is such a thing, people inevitably will do a bit of culling, sorting and other interference these days). I'm willing to stick to my guns on the WPEQ naming issue, but AGF in all respects. Truce? Montanabw(talk) 22:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
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Redundant sentence?
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The sentence at MOS:LIFE "General names for groups or types of organisms are not capitalized except where they contain a proper name (oak, Bryde's whales, rove beetle, Van cat)" is a bit odd, since the capitalization would (now) be exactly the same if they were the names of individual species. Can it simply be removed? There is an issue, covered at Wikipedia:PLANTS#The use of botanical names as common names for plants, which may or may not be worth putting in the main MOS, namely cases where the same word is used as the scientific genus name and as the English name, when it should be de-capitalized. I think this is rare for animals, but more common for plants and fungi (although I have seen "tyrannosauruses" and similar uses of dinosaur names). Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
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Note to self on WP:WikiProject English language
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Finish patching up WP:WikiProject English language with the stuff from User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language, and otherwise get the ball rolling. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:22, 17 August 2016 (UTC) |
Excellent mini-tutorial
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Somehow, I forget quite how, I came across this - that is an excellent summary of the distinctions. I often get confused over those, and your examples were very clear. Is something like that in the general MoS/citation documentation? Oh, and while I am here, what is the best way to format a citation to a page of a document where the pages are not numbered? All the guidance I have found says not to invent your own numbering by counting the pages (which makes sense), but I am wondering if I can use the 'numbering' used by the digitised form of the book. I'll point you to an example of what I mean: the 'book' in question is catalogued here (note that is volume 2) and the digitised version is accessed through a viewer, with an example of a 'page' being here, which the viewer calls page 116, but there are no numbers on the actual book pages (to confuse things further, if you switch between single-page and double-page view, funny things happen to the URLs, and if you create and click on a single-page URL the viewer seems to relocate you one page back for some reason). Carcharoth (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
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You had previously asked that protection be lowered on WP:MEDMOS which was not done at that time. I have just unprotected the page and so if you have routine update edits to make you should now be able to do so. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 06:42, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
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Ooh...potential WikiGnoming activity...
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I stumbled upon Category:Editnotices whose targets are redirects and there are ~100 pages whose pages have been moved, but the editnotices are still targeted to the redirect page. Seems like a great, and sort of fun, WikiGnoming activity for a template editor such as yourself. I'd do it, but I'm not a template editor. Not sure if that's really your thing, though. ;-) Cheers,
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Note to self
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Don't forget to deal with: Template talk:Cquote#Template-protected edit request on 19 April 2020. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:48, 20 April 2020 (UTC) |
Now this
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Not sure the ping went through, so noting here. Just spotted where a now-blocked user moved a bunch of animal breed articles back to parenthetical disambiguation from natural disambiguation. As they did it in October and I'm only catching it now, I only moved back two just in case there was some kind of consensus change. The equine ones are definitely against project consensus, the rest are not my wheelhouse but I'm glad to comment. Talk:Campine_chicken#Here_we_go_again. Montanabw(talk) 20:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
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Current threads
Race and Intelligence - Fringe RfC
Hi, I've been getting myself up to speed with the RFC [9] (and the disputed close[10]) last year about a potential genetic component to the racial IQ gap. I saw your name in the discussion and have respected your contributions on other articles, so I was wondering if you have any input on the current situation, in which editors are citing the fringe consensus determination in defense of:
- Comparing the weak hereditarian hypothesis (that some genetic component may be involved) to pseudoscience like Bigfoot and creationism[11][12]
- Arguing there is no scientific rationale for a potential genetic component[13]
- Writing "The current scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component", wording that is directly contradicted by the cited sources[14]
Editors are using the fringe determination to advance the argument that 100% of the racial IQ gap is due to environmental factors, and any dissent from this view is considered fringe, despite evidence to the contrary from a variety of reliable sources. Administrators at the ArbCom case back in 2010 proposed findings of fact affirming as much: "The (weak) hereditarian hypothesis is not fringe" and "The idea that genetics is one factor in racial IQ differences may not have achieved consensus in the scientific community, but neither is it fringe (and, in fact, no other factors have achieved consensus either—although some have been disproven)."[15]
I'm trying to to determine how best to proceed with this dispute, as the current situation strikes me as untenable and plainly wrong. I would rather avoid starting a new RfC and reigniting the whole debate again, if possible. Is there any better alternative? Stonkaments (talk) 21:14, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
- I have been considering the idea of possibly starting a new RFC soon as well. If there is going to be a new RFC, I think it would be advantageous to wait until next month if possible, because there is some upcoming research that it would be useful to cite (nothing I’ve written, but I have given feedback to the authors). I’m also dreadfully short on time with work deadlines until April.
- In the meantime, if a consensus can form on the article's talk page to bring that part of the article into line with what its sources say, that would be valuable. The article has a special restriction against misrepresenting sources, so I agree it's a problem that the outcome of last year's RFC is making that restriction impossible to follow. If this problem can't be addressed on the article's talk page, I can try raising it in a RFC next month. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:40, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments and Ferahgo the Assassin: This is apt to get ugly. Keep in mind that even if it turns out to be scientifically defensible that there's a slight average statistical variance in intelligence level along ethno-racial lines, this is essentially a dangerous thing to say, because wingnuts will latch onto and exaggerate it as a reason for discriminatory (or worse) behavior. WP needs to be super-mega-ultra-certain of the solidity of any scientific consensus in favor of the idea, and figure out a way to write about it that is engineered, in every clause of every sentence, to thwart attempts at misinterpretation and over-generalization.
However, I don't presently think the idea is scientifically defensible, because there is no agreed-upon definition of what "intelligence" really means (which becomes especially clear if you read up on animal-intelligence research), and our means of measuring it are neither cross-comparable nor, when it comes to things that involve more complex skills (language, mathematics, complicated problem solving of particular sorts, etc.), are our means of testing very well-vetted for socio-cultural biases. Many of them clearly have such biases (e.g., dependence on educational quality, acquisition of particular developmental and life skills by the testing age, ignoring of alternative skills, not taking account of the effects of social suppression and trauma, etc., etc.). When it comes to research purporting to show a particular group is more rather than less capable (the most common seems to be the claim that highly endogamous Askenazi Jews are better at numerical and some other tasks), there's been a lot of debunking of it (nor will it matter for the future since they are not very endogamous any longer except among the socially insular Orthodox Jewish community; one might as well make arguments about the Amish or the Trobriand Islanders). I don't know whether it's been entirely successful debunking, but the point is that there is very clearly not a scientific consensus that the "Ashkenazim are smarter" idea is true.
