User talk:SMcCandlish

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As of 2012-02-29 , SMcCandlish is Active.
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Unresolved old stuff

Cueless billiards

Unresolved

 – Can't get at the stuff at Ancestry; try using addl. cards.

Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Crud fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually. I think at least some variants of bar billiards are played with hands and some bagatelle split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's bocce billiards, article I've not written yet. Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once. Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. Hand pool might be its own article eventually. Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics". Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have crud), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really. I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-) In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at CfD. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled Category:Pinball just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to Category:Darts soon.

PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted Yank Adams as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a bunch of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.? I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4½ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years. I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for. S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the Blue Book of Pool Cues too for under $200 total. Here it is for $160, plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-) DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh. Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

PayPal Plugin ist kaput. Some banks now issue credit card accounts that make use of virtual card numbers, but mine's not one of them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for trying. It was worth a shot. I signed up for a newspaperarchive.com three month trial. As far as newspaper results go it seems quite good so far, and the search interface is many orders of magnitude better than ancestry's, but it has none of the genealogical records that ancestry provides. With ancestry I could probably find census info on Yank as well as death information (as well as for Masako Katsura, which I've been working on it for a few days; she could actually be alive, though she'd be 96).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Sad...

How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK. PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Jackpot. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Nice find! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Cite4Wiki

Unresolved

 – New version for FireFox 4.x not released yet.

Updates to this are very welcome, thanks. One thing though - it doesn't seem to use the vertical form any more, could this be fixed (or added as an option) in future releases? pablo 12:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Working on it. Probably won't release until FF4.x is out of beta (if it isn't already - haven't checked in a few weeks). Vertical format will be an option, but one that you have to manually enable. Have no had time to work out the code for actually installing an Otions menu and supporting functionality. Going with horizontal layout by popular demand, though I prefer the vertical format myself. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Every time I think about messing with it other stuff comes out, and or another version of Firefox hits public beta... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 16:23, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Look at the main page

Unresolved

 – Katsura News added (with new TFA section) to WP:CUE; need to see if I can add anything useful to Mingaud article.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Since you don't appear to have seen this near to the time I left it, it might be a little cryptic without explanation. Masako Katsura was today's featured article on January 31, 2011.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Supah-dupah! That kicks. WP:CUE's (and your?) first TFA, yes?! And yeah I have been away a lot lately. Long story. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, my first, though I have another in the works (not billiards related). I think François Mingaud could be a candidate in the near future. I really wanted to work it up to near FA level before posting it but another user created it recently, not realizing my draft existed, and once they did realize, copied some of my content without proper copyright attribution and posted to DYK. I have done a history merge though the newer, far less developed content is what's seen in the article now. I'm going to merge the old with the new soon. Glad to see your back.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

My front and sides are visible too. ;-) Anyway, glad you beat me to Mingaud. I'd been thinking of doing that one myself, but it seemed a bit daunting. I may have some tidbits for it. Lemme know when your merged version goes up, and I'll see what I have that might not already be in there. Probably not earthshaking, just a few things I found in 1800s-1910s books. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 16:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Some more notes on Crystalate

Unresolved

 – New sources/material worked into article, but unanswered questions remain.

Some more notes: they bought Royal Worcester in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.[1]; info about making records:[2]; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:[3]; "In 1880, crystalate balls made of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol began to appear. In 1926, they were made obligatory by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the London-based governing body." Amazing Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Feats. Richard B. Manchester - 1991[4]; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:[5]. Fences&Windows 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll have to have a look at this stuff in more detail. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I've worked most of it in. Fences&Windows 16:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Cool! From what I can tell, entirely different parties held the trademark in different markets. I can't find a link between Crystalate Mfg. Co. Ltd. (mostly records, though billiard balls early on) and the main billiard ball mfr. in the UK, who later came up with "Super Crystalate". I'm not sure the term was even used in the U.S. at all, despite the formulation having been originally patented there. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

WikiCite project in development

Hello SMcC, the m:WikiCite project proposal is gaining some interest again. Your insights and suggestions would be welcome. – SJ + 04:11, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Cite4Wiki and Jetpack

I saw Cite4Wiki mentioned on foundation-l and, on downloading it, noticed that it wanted me to restart and hadn't been updated to the latest Firefox. I'm going to go look at your code, but I thought you might be interested in Jetpack to help you with maintaining the extension since it would mean you wouldn't have to worry about Firefox versions or force people to restart Firefox to get it to run. I happen to be good friends with the guy who runs the project, so even if you aren't interested, I'm going to see what it would take to get Cite4Wiki ported to run there. — ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 16:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good! It needs work. For one thing, it needs a proper settings window that allows you to set options like whether to use vertical or horizontal formatting. I never did figure out how to do that (previous author apparently didn't either). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:43, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a source code repository somewhere? I'd like to work from that if I could. — ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 00:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Not yet, but good idea. I still have a SourceForge account, so I guess I can use that. Is everyone using Git these days? They offer Git, SVN and Mercurial but not CVS any longer. Looks like I need new version control software... Any preference? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

If you don't have a preference and don't currently use a VCS, then I'm going to say git. Not that it is easy (Torvalds isn't know for creating easy-to-use software), but it is pretty good. And we can pull from each other. I think I can get a repository set up in git hosted by the WMF. I'll probably end up putting it there anyway, unless you have some objections — ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 01:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

But, now that I think about it, would you mind if I put it in the SVN repo hosted by WMF? I can do that right now. I'm not sure if I can do gerrit right now.

