User talk:Andrewa

G'day! This is Andrew Alder's user talk page, you knew that. Welcome!

If you're tempted to go below the top three levels, you might like to read User:Andrewa/How not to rant first

Psalm 150 (paraphrased)

WikiProject Article Rescue Squadron Newsletter

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List of current IPL team rosters listed at Redirects for discussion

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Life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of energy sources

As I noticed you on the talk page, please check this out and let me know what you think.

2012 Yale University systematic review and Harmonization

A Yale University review published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology analyzing CO2 life cycle assessment emissions from nuclear power determined that.

"The collective LCA literature indicates that life cycle GHG emissions from nuclear power are only a fraction of traditional fossil sources and comparable to renewable technologies."

It went on to note that for the most common category of reactors, the Light water reactor:

"Harmonization decreased the median estimate for all LWR technology categories so that the medians of BWRs, PWRs, and all LWRs are similar, at approximately 12 g CO2-eq/kWh"

The study noted that differences between emissions scenarios were:

"The electric system was dominated by nuclear (or renewables) and a system dominated by coal can result in a fairly large ranging (from 4 to 22 g CO2-eq/kWh) compared to (30 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh), respectively."

The study predicted that depending on a number of variables, including how carbon intensive the electricity supply was in the future, and the quality of Uranium ore:

"median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh by 2050."

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Road Case/Flight case merge

Agreed. I think that someone looking for encyclopaedic information on this topic would not differentiate between a flight or road case and would want all the information available in one article. Indeed, it would make Wikipedia more concise to merge. A visitor may not know there's any difference anyway, and not look for the other article at all.

What is the procedure for getting a merge to happen once it's been flagged on a talk page?Black Stripe (talk) 14 July 2013.

Cuban missile crisis or Cuban Missile Crisis

There is currently another vote taking place on the talk page of Cuban missile crisis whether to recapitalize the name or keep it in lowercase. You participated in the 2012 vote, and may want to voice an opinion or comment on this one. I'm writing this to the voters from 2012 who may not know about this vote. Randy Kryn 19:04 13 January, 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

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Hi

HI JUST TESTING

Editing news 2020 #4

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Reply tool

The number of comments posted with the Reply Tool from March through June 2020. People used the Reply Tool to post over 7,400 comments with the tool.

The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.

• More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
• Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
• Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[1]

The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).

The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.

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Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Operation Demetrius

Please reconsider your close of the move request at Talk:Operation Demetrius#Requested move 9 August 2020. I believe the arguments against movement were weak, and were wholly refuted.

The first was This article is already reasonably large without moving it to an article that would add more information to it. I pointed out WP:SIZERULE and that if the readable prose is less than 40K a split isn't justified and that the article has 20K of prose, therefore theoretical potential future size alone is not an argument against moving the article especially as I have not stated I intend to more than double the current size.

The second was this page is about the operation that occurred in 1971 and This page is about Operation Demetrius though from a single purpose account when it has been demonstrated quite clearly the article goes significantly beyond a two-day military operation in August 1971, as do all the references when discussing this topic. This is also a completely circular argument, arguing that the article should retain its current title as it matches the content, when the argument is that the article already goes way beyond the two-day operation in August 1971 and should be retitled and slightly reframed in order to focus on the topic of internment.

I ask you to please reconsider. Thank you. FDW777 (talk) 07:39, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

FDW777, thank you for the opportunity to comment further.

I don't agree that the arguments were wholly refuted. I agree that the arguments against the move were not particularly strong, but I think that yours were weaker still. Stating them repeatedly as you did does not make them stronger.

Nor is the fact that one of the opponents to the move is an SPA relevant. Their arguments seem OK. They've only been here for a few months. Give them a chance.

The other opponent is of course a long established editor with many interests.

The current topic Operation Demetrius is a good one, and if off-topic material has been added to the article (and I'm not even convinced that it has been) without first obtaining consensus to broaden its scope that does not justify a move. I would suggest that you create a new, broader article either as a draft or in the article space. We can then consider whether the current article should be merged into that article (or vice versa) or whether the new article is even perhaps a good topic in its own right.

I am not at all confident that this merge proposal will gain consensus, but that is my suggestion for the way forward. At worst, assuming sources justify this second article we will end up with two articles on good topics.

The other possibility I suppose is to seek consensus to broaden the scope of the existing article, but that seems unlikely to succeed, based on the RM discussion.

Another possibility of course is to accept the opinions of others that this article should cover both topics, and have your proposed title redirect to a section on the background to the operation. That is probably what I would recommend as the next step, except that I'm assuming from the above that you don't want to do it. Best. Andrewa (talk) 14:57, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I am aware one of the editor's is long established. However that doesn't change the fact his argument is not supported by WP:SIZERULE, since the article only has 20K of prose. He made no other argument other than about size, so I felt it was reasonable to disregard that.