And all this is aside from the fact that the typical Western view of "race" is largely nonsense. The short version is that humans have been massively miscegenating since prehistory, even in places where doing so is particular difficult (e.g. the Arctic circle, Oceania, etc.) We have the illusion of races because the average human has, when given much of a choice, a strong innate desire to breed with someone who looks like him/herself (more accurately, as has been proven experimentally, like those whom that person spent early childhood with). The consequence of this is strong regional selection for outward appearance, reinforced by environmental evolutionary pressures, e.g. to have darker skin and thicker, darker hair near the equator). But there's no tie between genes for particular coloration (and other really obvious phenotype like nose width, breast size, etc.), and genes for more subtle things. Even some apparent ties are illusory, e.g. "Africans are more prone to sickle-cell anemia". It's random accident and, on a long scale, a temporary coincidence. In reality, people with a particular malarial adaptation are more prone to SCA, and they're statistically likely to be African[-diaspora] simply because of where that particular anti-malaria gene arose. But it has nothing to do with their skin color or nose width or whatever. If they breed with someone from Europe or Asia, with a different anti-malaria gene, their offspring are likely to get the other A-M gene, but end with an obviously African-ish appearance due to the dominance of those phenotype genes. And this is hardly theoretical; African-Americans (other than recent-generation African immigrants) have much lower incidence of SCA than do the sub-Saharan African populations ancestral to them (on that side of their genealogy). So, think about the consequences of how genes and chromosomes actually work, not how people wrongly imagine they do, when it comes to subtle traits like numerical or linguistic or spatial navigation or memory skills that don't have even any obvious regional adaptation correlation. The likelihood of there being a causal link is very low. A direct analogy is that we're pretty sure that Western men have larger penises today, on average, than they did in antiquity (judging from ancient art, mummies, etc.), entirely because of female preferential selection, yet there is no evidence of any other change: European[-diaspora] men are not less or more smart, better or worse fathers, less or more warlike, etc., etc., than their forbears, and there's no reason to suspect they would be since there's no reason a gene for the size of particular body part would have any connection to entirely unrelated heritable traits.
Keep in mind also that "science" is variable and often does not live up to its ideals. E.g., most physical anthropologists in China, despite being able do proper research – except on one particular thing – and to get published in good journals, are still indoctrinated to believe that the main Chinese cluster of ethnicities (or East Asians in general) are descended from an entirely different early hominid than other humans, despite the rest of the scientific world having disproved this, beyond any shadow of doubt. They simply ignore data that doesn't suit their preferences (just as medical proto-science in the West for over a millennium ignored the bare facts about certain internal human body parts, because they disagreed with ancient Greek dogma; something similar happened in Japan before extensive contact with the West and Western medical literature; cf. also traditional Chinese medicine's resistance to scientific facts). There's a similar cultural blind spot when it comes to psychologists, psychiatrists, behavioral scientists, neurologists, ethologists, some sociologists, etc., in the West and their firm belief in the legitimacy of IQ tests, despite the fact that any cultural anthropologist (and some sociologists) can point out really obvious socio-cultural biases in those tests. (Same goes for MBTI/Keirsey personality testing, NLP/EST, Freudian/Jungian psychoanalysis, and various other downright pseudoscientific but plausible-seeming-to-some-people approaches to human cognitive assessment that have become "big deals" but which unravel under scrutiny.)
So, yes, do more RfCs, but keep in mind that WP has a responsibility to not harm the world. Something like this really rises to WP:MEDRS levels of sourcing rigor, combined with a "WP is here to make the world better" focus in the writing of material on this topic. If stuff gets really nasty, it'll be time for another ArbCom or AE filing. And it probably will get really nasty. Just be aware that if you go the route of arguing that there's good science behind hereditary intelligence differences, even in a minor way, you will be subjected to character assassination, and the admin corps generally will not defend you, since doing so would subject them to the same [mis]treatment. WP is hardly immune to socio-politics and to cancel culture, and is dominated by American and British liberals (perhaps largely for the better, but not without occasional consequences). So, be sure you want to run that gantlet, and be extra sure you have both the sourcing to back it up and a way to write about it that doesn't play into racists' hands. That said, if something has been getting a lot of press, WP should cover it along with critical scientific response to it, so it cannot be "run away with" by bad reporting and worse misinterpretation of what the reporting said, based in turn on unfaithful overgeneralization from extremely limited scientific data and conclusions.
PS: One of the reasons I've been staying away from all this for some time is that even if it did eventually turn out to be incontrovertible that there are heritable cognitive differences tied to ethnicity (which I doubt), WP isn't doing any harm by "failing" to say so at this early, iffy stage. (WP is incomplete and not 100% up-to-date on at least hundreds of thousands of topics, and "we are all equal" is not a terrible fiction to maintain if it did turn out to be a fiction). Jumping on that racial-intelligence-differences bandwagon and ultimately being wrong about it would do a great deal of harm, both in the real world and to WP's reputation. Meanwhile, avoidance of siding with racialists on this question has no negative consequences. Another way of looking at it: Just letting the leftists own this topic for the foreseeable future, censorious biases and all, has fewer predictable bad outcomes than effectively ceding it to the far right. The centrist/moderate thing to do is to continue to maintain that the jury is still out, and until that's incontrovertibly no longer the case, we treat it at least as WP:UNDUE if not literally WP:FRINGE. A related argument is that if we have WP:BLP policy because we care about negative effects of bad encylcopedism even on a single individual, we necessarily also must care even more about negative effects on entire groups of them.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:20, 15 March 2021 (UTC)- Thank you for the very thorough and thoughtful response. It sounds like you're essentially advocating for First, do no harm, which is certainly a very reasonable argument, but also gives me some cause for concern. I agree with your concerns about the definitions of the concepts of race and intelligence, but I think all we can do is follow how the scientific community resolves those issues. Besides that, I think my counterargument is twofold, with both points stemming from my disagreement with the claim that in the status quo WP isn't doing any harm:
- 1) The belief that all differences are 100% environmental and 0% genetic can be harmful in its own right. That belief can be used to advance the argument that any and all inequalities are due to overt or systemic racism. If that turns out to be wrong, very real societal harm is caused by seeing everything solely through the lens of rooting out systemic racism and failing to pursue other necessary reforms; in that respect, WP is causing harm by suppressing information that gives a full and accurate picture of the debate. To be clear, I think racism in all its forms is abhorrent and a very real problem. But I think it is also harmful to suppress information that gives a more accurate understanding of the current scientific consensus, when that may have a very real impact on the argument that all inequalities are a priori due to discrimination. See the examples given of harm done by belief in the blank slate theory here[16].