Sure. I honestly don't even use SVN yet; I've been using CVS since the dawn of time. Which of the post-CVS alternatives to use isn't something I have a set mind about. :-) IIRC, the version that's publicly available is stable but missing some stuff I've added to it. I guess I can commit that stuff later as a beta. I haven't touched it in 6 months, so I don't remember where I left off anyway. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, committed. Now, to understand Jetpack. — ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 14:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, you should apply for Commit_access. — ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 15:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay. And vice-versa, you should register as a Mozilla add-on developer, so I can give you access to the "official" distribution channel. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Cite4Wiki4Chrome...

Hi there! I was just wondering if a Chrome port of Cite4Wiki was on the cards at all? I tried messing with the source code but I have no real knowledge of JS, XUL and the rest so can't really do anything about it. — Joseph Fox 15:39, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of one, since I just use Firefox. Maybe after the stuff mentioned above is done a port will be easier. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:42, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

---

New stuff

Chapeau

... for this one! Cheers - DVdm (talk) 20:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I actually like hats. :-) Your readability tweak was a good idea. I was a little concerned about it myself, but I'm not a cards editor, so I wasn't sure if there was a typical way of making hands more legible. (Also not sure if people conventionally use the card symbols that are available in Unicode, etc.). I do edit a lot of games articles, but almost exclusively in cue sports and related. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:49, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I specially like hats when there's a set of dice under them :-)

Perhaps you don't know, but overhere we use the name chapeau for the cup and, by extension, for the game itself. As you can see here—als je Nederlands een beetje in orde is—, we play an entirely different game with it, a game where one can practice the fine art of subtle bluffing, downright lying, assessing oponents' behaviour, and accurately estimating probabilities. We also play the "Mexican" variant, which is even subtler. Check it out and cheers! - DVdm (talk) 18:26, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know that, about the chapeau. I thought you were awarding me a virtual hat. :-) . I am familiar with the bluff game (possibly the Mexican version, since I learned it in California), but have always played that one with regular dice. Anyway, if you like what I did in the English version, certainly feel free to "port" it to the Netherlands Wikipedia. I may be able to work through the Dutch enough to add something about the other variants to the English article here, since it is rather paltry. Heh. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 04:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it was meant as a virtual hat award as well - I had seen a hat on your user page :-)

Porting from there to here could be a bit problematic, as there's not many sources around, alas. - DVdm (talk) 17:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll have to dig through my game encyclopedias and stuff. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:45, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, if you find something, please let know. I'd be glad to work on it together. Cheers and happy digging. - DVdm (talk) 20:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar comment

Hello. You have a new message at Djathinkimacowboy's talk page.

Don't delete this! -

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		For behaving in a genteel fashion, as if nothing were the matter, and for gallantry. --Djathinkimacowboy 03:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Sankyu beddy mush! Hardly necessary for me just behaving properly. Heh. But I appreciate it anyway. I left you a note at your page about that Guidance rename idea. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 04:43, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Shou ist werie velcum. I think the 'Guidance' name and the way you simplified it into a short statement is very good! And people should give out more barnstars. They are very merited and it isn't as if they cost us anything.--Djathinkimacowboy 10:19, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Heroic Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		For your recent work at WP:MOS: A model of unflagging effort, precise analysis, institutionally broad and historically deep vision, clear articulation, and civil expression under great pressure. Unforgettable. DocKino (talk) 06:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I do my best. At this point I'm being attacked on multiple pages in a concerted effort of harassment, and suspect that their goal is to get me to simply quit the project. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 18:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Reply to comments at WP:Birds

Hi. I'm copying this here because you implied you might not come back to reply at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Birds#Renewed_capitalization_discussion_at_WP:MOS.

There are a number of points to respond to here, but I'll start with one. There's no "1000 to 1" or any other such vast majority who think capitalized common names look "stoopid", and we're not writing just for ornithologists. In 1996, the total sale of Peterson field guides was estimated at 18 million (Diane Schmidt, A Guide to Field Guides). On the one hand, some people have more than one. (I have two of their bird guides and one of their wildflower guides, all of which capitalize common names.) On the other hand, birdwatching has been growing rapidly in popularity and is one of the most popular hobbies in the United States [6] and Britain [7]. And more than one person in a household may have looked at their field guide. And probably many birdwatchers these days don't have a Peterson guide at all. And if people aren't interested enough to get a field guide, they may still look at Web sites such as All About Birds and WhatBird (site blocked). Furthermore, some field guides on other subjects (such as The Kaufman Guide to Insects) capitalize, as do Web sites such as BugGuide (see for example this species page), although others don't. So I would estimate that a substantial minority of literate Americans are used to seeing capitalized species names in their sources for authoritative information on species. Presumably these people are overrepresented among people who look at our bird articles.

In general (as you'll have observed), most people don't care about style points. I very rarely hear complaints about it (outside Wikipedia, maybe once). Of those who care about this one, I think it's quite possible that the majority prefer capitalization. I think it's even more likely that the trend will be toward capitalization, not away from it. But in any case, please stop saying that all the soccer moms dislike capitalization.

