User talk:BrownHairedGirl

BrownHairedGirl is a Wikipedia admin

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Sub-national Portal Tables

First, thank you.

Second, what is YCMTSU (at the end of your post)?

Third, I think that what actually annoyed NA1k is sort of strangely amusing. First, the objection doesn't seem to be to the numbers, but to the comments, which are my observations. The problem is that I provided a dump of US state portal metrics in the Portal:Massachusetts nomination, and it didn't reflect that the Portal Rescue Squadron had improved Portal:Colorado. What is strange is that, first, Colorado isn't the subject of a nomination at this time. It had one, and the result was No Consensus, and so the portal still exists. Second, I wasn't even !voting Delete on Massachusetts. I haven't !voted on Massachusetts, because I was making the point that Portal:Massachusetts is in better shape than most state portals. But they are annoyed that I didn't recognize their hard scattergun work. But they have corrected it in the table in question anyway. They have also made a confused tagging in the Massachusetts MFD, saying that the table is being nominated for deletion, and what I posted in the Massachusetts MFD isn't quite the same as what is in the 50-state page. Oh well, consistency was never one of the key virtues of the Portal Rescue Squadron.

Fourth, I still haven't !voted on Massachusetts.

Fifth, they seem to think that by deleting the page, they can get rid of my portal stats and observations. That page and the entries in MFD come from a local database.

Sixth, I will in the future put dates to observations about gaps in maintenance. I don't think that "no maintenance between 2012 and Oct 19" is much better than "no maintenance since 2012".

Seventh, I have put a note on each of the three sub-national portal tables. They may not have noticed Canada or Australia, or they may be America-centric. I haven't published Counties in England, because I have only looked at about half of them.

Anyway, I probably won't be editing between 0000 GMT and 0330 GMT because there will be post-season baseball on TV. Before and after. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:32, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi @rRobert

You're welcome. I tell it like it is. YCMTSU = "You can't make this stuff up". ("stuff" may be replaced by a 4-letter-word also beginning with "s")

NA1K is the most extreme example I have seen of an editor wholly unaware of their own limitations, and energetically determined to double down on replicating their conceptual lapses. It would be comic if it wasn't both so sad and so disruptive.

However, I have been meaning to say for some time that I think your tables would be massively if they linked to the queries which produced the data. That way everyone could verify them. I have to confess that because of the lack of links, I tend to ignore them.

I am unpersuaded that NA1K's unexplained list-making in portals actually adds value. On the contrary, given NA1K's demonstrable lack of both conceptual skill and topic expertise, they are an outright menace.

Enjoy your ball game. Tho I have no idea why a group of people doing stuff with a ball has any attraction. I presume that watching paint dry is just too much excitement for some people --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:16, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Okay. As to the tables, your suggestion is understood, and I will think about whether there is a way to implement it. There might not be, because of the way that the tables are generated, which is from an Access database, and then to Excel, and then to Wikitable. It would be getting all of the query information into Access that I would have to work on. I already have more than 1100 portals tracked (out of some 5000). So I will think about it. I think that what you want and what I want are not exactly the same, but overlapping sets.

As to the ball game, we have increased the speed of the game compared to how it is played in England and India. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:51, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

I would have !voted Neutral on Portal:Massachusetts based on the table. But they don't like the table. That's the way the ball bounces. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:24, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

YCMTSU

On the topic of You Can't Make This Scat* Up:

• Compromise between two values.

1. I really had been planning to !vote Neutral on Portal:Massachusetts based on the table showing 20 states that were less views than it was. But they tagged the table and asked to have it deleted. Without the table, there is no evidence to support anything but deletion.

2. I really was planning to be either Neutral or Weak Delete on Australian football until we were told that portals do not fork content because they only highlight it. It is true that transclusion does not fork content, but the statement that portals don't fork content misses the point of many MFDs.

3. Did they notice the insult when I apologized for the lookup error on the zoos?

4. Take a look at the MFD log for 18 October. Yes. Take a look at it.

Robert McClenon (talk) 18:46, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I think ...

... you're a great editor, and I think you're wasting your talents on this portal-crap and I think you'd be better off ignoring it. Just my impression, and I won't debate it with you or anyone else (fully realising how crappily unfair this position is). ---Sluzzelin talk 23:00, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, @Sluzzelin.

8 months ago, I hoped that a influx of outsiders might being some involvement in the mire that portalpsace was, so I gave it my efforts. I never thought that it would drag on this long.

Sadly, one of the fundamental problems of portals is that the very factors which make them such a mess are also what makes it so hard to tackle the problem.

At some point, I will have to decide that enough is enough. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:27, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

I really hope you don't give up on portals BHG! Having just read WP:VPPR#Proposal to delete Portal space this morning, it is amazing how much you have achieved. I know you face groups that oppose you, and even protect broken portals. I think they feel the failure of portals will be the failure of Wikipedia, and therefore want to "leave a light on" in the hope that portal editors return. However, for reasons now apparent, portals are only going in one direction, and quickly now; however, that has not stopped Wikipedia content rising at a relentless rate.

Like you, I am a believer in creative destruction - cutting what doesn't work, amplifying what does work. Every great city ever built, experienced times when whole parts needed to be flattened and rebuilt in a different way. Wikipedia will be no different. And the more portal MfDs I see, the stronger my view on portals needs such a process; incrementalism won't work.

I can also see that 8 months of intense work by yourself (and others with you) is taking a toll, and it is coming across in your tone in portal debates. Nobody, not even those who oppose you, can doubt your skill-level and depth of analysis that you bring to any debate in WP (unprecedented in my experience on Wikipedia). However, the deterioration in your tone is going to become an important stick for them to contest you on, as per the recent ANI. You know this better than I, but I give you the view as someone involved on the periphery.

I really do hope you re-group and press on here as this work is extremely valuable for maintaining the quality of Wikipedia in the eyes of the public. I will try an be as helpful as I can, but unfortunately, I just don't have your capacity or productivity (or skill level). However, ultimately, for structural reasons, most portals are only going to one direction; if that means that you take a break from time to time, and the process takes a bit longer, so be it. That was the spirit in which I mused on the 30-day cool-off point. Britishfinance (talk) 19:38, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks, @Britishfinance.

After that pile-on at the drama board, I need to reflect a bit. You have given me much to chew on.

Best wishes, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:20, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

I think you faced most of the group who oppose you on portals, however, they were using incivility as the tool to get you off portals, and while nobody else in WP cares about portals (hence their inevitable demise and state of abandonment), incivility is something that a non-involved WP editor can see and react to (even without knowing the full picture).

Like you, I !voted on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Massachusetts today and gave more expanded reasons as to why even this portal, despite the vibrancy of the topic area with editors, has so completely failed, leaving it abandoned. Even the strongest portal supporter is going to realise that a lot of the current "band-aid" work is going to get deleted at some stage (as the TH will have realised). There is no way to stop the speed of the demise, as it is a structural issue (not editor habits), and the trend on the Massachusetts portal is evident on most other portals.

Ironically, even if portal supporters managed to get you topic-banned from portals (which they are trying), it would not change the quickening demise and collapse of portals one bit. That is the thing to keep in mind, and not to let the interactions become the driver of this. It is like somebody winning a bitter takeover battle for a newspaper in 2012; oops.

Take care of yourself, and at all costs, preserve your sanity and enjoyment. Britishfinance (talk) 11:14, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks again, @Britishfinance. There is a lot I could say in response to continue the dialogue, but I hope you will understand why at the moment I am being very cautious about what I say. I will only repeat my earlier observation to Sluzzelin that that the very factors which make portals such a mess are also what makes it so hard to tackle the problem. But the good thing is that after so much debate over the last year, progress no longer depends on any individual or any group of editors; the failings are now well-enough documented and widely-enough understood that there now seems to be a broad process of identifying and culling the junk, and a lot of very thorough analysis to challenge the uncritical groupthink which had previously dominated portalspace. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:26, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Please adjust page protection

Please adjust the page protection settings on the following pages. As discussed at there is clear community consensus that ECP should not apply for "high risk templates" and nothing under WP:ECP supports such protection to this/these template(s) (example: "by request" is insufficient).