- 2) Should the suppression of facts in the face of foreseeable misuse by bad actors trump WP:Verifiability? In my view, making an editorial decision based not on the evidence at hand but in consideration of the negative societal implications of including that information, is a dangerous road to go down for an encyclopedia. For example, couldn't that argument also be extended to removing any mention of the fact that there is a ~1 standard deviation gap in black-white IQ scores, since that fact can be used to support any number of racist/hateful/white supremacist arguments? Doesn't China make a similar argument for the good of society in favor of suppressing information about the Tiananmen Square protests? I understand the fact that the science is unresolved complicates matters somewhat, and certainly sympathize with the desire to simply "let the dust settle" first so to speak, but suppressing information just strikes me as very dangerous and antithetical to what Wikipedia stands for. As long as the jury is still out, I think it's important for WP to convey that fact. That's all I'm pushing for, and I think the article currently fails to accurately convey that in several key ways. Stonkaments (talk) 16:52, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments: Yes, the medical-practice principle is a good analogy, since what is being made is essentially a medical claim, though a thinly disguised one. As for "all we can do is follow how the scientific community resolves those issues", MEDRS is again very good guidance: We do not rely on primary research (journal papers), which is a form of WP:PRIMARY sourcing (though we might cite it secondarily so more technical readers have easy access to the original material, and we sometimes also use it more directly for attributed statements when they are themselves key elements of the story, e.g. a notable controversy over a purportedly scientific claim). Primary research is extremely often disproved by later confirmation attempts by other scientists. Nor do we rely on the mainstream press's understanding of the science, which is generally going to be incomplete at best and is often flat-out wrong. (That even holds in non-medical science articles, though we don't have a "WP:SCIENCERS" saying so; it's just a de facto consensus that, for example, no amount of non-expert material written about how Pluto really is a planet actually means much encyclopedically.) Similarly, we have no medical-sphere permissiveness for blogs, op-eds, and other WP:SPS by alleged experts, which we might accept in a different topic, like pool playing or the recording industry. As with un- or poorly-sourced WP:BLP claims, uncertain medical ones should simply be deleted on-sight. What we rely on is high-quality scientific secondary sourcing, mostly literature reviews, especially systematic reviews. This is a good model to follow with anything that makes claims about human psychology/cognition, which is definitely covered by MEDRS as much as claims about the human pancreas or immune system. (MEDRS is even generally held to apply to veterinary material.)
On your numbered points, in order: The issue isn't really about whether "all differences are 100% environmental and 0% genetic"; it's about whether any of the heritable ones are tied, with certainty, to ethnicity/race. So, I would agree with you that the most activistic persons who are making bogus "100% environmental" arguments need to be removed from the topic area if they become (or get more) disruptive. There is no question that, say, two people with the same congenital mental disability have highly elevated risk of producing children who also have the same disability. It's much less certain that two MENSA members with advanced degrees are going to produce smarter-than-average children (and that they would still turn out that way if, say, raised in the foster-care system after their parents' untimely deaths – i.e., subjected to an entirely different environment), much less whether either a positive or negative potential for short-term heritability of a trait we cluster under the ever-changing "intelligence" umbrella has any connection whatever to broad groups of people who share some degree of regional genetic origin.
I agree that we should not "suppress information", but in a topic like this it doesn't qualify as information rather than as conjecture and theory and tentative data interpretation until a higher hurdle than usual has been leapt (in the real world, not just in WP editors' selective attempts at proving their points). And not everything that is factual must be covered by Wikipedia; WP not writing about something isn't "suppression", or we could not have WP:N, WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE, etc. (That said, I have argued before, when people have tried to delete race-and-intelligence articles outright, that WP needs to cover the topic and do it really well, otherwise it effectively cedes writing about the topic to far-right webboards.) To the extent the standard deviation gap you mention is being covered here (largely because it's a huge-ass public controversy – cf. The Bell Curve and our coverage of it – not because it's rigorous or meaningful science), and we're covering it with clarification about what it means, and what little can be drawn from it, and how much criticism IQ tests themselves have against them, etc., plus all the debate we've had about going even that far on the subject in Wikipedia content ... that all is probably a good indicator of how to proceed on related topics, though perhaps with even more caution. Public belief in the accuracy of IQ tests (viewed a lot like lie-detector tests and personality tests) is much lower than public belief in the accuracy of anything that claims to be "genetic testing", as a result of things like police-procedural TV shows. It's even been observed in the legal profession that juries are increasingly difficult to convince to convict in rape and murder cases on the basis of traditional "circumstantial" evidence, because they've become conditioned to expect the genetic kind, and to trust it absolutely. This fallacious belief that "genetics" is just one thing, and something like infallibly powerful magic, has multiple effects. One of them is at play in this subject area.
Anyway, I'm not replying at length again just to argue; rather, I think the topic is important and covering it "just so" is important, too. I don't think I will, nor do I mean to, dissuade you from working on it in that direction, but I do hope to have a little effect on the approach. And I did want make sure (in the first reply) that you understand that pursuing it will have stressful costs. I've learned this the hard way by getting involved in gender identity and human sexuality topics, another sphere of over-politicized WP:DRAMA (and off-site conflict) that is also subject to a big mixture of science, pseudo-science, polarized posturing, witch-hunting, and potential for actual harm.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:41, 15 March 2021 (UTC)- Thank you for your thoughts, they're greatly appreciated. I will take everything you've said to heart, especially the utmost importance of covering the topic "just so", as well as the stressful personal costs you've mentioned. I was involved in an arbitration incident last year when I dove too zealously into another hot button topic, so I'm already somewhat aware of how stressful that sort of character assassination and general nastiness can be. Already it's being alleged this time around that my "only purpose here is to try to overturn the consensus and promote racialist hereditarianism"[17], so I'll definitely need to weigh the pros and cons of pursuing this debate further.
- ETA: I just discovered the guide to Wikistress[18] from your profile, which looks quite handy! Stonkaments (talk) 00:39, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments: Aieee! I see the pitchforks are already being brandished in your direction. That bears a striking resemblance to what I was subjected to: the imputing of motives, the reductio ad absurdum, the fallacious confusion of seeking DUE coverage of X with a "promotion" of X. Those who are activists about Y often have (or pretend they have) a great deal of difficulty understanding that writing neutrally about the matter is not supporting X and being an opponent of Y; they just see anyone who is not parroting the Y dogma as necessarily an outright enemy of Y. It's part of our society's unfortunate shift toward polarization and echo chambers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:24, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments: I know you are considering starting another RFC, but I would really appreciate it if you could wait another month so I can do it. I have a lot of experience with that article, and starting another RFC will cause more harm than good if it isn't handled in the right way. I encourage you to pursue other forms of dispute resolution or to make an Arbitration Enforcement report, and then if those things fail to resolve the issue, I'll start another RFC next month. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- Youse might consider collaboratively drafting an RfC, and use AE as needed in the interim. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:49, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- Sure, I'm very amenable to suggestions as I'm still somewhat new here and learning the ropes of how to best approach these heated issues. I wasn't planning to start another RfC, but rather bring the issue to WP:DRN (those are two separate things, right?) to resolve the narrow content dispute ongoing of whether "no evidence for a genetic component" accurately represents the cited sources and meets the requirements of WP:VERIFIABILITY. But if you think that will cause more harm than good for the community then I'll gladly hold off, so please let me know. Stonkaments (talk) 15:07, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- DRN's a very different process (and a weird and usually unsuccessful one; I don't think it'll be around much longer, for the same reason WP:MEDCAB came to an end). What you'd probably want is WP:RSN or WP:NPOVN, or maybe even WP:NORN, depending on whether the problem is more one of (respectively): 1) problems identifying and accepting reliable sources and assessing their reliability; 2) pushing a personal or organizational/dogmatic viewpoint despite what sources say; or 3) misusing sources to weave, out of unrelated material, a novel-synthesis (WP:SYNTH) conclusion that cannot be found in any of them. It's been my experience that even when the issue is really no. 2 at root, RSN can be more effective (by focusing on sources instead of on editors and their viewpoints), though even NORN is that way to an extent, just a bit more subjective. They're all more effective than DRN, because they're open to general community assessment and can reach binding conclusions (like ANI), while DRN is dependent on a single volunteer to "get it" well enough to produce a solution that both sides agree to (tends not to happen). I think I would avoid NPOVN for this, because editors who agree with a PoV tend not to recognize that is is one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:10, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Ferahgo the Assassin: @SMcCandlish: I've written up a draft for a WP:RSN discussion: User:Stonkaments/sandbox. Please let me know if you have any thoughts, objections, words of wisdom, etc.—greatly appreciated. And again, Ferahgo the Assassin if you think pursuing this discussion now will cause more harm than good, please let me know and I'll gladly hold off. Stonkaments (talk) 20:53, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- Actually I'm thinking the discussion may be better suited for WP:NORN, as it is not so much a question of the reliability of the sources but a claim that is not supported by any of the sources. Stonkaments (talk) 21:15, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments: If you want to try raising this issue at the NOR noticeboard, that's fine. My request was just that you not start a new RFC yet. I have two suggestions about your draft:
- DRN's a very different process (and a weird and usually unsuccessful one; I don't think it'll be around much longer, for the same reason WP:MEDCAB came to an end). What you'd probably want is WP:RSN or WP:NPOVN, or maybe even WP:NORN, depending on whether the problem is more one of (respectively): 1) problems identifying and accepting reliable sources and assessing their reliability; 2) pushing a personal or organizational/dogmatic viewpoint despite what sources say; or 3) misusing sources to weave, out of unrelated material, a novel-synthesis (WP:SYNTH) conclusion that cannot be found in any of them. It's been my experience that even when the issue is really no. 2 at root, RSN can be more effective (by focusing on sources instead of on editors and their viewpoints), though even NORN is that way to an extent, just a bit more subjective. They're all more effective than DRN, because they're open to general community assessment and can reach binding conclusions (like ANI), while DRN is dependent on a single volunteer to "get it" well enough to produce a solution that both sides agree to (tends not to happen). I think I would avoid NPOVN for this, because editors who agree with a PoV tend not to recognize that is is one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:10, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- Sure, I'm very amenable to suggestions as I'm still somewhat new here and learning the ropes of how to best approach these heated issues. I wasn't planning to start another RfC, but rather bring the issue to WP:DRN (those are two separate things, right?) to resolve the narrow content dispute ongoing of whether "no evidence for a genetic component" accurately represents the cited sources and meets the requirements of WP:VERIFIABILITY. But if you think that will cause more harm than good for the community then I'll gladly hold off, so please let me know. Stonkaments (talk) 15:07, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- Youse might consider collaboratively drafting an RfC, and use AE as needed in the interim. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:49, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments: I know you are considering starting another RFC, but I would really appreciate it if you could wait another month so I can do it. I have a lot of experience with that article, and starting another RFC will cause more harm than good if it isn't handled in the right way. I encourage you to pursue other forms of dispute resolution or to make an Arbitration Enforcement report, and then if those things fail to resolve the issue, I'll start another RFC next month. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments: Aieee! I see the pitchforks are already being brandished in your direction. That bears a striking resemblance to what I was subjected to: the imputing of motives, the reductio ad absurdum, the fallacious confusion of seeking DUE coverage of X with a "promotion" of X. Those who are activists about Y often have (or pretend they have) a great deal of difficulty understanding that writing neutrally about the matter is not supporting X and being an opponent of Y; they just see anyone who is not parroting the Y dogma as necessarily an outright enemy of Y. It's part of our society's unfortunate shift toward polarization and echo chambers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:24, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Stonkaments: Yes, the medical-practice principle is a good analogy, since what is being made is essentially a medical claim, though a thinly disguised one. As for "all we can do is follow how the scientific community resolves those issues", MEDRS is again very good guidance: We do not rely on primary research (journal papers), which is a form of WP:PRIMARY sourcing (though we might cite it secondarily so more technical readers have easy access to the original material, and we sometimes also use it more directly for attributed statements when they are themselves key elements of the story, e.g. a notable controversy over a purportedly scientific claim). Primary research is extremely often disproved by later confirmation attempts by other scientists. Nor do we rely on the mainstream press's understanding of the science, which is generally going to be incomplete at best and is often flat-out wrong. (That even holds in non-medical science articles, though we don't have a "WP:SCIENCERS" saying so; it's just a de facto consensus that, for example, no amount of non-expert material written about how Pluto really is a planet actually means much encyclopedically.) Similarly, we have no medical-sphere permissiveness for blogs, op-eds, and other WP:SPS by alleged experts, which we might accept in a different topic, like pool playing or the recording industry. As with un- or poorly-sourced WP:BLP claims, uncertain medical ones should simply be deleted on-sight. What we rely on is high-quality scientific secondary sourcing, mostly literature reviews, especially systematic reviews. This is a good model to follow with anything that makes claims about human psychology/cognition, which is definitely covered by MEDRS as much as claims about the human pancreas or immune system. (MEDRS is even generally held to apply to veterinary material.)
- @Stonkaments and Ferahgo the Assassin: This is apt to get ugly. Keep in mind that even if it turns out to be scientifically defensible that there's a slight average statistical variance in intelligence level along ethno-racial lines, this is essentially a dangerous thing to say, because wingnuts will latch onto and exaggerate it as a reason for discriminatory (or worse) behavior. WP needs to be super-mega-ultra-certain of the solidity of any scientific consensus in favor of the idea, and figure out a way to write about it that is engineered, in every clause of every sentence, to thwart attempts at misinterpretation and over-generalization.
- First, the disputed part of Hunt's textbook is available at Google books. If you raise the issue at a noticeboard, I suggest including this link so others can see what the book says directly.
- Second, I suggest mentioning that this issue exists on more than just the Race and intelligence article. The same wording cited to the same sources (Hunt, Mackintosh, Nisbett and Kaplan) has been copied to at least three other articles: Intelligence quotient [19], Heritability of IQ [20] and then again about 2/3 of the way through the first large paragraph added here [21], and Racial achievement gap in the United States (originally added in this edit [22] and then moved to the other article [23]). It may also have been copied to other articles that I'm not remembering. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:45, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
- I would add that the only way to avoid a total freakout is going to be front-loading the discussion with a note that this is not about positing that intelligence is mostly heritable and that the environmental factors are not the primary ones; it's about not suppressing the science saying there is at least a minor genetic factor – and that our encyclopedic writing goals will include ensuring that this is not misinterpreted or exaggerated in any way that supports racist notions. However, there are some other potential pitfalls here, and it'll require some source combing.
First, be sure that "heritable" means true-breeding genetic heritability in all this material. While it's not common usage, a child receiving damaged or otherwise altered genes/chromosomes from a parent, caused by environmental factor (radioactive, chemical, etc.) and not inherited in turn by that parent from a grandparent, is sometimes imprecisely referred to as inherited or genetic.