I realize this is irrelevant to your "firewall" proposal, but you do keep bringing it up. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 16:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Of course there are 1000:1, more like 50,000:1 or more, of people who do not think it is proper to capitalize common names of animals, any more than they'd capitalize Shoes and Truck and Flowerpot. Otherwise all the major style guides like Chicago and Hart's and so on, would all say "capitalize the common names of animals" (or birds more specifically or whatever level you want to argue this on). The only people who think it's "right" are specialists in a few fields (and not even all of them in those fields). The fact that lots of people buy bird field guides and don't rise up in arms to burn down the publishing house or whatever doesn't mean that all of those people also agree that the capitalization used in the field guides to make the common names stand out is what should be done in an encyclopedia or any other non-specialist work. Otherwise most or all non-specialist works would do it, yet virtually zero of them do. This has nothing to do with whether birdwatching is popular, only to do with whether what is done in ornithology journals and bird books has jack to do with how to write an encyclopedia. Seven years of other editors, from all walks of life and fields and experience and viewpoints, telling you it doesn't should have sunk in by now.

I don't understand why your project and most editors in it continually pretend not to hear the basic argument: What is done in specialist publications is not what the majority of people think should be done in a general encyclopedia. This has been demonstrated at VPP more than once, and is why MOS has had a default against capitalization of animal names for over 4 years, despite your project doing everything in its power to derail every debate about animal capitalization that arises. I don't know what you mean about Peterson guides... I re-read, and do get it now. No one cares, because it's not about what bird field guides do, it's about what encyclopedias do: Which is never capitalize the common names of animals, including birds. If the trend were toward capitalization, we'd've already seen that, not the opposite. Every time the issue comes up outside your own talk page, the majority of respondents oppose it (except when, as in this case, someone like KimvdLinde canvasses your project to show up en masse and dominate the debate with circular arguments and IDHT "noise".

What your project is doing is insisting that what is done in specialist literature like bird guides and bird journals must be done in an encyclopedia, when the real world shows you otherwise in every single case. There is no encyclopedia on the planet (judging from from previous debates where people have spent large amounts of time looking at non-specialist reliable source style) that obeys your caps convention. With one single exception, even non-orn. biology & science journals will not use it when publishing orn. articles! But whatever. I'm tired of having circular debates about this. Your entire project simply pretends that the arguments against your practice have never been made and that evidence has never been presented, and that your own have never been refuted, when the opposite is the case, x7 years. And I'm not even trying to stop you any more, I'm trying to stop Domestic Cat and Lion and Goldfish. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 17:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

PS: Sorry if that reply came across as testy; it's been a stressful day. I honestly don't care any more what your project does, I just want MOS to firewall it so that people stop capitalizing everything else. At least your project has a rationale for doing so. I and others disagree with it, but it's not crazy or stupid, and the fact that you can point to an international body that has published an official list of [capitalized] common names, that all ornithologists use, is different from any other field. It's a weak excuse, but other fields have none whatsoever. The fact that this random website or that capitalizes or doesn't isn't relevant. Take WP:FISH for example. They note that a major website they like to cite does not capitalize, and that a major ichythological body (I forget which - too many acronyms!) does. The project doesn't, probably because they don't want 7 years of flamewarring like your project has had to withstand, with plenty more to come from plenty more people who want to follow plain-English grammar rules in a plain-English encyclopedia. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 19:38, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Chicago states explicitly to follow the rules in the relevant specialist literature. That is what we do. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Chicago names specific literature to follow, and yours is not included: "For the correct capitalization and spelling of common names of plants and animals, consult a dictionary or the authoritative guides to nomenclature, the ICBN and the ICZN, mentioned in 8.118. In general, Chicago recommends capitalizing only proper nouns and adjectives, as in the following examples, which conform to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary...".— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 17:54, 7 February 2012 (UTC) PS: Since neither the ICBN nor the ICZN have ever issued a standard for or against capitalization, only for what the names are, the Chicago advice on capitalization specifically is actually only "consult a dictionary"; they simply phrased it badly. All of this has already been told to you before, here specifically, just like everything else in the debate that you keep re-re-re-recycling just to make more and more text to cloud the debate and wear everyone out. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 18:24, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the apology, and I'm sorry I added to your stress. I may not be able to answer substantively till Thursday. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 22:08, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to take even longer than I said, but this is not fun.

It simply doesn't follow that if the style guides say not to capitalize, then 99.9% or even 50% of readers do not think capitalizing is proper. Maybe if style guides took polls, it would follow.

If bird guides do it in a way that's helpful to many readers and encyclopedias don't, we should follow bird guides. The question isn't who does it but what's helpful. What I'm arguing is that capitalizing is helpful to many readers. The popularity of birding and other natural history is relevant because it tells you something about the number of readers it will be helpful to.

I see no reason that Erik Haugen or Kim van der Linde shouldn't let people know about a debate at MoS that concerns them, and as you probably know by now, some participants in WP:BIRDS didn't show up.

Capitalization is not grammar, it's convention. Scientific names are a clear example. Leaving vernacular names of species aside, you'll find it very hard to define "proper name" grammatically in a way that includes "Monopoly" but not "contract bridge", or "Felidae" but not "the cat family", or "Muslim" but not "atheist". —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:14, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Of course it follows. The current (16th) edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, despite being quite expensive and barely different form the previous edition, has an Amazon Best Sellers Rank of #729. That's {{em}out of all books in the world}}. Even people who do not buy it and use Chicago personall, or the British equivent, the Oxford Guide to Style a.k.a. Hart's Rules, which also doesn't capitalize common names, are deeply influenced by it, because all professional editors do, so every newspaper, magazine, etc., it written in accordance with the style rules promulgated thereby, except where they consciously choose, e.g. for specialist reasons, to depart from it. And why would you think that their style advice isn't based on real-world data? They have large staff who do quite a bit of research, actually; that's why they keep changing, to reflect changing patterns of usage. It's been less than four years between Chicago editions and about 6.5 since the last edition of Hart's/Oxford.