• Template:Lists of office-holders in YYYY cat
• Template:Tele by country by year cat‎
• Template:Music festivals by year of establishment cat‎
• Template:Film festivals by year of establishment cat
• Template:Filmyr
• Template:In film year‎
• Template:Year in theatre category‎

Thank you. Buffs (talk) 16:30, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

@Buffs: all changed to template-prot, because in each case a large number of categories are wholly dependent on the template. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:42, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Sounds appropriate and was all I was looking for. Thanks! Buffs (talk) 19:37, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing it to my attention, @Buffs. Glad we're both happy with the outcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:39, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

British National Party Page

Hi I have noticed a page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party ) it is the British National Party Page. It looks as though it has been tampered with, I can see that you have made a recent edit to try to correct the issues. But after reading the article, it is full of non neutral "point of views", and unverifiable claims. i understand that the party is a right wing party but there are claims all through the page referring to the party as "neo-nazi" and "facist". I have looked through all the references on the page and there is no verifiable evidence in any of the references. (except for a few opinion pieces). I was wondering if you would mind helping to rectify these issues on this page, I am happy to assist also, but it is going to be quite a task because a lot of the reference used are non neutral, so we will have to cross reference all the data in the page unfortunately, to ensure is verifiable. I think there are a few other page i have read in the past, that are similar. Also Is there a better way to raise these issues or a better place to discuss these issues? (sorry i am a bit of a noob in wikipedia) Regards - Markie — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markie Camenzuli (talk • contribs) 08:17, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Markie Camenzuli

My only edits to that page have been trivial technical edits, and I have no wish to get further involved.

There is ongoing discussion of issues relating to the article at Talk:British National Party. I suggest that you review those discussions, and add whatever contributions you wish to make in regard to the use of sources.

If you don't mind me offering a word of advice, I would respectfully suggest that as a relatively new editor, it is best not to jump in at the deep end. I recommend that you gain experience of the most relevant crucial policies such as as WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:WEIGHT, WP:UNDUE, etc before weighing in on hotly contested topics. But that's just my friendly advice, so make of it what you will. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:35, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Portal deletions

FYI, I have deleted Portal:Zoos, Portal:Musical theatre, and Portal:Design per their respective MfDs. Have at it! bd2412 T 20:06, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

@BD2412: thanks for the headsup. I will fuel index finger with nectar, set to with AWB. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:15, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Sponge

just wanted to leave a message to let you know I appreciate your wit! For example, it appears you worked on a page for the the band "Sponge' and had a line to the eff ect of 'the band's popularity waned' knowing that one of their biggest hits had "wax" in the title? Hilarious, lass, IMO! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.242.117.45 (talk) 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't recall that, but thank you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:00, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Your AWB edits

Hello BHG, I am wondering about your editing frequency as of late.

Between 14:08 and 14:59 (14 October 2019) 150 edits were made using AWB

15:00 and 15:44 453 edits were made using AWB

16:02 and 16:35 777 edits were made using AWB

Between 17:22 and 17:39, 475 edits were made using AWB. From 17:39 to 17:49, 529 edits were made within the span of 10 minutes (an edit about every 1-3 seconds).

17:50-18:56 saw an additional 764.

19:20-19:25 (space of 5 minutes) saw 220. The rest of the 19:00 hour (end) saw an additional 1,083.

20:00-20:59 (start, end) saw 459 edits.

21:00-21:59: 183

22:00-22:59: 794

23:00-23:59: 452

Between 14:08 and 23:59 on 14 October 2019, at least 6, 339 edits were made - the vast majority using AWB (did my best to discount any non-AWB edits in the above figures). This isn't a one-off either (quickly clicking through the 15th, it appears to be at least another 3 or 4k edits). Skipping forward to your most recent contribs and this pattern appears to have continued until just yesterday. This seems way too fast for even AWB to reasonably do as a non-bot (ie 529 in 10 minutes). (That's faster than the average editing frequency of my bots even.) How did you manage this using AWB? At least on the surface, this looks like unauthorized bot activity/bot-like editing - which is concerning to me as a BAG member. To be clear: the concern is with the editing speed (frequency), not the validity of the edits themselves. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 22:43, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Might I suggest that you create a bot account (or re-use BHGbot, subject to a new BRFA), apply for bot approval at BRFA and get it flagged? That way, you can make these edits without flooding recent changes. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 23:13, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi TheSandDoctor

This is all done with an out-of-the box copy of AWB, currently v6.1.01. Downloaded pre-compiled, and unmodified in any way.

A little context. In general I find AWB to be a v poor tool for tasks that require manual changes to the edit window. I occasionally use it that way for very short runs, but for anything more than a few dozen edits, I find that it doesn't provide clear enough feedback on the effects of edit. So I try to use AWB only for tasks where I have regexes and/or modules to cover all cases; even though it may take longer to code to cover all cases than do them manually within AWB, coding them offers more accuracy.

That means that during the AWB run, my crucial task is spotting edge-cases, i.e. either unforeseen patterns or cases where my regexes and modules don't behave as expected.

For big jobs like these, I did some experiments a few years ago. What I found was that the accuracy level of my assessment of AWB edits declined as runs got longer; I was less likely to spot edge cases. Watching myself doing such jobs, it seemed that as a long run progressed, I was mostly concentrating on clicking in the right place, and not focusing as I much as I should on the actual changes.

I had hunch that this was because the physical act of clicking was a distraction, so I devised a way to automate the process of clicking. (it may not helpful to say more publicly, but I am happy to explain that more privately). This was a revelation: apart from making my fingers less achey, it massively increased my detection rate of edge cases. Instead of half my attention being on clicking in the right place, I could now focus solely on the effects of the edits, and stop the run if I spotted a problem. Sometimes my reaction times are slow, and one or two more edits may be saved before I get to stop the run; but overall my accuracy level is much higher than before.

I have now used this approach successfully for several years. I set a low click rate initially, and increase it increments as I gain confidence in the accuracy. Then, on longer runs, I let it run at massively higher clicks per minute, so that the limits are simply how fast AWB can load a page, process it, save it, and then load the next one.

Category pages are usually short and simple, so a simple edit to them can sometimes be done at a rate of about 40 to 60 per minute. The sets which run at that sort of speed are nearly all categories.

Large and complex pages (nearly always articles) are much slower; some of them can take five or ten seconds each to load and process, but in general articles can be done at a rate of 15 to 35 per minute. Long runs of stubs maybe 40/min.

After several years, I am very satisfied that this combination of high speed when freed from clicking to do actual watching is the most accurate way of doing long runs. It's more accurate both than unattended bot editing and than manual clicking.

I liken it do a change I made in my driving a decade or so ago; I got a much more powerful car of the same size, with an automatic gearbox and cruise control instead of its predecessor's small engine and manual gearbox (manuals are the norm in Ireland). It made me a much better driver, because I could concentrate much more on the crucial task of reading the road.

And I am glad that you agree the accuracy levels are fine: that has always been my prime goal. Since that's the focus of WP:MEATBOT, I have therefore worked on the basis that so long as I maintained v high levels of accuracy, I was well within policy.

For most of the last few years, nearly all of my edits done this way have been to categories, which are little-watched. So it has been v rare for them to flood any watchlists.

However, in the last 2–3 months, I have been doing link replacement after portal deletions. In many cases, these have either been small sets, or mostly categories (esp country portals, where several editors did AWB runs to add portal links to categories but not articles). So again, little intrusion.

However, in the last week or so, I have handled two portals which each had over 2,000 links from article space, so I can imagine that those have been more intrusive.

Nonetheless, I would prefer not to use a bot account for this. That's mostly because BAG usually sets a throttle on editing rates, usually (AFAICR) 5 or 10 edits/min, which is too slow to make attended editing viable.

I have had two recent cases of portals with >6,000 backlinks, plus one with ~15,000 backlinks. At five edit/s min, those would take respectively 20 hours and 50 hours … which is too long for this human's attention, so they'd have to run unattended. That would be a step backwards.

The other factor is that I often tweak these AWB runs by adding related minor fixes such as capitalising the first letter of the names of other portals which are being linked. Since BAG tends to define its tasks narrowly and precisely, I'd be concerned that such uncontroversial fixes would be subject to bureaucratic hurdles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:06, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I was asked to comment on this off-wiki, but I just thought I would clarify a few bot-related things. First, the upper bot rate is generally 20-30epm (with 20 being the "preferred" standard) with the upper limit more-or-less acceptable during "off-peak" hours. Second, there has been a little bit of a relaxation of the hard-and-fast "no genfixes" rule that seems to have been common a few years ago in BRFAs - "fixing caps in related portal links" would be a perfectly acceptable genfix to have (assuming the major change of removing the portal was accomplished).

Personally, I feel that MEATBOT is more for problematic editing, so I guess whether you use a bot or your main account is up to you (provided your edits stay more-or-less flawless), but I also suspect that while a high-epm bot wouldn't be questioned, there are multiple editors I've seen sanctioned over the past few years for high edit rates (though to be clear, they were being a bit problematic overall). Primefac (talk) 01:20, 21 October 2019 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

I would prefer for BHG to use an alternative account for doing mass big job AWB edits, so that I can follow her more intellectual activities in the user contributions of the main account. On the other hand, it is interesting to note the sheer number of edits to clean up after portal fixes. --SmokeyJoe (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:30, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

• Thank you for the response, BHG, and the explanation. I am glad that you appreciate my concerns. I asked Primefac to comment as I was away from my keyboard at the time and unable to respond/was not sure if I could tonight.