Even when the normal sense of long-term, evolutionary heritability is what is meant, that doesn't necessarily tie into ethnicity/race. E.g., if Test Student A did poorly and Parent A1 and Parent A2 both do poorly on the same test, and genetic analysis shows they share a trait that is demonstrated to effect these scores, on average, then that is some evidence for performance heritability, but it is not evidence for it being tied to a particular population-of-general-geographic-origin or a particular looks-like-a-race-to-me phenotypic appearance trait associated with a general geographic ancestral origin. It would have to be shown that again and again and again people who are genetically mostly or entirely from that population carry this trait (not found much in other populations) and reliably pass it on and it reliably has a suppressive effect on the test results. (And the tests don't have cultural and related biases.)
Third, "race" is generally bullshit except as a socio-cultural force, but not all scientists outside of physical anthropology and the more sensible side of sociology understand this. There's more genetic diversity between neighboring groups in Africa, and there are more genetically identifiable ethnic groups there (aside from cultural identifiers of them) than in all of the rest of the world combined. That is, Aboriginal Australians, Danes, the Ainu of Japan, and the Yanomami of the Amazon are all more closely related to each other and more genetically similar to each other than two fairly endogamous groups in the same country in sub-Saharan Africa (who look superficially similar because of a much longer period of consistent environmental pressure, with the best adaptations to it spreading comparatively rapidly because haplogroups that come into contact). So, to the extent any claims are being made about "Europeans" versus "Africans", or "African Americans" versus "Asian Americans", and other broad pseudo-racial categories that our censuses like to use (because they encapsulate cultural views about "races"), that data is probably unreliable, even if a journal published it. And remember that WP doesn't rely in primary-research papers to begin with. What are systematic reviews saying? Are there not any? Then it's too soon for WP to be advancing something as scientifically factual, and we should be approaching this from a "public controversy" angle, with elevated amounts of attribution, quotation, balancing, and hedging.
I go into the race illusion quite a bit in WP:R&E. It's easy to invent a fake "race" by just selecting some appearance traits and an environmental factor; e.g. one could divide the world into a "Sunbelt race" and a "Coldzone race" by latitude and relative darkness of hair and skin, but this would bear little resemblance to genetic history. This is pretty much the situation with the present "races", since sub-Saharan Africans aren't closely inter-related, and the entire "White race" is just a variant of the "East Asian race" that lost epicanthic folds and got a bit paler (mostly - there are Koreans, Japanese, Mongols, Asian Siberians, etc., who are paler than many Mediterranean "White people"). "Whites" on average are closer related in most genetic respects to northern East Asians and northern South Asians than any of those are to southern East Asians, southern South Asians, and Oceanian peoples. However, particular traits like epicanthic folds, certain skull shapes, melanin level, etc., quickly migrate from one group to another if they interbreed with any regularity; genes do not travel as total "racial packages". The essay gets into that as well, in discussing anti-malarial genes.
What proper science is likely to be showing or eventually show is some minor level of heritable performance difference between haplogroups, which do not correspond closely to "races". Having said all this (in more than one place), I don't think I want to get very deeply involved in further RfCs, noticeboardings, etc., on this subject. It's a hot potato, and my hands are already burning enough from gender/sexuality hot potatoes.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:06, 18 March 2021 (UTC)- Yes indeed, it is quite the complex subject, and I'll admit I'm far from an expert in the field. Until recently I had no idea just how fraught and ill-defined the concept of race is. I wonder if research that continues to look at "race" as the defining variable rather than haplogroups, etc. is partly a case of "meet them where they are", where it remains valuable to use such an ill-defined idea precisely because it is such a socio-cultural force as you say? Or is it more often simply a sign of sloppy/naive thinking?
- And I totally agree that the best way for Wikipedia to approach this is from a "public controversy" angle, with the heightened levels of attribution, balance, and hedging that entails. Unfortunately, as Gardenofaleph pointed out, I think the RfC makes it difficult (impossible?) to provide the appropriate level of balance.[24] Nevertheless, despite the usual personal attacks and motivated reasoning, I'm still encouraged by all of the recent talk page discussion. I was starting to lose hope that policy and careful consideration could ever overcome ideology on a topic like this, but there's still hope yet. I appreciate your patience in taking the time to share your thoughts. It's a shame that WP is missing out on a thoughtful, moderate voice of reason on this topic, but of course I totally understand given the circumstances. Stonkaments (talk) 03:37, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
- I would add that the only way to avoid a total freakout is going to be front-loading the discussion with a note that this is not about positing that intelligence is mostly heritable and that the environmental factors are not the primary ones; it's about not suppressing the science saying there is at least a minor genetic factor – and that our encyclopedic writing goals will include ensuring that this is not misinterpreted or exaggerated in any way that supports racist notions. However, there are some other potential pitfalls here, and it'll require some source combing.
- Second, I suggest mentioning that this issue exists on more than just the Race and intelligence article. The same wording cited to the same sources (Hunt, Mackintosh, Nisbett and Kaplan) has been copied to at least three other articles: Intelligence quotient [19], Heritability of IQ [20] and then again about 2/3 of the way through the first large paragraph added here [21], and Racial achievement gap in the United States (originally added in this edit [22] and then moved to the other article [23]). It may also have been copied to other articles that I'm not remembering. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:45, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Putting a comment in the Survey subsection of the MoS Internet discussion
I see you made a joke in reply to a comment in the survey subsection of the Internet discussion on the MoS talk page. I can't say I'm unamused :) There is only one small problem: I'd like to keep that area clear of any replies for readability, and I would have just moved your comment to the Discussion subsection, but because it's a joke, I'm not sure what to do with it. I guess it doesn't really matter if that one reply is up in the Survey subsection, but then there's inconsistency, and it might cause others to continue to reply in the Survey subsection too. I hesitate to move it to the Discussion section because it isn't actually discussion as such. Do you have any advice? :) Thanks, DesertPipeline (talk) 10:10, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- @DesertPipeline: This should do it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:28, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- I was actually thinking of that solution after I'd logged off – initially I was thinking "well shouldn't I add the response indicator if I move it? That seems a bit overkill for a joke response". Moving it and not adding a response indicator is probably the best solution :) DesertPipeline (talk) 02:57, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
Notwithstanding the beneficial tweak above, pretty much all of your comments on that page appear solid, and from what could be recognised as position of understanding of the issue. Frankly, I had nothing substantial to add given that you largely nailed it. Chumpih. (talk) 20:39, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- Thankee. I'll add that the purpose of my joke to was to defuse what appeared to be an intent to personalize / polarize / wiki-politicize the discussion; I ignored the jab and made a further joke building on the joke at the end of the jab, to lighten the mood and dismiss the jab by refusing to comment on it. Moving this banter out of the !vote section mostly thwarts the purpose of my response (which already got a Thank). But I don't think it's a big deal. The outcome of that RfC (discussion at which is winding down) is already pretty clear. I disagree vehemently with the direction it's going, but I know when I'm outvoted and am not going to WP:BLUDGEON about it; my response to Dicklyon will probably be my last there. I'm the first to point out that no one is happy with 100% of what MoS or any other guideline says, and no P&G line-item has buy-in from 100% of editors, so I have to live with that as well. In fairness, since this medium lacks facial expression, voice tone, etc., it is actually possible that the personalized animosity in the original post was itself intended as a joke, in which case my joke response helps to reinforce it as a
{{FBDB}}situation; either way, I think my joke reply was the correct approach. I understand DesertPipeline's "thread management" purpose and observe that it has had the effect of keeping the !vote section clearer and easier to assess; I've sometimes taken this refactoring approach myself. In retrospect, another tactic I could've used would've been EEng's style of making joke replies with sidebars, but that thread is already heavy with those. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 21 March 2021 (UTC)- My heart swells with pride to see that my philosophy of giving humor serious consideration is diffusing more and more among our esteemed fellow editors. EEng 21:04, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- Well, pride is a deadly sin, so you're clearly bound directly for Hell. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:24, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- I'm relatively new to those pages, and the levity and charm of those sidebars was a delight. Nice one User:EEng.Chumpih. (talk) 23:44, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
- For sure it's tricky for the spirit in which a comment was made to be conveyed by the comment itself. There's some quote along the lines of "it is the curse of those who express themselves to be misunderstood" - I'll try and find it.