Why would capitalization be helpful to many readers, when we can simply rewrite to avoid the one problem that capitalization is helpful for?:

• Bad writing: The Mexican Jay is one of several Mexican jays.
• Good writing: The Mexican jay is one of several jays native to Mexico.

If there were any actual evidence that people are often confused by lower-case species common names, we'd see it all the time. But we don't. Bird guides capitalize to make the name stand out. People tend to read those in a hurry, trying to find the bird outside their window before it flies off. Orn. journals capitalize because the IOC says to, and IOC arrived at that decision out of the blue. People just went along with it, by what appears to be blind coincident but was surely a lot of wheel-greasing to get to journals and other publishers to go along. When the American Fisheries Society decided that the new version of their list of fish common names would include the same capitalization, when they weren't just ignored, they were castigated.

While I don't pretend that you are or should be in some kind of lockstep with a WikiProject, I do have to observe that WP:BIRDS members frequently make a strenuous argument that "the question is who does it", and demand that bird specialist publications be recognized as more authoritative than generalist ones on this grammar/style point simply because birds happen to be the subject. This is like saying that if books on stamp collecting decided to start capitalizing things like Performation, Stamp, Stamp Album, Watermark, Ink, Paper, etc. that WP would go along with this in articles about philately. WP doesn't make any exception of this sort – preferring specialist capitalization where it conflicts with basic grammar/style rules – anywhere on the system, because doing so invites utter chaos, as every project/topic would demand exceptions for every rule on everything. ANyway, I think it's interesting that you contradict other project members' argument from authority and rely only on a utility argument. Makes me wonder how many others over there realize that the from authority is fallacious. Anyway, WP:MOS is explicitly predicated upon what reliable general sources do when it comes to grammar and style, whether you agree this is a good idea or not, and only defers to specialist style when it doesn't conflict with general style.

Birding being popular doesn't mean that capitalization will be more "helpful" to more people, simply familiar to a larger subset than, say, capitalizing the names of worms or nematodes or other less popular topics than birds. You argument doesn't follow; either it's helpful generally, or its not. If it's only helpful for a topical subset, this is an argument in favor of my position, not yours. :-)

I'm unaware of anyone criticizing Erik. KimvdLinde was found by WP:AN/I to have engaged in "unfortunate canvassing", because she did not post a calm, neutrally worded notice, she posted a call to arms that resulted in poll stacking. Not sure what your "some participants didn't show up" point is. Of course some didn't; the project have over 100 members, and most of them are here to write articles, not engage in wikipolitical debates, right? Heh.

A very large number of people consider proper capitalization to be a major part of written grammar. Even if they didn't, you're just splitting hairs, like saying "the speed limit's not really a law in the classic sense, it's a statute." The cops will still give you a speeding ticket! D'oh.

I find zero difficulty distinguishing the cases you raise. The game Monopoly is a registered trademark. Capitalization of taxa higher than species is a convention supported by all generalist (Chicago, Oxford, etc.) style guides, and does not conflict with everyday usage. Atheism isn't a religion, but the absence of one; it's a philosophy like agnosticism, libertarianism, etc., and per all generalist style guides we capitalize religions and their adherents, like nations and nationalities, but not philosophies (unless eponymous, e.g. Marxism) and followers of them.

Anyway, I don't much care any more whether the birds project capitalizes or not. Their position is actually marginally stronger on the "it's a worldwide standard" basis than for capitalization of salamander names or comic book collecting terms or car part names, and capitalization of that sort of stuff all over the place is why I and so many others have had a bee in our bonnet about this. (That said, there are people who hate, hate, hate the birds capitalization scheme specifically and will still try to stop it.) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 18:21, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

No doubt the style guides keep up to date on what's published, as you say, but I know of no reason to think they have data on what readers think is proper, and that's what we were talking about. The fact that most people don't capitalize bird names (which I agree with) doesn't mean they think it's improper, any more than the correspond fact on en dashes.

I may have been imprecise when I said it doesn't matter who says it. As I said somewhere at MOS Talk, I think the IOC's usage is the other valid reason since we've chosen them as our authority for common names, along with improved communication. What I meant above is that it doesn't matter whether encyclopedias don't capitalize and field guides do or the other way around. I know some people on both sides of the debate think it does matter, and I'd estimate that 0% of them consider their views fallacious.

Speaking of mattering, it does matter whether you call your preferred capitalization "plain-English grammar rules", since doing so suggests that any other convention is like "This place perceptible to view of the beholders that passes by" or "The guy hummingbird don't never take no care of the babies." But it's not; it's just a different convention used in edited text.

I wasn't suggesting that you would have trouble determining which of my examples should be capitalized. I meant that it's a matter of convention—there's no grammatical way to determine, because the syntax of "Muslim" is identical to that of "atheist", etc. This is, I believe, the same thing Noetica was saying here.