  "...so I devised a way to automate the process of clicking..." by definition means that the edits are supervised, but automated. Being essentially automated, it satisfies the definition of WP:BOT ("an automated tool that carries out repetitive and mundane tasks") and combined with the speed in some of these instances WP:ASSISTED's clause, which states "semi-automated processes that operate at higher speeds, with a higher volume of edits, or with less human involvement are more likely to be treated as bots. If there is any doubt, you should make an approval request." WP:BOTUSE also notes that "...high-speed semi-automated editing may effectively be considered bots in some cases (see WP:MEATBOT), even if performed by a human editor. If in doubt, check."

  Your concern regarding a 5-10 edit limit is indeed a valid concern and I can see why that would be something that would give you pause, but I can assure you that that is not the case. Primefac mentioned the 20-30 edit/min number above out of his own experience but there is no mention in BOTPOL regarding an edit rate limit. BOTPOL just asks that between 12:00–04:00 UTC high speed bots slow down. Even if a limit was specified, having a bot flagged account would allow you to make the process automated within AWB without the need to manually approve each edit (though you could certainly continue to do so should you choose). This would also save you the trouble of an autoclicker and the "nectar" two sections up for your finger. ;)

  I appreciate the work that you have been doing to correct portal links post-deletion, but it is something that would be far better served by a flagged bot. This would prevent watchlist/recent changes flooding (an edit a second is fairly intrusive) and be in line with current bot policy. As a BAG member, my strong recommendation is to file a Bot Request for Approval regarding these activities and to switch the edits to either BHGbot or another account you create. I do not see the process being overly long given the low controversial nature of these changes - probably just a few days at most. Genfixes also wouldn't be an issue to continue and there is also precedent for BAG members to give rather broad approvals in some instances/at their discretion (I just gave one yesterday). --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 03:45, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

• @TheSandDoctor: thanks for your reply. I am surprised to learn of off-Wiki communication between you and Primefac which doesn't even involve keyboards. That seems odd, and I prefer discussions about Wiki to be on Wiki.

Anyway, I am glad that everyone agrees that these edits present no issues of accuracy.

Despite all that has been written above, I see zero benefit to me of getting bot approval for this job. Nothing about doing so would make my task easier, or help me to maintain accuracy. On the contrary, there are several factors which would make my work more difficult, one of which is splitting my contribs list between the bot and my main a/c; that makes it harder to check the sequence of events if it needs to be scrutinised.

So in terms of the core issue of getting the job done, using a bot a/c seems to me to be a step backwards.

I wasn't aware of WP:BOTREQUIRE's provisions about throttling edits between 0000 UTC and 0400 UTC, and trying to avoid weekdays. Now that I am aware, I will adopt both, and leave big jobs to the weekend.

So the only outstanding issue I can see is possible flooding of related changes. In practice, it's rare for any run to be long enough to cause much of a problem; the period noted above was exceptionally busy.

@TheSandDoctor: are you really sure putting this job in a bot framework would, on balance, actually helpful? It seems to me not.

If you do insist on going down that path, we need some input from @BD2412, who has been doing the same type of edits, also at high speed, tho apparently with much cruder replacement codes.(see e.g. [1] and [2]) I have never been clear what purpose is served by BD2412's duplication of effort, but if there are overriding reasons to move my work to a bot job and/or throttle its rate (at least during some hours), then it makes little sense to me to have another non-bot dong part of the job, and possibly "taking up the slack" as my work is delayed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:35, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

I would only add to the above that this job can not be done by a bot. Each individual edit requires human attention, and I tend to skip more than I save, since only so many solutions are readily apparent to the eye. With respect to rate, the human eye can generally discern within less than half a second whether an immediate edit like the removal (or replacement) of a deleted portal in a bar is correct. bd2412 T 23:42, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@BD2412: on the contrary, this job can be done by a bot. I have a set of regexes which allow the job to be done without individual assessment. They handle all cases (including name variants and duplication, and different types of portal link template), so my monitoring of edits is simply to check for regex glitches which I then fix. The only reason that you are making individual checks is that it seems you don't have regexes which handle all cases.

My concern is only whether it is better done by a bot, and I am unpersuaded of that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:49, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps it depends on the case. Since we are talking about substituting portals, in some cases editors have pointed out that the higher-level portal topic makes sense for some articles but not others, so in some instances it should be replaced and in others deleted altogether. There is no regex that can make that judgment call. bd2412 T 00:29, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@BD2412: sadly, there is usually no discussion on the proposals at MFD to replace or the backlinks (which are usually made either by me or by Robert McClenon). I recall only one instance where there was a post-discussion request to make selective judgments, and I rejected that one because it seemed to mistake linking to a portal with categorisation. I recall no case where there was agreement at MFD to be selective. If I have missed some, please can you point me to them?

I have nothing to add except that the decision as to what to do with the backlinks, like everything involving portals, has to be done using common sense, and that is a characteristic of editors who are H. sapiens rather than bots. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:27, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

If there are any such cases, they will certainly be very rare; the overwhelming majority of cases require simple replacement, while avoiding duplicates, and that is done much more accurately by a rule-based process than by repeated snap human judgements. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:50, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I recall, for example, that concerns were raised about replacing links to the deleted portal on terrorism with links to Portal:War, when certain of the target articles were about one-off acts that were unrelated to any war. bd2412 T 01:06, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I think that the definitions at Portal:War are broad enough to include such actions, tho I can respect that there are edge cases where editors may reasonably disagree. If subjective judgements are to be made about the edge cases, it is much better that they are made after reflection by editors well-familiar with the topics than in less than half a second by someone working rapidly through a list. Doing the replacement rather than just deleting leaves those finer judgements to the place where they belong. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:19, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Apologies for the delayed response. It seems that an issue of confusion here with you and BD2412 is the belief that bots must be automated. There is an entire class of bots which are supervised and have their edits checked by the bot operator prior to saving them and are not automated (see WP:ASSISTED, "...semi-automated processes that operate at higher speeds, with a higher volume of edits, or with less human involvement are more likely to be treated as bots. If there is any doubt, you should make an approval request" clause I've quoted above - emphasis added). In essence, this shouldn't change much of anything for either of you to do aside from a one-time settings change in AWB and the filing of a BRFA (again, you can request broad coverage for things like what you have been doing etc - genfixes are totally cool to include as well). You'd then continue as is on the other account. All I am asking is that you file a BRFA and wait for approval (probably no more than a couple days). Aside from filing, there shouldn't be much - if any - extra work for you to do. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 07:54, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

@TheSandDoctor, thanks for your reply.

Things got a bit sidetracked above into a mistaken idea that this job can't be done unattended, which still seems to me to derive from an inadequate AWB setup. After that with about 100K such edits, I have demonstrated that my regexes are sufficiently robust that the job can be done unattended.

However, it seems that you missed my longer post above, at 23:35, 21 October 2019[3]. As noted there, I still struggle to see advantages of doing this as a bot. Please may I ask you to review that post?

Thanks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:21, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Will do. If you are still unclear as to the need or feel it is a ton of work, could you please list where you are getting "stuck" (e.g. like the automation and genfix issues like have been previously cleared up)? I am happy to help clear up any misconceptions etc.

"I am surprised to learn of off-Wiki communication between you and Primefac which doesn't even involve keyboards. That seems odd, and I prefer discussions about Wiki to be on Wiki." - that was communication over WP:IRC. The Wikipedia app was not working for me on mobile at the time (showed your talk page as blank and tends to be spotty at best for me, even after upgrading phones) and I was unsure when I'd be able to give you a (reasonable) response. The crux of the issue with keeping it "on wiki" was the fact that I was literally unable to edit Wikipedia at the time as the app wasn't working. I guess you could say that a keyboard was involved though as IRC is entirely text based. I too prefer onwiki communication when possible, but sometimes it simply isn't. I am also active on the channel where a lot of revdel requests come in. Operations is also a useful channel to monitor regarding any ongoing (WMF) server issues. IRC does have its positive uses.

"...I see zero benefit to me of getting bot approval for this job" - the primary benefit to you, as I have implied in previous responses, is being within the bot policy as it is currently written (see also: the bolding in my above/previous response & my other earlier breakdowns where I have illustrated the need; the second last paragraph of this response). At current, this is at best WP:ASSISTED's clause (see bolding of policy in last response requiring a BRFA to be filed), at worse an unauthorized bot by your own admission. Until starting this thread on your talk page, I was unaware of BD2412's involvement. I would also urge BD2412 to create a secondary bot account and also file a BRFA should he wish to continue with this sort of work (for clarity: I am referring to the duplication of effort you've mentioned above). They are quite simple to write up (especially when the edits will be using AWB; see User:Enterprisey/easy-brfa for a really simple way) and honestly will not take a lot of time to get processed.