And re. the whole "Internet" issue: language shifts over time, even in more formal circles. Your stance strikes a sensible balance. Chumpih. (talk) 23:31, 21 March 2021 (UTC) - Karl Popper: "Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you." (on reflection, I think the words above are sweeter) Chumpih. (talk) 23:34 + 23:44, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
The outcome of that RfC ... is already pretty clear.
- I'm obviously going to be biased here, but I feel like those of us in favour of capitalisation for Internet as a name have a stronger position than those who favour no capitalisation. Their position is "others don't do it any more" and ours is "it's a proper noun" – which I still feel is true, and still feel can't be taken away by popular opinion. I probably shouldn't speak without checking, but has anyone who is against capitalisation put forward the position "it's incorrect to capitalise it"? I'm pretty sure all that's been said is "it's not done now", so they're not suggesting it's wrong. There may be more responses in the "don't capitalise" subsection, but this is exactly why I placed that reminder about WP:NOTVOTE – yes, that option has the numerical advantage, but I don't think those in favour of it are giving convincing rationales. Again though: Most probably biased :) DesertPipeline (talk) 02:57, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
- Nah, the entire argument for lower-case "internet" is simply the WP:Common-style fallacy. I.e., whatever is most common, stylistically, in news and other lowest-common-denominator media is somehow what WP must do. (If this fallacy were not a fallacy, WP would have no need of a style guide at all; we'd just follow AP Stylebook, since it accounts for by far the dominant style in English-language news publications by count of both number of works and number of readers.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
- Perhaps you could mention that in the discussion section under a new bullet point? It's a good point :) DesertPipeline (talk) 07:54, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
- Someone else should. I've already said over-much there, and the point is already implicit in what I've posted in several comments. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:55, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
- Perhaps you could mention that in the discussion section under a new bullet point? It's a good point :) DesertPipeline (talk) 07:54, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
- Nah, the entire argument for lower-case "internet" is simply the WP:Common-style fallacy. I.e., whatever is most common, stylistically, in news and other lowest-common-denominator media is somehow what WP must do. (If this fallacy were not a fallacy, WP would have no need of a style guide at all; we'd just follow AP Stylebook, since it accounts for by far the dominant style in English-language news publications by count of both number of works and number of readers.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:53, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
- My heart swells with pride to see that my philosophy of giving humor serious consideration is diffusing more and more among our esteemed fellow editors. EEng 21:04, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Template:Db-g11
I am not sure what problem your edit of 21:57, 13 December 2020 of Template:Db-g11 was intended to solve. In Draft:DJ Omen we have {{db-spam|category=biography|reason=biography}}, and with the help of Special:ExpandTemplates, we see that the newly inserted </b> in your edit shows up here as stripped. —Anomalocaris (talk) 07:44, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Anomalocaris: You can just test this stuff for yourself in a matter of moments. See User:SMcCandlish/sandbox22 (the template and its sandbox will need to be in the same state when you look at that page as they were was when I wrote this). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:20, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
- OK. I went to User:SMcCandlish/sandbox22, edited it, and clicked on lintHint, which I have installed, and it reports a stripped
</b>for the markup{{Db-g11|category=biography|reason=My comments}}, but not for the sandbox version. This agrees with what I reported before. Anomalocaris (talk) 09:29, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
- OK. I went to User:SMcCandlish/sandbox22, edited it, and clicked on lintHint, which I have installed, and it reports a stripped
<b>
<i>
This user page may meet Wikipedia's
<a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion" title="Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion">
criteria for speedy deletion
</a>
</i>
because in its current form it serves only to
<a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Spam" title="Wikipedia:Spam">
promote
</a>
or publicise an entity, person, product, or idea, and would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic.
<br/>
<i>
Requester's additional rationale:
</i>
</b>
My comments: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum..
So, maybe lintHint has some kind of problem. Oh, what might be happening is that the parser maybe isn't smart enough to recognize an explicit </b> as closure of a <b> element that was opened by means of ''', so it is injecting a closing ''' after this, at whatever point such a closure is forced by the beginning of a new block element, and then later stages of the parser are removing that as dead code, so lintHint sees it being stripped out. This seems like a non-problem to me, the parser doing its job. I'm not sure how to "fix" it anyway. If we told the underlying meta-template to use explicit <b>...</b> HTML, it would still end up getting another one to strip out later (because the template would say to insert it there; it wouldn't be auto-generated). If we wrapped |reason='s input in a <div>...</div> with font-weight:normal, that would (being a block element) force auto-closure of the <b>, and again produce a redundant </b> later (auto-generated as in the current code). If we wrapped |reason='s input in a <span>...</span> with that CSS, it would be invalid if the input contained any block elements, like an explicit <p>...</p>, a {{pb}}, or even just a blank line that autogenerated a para. break. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
I don't think it is correct to infer from the fact that rendered output is well-formed HTML that wikitext is correct. I did a simple test.
{|
|<b>This is bold with a closing tag.</b>
|This is normal
|<b>This is bold without a closing tag.
|}
out of table
This generated generated the following HTML:
<table> <tbody><tr> <td><b>This is bold with a closing tag.</b> </td> <td>This is normal </td> <td><b>This is bold without a closing tag. </b></td></tr></tbody></table> <p>out of table </p>
The parser fixed my missing </b> for me, but the tag is still missing.