That's all I have time for now. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 06:27, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not following your reasoning on this. Why would major publishers of style guides not pay any attention to what readers think? CMoS has a blog, full of comments and responses to them, for example. Their editorial staff engage on a daily basis with people and their opinions on style matters. Of course they notice and care. Regardless, "the fact that most people don't capitalize bird names... doesn't mean they think it's improper" doesn't wash. Of course they do. People derive their sense of what is and isn't acceptable (prescriptivist: "correct"; traditionalist: "proper") English usage and in what registers and contexts from what they see and hear every day, first and foremost, followed in emphatically descending order by dictionaries, general style guides, encyclopedias, specialized style guides and dictionaries (AP Style Manual or the Guardian UK equivalent for journalism, Garner's Red Book for law, etc.), and specialist topic-specifc works like field guides and journals last. No one on this earth is going to go buy a bird book to figure out whether to capitalize bird names. They already know, from daily experience with the English language, not to do that (and know not to do in general prose, even if they encounter it as a subcultural colloquialism in bird specialty books). "The fact that most people don't capitalize" the common names of animals absolutely means that most people think its improper, for exactly the same reason we don't find "birdses" acceptable unless it humorously comes from Gollum's mouth, or sit still for spelling supersede as "supercede", "superceed" or "soopurrsiid". The fact that 99%+ of people will never check anything more specialist than a dictionary, style guide or encyclopedia to get their answer, means that their feelings with regard to things like this are massively and uniformly reinforced. Until they encounter something "geeky", like bird field guides or orn. journal articles.

You have been strongly disagreed with by more people than I can count for seven years running that this is not seen by many others as "just a different convention used in edited text", and virtually all evidence backs up the view in opposition to yours, since virtulaly all edited text aside from bird specialist works does not capitalize bird common names. There is no way around these facts. Re: Muslim and atheist: But I just demonstrated that there is a way to distinguish them, one that all style guide agree on. No one ever said it had anything to do with syntax, and I never implied a definition of "grammatical" that was that narrow. I believe you are misinterpreting Noetica and what he's doing (which I support) at WT:MOSCAPS. It's a mistake to assume that all capitalization debates raise the same issues. Heck, even the debate over capitalization of dog/horse/cat/etc. breeds and plant cultivars is radically different from that over upper-casing common names of species. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 18:43, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

As at MOS Talk, I'm not going to answer any of this either, since I got the impression you don't want me to. If you do, let me know, and I will (though maybe rather slowly, as before). I'll watch this page for a while. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 18:19, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Replies are a good thing. :-) Reasonable people can disagree, and often come to less disagreement after their reasons have played out. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 20:22, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, that makes sense to me. I'll reply here within a few days. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 23:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Cheers!

		A beer on me!
		for all of the thoughtful posts through the extended discussion at MOSCAPS. I've appreciated it. JHunterJ (talk) 13:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank ya verra much! I was thirsty. >;-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 15:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Big coding problem at the glossary

Resolved

 – Fixed.

Hey Stanton. Something is very wrong with the coding at the glossary, where numerous entries are not displaying anything where gueloss2 is used. See, for example action ("Short for .") or ahead race ("Contrast .").--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:37, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Looking into it. Something had to break, huh? — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 16:39, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

It was just a dumb typo on my part. I forgot to close a <noinclude>. All fixed! — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 16:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Ack, good. I was getting ready to revert back to a month ago if you weren't around. It occurs to me that vandalism to these would affect a lot of content so I have semi-protected both and move protected them as well.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

A plan of goodness. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Ballet templates

Resolved

 – Revisited TfD.

perhaps I wasn't clear in Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 February 19#Ballet multicolumn formatting templates. if you look at Template:Agon it's just a hardcoded frontend to template:pas de huit. so when you express the opinion to delete template:Zakouski, I would think the same rationale would apply to most of the templates in this discussion. Frietjes (talk) 19:55, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I get it now. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 21:52, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Non-free content

Resolved

 – Done.

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И

Resolved

 – Wrong venue; see Talk:Client (band).

И is the Cyrillic letter I. It cannot be used as a backwards N just because it resembles one. Georgia guy (talk) 00:58, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I've already addressed this at Talk:Client (band). The fact that the band does exactly this may be inconvenient or annoying to you, but it is a fact. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 01:03, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

See WP:TFD for merging templates

Resolved

 – Took the issue to TfD as suggested.

I have removed the {{merge}} templates you added to templates. See WP:TFD for merging templates. Mark Hurd (talk) 14:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

What templates? — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 16:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

You added them in these edits: [8], [9] and [10], though you seem to have remembered. Mark Hurd (talk) 00:01, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't; I just dug it out of your edit history. :-) That said, I'm unaware of any policy that requires template merge discussions to happen at TfD; it's often more expedient to handle it via the template's own talk pages. I nearly just boldly merged all these, since no one objected, but a three way merge might be better a a TfD discussion in this case. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:08, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Template:Merge#Notes points out Categories and Templates do not use the template, and attempts to do so are listed at Category:Items to be merged. Mark Hurd (talk) 00:36, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Template documentation isn't policy, and I'm not sure where anyone got the idea that is "misprocess" to use merge templates ant template talk to merge templates when controversy isn't likely. People have been using merge templates since they've existed to suggest template merges, when they might need some discussion, but aren't likely to arouse site-wide interest at TfD. It's not "wrong" to suggest merges this way. Categories are more complicated and even for trivial stuff have to be handled at CfD. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 14:08, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Quantum Leap

FYI

 – Just a notice.