"On the contrary, there are several factors which would make my work more difficult, one of which is splitting my contribs list between the bot and my main a/c; that makes it harder to check the sequence of events if it needs to be scrutinised." - Every editor who files a BRFA and runs a bot has the same issue. I have a combined total of over 290,000 edits if you include my bots. Bots typically make uncontroversial edits which are unlikely to cause concern. If there is an issue, the community can certainly manage (revert, go to operator's talk page and discuss). This truly isn't a significant issue. I am unclear how this would make your work more difficult? As I've explained above (previous responses), it would probably have little to no effect (on difficulty), aside from a one time AWB settings change and the initial filing of a BRFA. (To make the filing super simple: you can use User:Enterprisey/easy-brfa and follow the directions there. I personally use the script and it does make filing easier.

"...are you really sure putting this job in a bot framework would, on balance, actually helpful?" - what do you mean by "framework" in this case? A BRFA? if so: yes, I truly am. Aside from the policy reasons previously mentioned, it would make your contributions easier to read, for one thing. It would keep your AWB link fixes in one area and be easier to go through, whilst keeping your non-AWB edits more visible on this account. It would make both easier to filter through should there be any issues.

"If you do insist on going down that path..." - I would really rather that we did per all the policy reasons I have been citing in my responses above. The entire approval process is quite painless and doesn't take that much time. In general, BRFAs basically follow the below pattern/flow. You can request broad approval for the types of fixes that you have been doing previously.

1. submit
2. asked to do usually <50 edits
3. Those edits are reviewed. If everything is in order and there are no outstanding issues, approved. If there are, changes are made and another trial requested.
4. edit

If automation is still a concern, please note that bots can be entirely supervised and do not need to run automatically (see previous response). If you are still unclear as to the need or feel it is a ton of work, could you please list where you are getting "stuck" (e.g. like the automation and genfix issues like have been previously cleared up)? I am happy to help clear up any misconceptions etc. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 17:33, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

@TheSandDoctor:, I do have an approved bot account, User:BD2412bot. I am not using it to address portal deletions because I consider the decision to replace or remove a specific deleted portal to require case-by-case human attention (I would add that I have only done a relative handful of these, and my primary usage of both AWB and BD2412bot has been disambiguation link fixing). bd2412 T 17:54, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

@TheSandDoctor: you still haven't persuaded me of any advantage to this other than possible policy-compliance issues. However, I don't want the drama of an unauthorised bot complaint, so I will do the BRFA.

I am not persuaded at all by BD2412's comments that this requires case-by-case human attention. The only example which BD2412 gave was unpersuasive, and the edit rate of many of BD2412's portal-link replacements makes it v hard to believe that the process either involved individual assessments or was done without assistance. Also, I didn't see any instances where one of BD2412's run involved mix of replacements and deletions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:27, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Here is an example from my run of replacing links to the deleted international relations portal where I determined that the appropriate replacement was with two distinct portal links, to Portal:Politics and Portal:Architecture. Here is one where I found it appropriate to replace the deleted portal with separate links to Portal:Politics and Portal:Law. These are, of course, calls that must be made on a case-by-case basis. For the most part, as noted above, the call that I make is whether to make the edit or skip it altogether, so decisions to skip the edit don't leave an edit to point to. My edit rate may indeed be hard to believe, but I am just that fast. On occasion I have even been confused for using AWB or similar tools while editing manually. bd2412 T 20:13, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

@BD2412: In each of the first two cases =921299147[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Palace_of_Nations&diff=prev&oldid=921303122 you did two tasks:

1. replaced Portal:IR with Portal:Politics
2. added another link to a portal unrelated to the removal, which you didn't disclose in the edit summary.

Adding those other portals looks like a good idea in each cases, but it was not a part of the replacement process; it was an addition.

So I see nothing at all in that which impedes the use of a bot to do this job. Any editor may of course choose to add links to portals, but there is absolutely no reason to say that each replacement must be checked manually in order to facilitate undisclosed additions. As a general principle, it is much better that an edit summary discloses what was done, and the use of the replacement process to facilitate undisclosed additions seems to me to be something which should be discouraged. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:58, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

PS I also don't see why you would ever decide to skip the edit altogether, and leave a link to the deleted portal … unless the problem is that your regexes haven't handled the replacement accurately. Mine cover all cases accurately, so no need to skip. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:02, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

@TheSandDoctor: request submitted at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 4.

I tried using User:Enterprisey/easy-brfa.js, but it wouldn't save the form, even I tried again with placeholder answers. The error message each time was While creating BRFA subpage, the edit query returned an error. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:02, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

• That's a token issue, a quick fix for Enterprisey ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:26, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

• @TheSandDoctor: it's now over 5 days since I completed the trial run requested at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 4, but there has been no substantive response to it.

You wrote above that the BRFA approval process would take probably just a few days at most. How do you define "just a few days at most" in this context? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:52, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

You are correct, but I wrote that it "probably" wouldn't take more than a few days (a lot of BRFAs sit for at least a week or more...yours was fairly fast). Me processing it would've been quicker, but not ideal (more than one set of eyes is always preferable) - though I will say that I would've probably gone ahead and approved it (barring any complaints) anyways had it been open much longer.

A request is also typically left open for a couple of days after trial in case anyone has any feedback (speedy approvals aside). With that said, a problem with BAG is that there simply aren't enough active members. Members also tend to not like approving what they've trialed or had other involvement in (e.g. requesting a BRFA be filed). This can lead to delays in and of itself, but is a consequence of the low number of BAG members (a couple of us have been forced to approve bots they trialed due to low numbers of BAGs - see User:TheSandDoctor/BAGusual and User:TheSandDoctor/extraordinaryBAG). I do appreciate your patience and willingness to file a BRFA. If you ever have any BRFA/bot questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 01:44, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Women's sport

Would you please have a look at Portal:Women's sport? Before I ask for a lot of new links to be added, I would like to check how this portal rates on the activity criteria you have been applying to other portals—i.e., there's no reason to add new links if the portal should be deleted instead. Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 02:09, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Black Falcon, and thanks for asking. I did a quick analysis. Here's the results in note form:

• No discussion at Portal talk:Women's sport
• Daily average of only 10 views/day in Oct 2018–Sept 2019. That's risibly low, and it's not due to lack of promotion: there are incoming links from 1,322 articles and 2,046 categories.
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's sport looks only semi-active.
• Project not interested: a search of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women's sport and all its sub-pages (i.e. archives etc) gives no hits for "Portal:Women's sport", apart frm BF's 13 Oct 2019 note on adding links.
• The portal has been badly neglected since 2011 or 2012. The DYKs are all long-since stale; the sample of ten birthday pages which I examined were all untouched for between five and 8 years; the most recent addition to the biogs was in 2012 (see biog/13); the most recent /article is article/9, which was added in 2011, i.e. before the portal was even moved to mainspace.
• Massive, unmaintainable sprawl of subpages: Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Women's sport contains an absurd farm of 440 pages.

So AFAICS, this is an abandoned portal: abandoned by its creator, by readers, and by the WikiProject which has never shown any interest in it, let alone in staying on top of the 440 sub-pages.

Looks to me like it's long overdue for deletion. So please hold off the bot run until after the MFD which will likely happen soon. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:49, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Of course, I'll wait until the nomination concludes. Thank you for taking the time to check. Cheers, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 00:27, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Planned choreography.

Thanks a whole lot for your edit on planned choreography. I'm writing an exam and I just needed that explanation. I'm also really interested in your page. Keep it up.😁 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.190.2.64 (talk) 01:26, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, but I have made no substantive contribution to Wikipedia's content on that topic.

Anyway, good luck with your exam. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:32, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Re-insert maintenance Tags to destroy the pages

Hi,

The problems are created by the below mentioned user (Obi2canibe).

Sri Lanka is a multi cultural country & he has a habit to interfere with the pages which he is not happy. I Kindly request from you to keep a watch with this matter as he is against all communities other than one & keep on adding re-insert maintenance Tags to destroy the pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Obi2canibe

• Please clean up (re-insert maintenance Tags) Mr.Sajith Premadasa'page (he is one of 2019 Sri Lanka Presidential Candidate).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sajith_Premadasa

Yours sincerely,
Jetta
112.134.224.168 (talk) 02:18, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The Simpsons portal

When you get a chance, you may want to take a look at Portal:The Simpsons. The introduction just says "666"; I seriously tried to fix this vandalism and could not figure out how to do so. Who knows how long it has been live. The news feed died out in 2011, save for one update from 2013. Viewership also appears to be quite low; for the last 20 days, it's been at 17 per day vs. 7,379 for The Simpsons, which is FA class. [4] -Crossroads- (talk) 00:15, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, @Crossroads. I fixed the intro.[5]

I'll try to make time to do a thorough examination of whether it should be an MFD candidate. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

In the first half of 2019, it had 17 daily pageviews: https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2019-01-01&end=2019-06-30&pages=Portal:The_Simpsons

The article had 6548: https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2019-01-01&end=2019-06-30&pages=The_Simpsons

I haven't reviewed the currency of the 26 articles and 29 episodes. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:49, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Antonietta_Dell'Era

hello, I am relatively new.. On this Italian dancer, there is a book I cannot find anywhere, by Panwitz, Sebastian, is it okay by wiki standards to delete it? Toandael49 (talk) 15:25, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)@Toandanel49: Why would you want to delete a mention of a book which another editor has added: do you believe that they were hoaxing? This book is in Worldcat - see the catalogue record which shows it is held in a couple of German libraries.