I agree with you that your addition of </b> does something useful, but note that Information for "Draft:DJ Omen" reports 1 stripped tag. It's not just lintHint, the error is really there. —Anomalocaris (talk) 10:26, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
- This seems to be philosophic/semantic hair splitting. Whether the wiki code that's fed into the parser is perfect is ultimately irrelevant as long as it's within the parser's known handling capabilities, produces end-user correct HTML, and (ideally) on the editorial side isn't confusing, or at least not so confusing that s question or a review of talk comments doesn't resolve the confusion. We depend on every single day on the parser's own cleanup capabilities with regard to input – in parsing of talk pages, for example, which do all kind of awful things with list markup (by design) and in handling people's accidental or ignorant markup mistakes (like many a non-closed element, and frequent use of invalid elements, and so on). Even a lot of the markup used in our articles is blecherous (mismatching types of list markup, etc.). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:37, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
- I agree with you that the parser fixes a lot of mistakes and that it is helpful that it does this. But I also think that responsible Wikipedians should work to avoid lint errors, not intentionally introduce them, and cooperate with efforts to eliminate them. Your edit introduced a closing
</b>in the middle of an existing<b>...</b>generated by{{db-meta}}. It really is an error. However, any transclusion of {{Db-g11}} would be expected to be temporary. If this were a navigation template I would definitely insist that even a low-priority lint error must be fixed. Given the intended brief duration of any transclusion of {{Db-g11}}, for the moment I will let the matter drop. I may revisit it, though. Cheers! —Anomalocaris (talk) 11:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)- @Anomalocaris: I'm not meaning to suggest it should not be fixed, but I care (as I think most editors do) about end results at the user side, so I can't get worked up about this. I already have "work[ed] to avoid [the] lint error", as I've already walked you through in some detail. I've hardly been "irresponsible", I simply have limited amounts of volunteer time, and have to devote them to thing that actually make a practical difference. There is no simple solution, without doing a bunch of Lua (which I'm not really competent at) in the meta-template/module behind this stuff, to detect a
</b>in input and suppress the one that would normally be generated otherwise. Or, on some additional thinking, it might actually be as simple as moving the original</b>or'''(whichever it is), so that it it occurs before|reason=, and thus that parameter would no longer need any means of ending the boldface sooner. If we go that route, it would also be nice to move the closing "." so that it not forced after|reason=, which is apt to result in ".." since most people add a "." at the end of whatever sentence they'll write in there. But this is such a internal-oriented and short-term template I don't care much, honestly. :-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:02, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Anomalocaris: I'm not meaning to suggest it should not be fixed, but I care (as I think most editors do) about end results at the user side, so I can't get worked up about this. I already have "work[ed] to avoid [the] lint error", as I've already walked you through in some detail. I've hardly been "irresponsible", I simply have limited amounts of volunteer time, and have to devote them to thing that actually make a practical difference. There is no simple solution, without doing a bunch of Lua (which I'm not really competent at) in the meta-template/module behind this stuff, to detect a
- I do not anticipate that
'''being closed by </b> will be supported forever if at all in the future when Parsoid becomes the one parser. Best to try to sort out the issue today rather than later. Izno (talk) 21:19, 26 March 2021 (UTC)- Sure. Again, I have no objection to finding a fix, it's just not rating high on my personal priority list. I think tweaking the underlying meta-template is the solution. I'm pleased to see that it (
{{db-meta}}) is a regular template not a Lua module, so it should at least not be difficult. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:05, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
- Sure. Again, I have no objection to finding a fix, it's just not rating high on my personal priority list. I think tweaking the underlying meta-template is the solution. I'm pleased to see that it (
- I agree with you that the parser fixes a lot of mistakes and that it is helpful that it does this. But I also think that responsible Wikipedians should work to avoid lint errors, not intentionally introduce them, and cooperate with efforts to eliminate them. Your edit introduced a closing
Drago's century
Just occurred to me that Drago's century might be faster than 3:31, akin to trimming Ronnie's maximum time from 5:20 to 5:08. Splićanin (talk) 06:41, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
- That'll be something to raise, with reliable sources, at the talk page of his article that or that of the event or where ever the claimed record belongs. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Splićanin: forgot to ping you. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:49, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
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Feedback request: Language and linguistics request for comment
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Nomination for deletion
An article you created or have significantly contributed to has been nominated for deletion. The article is being discussed at the deletion discussion, located here. North America1000 11:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
- Rats. I was hoping there was some embarrassing piece-of-trash permastub from 2005 we were going to get rid of. LOL. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:58, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Starting an RFC on including the dash in "Virtual reality (noun)s"
Given the close over at Talk:Virtual reality headset, I would be happy to initiate an RFC on a WT:Manual of style related to the issue of whether a hyphened form of "virtual-reality" should be used when that's an adjective phrase attached to a noun. I think a wider input would be helpful to settle the matter across all of WP. --Masem (t) 22:21, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
- Sure, especially since at least three editors are challenging that non-admin close as an obvious WP:SUPERVOTE + WP:NOTAVOTE failure. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:17, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Masem: forgot to ping. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:17, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Feedback request: WikiProjects and collaborations request for comment
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COI Request on Dictionary.com Page
Hello User:SMcCandlish.
I see you belong to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Reference works group and was wondering if you could help me with a few minor edits to the Dictionary.com page? As I have declared, I am in a COI/paid relationship with Dictionary and am therefore adhering to the Wikipedia rules of seeking assistance from volunteer editors. I was wondering if you could review the requests I made on that talk page on March 3 and 8? Another editor added the COI edit request code which placed these requests into that queue. Those requests now date back to November. If you have the time and inclination, I'd greatly appreciate your assistance. Thank you in advance. Best, LeepKendall (talk) 16:13, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- @LeepKendall: I'll try to look into it as time permits (and I have some experience resolving CoI edit requests), but I'm kind of swamped. If much of this has been languishing for a while already, I guess there's not a big hurry. If you don't see action on this stuff begin (from me or someone else) within a week, hit me up again here and I'll try to more explicitly block out some time for it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:29, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you User:SMcCandlish. I appreciate it, and your quick reply. I've reached out to several volunteers with no reply. LeepKendall (talk) 15:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- Hey there User:SMcCandlish. As you suggested on the 8th, I'm pinging you to see if you have a little time to review my edit requests on Dictionary.com? I truly appreciate your offer, and your busy-ness. Thank you. LeepKendall (talk) 17:57, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you User:SMcCandlish. I appreciate it, and your quick reply. I've reached out to several volunteers with no reply. LeepKendall (talk) 15:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Pichenotte
looking for edit summary
hello from DLagasse...Stanton...Can you please show me how to view edit summaries, for example Grabergs recently made an edit on PICHENOTTE and removed external links, and I understand why, now, but I don't see how to look at edit summaries which would have saved me and him the trouble of some back and forth. You can email me if you prefer to answer that way. Thanks a lot.— Preceding unsigned comment added by DVQuebec (talk • contribs) 04:01, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- @DVQuebec: Use the page-history feature, toward the top of the page (exactly where it is and what it's called will depend on your site skin and scripts; in my case it's "View history" and toward top right, but you might have it as "History" and just to the right of "Talk" or "Discuss", toward top-left of page). In there, you'll see a list of all edits, from newest on down, including the edit summaries. As for the issue that you're talking about, I've commented in detail at Talk:Pichenotte. PS: I just did a big cleanup pass on the article, but only for basic style and formatting stuff. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:52, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
pronunciation...
yes , thanks, I will work on the re-wording as you suggest... a group or family of games... and I will check on pronunciation giudes... we stopped using 'peesh'-nut' because kids would giggle about using the pee word, so we used 'peash' - nut' but I will check pronunciation guide, possibly just a long 'e' with a horizontal line over it . I don't have it on my cellphone keyboard DVQuebec (talk) 15:48, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- WP has a specific system for doing these "respelling" pronunciation guides; see Template:Respell and Help:Pronunciation respelling key. In short, it is a codified system, not a "change it around as I like" thing. We also need even more strict IPA pron. guides for Eng. and Fr., but that takes a linguistics background (and I have that, so I'll do it, but it's low-priority given the general state of the article). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:56, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
text... size
@DVQuebec: I will increase the text size and make other adjustments you have suggested... busy schedule today but will work on it in the evenings to come DVQuebec (talk) 17:25, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- I didn't suggest increasing any text size. Rather, the images that contain text inside them need to be large enough to be readable. However, there are too many images with too much text, so in the long run some of these need to be replaced. It's not a big deal (like lowest priority). Just making sure the lead image is legible is good enough for now. The overall organization of the article and the "story" it is telling, with what sources, is way more important to deal with.