Moved; see my talk page for the response if you're interested. Nyttend (talk) 01:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 09:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for working on this. I wasn't even sure anyone checked the talk page there regularly anymore. I've never been sure of how to address the issue of comparisons and lists, but at least we have a start now. I did do some research a year or two back and found that historically we did once have a lot of "lists of wikilinks" which had been named "comparison of", but those appeared to have been renamed long ago. Comparison articles seem to be somewhat of an orphan within the Manual of Style with no MoS pages covering their naming, layout, etc. This seems to be due to the evolution of comparison articles, in that when the style guides were originally written, we didn't really have comparison articles. --Tothwolf (talk) 08:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Right. I added Comparison of Linux distributions as a well-developed example. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 09:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I seem to remember that I was able to find 3 distinct types of comparison articles, but I will need to spend some time to find good examples again. Somehow we also need to find a way to address this sort of problem. This was an example I brought up at WT:NPOV. --Tothwolf (talk) 01:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Not sure I'm seeing the problem. The entries removed were either sourced to their own sites (WP:COI/WP:SPS/WP:SPAM) or to whitepapers proposing the systems (WP:CRYSTALBALL), not to indepenent sources, nor linked to articles about them here with such independent sources. The edit summary's use of "notability" is wrong, because that applies to articles, not list membership, but WP:INDISCRIMINATE militates against including every possible thing in a list just because it could be added, rather than being important to add. Did I miss something? Maybe you noticed something I didn't. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 03:18, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

While this was just one example, and much better examples undoubtedly exist, I don't personally see the laundry list of problems you brought up. It could just be that having seen this exact sort of thing play out 100s of times (if not more) across all sorts of articles within WP:COMP's scope that I have a slightly different take on it. It didn't look like "linkspam" to me, and the removals are a slap in the face towards our contributors; ie "Your contributions don't matter, we don't want you here, now go away". New contributors in particular don't take this very well. While we can almost always find a guideline somewhere that allows us to justify removing just about any content, in the long run doing so will only continue to harm Wikipedia as the editor retention problem continues to grow. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:38, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I follow you. If new entries to lists are being blanket reverted per WP:IDONTKNOWIT, then that's certainly an issue. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 15:32, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not even just new entries, even old entries in some lists and entries in wikitables within articles that have been in place for years without issue are being drive-by removed. I'm not sure this would be happening if it weren't for the automated editing tools that make this incredibly easy. If someone had to slow down and write a rationale and explain to a contributor why their contribution is being removed, they might not be so willing to do this. I really don't know what to do about it, but it isn't good for the community. --Tothwolf (talk) 07:16, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Lead / lede

Resolved

 – Fixed.

Did you mean what you typed when you said "lead is a jargon term exclusive to news journalism" in this edit? PamD 09:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

No! D'oh!. Thanks. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 09:32, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Barnstar Creator's Barnstar
		Thank you for your submission of the Instructor's Barnstar. It's now on the main barnstar list. Pinetalk 15:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Keen beans! Thanks.

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:No original research

Resolved

 – Done.

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My American brother

Is it cold at your home? Be it the season of the american basketball ? Here in Canada we begin our university finales in the women hockey. And then we had a lot of snow. You ski? Which are your projects on wikipedia ?--Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 00:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

For sports, I'm all about cue sports. I used to live in Toronto, actually, but the 2004–05 NHL lockout was on the entire time I was there, so I never once got to go to an NHL game. Very sad! A lot my editing interests are mentioned on my user page. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 00:56, 28 February 2012 (UTC) Oh, and no, it's nothing like Canada cold here. I can sometimes get that way (Albuquerque is around 1 mile in altitude, and mountainous - not all of New Mexico is flat and arid). But it's been a very mild winter. I went skiing once, and was terrible at it. I figure I'd do better at 'boarding, since I used to be skater, but I'm not a huge fan of cold, so I never tired. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 14:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

What can WP decide?

Resolved

 – Opened a can of trouts and wikt:cluebats over at that talk page.

What can WP decide about the format of pages within the scope of their project? Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music does not approve of infoboxes. See the Simon Rattle article and discussion on the talk page. I think this is an interesting issue that challenges uniformity on the Wiki. Snowman (talk) 13:22, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Interesting question. I think I already ran into this one a few days ago, but will look again. MOS, last I looked, and certainly no policies, require an infobox. There seems to be a widespread consensus that at least many types of article should uniformly have an infobox, but I know of plenty of editors who don't like them, either at all, or in particular situations. I'm on the fence about them myself, because they are problematic in various ways, yet I find myself using them a lot, as a reader, in certain kinds of articles, for certain kinds of info (and never at all for other kinds of info). It's something that's a big "?" to me, really. Anyway, I don't think any guideline is in a position to "force" infoboxes on a wikiproject for infobox uniformity. However, wikiprojects are just misc. editors who agree to pool resources to edit collaboratively and have precisely zero authority, per numerous WP:ARBCOM rulings and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy and WP:OWN; they cannot force other editors to follow wikiproject "guidelines". The upshot is that for any composer, say J. S. Bach, WP:GERMANY, WP:BIO, and other other project the article is in-scope for, as well as any random editors, really, have 100% as much business insisting on an infobox as WP:CLASSICAL has insisting on not having one. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:31, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

The Simon Rattle article is a music article and a biography, and so the article is within the scope of more than one Wikiproject. I put an infobox on it a long time ago, because I thought that it needed one as an autobiography, but it was soon deleted. I do not know why the music project's policy on infoboxes prevailed. Snowman (talk) 13:49, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

There's no such thing as a "project policy", just opinions. Stick to your guns on this (but way short of WP:3RR). See what I posted over there, in both related threads. There are a lot of cluebags who don't understand how things work here and are trying to bend things to their whim. They will lose. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 14:03, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Would you be prepared to ...

... drop back over to Kim's talk page (the extended content bit) and drop some sort of apology there? Particularly for your comment [ending with] WP:SPADE, and I'm sticking to it.

I do appreciate that impatience and frustration can get the better of all of us from time to time, but that really was beyond the pale; right in the definition of personal attacks, whichever way one looks at it. I'm really trying to sort something out here which can create a real resolution, not trying to be unpleasant, or baiting, or anything else. Maybe if you could just explain how you felt at the time of posting that kind of thing, and agree that you shouldn't have let those feelings get the better of you, and you're sorry for any distress your comments would have caused? (Striking through the whole lot would probably be a good idea, not just that one comment.)