And is it intentional that your signature displays a slightly-misspelled version of your editor name? It's quite confusing for other editors. PamD 15:54, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying how to find the book. That is why I asked. I do not know why my signature is different from my editor name, I will try to figure it out. Toandael49 (talk) 16:04, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

I fixed my user signature, I had not noticed that error, thank you for pointing it out to me.Toandanel49 16:16, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

@Toandanel49: Umm, no, not quite fixed - you haven't got a link in it now! PamD 17:35, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Why did you remove my edit?

Why did you remove my edit? It’s completely factual. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwsapp (talk • contribs) 00:25, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Jwsapp,

I had no idea what you were talking about, so I looked at your edits, and saw what had happened: User:Vsmith reverted[6] your edit, restoring the last edit by me.

I see that User:Shenme has already left a message on your talk page[7] explaining why this was done. I would add that http://lisasstudio.com/vmpopup_2018.htm is a) not a reliable source (it's WP:SELFPUBLISHed); b) not an independent source; and c) that WP:VNOTSUFF applies. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:24, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

The notes say that you removed my edit and marked it as spam. Ms. Bryan is my girlfriend and besides being a talented artist, it one of the few modern pictorial mapmakers. She d serves recognition for her contributions to the preservation of the nearly lost art of pictorial maps. She also publishes books and jigsaw puzzles based on her maps and has works in the Library of Congress. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwsapp (talk • contribs) 03:56, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

@Jwsapp: No, I did not remove your edit. The diff[8] makes that clear.

Anyway, your statement that you were adding a link relating to your girlfriend is a statement that you have conflict of interest. Please see the policy WP:COI, and stop using Wikipedia to promote your girlfriend. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:07, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Undelete portal:African American

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:African American - I just found the discussion where the portal was deleted, reasons given that there were only 14 articles from 2010 and it was poorly maintained. As I have added articles to that in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and this year, I'm confounded that an admin saw fit to validate what can be construed as white-washing. It's a strong term, but in my view is the only way to get across the message that articles dealing with the 'race-based diminishing' that occurs when the need to conform with WP:style engages the black experience and the plain-speak of that subculture. While articles about celebrities easily meet WP:notoriety, and Portal R&B fits the musical genres, some articles about marginal figures that were inspirational to black audiences, but have few or no reference cites to work with will end up with few page views, all that's left is a portal to call home, where an aggregate makes them easier to find. If there is no editor placing the portal on fresh articles it will be un-tended, but no less relevant. Replacing it with Portal:United States again works to disappear the stories about the African American experience. Unless it is something you personally have a stake in, deletion seems like necessary resolution to something that didn't need resolving. I don't know who called for it's deletion, but I would have argued against deletion as I have, so to say, a few dogs in that fight. It is not often that I feel the need to rant about a subject to an admin, heaven knows I have run up against some who have strong feelings that are contrary, and they - I have found them to have more experience at flame wars to achieve their goals which they gain thru sheer 'never give and inch', which some can't be bothered to pay attention to forever.Just wanted you to be aware that I expressed this to admin User talk:JJMC89 today. Thanks.. CaptJayRuffins (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi CaptJayRuffins

If you don't agree with the closure of an XFD, the first step is discuss the matter with the admin who closed Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:African American. If the two of you don't reach agreement, the next step is to open a WP:Deletion review. No admin other than the closer will act unilaterally.

As to the substance, I get that black America is as under-represented on en.wp as it is in wider American society. But please remember that Wikipedia is not a pace to write great wrongs. As a tertiary publication, Wikipedia reflects the balance of existing sources. Luckily, lots of editors do great work on these topics, but if the sources aren't there then the article can't go far. And given the low page views of portals, they area very poor way of showcasing any topic.

If I had !voted in that MFD, it would have been to delete, because the portal was neglected. Your choice to label deletion as white-washing is an unevidenced slur on the good faith of those who did participate in the MFD, and as to your own good faith: you claim above that you added articles to that in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and this year, which is not true. Your contribs list shows no live edits by you to any portal page, and also no deleted edits by you to any portal page.

So I am pleased to see that JJMC89 declined your unfounded, bad faith, request to undelete. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:41, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I thought that putting the portal logo on the page was how it was done. I stand corrected. I also see that the reason why the Portal did not register any of my articles, and maybe others as well since 2010. I do not wish to have to rewrite the portal when there was a lot of work put into the original, I was hoping that you could help. You are mistaken that I did not use the portal, I was just not consistent is placing the portal under ==See Also==, instead using ==External Links==. I only knew of the deletion when I was notified you were changing the now dead link to Portal:United States. So articles that I assumed were included, were not. I don't wish to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, just to use the tools available to categorize like articles. Someone vandalized the portal, the result is deletion of the portal for supposed under-use. You changed many of my articles to Portal United States, not the subculture/5 african american topic, in effect, legitimizing the removal. It's not a complaint, but I think we can fix this. CaptJayRuffins (talk) 07:46, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

November 2019 at Women in Red

November 2019, Volume 5, Issue 11, Numbers 107, 108, 140, 141, 142, 143 Check out what's happening in November at Women in Red... Online events: New: Librarians / Leaders / Geofocus: Asian Women Month Continuing: Suffrage / #1day1woman / Stub Contest Editor feedback: Check out the conversation regarding: Disappearing articles Help us plan our future events at the Ideas Cafe Join the conversations on our talkpage Social media: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest / Twitter Stay in touch: Join WikiProject Women in Red / Opt-out of notifications

--Rosiestep (talk) 22:57, 29 October 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging

The Signpost: 31 October 2019

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* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:11, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Search shortcuts script

Hi! I noticed you've made a couple of redirects like Wikipedia:TFD/2019 March 16. I've constantly been frustrated with the same thing! So I made User:Enterprisey/search-shortcuts, so when you type "WP:TFD/" into the search bar, it expands to "WP:Templates for discussion/Log/" and you can just type subpages normally. Let me know if this is useful. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:15, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

P.S. I also fixed easy-brfa. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:17, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi Enterprisey, and thanks for both of those fixes. I confess that I did say a few unprintable things about the easy-brfa script, but then remembered that I was using MS-Edge, which seems to have a wider issue with tokens. But great that you have found a way around that.

I am looking fwd to trying User:Enterprisey/search-shortcuts, but I think the ideal thing would be a bot to make such shortcuts automatically. It'd be a trivial bit of coding, and a huge help. I'll do a WP:BOTREQ. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:29, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Of portals and choices

Heh, BHG, I hope you are well. I see you have been having a rough go of late (I only read a little bit of the recent ANI "conversation" and already don't think I can get any farther), but then portal space has always been a huge slog for you. As you might have noticed, my wiki-break is over now per say. My over month long break has done a great deal to lift the dark storm cloud that had set in over my relationship to Wikipedia and portals, which resulted in the note (one might say rant!) I left here. I don't have the stamina, time or patience to return to my previous level of clean-up efforts, but this reminded me of you and our work together. It's not right of me to leave a wiki-mate unaided by me in a mire of hardship and distress. I apologize to you that I did. Yet, while I did cast some new votes at MfD, I'm not really back to help with that effort per say.

My focus is on what you said here recently: "At some point, I will have to decide that enough is enough." You know that I worked passionately with you to help clean up portal space, so I hope you see this as the good faith attempt to give you perspective that this is. You must know better then anyone that this topic pounds the life out of a person. Based on my own experience, just "letting go" of this topic was a huge relief, so if you feel that is what you need, don't be afraid to pull the trigger. It really is a huge mental burden and time-suck that just disappears from your world, freeing you to pursue other, likely much happier activities. It's a cruel twist of fate that a handful of us work to clean up in a period of months a 15-year joyride by a huge number of people.

Even crueler that nearly every part of the portal clean-up effort is depressing. Reviewing one abysmal crud portal after another that has rotted for a decade or more, writing detailed noms/votes again and again that are of vastly higher quality then what's being written about, arguing with delusional people at seemingly every forum available on Wikipedia, etc. What I see here is a woman who is tired. Almost 1000 pre-TTH spam portals have been deleted now, and you must know in your heart after well over 1000 hours spent on this cleanup, as much as you might not want to, that incredibly likely hundreds more ought to follow. If you choose to end your involvement with portals, you can hold your head high and hang your hat on an incredible contribution you have freely given to Wikipedia and its readers. You rock :) But, as someone who I like to think became your friend, I think it's time you thought of yourself. Newshunter12 (talk) 10:36, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

• FYI, before you make that choice, Portal:Massachusetts has been deleted. Let me know if you plan to clean up the links. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:13, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

• @BD2412: WP:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 4 was authorised a few minutes ago, so as soon as the bot flag is re-activated I will put it to work.