The other argument is circular, and a barrier to article improvement. Internment lasted until December 1975, so the topic covers much more than a two-day military operation in August 1971. For example by mid-December 1971 1,590 people had been arrested, compared to the 342 arrested during Operation Demetrius), of which 620 were detained (out of 1,981 over the whole period of internment. However I am sure any attempts to expand the article will be blocked with the argument of "this article is about Operation Demetrius" while simultaneously saying it doesn't need to be moved as "this article is about Operation Demetrius", thus preventing a move to an article title that would allow a well-rounded article to be written on the subject of internment.

However I feel that path of least resistance is to simply write a new article at the correct title that is much bigger and better than the existing article, and will render its continued existence to be pointless. FDW777 (talk) 17:29, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. Whether the existing article is pointless is another thing! Operation Demetrius does sound to me like a good topic in its own right, but could be a section of the article you propose. Perhaps they will be merged, perhaps not. We are a collaboration, and not perfect, see wp:creed#2. Andrewa (talk) 18:17, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the proposal

Thanks for this proposal. I gave my opinions on the talk page, but if its ok, I'll also give them here. There is a significant overlap between concubinage and sexual slavery, in the context of Islam. Just as there is overlap between military jihad and Islamic terrorism. Yet, ultimately they remain separate topics. WP:RS generally say that the Quran and prophet Muhammad allowed "concubinage", but many Muslims later used that as justification to practice "sexual slavery" (e.g ISIS), while moderate Muslims see that as a distortion. This is similar to how WP:RS agree that the Quran has verses on jihad, but later Muslims use those verses to justify Islamic terrorism, while more moderate Muslims see that as a distortion. Lemme know if this is making any sense and sorry if I'm not being clear.VR _talk 14:52, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

That is how it seems to me too. I do not read Arabic and am aware that English translations are regarded as not having scriptural status.

There are several competing POVs here.

Some would naturally like to assert that sexual slavery is not compatible with Islam. That seems wrong to me. Some Moslems are practising it to this day, similarly to Jihad (and other "moderate" Moslems known to me personally interpret Jihad as being a striving for personal holiness rather than anything to do with armed conflict). Sexual slavery is compatible with some significant forms of Islam, both past and present.

There is I think an interesting parallel between the Islamic attitude to sexual slavery and the Christian attitude to torture. I think there is now consensus within the Christian community, however right-wing, that torture is not acceptable. But that consensus is a recent development. It seems to me that the Islamic approach to sexual slavery is not yet to that point of consensus, although many Moslems (and all those that I know personally) condemn it. Similarly, slavery itself is condemned by all parts of the Christian church today, but that is recent and raises some interesting questions as to how to interpret some references to it in the Bible. Even human sacrifice is mentioned without condemnation in one scandalous Old Testament passage.

Others would like to assert that sexual slavery is an integral part of Islam. That POV is I think more easily dismissed, but still needs to be dealt with.

The advantages in having two articles seem obvious, and I have yet to hear any coherent objections. But it does not help those of either extreme POV, which is another sign it may be a good idea, but does not help to promote it. Andrewa (talk) 15:33, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree and I think it is worth attempting to create a separate article. Sometimes folks don't see the advantage of a solution until it materializes and then it makes sense. I'll try to put together something in a sandbox first.VR _talk 15:51, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

It is worth a try. But we also need to work towards consensus on this on the talk page. Andrewa (talk) 16:29, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

@Andrewa: To remain within your parallel about torture, contemporary Christians who condemn it do not try to rename the Wikipedia articles that talk about torture in the past using a more gentle name – despite at the time it was accepted by most contemporaries. This is what we are talking about here. A possible distance between the Quranic verses and contemporary Muslims can be mentioned in the article, but we do not need to use an imprecise term (maybe gentle towards past masters, but ungentle towards past slaves) to mark such distance. --Grufo (talk) 15:47, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Exactly which imprecise term?

I don't think moderate Moslems see any conflict or possible distance between the Quranic verses and contemporary Muslims. Do they? Andrewa (talk) 16:29, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

“Exactly which imprecise term?”: Using the term “concubinage” to describe the relationship between sexual slaves and their master. A concubinage with a slave is not best described by the word “concubinage” more than “sex with a slave” is best described by the word “sex”. --Grufo (talk) 16:41, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

This seems to me to be a POV. So far as article titles go, we use English. We do not try to correct or improve it. If and only if English sources describe this as concubinage, then that is what we call it too. Andrewa (talk) 16:57, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

And we are back to the discussion about how “Sexual slavery in Islam” should be called… The English sources use the term concubinage only when talking about early Islam and even there they always accompany the term with a slavery warning. The Wikipedia article is not about early Islam, but simply about Islam, and we do not only follow some sources for article names, we also try to remain internally coherent (see how “concubinage” is used on Wikipedia). But that discussion is finally closed and a decision has been taken. So basically now you want to split the article into two synonyms, or am I wrong? What would the difference between “Sexual slavery in Islam” and “Concubinage in Islam” be? --Grufo (talk) 17:04, 9 September 2020 (UTC)