I know this kind of situation can be bordering on intolerable, and that's certainly a mitigating circumstance, though not a "defence" as such. My own thoughts on this kind of situation are here. Maybe if you re-read what you've written, and consider how you'd feel if someone had said that to your sister / mother / wife / daughter ... would you have felt like thumping them (or smashing a broken bottle into their face, or whatever...) I suspect that if someone had said that to someone you loved, you would probably have been furious, no matter what the provocation. All the best, Pesky (talk) 07:25, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Short version: Sorry, I just WP:don't feed the divas. KimvdLinde took the matter to WP:AN/I, and it was closed there. I've already made retractions and concessions at both WT:MOS and WP:AN/I. I asked for one simple act of meet-me-half-way contrition on her part – retraction of her "there is no good faith from SMcCandlish" attack at WT:BIRDS – and she ignored it, twice. My part is done, and the ball is in her court. We own our own emotions, and KimvdLinde is not a child. I meant what I said in criticism, even if I could have said it more "nicely". It was harsh, but it did not actually transgress WP:NPA, only WP:CIVIL. The "sister/mother..." bit is a really cheap shot (and the "broken bottle" bit creepy...); Kim has no "natural right" to be free from criticism for tendentiously disruptive editing and blatant personal antagonism just because of her gender. PS: Please stop abusing the {{xt}} example text template for talk page quotation; that's what {{tq}} talk quote is for.

Long verson:

This user is just tired of it all. My going to her talk page and marking it resolved (by her filing a now-closed AN/I case, which in fact did not find against me) and hiding the text there, and archiving the copy here off of my own talk page [<sarcasm>thanks</sarcasm> for putting it back to make a point; I've refactored it back out] is enough, given that KimvdLinde will not concede, retract, compromise on, or in even address at all anything on her side of the dispute. In my view, KimvdLinde has far more to apologize for, including a lengthy "war" against me in multiple forums, with loud proclamations that I "have no good faith", etc., which are also interpretable as just short of personal attacks. Describing in personal user-talk correspondence, how another editor's behavior is destroying the enjoyment of Wikipedia for me, is certainly harsh criticism, and even incivil, but it's not actually a personal attack per WP:NPA (nor was, quite, KimvdLinde's bad faith accusations and other rubbish). I already admitted at AN/I that I'd been incivil, and retracted the criticism I posted in public at WT:MOS, earlier. And I did that after all my offers of compromise were rebuffed, and did so knowing that KimvdLinde would not honor my request to retract her own incivil posts about me (note: she has not). We own our own emotions. When KimvdLinde returns (I say "when" not "if", because she has a history of repeatedly "retiring" and coming back after a few days, weeks or months; there's no rule against calling a wikibreak "quitting", but I don't feel like playing make-believe, and she has in fact still been sporadically active, not to mention it's just an obvious appeal-to-emotion ploy to begin with), if she has indeed felt "any distress" about being sharply criticized, maybe she'll think twice before going on another personally-motivated, ad hominem rampage of incivility, character assassination, poll stacking, canvassing, WP:SSF of the bad faith variety, tendentiousness, filibustering, disruptive editing, and dispute-resolution sabotage. She knows how to archive her own talk page, if she finds the words discomforting. I've retracted all that I'm going to retract, unless and until I see serious signs of contrition, compromise and attitude adjustment on KimvdLinde's part. You seem to be under the impression that I did not mean the things I wrote, that it was just a momentary lapse of temper, and that I haven't re-read it or thought it over. You'd be incorrect in those assumptions. I have already "explain[ed] how [I] felt at the time of posting that kind of thing, and agree that [I] shouldn't have let those feelings get the better of [me]". I did this publicly at AN/I. No further apology is forthcoming without some quid pro quo. KimvdLinde refuses to even retract the "not good faith" attack at WT:BIRDS. It would take her one minute or so. The "sister/mother/wife/daughter" shot is cheap; I don't treat KimvdLinde as a frail, child-like flower simply because of her gender, and being female doesn't make someone even 1% more immune from criticism for disruptive behavior here. Re-re-reading what I said, if someone said that about someone I cared about, whatever their gender, my initial thoughts would probably be "wow, you must have really, really been working at pissing that person off; what'd you do, and why?" I actually have a fair number of histrionic, troublemaking, judgmental and occasionally irrational family members, friends and acquaintances, of both sexes and all ages, and have learned through experience never to trust only their side of any dispute. If someone said something like that about me, after an initial blush of anger and defensiveness, I'd have to ask myself the same questions. If you don't believe me, go ask Noetica (talk · contribs). We had "words" like this several years ago, even more pointed ones, and longer and more detailed. We both WP:SHUNned each other for a couple of months, and used some of that time to think about what the other had said, and now we not only get along, we're both also better editors for it, more mindful of how what we say in edit summaries and on talk pages can affect other people. Just in case I've missed something, I've gone and re-read it a third time. It's a bit harsh, and I did mean it. I didn't use any dirty words, I didn't tell KimvdLinde to leave, I didn't say she was stupid or evil, I described my own feelings and described her behaviors. Maybe it is insulting to use a word like "psychodramatic" to characterize another editor's talk page patterns. But we have plenty of entire essays about this. Try TfDing pages like that, then come talk to me about whether I've crossed a line in simply using the one word instead of euphemistic verbal spew like "characterized by an unreasonable level of emotional investment in argument-winning and in making everything personal on both sides, to the great detriment of the logic, cohesion, civility and bearableness of the discussion". WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA have no requirement that one has to mince words and kiss asses. WP:SPADE is a well-received and oft-cited essay. I have read your civility essay, before you came here, and agree with most of it. The dispute between KimvdLinde and I is far beyond that level now, and she's getting precisely zero more concessions of anything from me on this unless she takes the next step and meets me half-way. The ball's in her court, not mine. PPS: If you'd "fe[el] like...smashing a broken bottle into [someone's] face" over words like "psychodramatic" you may want to rethink your wikicareer as a civility essayist and mediator. That comes across as really creepy and irrational.

— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 09:20, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, sorry, I wasn't meaning to be creepy, or anything else like that; I really do have the best of intentions here. (But, in Real Life, some people would, in fact, get really, genuinely violent if a person were to say something along those lines to a friend or relative.) But, regardless of all the background stuff, and your own frustration here (which I can appreciate), teh Arbs have just quite clearly stated: "Per policy, "as a matter of … effective discourse, comments should not be personalized. That is, they should be directed at content and actions rather than people." Disparaging an editor or casting aspersions is a personal attack, regardless of the manner in which it is done. The usual exception to this principle is reasonably expressed concerns raised within a legitimate dispute resolution process. " Remember Kim may not have seen your request at AN/I (particularly now that the discussion is not only closed, but also archived). I know how tempting it can be to get into name-calling, but it always causes more problems than it solves. With regard to the "requirements" of WP:CIVIL (and regardless of how chaotically-applied that policy is, or how ambiguously worded), there is the following:

1. Direct rudeness

(a) rudeness, insults, name-calling, gross profanity or indecent suggestions;

(b) personal attacks, including racial, ethnic, sexual, gender-related and religious slurs, and derogatory references to groups such as social classes or nationalities;

(c) ill-considered accusations of impropriety;

(d) belittling a fellow editor, including the use of judgmental edit summaries or talk-page posts (e.g. "that is the stupidest thing I have ever seen", "snipped crap");

Is there any way at all that you could see your way clear to apologising for the "insults and name-calling" bit? Pesky (talk) 10:00, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I do not need to apologize further and again. I've received nothing but hostility and eventual (thanfully) silence for having even gone that far. The best course of action is to leave it alone and let the cut heal, not pick the scab. I've already acknowledged, to KimvdLinde in public twice that I was incivil, and pointedly retracted a public post with a declaration that I was doing so because I'd been incivil. Why you feel the need to come quotating WP:CIVIL at me is unclear. I know what the page says, since I already addressed my breach of it. Kim saw my request, because I made it multiple times in multiple forums over multiple days, and explicitly rejected it. I don't need ArbCom quoted at me, either. I repeat, I already conceded it was civil and retracted it. WP:DEADHORSE, man. I got nothing in return, despite having been publicly attacked by this user without provocation several times, and including in a WP:DRN case that she blatantly abused as a platform for aggression instead of resolution. Why are you picking other people's scabs? Since you want to throw mentions of assault in for no reason (and did it again, after I told you it was creepy!), that's also the kind of behavior that in real life would get you popped in the nose, don't you think?

Sorry again, I should have put this bit earlier (but Real Life is troublesome for me, too!) I'm not sure what the general view is on this, but I have a feeling that editing another person;s talk page to hide from view your own comments which (per policy, as opposed to per essay) could reasonably be construed to be a personal attack isn't generally considered to be OK. It's a bit like "destroying evidence" when you hide it from view; on your own talk page, I guess that's all right, but not on someone else's talk page. Adding: I think that the collapse template interferes with page preview in some way (not sure if that's a reported bug), hence the multiple tweaky edits here. Sorry! Pesky (talk) 10:14, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Let's not be silly. See WP:REFACTOR. And it's not really hidden at all, just collapsed. It's like a form of struck-out text, but much, much easier to read if you are intent on reading it. It's also in the same form as the "This debate is closed, do not edit it" templates, because the matter was closed at AN/I. Further debate about it by passers-by on her talk page is simply going to irritate me, remind KimvdLinde why she left, protract an unfruitful discussion, involve random editors in other people's dirty laundry, and raise the undead spectre of an issue that has already resolved itself at AN/I satisfactorily. See again WP:DEADHORSE and also WP:Ignore all drama. Stop trying to generate more of it, please. Actually, per WP:REFACTOR you, me, anyone would be free to completely delete the entire talk page section if your view that it actually constitutes as personal attack were true: "Pruning text – should only be done...with good cause under policy: * Removing, striking or hiding personal attacks ..." — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 10:50, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Capitalization of common names (just a passing comment)

While writing a reply to you elsewhere, I happened to look at Murinae. All the English names here are capitalized (which may be ok as it's a list) but equally all the links I followed (about 20 I guess) have capitalized titles. Nothing follows from this either way with regard to policy; it's just an observation. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:09, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

recent arbitrary move and deletion activity of Alan Liefting

Hi SMcCandlish--

I notice you have posted a protest concerning Liefting's recent peremptory and arbitrary moves. Please also see the further discussion at Talk:Glossary of music#Move from "Glossary of music terminology" to "Glossary of music", including my most recent post at or near the bottom. Perhaps you may have a suggestion for addressing this Wikipedia-wide problem. Thanks for any help you may be able to provide. (Of course you may agree with some of his arguments, but presumably not with his methods.) Milkunderwood (talk) 11:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)