Given that there is now a bot to do this job, I think it's best that you leave the task to the bot, per the discussion above. Thanks! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:21, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I definitely agree. bd2412 T 00:23, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

User:BHGbot user page

I was just looking at User:BHGbot and noticed that it appears to need an update. The page doesn't list the recently approved task #4. I've gone ahead and marked it as an approved bot in the header, but haven't touched anything else. I hope that that is okay with you. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 02:55, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

@TheSandDoctor: yes, it does need an update. I'll get to it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:57, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

 Done [9] --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:21, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Discussion on MP categories

Hi. Incase you missed my ping, please see this discussion. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:27, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – November 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (October 2019).

Administrator changes

GermanJoe • Girth Summit • Kees08 • Nosebagbear

DESiegel • GB fan • MSGJ • Voice of Clam • WilyD

DeltaQuad • Fang Aili • Pakaran

Bureaucrat changes

DeltaQuad • Pakaran

Interface administrator changes

MSGJ

CheckUser changes

L235 • Mz7 • SQL • ST47

Ivanvector

DeltaQuad

Oversight changes

L235 • Mz7 • ST47 • Stwalkerster • The Blade of the Northern Lights • Xaosflux

DeltaQuad • DGG • Julia W

Guideline and policy news

• An RfC was closed with the consensus that the resysop criteria should be made stricter.

• The follow-up RfC to develop that change is now open at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 Resysop Criteria (2).

• A related RfC is seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure.

Arbitration

• Eligible editors may now nominate themselves as candidates for the 2019 Arbitration Committee Elections. The self-nomination period will close November 12, with voting running from November 19 through December 2.

---

• Discuss this newsletter
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Appreciation

Hey Hi BHG was tracing my roots kenya kakamega county and the wards to find exactly where i belong to as i was feeling some information i needed, Thank you for editing and keeping things sleek thou am a bit perplexed in regards to your origin and how you know so much of something and not being apart of in regards to the information i was going through. Either way thank you alot humbly appreciate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.68.78.119 (talk) 11:43, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

What do you mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cape_Verdean_escudo&oldid=924632674 I haven't edited anything on this page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Megyeye (talk • contribs) 12:54, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, Megyeye. My mistake.

I did correctly ping you in my previous edit,[10] but something went wrong with my copypastes while constructing the edit summary for Cape_Verdean_escudo, and I pinged you again. Sorry. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:19, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

good afternoon

Hi. A topic about internet censorship in iran needs to become update on Wikipedia. Please add "How Iranian people access to block websites and use social medias" Wikipedia needs your attention to become better place. Thank you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran Omid6578 (talk) 14:05, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi Omid6578.

I have no idea why you are asking me to do this. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:20, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

They've spammed a bunch of regular users (including myself) with this message. Cheers, Polyamorph (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Polyamorph. I hadn't checked their contribs, but just did so now. 11 such posts in all.

@Omid6578: i suggest that you post at Talk:Internet censorship in Iran to explain what updates you believe are needed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:01, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Abuse

It looks like Newshunter12 and The Blade of the Northern Lights are bullying and harassing people who edit longevity related pages again. 213.128.80.62 (talk) 00:20, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Furthermore it looks like Newshunter12 made a sock account possibly to avoid breaking the 3RR on List of the oldest living people. 213.128.80.62 (talk) 00:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Please forgive the intrusion on your talk page BHG. The IP's post looks to be related to this Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#TFBCT1's editing on longevity articles. You might already be aware of this but I wanted to provide the link just in case. This IP may be a sock as well. MarnetteD|Talk 00:44, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

No intrusion at all, @MarnetteD.

Thanks for explaining the context. I am a bit ANIed out right now, so I'll leave it to others to resolve this. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:17, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Wise choice methinks :-) MarnetteD|Talk 02:35, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@MarnetteD: Indeed. There's some talk at ANI about an IP troll, sock, and impersonator. Say hello to that IP. In fact from what I've seen, don't listen to any IP or new user who edits longevity articles or related talk pages. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:40, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@MarnetteD and Zzuuzz: Sadly, what from I have seen of longevity topics, the field now has two tribes of POV warriors: one set of unhealthily obsessive longevity fans who spam out any old carp without regard to WP:GNG, WP:V, WP:WEIGHT etc; and another polar opposite faction who dismiss anything to do with longevity as "cruft", no matter how well and widely it is sourced. (The latter group has some similarities of style and some overlap of membership with the WP:FTN crew, who are similarly dogmatic about their worldview). So the whole field is an unpleasant area in which to tread. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:39, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Good grief BHG and Z. That is crazy. What a thing to edit war over. Here is an old carp. In case that was a typo BHG I won't leave a pic of the other possibility for those four letters :-) MarnetteD|Talk 01:41, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

@MarnetteD: that's a deliberate typo, to avoid triggering swear filters. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:44, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Ah I hadn't thought of that. Does that mean it was Thomas Carper who invented the WC? heehee. MarnetteD|Talk 01:47, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

You should flush that thought from your mind, MarnetteD. Such matters can be very draining. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:22, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

That is excellent stuff BHG. The smile on my face is so wide my cheeks are starting to hurt. :-D Many thanks. MarnetteD|Talk 03:36, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Just noticed this. The IP poster above is the one who created the now indefed Newshunter16, not me. You will be pleased to know BHG, insofar as one can with a topic as troubled to edit in as longevity, that the current ANI issue is not related to AfD, but following consensus sourcing standards for list inclusion and personal attacks. We have very different views on those past longevity AfD's, but it's worth understanding that that effort is all in the past. No one is using Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Longevity to do much of anything anymore, least of all to make controversial AfDs. Insofar as that "faction" existed, we've largely gone our separate ways. I only went to the topic again because the same longevity IP troll from before harassed me yet again, not because it's a nice place to edit in. If you and @MarnetteD read the four IP posts on my talk page since 30 October, you will see why I went back. Not going to let the bully win. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:54, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 6

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited List of sports attendance figures, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page NNC (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 07:25, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Member states of the European Free Trade Association

You added {{Portal|European Union}} on a category with members of EFTA. Yes, it is correct that EFTA cooperate with the EU through different agreements. However it is a separate organization, independent from the EU. The EU portal doesn't even mention EFTA? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Megyeye (talk • contribs) 13:45, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Megyeye: yes, I added in because while EFTA is separate to the EU, it is closely related to the EU. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:26, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Even if they cooperate they are separate organizations. Makes no sense to add EU portal on EFTA category page, on a category page for EEA it would make more sense, as this is the agreement that both EFTA and EU is member of. EFTA itself has nothing to do with the EU — Preceding unsigned comment added by Megyeye (talk • contribs) 21:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

(TPS) I can understand people not liking an EFTA page being "tagged" for the EU. An analogy: If Ireland didn't have a portal, but the UK did would you put the UK portal tag (and hence the UK flag) on Ireland pages because they are closely related? DexDor ^(talk) 21:51, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Fair point, DexDor.

My thinking here is that a portal link is akin to a see-also link. But on a category page, where the portal link is at the top of the page, I can see how the portal link with its flag looks like a bit of a land-grab.

So look, Megyeye, if you still want to remove it, I'll withdraw my objection. Thanks to you both for the discussion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:59, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Adding categories

Hi, I've been working through some articles in Category:Welsh expatriate footballers and noticed you seem to have added a number of players to this category at the start of the year using AWB who seemingly shouldn't be there. I've already removed Danny Allsopp and Peter Barnes (footballer) and a quick look finds others such as Giorgio Chinaglia, Chris Blackburn, Aurélien Collin and Terry Cooke. Category:Welsh expatriate sportspeople in the United States also seems to be affected as they were added simultaneously. Thought I'd check if there was a reason for the additions before going ahead and removing en masse, I'm guessing it's got something to do with the fact that these players all played for a Welsh club at some point, cheers. Kosack (talk) 21:09, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

A Star

		The Special Barnstar
		Sometimes editors need a star! Keep on advising! Keep pushing! Lightburst (talk) 00:40, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:43, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Question re WikiProjects

Hi BHG - I asked a question on NA1K's TP about whether we should have links to WikiProject pages on the front Main Space pages of the Main Articles, instead of the Talk Page. My thought was that ultimately Portals are caught between Main Articles (+NavBoxes) and WikiProject Directories, and can compete with neither. Maybe if we had WikiProject links on the Mainspace articles, it would solve a lot of these issues? NA1K gave this a slim chance of being accepted by the community, however. What do you think? Britishfinance (talk) 13:58, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• FYI, I would agree with this, if the WikiProjects were generally more active. Some are as moribund as the portals. Perhaps some formula can be derived for more closely tying together the operation of these spaces, so that the portals serve as an entree to the projects. I would also be agreeable, under these circumstances, to linking the relevant WikiProjects on the Main page rather than linking the portals that are there now. bd2412 T 01:12, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Ultimately, merging Portals into WikiProjects, and putting a WikiProject link on the Main Article page could solve a lot of issues simultaneously:

1. It would avoid some of the portal content issues of pov+forking (e.g. bigger audience), and avoid portals having to compete with Main Articles (which they are mostly failing at).