Ultimately, there are just too many near-identical images, though. We need one to two good illustration of each board type, a diagram of scoring zones, an illustration of pieces close up (preferably including striker and queen – maybe I can do that, since you sent me pieces!), and perhaps also of pins in the one game type that uses them. At the bottom of the article we could do a WP:Gallery of additional images showing particularly handsome or antique boards, but the short list above is all we really, really need. Most of the text populating these images is text that belongs inside the article body (dimensions, etc.) If it's particular to a particular board, then it belongs (if it's important to include at all) as caption text under the image. So, basically, I think most of the images eventually need replacing. The original pics they are made up of will in many cases be more useful. I'm not sure if you uploaded those to Commons as well, or just these collages. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:03, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Many thanks !!! for your expansive and insightful work on PICHENOTTE and two questions please...
Greetings Stanton. Thanks so much for your expansive and accurate work on the PICHENOTTE entry. I really appreciate it. The growing accuracy of information about this family of games, now impresses not only me, but my French Canadian friends and relatives. Yahoo! Your additional references to the games of billiards, pool and bocce are expansive and educational, giving readers who have familiarity with those games, a better appreciation for the subtleties of these seemingly simple folk games. Questions please: 1) I would like to ask your advice about the photos on the page. My intention was to make two 'quadrant photos' for each game. One to show just the game itself and the other to show the equipment, players, and the flicking methods. I thought perhaps showing them as thumbnails would be a good idea and then they could be opened and read easily and enjoyed in 'full size mode' - 900 pixel height. But perhaps readers don't realize you can click and open them. And I am having second thoughts. Perhaps there are too many, perhaps the size is wrong. I am also considering removing the quad photo in the introduction, since the intro now perhaps adequately describes a 'family' of games. 2) American Southwest pichenotte I would like to add 'American Southwest pichenotte' in a 'Final Four' mix for the time being, staying open to future considerations. The 'Final Four' Family: 1) Canadian-American carrom, 2) Canadian-American Pitchnut, 3) Canadian American crokinole and 4) American Southwest pichenotte. I plan to remove the India-International game from the quadrant photo in any case, if it stays. The descendants of French Canadian families have settled into the American Southwest, bringing the game of pichenotte with them. There is now a loosely knit but active group in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado. The game is different from Canadian Crokinole - different physical dimensions and different rules. We have a mutually respectful relationship with many Canadian makers and players. But for the sake of both games and both 'parties' the differences can be highlighted in a way that is mutually respectful and educational. Your thoughts please, when you have time. DLagasse April 9, 2021 DVQuebec (talk) 17:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- @DVQuebec: One problem (in point no. 1) about using images people have to click on to read is that this doesn't really work on small mobile devices. It's also an accessibility issue, in that all the embedded text in these images is something blind users can't access, even with screen readers. A third, more minor, issue is WP:REUSE; article sections are best when they fairly well stand alone like mini-articles; if the images in a section are tightly relevant to that section, and they're not all just more and more cross-categorical comparison, this is better material (e.g. for extracting content about a specific game variant). Well-done sections are what we typically base spin-off articles on, when a main article gets too long. Oh, and close relevancy relationship between image and text in a section is also another accessibility boon, since screen readers parse these pages in a strict top-down, left-to-right manner; an image floated to the right will still have its alt text red out in the order of its appearance in the source code of the page (which is why I tweaked the order of a couple of them). For all of these reasons, it's better to use multiple images, with descriptive captions, rather than composites-of-icons pictures with a bunch of text in them pertaining to different sections.
My assumption is that you still have all your original images. I would probably be most helpful to upload those to commons, not just these collages. And please not with SCREAMING ALL-CAPS FILENAMES. Heh. They need not have terribly long names either; the image description page is where details go. As you know from before, I can help with the image cataloguing at Commons. Even if we did use one composite image somewhere, having separate ones available would be a boon.
On Q. 2: I think American Southwest pichenotte could be a difficult sell as an entire section. It would require multiple independent reliable sources (i.e. not from tournament promoters, etc.), that establish it as a separate-ruleset game. If the game itself is not radically different from another version, it should just be covered as a resurgence of regional play of that game in that area, not as a separate game. But if it really is a separate game: tournament promoter materials are probably good enough for establishing what the rules are (WP:PRIMARYUSE, WP:ABOUTSELF), but it would take various newspaper articles and such, the independent sources, to establish that it's noteworthy enough for us to bother writing about it. And where is this named "American Southwest pichenotte" coming from? It sounds like a descriptive label we've made up. If that's the case, and if this is really a unique game, then why doesn't it have its own name? And what kind of sourcing is there about differences in game equipment, that isn't coming from makers of it like yourself (WP:COI)?
I'm reminded of bocce, which has turned into a big deal across the US (probably also Canada) especially with indoor courts at large bar-restaurants in suburban to rural areas (where there's enough room). It has gone hand-in-hand with the resurgence of cornhole; places with one often also have the other). The house and regional rules will vary from place to place, but it doesn't make them separate games we need WP article sections about. Same with a lot of pool games, which can have a lot of regional variance, which is mostly non-encyclopedic. We write mostly about nationally and internationally standardized rule sets. I don't want this to sound like "WP cannot write about the SW game"; rather, the bar is kind of high to do it properly.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:32, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
Pichenotte translating into French
Stanton, greetings, any advice on translating into French ? I have friends and family to help me. Also, it seems someone is going to ask for a citation in the introduction, relative to the 1880 patent for a variant. Assuming that is for the MB Ross game board, would you like me to cite The Crokinole Book? Thanks DVQuebec (talk) 14:05, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- I don't know French. And I wouldn't bother translating this while it still needs so much work. WP:THEREISNODEADLINE. It's more important to get this up to at least Good Article quality first. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:51, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- @DVQuebec: Je parle francais. What exactly do you need translation of? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:45, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Feedback request: Society, sports, and culture request for comment
Done
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Re. recent events
Sorry for your loss. Don't worry about the comments, misunderstandings happen and so long everything's cleared up I think we don't need to have any bad thoughts over it. Understandable that you'd wish to take a break for personal reasons. Wish you best, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:44, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
My condolences
I am sorry to read of the death of your uncle. Please take care of yourself. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 02:08, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- My condolences as well. Please take care of yourself and your family in these times. VanIsaac, MPLL contWpWS 19:29, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- The header caught my attention: take my condolences as well, and see my talk for a piece of music that played a role in my life and was for a long time believed to have been written for a funeral, Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:41, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- Oh I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. Take good care. LeepKendall (talk) 19:22, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
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