2. It would encourage the WikiProjct to take some responsibility for the portal (even if still ignored, can't worsen the situation); many WikiPrjects have quasi-portal pages as their front page.

3. If a non-editor topic expert clicks on a portal, in 9/10 cases they will get the impression that WP is a failing project which could lead them no to bother contributing. However, if they click on a WP Project, they will see a much larger scale of activity (e.g. compare the Portal:Alaska with WikiProject Alaska and its structured directory of over 10,000 topic articles); this could drive them to engage.

4. While a high % of portals have become functionally obsolete (due to Main Article+NavBoxes and WikiProject Directories), we will always need a WP Project space in some form.

5. Even where the WikiProject is dormant, it can't be a worse situation as the portal is likely to be in even worse shape; per 3. we should be trying to promote the WikiProject in such cases.

Perhaps WP should also have an MOS for the front-page of WikiProject pages if such a link was created to help things along? Britishfinance (talk) 13:56, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Category:Lists of Fellows of the Royal Society has been nominated for discussion

Category:Lists of Fellows of the Royal Society, which you created, has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Dicklyon (talk) 15:30, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Considering taking the case on "portal wars" to ArbCom

Okay, I think I've had enough. Since there appears to be no end to questionable behavior and half-truth arguments from a number of portal advocates (at least from my perspective, and likely yours as well), I'm considering filing an ArbCom case, though I'd like to know if you agree on whether or not this is ready for ArbCom deliberation. If so, are there any other relevant discussions you know of that attempt to resolve this dispute (other than this one)? ToThAc (talk) 03:03, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

@ToThAc: I don't think that ArbCom should be the first step from here.

I see two underlying problems here:

1. there are no community-endorsed guidelines relating to the portals. This means that every portal needs to be considered individually, applying broad policies; but most of the portal fans demonstrate little or no familiarity with those policies.
2. the general abandonment of portals by WikiProjects and readers, and the lack of the normal intellectually-taxing editing process of discussing how to use which sources has left portalspace dominated by low-skill editors, who may have technical expertise in tasks such as coding, but who lack experience and skill both in applying policies and in discussing disagreements to reach consensus. Many of them dissemble, lie, post half-truths, contradict themselves, etc; some of them seem incapable of basic collaboration skills, such as explaining a rational basis for why they made a decision, and there are repeated crucial absences of ability to do critical thinking. As a result, debating with them is like debating a bunch of unruly school kids.
   This is a structural problem, because portalspace is one of the few parts of Wikipedia where this low-skill base can flourish, and it is the only one where it dominates. It is also a social problem, because many of these editors feel frightened and threatened by the deletion of portals, since their limited skillset gives them minimal basis to participate elsewhere. Portals are the spaces where they can make pretty pages and unchallenged lists without having to engage with all the intellectual complexity of content policy.

The first problem is capable of resolution by RFC. If RFCs established community-supported guidelines on at least some of they issues with portals (even tho there may be gaps), then much of the contention would be removed. If, for example, there was consensus on how a list of selected articles should be selected, then much of the drama at the current transport MFD could be avoided. That would be true regardless of whether guideline said "add whatever you like" or specified quality, scope, importance, and transparency of process (like notifying WikiProjects before you rebuild their portal).

Similarly, if RFC established guidelines that portals should be drawn from live, linked lists of articles, then there wouldn't be the surprise factor of the transport MFD being faced with plausible demands to restore a reverted version ... only to find on scrutiny facilitated by MFD disclosure that in fact the list created is a huge POV failure. If that had all been disclosed upfront, the scrutiny could have been done long before.

The social problem is more intractable. As far as I can see, the portal fans' priority is to keep as much possible of their playground, regardless of its quality or utility. So long as others try to uphold higher standards, they will continue to be aggrieved. The resulting disruption will be much more contained if there are clear guidelines, but even then the social problem will remain.

So if this goes to ArbCom, then ArbCom faces some ugly choices. Does it say to the angry portal fans that their low skill level is a breach of WP:CIR, and that they should back off? Or does it say to the likes of me who are trying to uphold encyclopedic quality that no matter how persistently dishonest or incompetent other editors are, that their incompetence and dishonesty must not be explicitly challenged?

This a variant of the old Randy in Boise problem: how does Wikipedia balance its purpose (to produce an encyclopedia, which is a significant intellectual work) with its process of crowd-sourcing (which means crowds which usually include people without notable intellectual skill). I don't know how ArbCom resolves that, and I don't see how an ArbCom case helps other than in diverting huge amounts of energy into weeks of diff-farming.

So my preference is to try first doing RFCs to make guidelines, and see how much that improves things. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:04, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for your input. I guess bringing this up with you was the right call after all. ToThAc (talk) 04:39, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

The red footer "If you leave a new message on this page..."

I had to play with the magnification in my web browser in order to uncover the final line or so of the last comment on the page. At no magnification (i.e. 100%) it is fine and clears the text. At higher magnifications (e.g. 110% 125% etc) it isn't set far enough down from the text and covers it. I don't see how the message is being generated, so can't see any suggestions to make. Shenme (talk) 03:32, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

@Shenme: the message is generated by Template:UserTalkReplyhere, which I created about 12 years ago. The CSS has never worked entirely as I intend on all browsers in all circumstances, but it has been good enough that it's used by about 50 editors and hasn't been changed in about 10 years.

I prefer having its imperfections than not having it, and I don't intend to spend hours checking on all permutations of all browsers on all operating systems at all resolutions. Sorry that some permutations of your set-up don't work. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:22, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

My Category:1929–30 in Hungarian football edit

Apologies, I had not noticed I had put the deleted portal in - many thanks for picking this up and fixing. Dunarc (talk) 16:02, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

MFD:P:HZ closed

(1) Please remove the backlinks to Portal:Harz.
(2) Also, thank you for this which happened while I was on wikibreak.
–MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:42, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Correction of misspelling

Hello, would you mind correcting the spelling of Choctaw in 'Confederate government of Missouri' under Allied tribes in Indian Territory? Apparently I don't have access to it. Go raibh maith agat! 2600:1700:A230:3CA0:FD78:91B2:B148:9F70 (talk) 23:03, 9 November 2019 (UTC)Alan

portal at 2020 NBA Draft

I didn't put that portal in there. I merely restored an edit which had it... Enigma^msg 03:38, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

@Enigmaman, whenever I do one of those fixes, it's because the page has been categorised in Category:Portal templates with redlinked portals or one of its subcats. I just try to do the fix, and try to use the edit summary to notify the editor whose edit caused it to end up in there, and to do so neutrally without casting judgement. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:48, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

When will it end

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. --Moxy 🍁 07:25, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Selective Application of Consensus

Hello. I noticed on WP:ANI, you wrote: "I did was very clear that POG is a former guideline, and I cited it to explicitly stress the folly of that guideline. NA!K is trying to conflate this with their efforts to cite POG as guidance on how to act, which is the exact opposite of what I did. NA1K actually claimed that POG has current value, which I explicitly did not." Could I ask how this reconciles with your reference to WP:POG as "policy" in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Vermont? I'm sure you've also referred to it as policy elsewhere, although I don't have much time to go digging. Regards, Vermont (talk) 03:52, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I may not have been clear. You also wrote about "NA1K's disgraceful attempt to claim currency for POG as a device to justify creation of a POV portal". If it is a "disgraceful attempt" to claim POG as a reason to justify creation of a portal, is it not the same to use POG as a reason to justify deletion of a portal? To me, at least, it seems like you're pushing your view that all portals should be deleted regardless of what consensus and guidelines, whether current or past, actually say. Regards, Vermont (talk) 03:57, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Sure, Vermont. That first question is very simple.

WP:POG was delisted as a guideline on 27 Set 2019[11]. That followed the closure on 26 Sept of WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 153#RFC:_Formalize_Standing_of_Portal_Guidelines_as_a_Guideline_(18_July_2019)

My last edit at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Vermont was on 26 July 2019‎. At that point, POG was tagged as a guideline, as it had been for years. I accepted the status quo, and worked within the guideline, even though I had grave reservations about much of it. I used at as guideline while it was still a guideline, and whe it was delisted per RFC I stopped citing it as a guideline ... though I frequently noted how absurd it had been to recommend only 20 articles.

That is how WP:Consensus works: accept a guideline unless and until it is changed. The status of POG changed two months later, but I work within policy and guideline as they are now, not how they might be in the future.

My wording there are MFD was sloppy in one respect. In reply to you, I referred to two fundamental policy issues, but I should of course have used the word "guideline". I am sorry for that error, but I don't think it was a major issue in the context. I think that our disagreement would have been the same whichever word was used.

As your comments that I am pushing [my] view that all portals should be deleted regardless of what consensus and guidelines, that is very far from the truth. Of the last 30 portals I assessed for possible MFD noms, I nominated only about 5.

I think that you miss some very important distinctions. Editors are all entitled to their views and to express them. They are also required to respect the current consensus.

In this case, some editors would like to have thousands of portals, and some would like to have zero. I would like few or none, and if we got down to say 100 portals I'd say good enough for now: the 100 would still be pretty useless, but at least at that number they would probably have enough traffic to be maintained, and maybe even restructured to add a little more value than the failed model of pseudo-magazine with a Rube Goldberg machine. But for now there are two points of consensus: a) that there should not be a deletion of all portals, per WP:ENDPORTALS, and b) that individual portals may be deleted at MFD.

So that is my personal view, and I hold it while also respecting the current consensus. I support the deletion of failed portals, and those on excessively narrow topics. I would oppose the deletion of a broad-topic portal if it is in good shape, and if it is a high-level topic portal in terrible shape then I would support a WP:TNT deletion pending a rebuild, as I did e.g. at MFD:Portal:Asia. If P:Asia had been in good shape, I'd have said keep it.

I regard the stream of MFDs as being a process of removal of failed portals, like P:Vermont. I thought that process would have ended months ago, but sadly MFD nominators are still finding lots of failed portals. In hindsight, I realise that I had radically overestimated the degree to which portals were being maintained, and now realise that the rot extends much further than I had thought.

I hope that clarifies my views.

Best wishes, --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:54, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your clarification. I was unaware of the timing of the delisting, which is surprisingly recent. Vermont (talk) 10:51, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@Vermont: it's a pity that you chose not to check the dates before accusing me of regardless of what consensus and guidelines. The information is available on the 8th line of the revision history of WP:POG, or you could simply have asked me the question. Instead you chose to make a pejorative judgement on me without having the key fact. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:55, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I was unaware of the timing. I stated that, and thanked you for the clarification. I apologize. However, that does not negate the fact you misrepresented POG as policy on multiple occasions, and as our disagreement then remains unchanged, our disagreement now remains unchanged. On a related note, do you believe these statements fall within our community's standards for civility? I hope to understand how you believe these to acceptable, where I regard them as abhorrent conduct unbecoming of an administrator. Regards, Vermont (talk) 17:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@Vermont: I twice used the word "policy" when I should have used the word "guideline", and I have apologised for that. However, you miss the point I cited POG in support when it was still a guide, and ceased to rely on it as soon as it was delisted. In complete contrast, NA1K has WP:GAMEd the system by asking successfully for POG to be delisted as a guideline, but the cited as justification for problematic edits. That's trying to have your cake and eat it.

As to my comments about NA1K, I stand by my view that NA1K's substantive conduct has been unacceptable. They have repeatedly misrepresented both fact and and guideline, and have repeatedly demonstrated the very poor judgement which was noted by multiple editors at both their RFAs. Their latest escapade has been shocking. In 13 years as an admin, I have never before seen any editor, let alone an admin, cite in their support a page which was deprecated on their own insistence that it never received actual formal discussion to be enacted as a real English Wikipedia guideline page. I could never have imagined a situation where an actual admin would repeat that deception in a discussion where the error had already been noted in the post to which they were replying ... and I am shocked that it has all been done in support of sneaky edits which amount to massive breach of the core policy WP:NPOV.

Yes, I have used strong and direct words to point this out. And I am very deeply saddened that some editors are massively more concerned about my language than about the substantive and persistent problems which I have described. It's nearly 14 years since I joined Wikipedia to help build a verifiable, NPOV encyclopedia ... and the conduct which I have seen and described here appals me because me it runs counter to that goal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:10, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I believe it has formulated the fundamental disagreement between us: the value of civility. I have not looked into NA1k's edits regarding portals, nor do I intend to. My only involvement is with your incivility towards editors who disagree with you. I hope you recognize that your behavior would not be in question, at least from me, if your responses conformed to WP:5P4. I cite you referring to people in the current ANI discussion as "incompetent", "mendacious", "habitual lying", "idiot", "poster-child for the Dunning–Kruger effect", "incapable of conducting rational discussions", "a liar or incompetent, or both", a "mix of stupidity and mendacity", "anti-truth", "bad faith", "low-skill group", "very low-competence editors" (which you went on to name specifics), and various other phrases. Your constant incivility towards other editors is a problem. I have no interest what consensus is with regard what to do with portals, whether NA1k is gaming the system, or anything other than your conduct, as that is not why I am here. I have no interest in portals; only the one for my home state, which was deleted. My sole motive in this is to promote an atmosphere where people are free to disagree with other editors without incivility. Even when you believe other editors are acting out of line, you can't start spouting insults and personal attacks. You're an administrator; you should know better than to say things like that. And if you weren't an admin, I can nearly guarantee that you would have been blocked by now for your conduct. Please, please, please try to focus on wording your comments to be respectful of editors you disagree with, avoiding personal attacks, and ensuring that your comments promote a constructive environment, regardless of opinion. Regards, Vermont (talk) 23:37, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I understand where you are coming from, Vermont.

But with respect, I think that you are taking a dangerously incomplete view of civility. It seems to me that you overlook (or at least massively underestimate) the deep incivility of the passive aggression and WP:GAMEing techniques used by NA1K. The repeated selective quotations; the misrepresentation of statistics; the attempts to depopulate tracking categories because "they are used by deletionists"; the use of pompous synonyms to describe as a guideline a page which was de-guidelined at their request; the stonewalling in response to civil questions, such as NA!K's assertion "I assessed these articles relative to their suitability for this portal" (word soup which conveys nothing); the brushing off of complaints about the poor quality of a selection with variants of "add more stuff if you like"; the complete failure to accept any responsibility for creating a huge POV breach at Portal:Transport; and much much more.

This all highly aggressive and uncivil conduct, which wastes the time and energy of other editors, and sets them up for NA1K to make allegations of badgering, harassment etc when challenged on their evasions and deceit. This manipulative conduct is a form of systematic goading of those trying to have reasoned debate. And all these issue were note years ago, in NA1K's RFAs.

Other editors have noted it in the portal MFDs, but have not directly challenged it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:59, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

You complain about stonewalling and your responses here are stonewalling, feeding me word soup which conveys nothing. Could you explain to me how your slew of insults and personal attacks conforms with WP:5P4, without mentioning NA1k? Someone else being uncivil is not a reason to be similarly or more uncivil. Your argument is a basic strawman argument. I will again reiterate: you are being extremely uncivil, and it does not matter what it is in response to. You're an administrator, and are expected to act with a degree of control that you are not showing. You need to stop your blatant and callous incivility, which you seem to recognize as being nonconforming with policy by your intentional attempts to walk around it. Vermont (talk) 00:22, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Optional hyphen in century link

Hi BHG, you probably know this or a better way already, but just in case it's useful to you, here is a method I found to link to centuries with or without a hyphen (e.g. 17th-century songs but 17th century in music), depending on whether a parameter began with "in ".[12]

It was confusing to me that I had to compare just two characters "in", since the string functions trim the space if they find "in ". It also took me a while to realise that {{sp}} is the way to insert a space.

Oh, and looking for help led me to meta:Help:String_functions#Extracting_a_substring which says "This is done in Template:Sub." Not in English Wikipedia, it's not! (I added the warning note at the end of that section.)

– Fayenatic London 11:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi Fayenatic

Clever work, sorting the difft format with the "in" prefix.

For matching parts of a title, I tend to use Module:String#match to apply a regex, because I am used to working with regex, but {{str left}} works too. Whichever you're more comfortable with. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:24, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Help me understand

I've been reading through the discussions at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Transport (which I found via the ongoing ANI discussion), and there is one accusation that you're making of NA1k that I can't figure out. You're saying that NA1k made edits to the portal that added a number of articles to the rotation, but these additional articles were obscured from view in some way. Specifically, you say that NA1k's new version of the portal does not display a list of linked articles that are part of the rotation in the portal. I have tried comparing the before and after versions of the portal (via this diff), but I don't see a list of linked articles that appears in one version and doesn't appear in the other. Can you help me understand where this list resides, and specifically how you believe NA1k's change to the article made this list more difficult to access? Thanks. ‑Scottywong| [talk] || 22:40, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@Scottywong, writing up my reply. Sorry it's taken longer than I thought it would. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:00, 12 November 2019 (UTC)