User talk:GoingBatty

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Re: Yobot - Caption edit for 111th Congress

Hey =) Just in regards to my edit on the 111th Congress page (very long caption); yea, I realized and was worried about it - I decided to go with it since it seemed to fit in on the page alright + it's mostly a matter, I think, of the number of seat changes making it hard to convey that whilst 59:41 gives an accurate impression overall, the critical 60 seat threshold was temporarily obtained (see: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act). I felt it was very important to make that clear? Sb101 (talk) 03:47, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sb101 - thanks for the info. I don't think Yobot was expecting that kind of caption, so we will see what the bot operator says. GoingBatty (talk) 13:02, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject banner excluded

Hi, with this edit, BattyBot moved {{WPTRAINS}} down and in so doing excluded it from the {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:26, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I updated User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects and my AWB module so that it will change {{WPTRAINS}} to {{WikiProject Trains}}, so that AWB general fixes will include it inside {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Edits in Windows 8?

Hi.

Could you please give me an explanation of what were you trying to do in Windows 8 article? Removing |work= and putting the work title in |publisher= field? I don't know about you but I am certainly going dizzy looking at those edits.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 15:24, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi Lisa! My goal was to clean up the references in the Windows 8 article. However, it seems that the information in Help:Citation Style 1 and Template:Cite web and User:Ohconfucius/script/Sources all give different instructions, which may or may not conform with WP:ITALICS. I'll analyze the edits and start some discussions to see where we go from here. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:51, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I was also attempting to make the date formats consistent. I apologize that wasn't included in the edit summary. GoingBatty (talk) 16:54, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

That article is a mess from a formatting point of view. The scripts can only do so much. -- Ohc ^{digame / ¿que pasa?} 02:12, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello.

• Look, I am not opposed to date consistency, but I'd appreciate if you don't forget an edit summary when it comes to this controversial issue. We talk and talk and every time have a consensus that Windows 8 does not have any strong national ties to U.S. and that is in fact the secret of its success but then every now and then, some guy pops out of nowhere and changes the date styles to his own heart content on one pretext or another. So, please, make an independent edit, and provide your evidence in edit summary.
• Back to our own subject: Why did you remove the |work= replaced its contents with |publisher=? You say you were following Help:Citation Style 1? Alright, that document gives this example:

|work=Amazon.com and |publisher=Amazon
|newspaper=The New York Times and |publisher=The New York Times Company

Please correct me if I am wrong but this is the opposite of what you did.

Oh, and I know that reverting may sometimes seem a brutal thing to do, especially after all the time you spent doing those edits but I assure you, I am ready to listen too, not just revert.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 14:04, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

• The script should actually be changing these as follows:

|work=Amazon.com -> |publisher=Amazon.com note: websites are not italicised
|publisher=Amazon [unchanged] note: no such thing as Amazon (company is known as Amazon.com, Inc., and the script ignores it
|newspaper=The New York Times [unchanged]
|publisher=The New York Times Company [removed] note: publisher is removed as it is not required for periodicals

-- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 14:47, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello. To put it bluntly, I think that is a very stupid thing to do. Why misrepresent a work as a publisher and violate Help:Citation Style 1 at the same time too? Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 15:37, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello again

I read about your script a bit and it seems to me you are trying to delete valuable citation info to fix a simple italicization. With all due respect, it is the most unwise course of action. Consider reporting the issue to the proper venue for a template code that does not produce italicization where applicable. As far as the consensus goes, however, I do not condone such blunt measures to accomplish so little.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 15:56, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

The deletions are not coded in with the intention of fixing the italicisation issue; they are because the information is not necessary. AFAIK, there is a 'fix' to toggle italicisation, but that is not regarded as proper usage and is certainly not written in anywhere. Help:Citation Style 1 is rather non-specific as to the precise italicisation issue, but it seems to have been considered in much greater depth at WT:ITALIC. There is no consensus to universally italicise new media sites, and I believe those that have been changed have gone through individual discussions; my script is adjusted to align names and italicisations according to our own naming conventions. As to "I do not condone such blunt measures to accomplish so little", I am trying to do that to hundreds of references to hundreds of articles to ensure consistency. If you can give me a hand sharpening the "blunt instrument" further, that would be much appreciated. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 06:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I'd be glad to do that but first, what is the fix to toggle the italicization? Then, please study my message below and let's see how the situation should be handled. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 06:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

@Codename Lisa: - I have no problem with you employing WP:BRD - I was bold, you reverted, now we're discussing:

• I asked for assistance at Help talk:Citation Style 1#Please help make documentation consistent. Input from both of you would be appreciated.
• Changing the dates without an edit summary was an failure on my part to use Ohconfucius' scripts properly. I wanted to change all the dates to mdy (since it appeared that was the primary format in the article), but hesitated when I say {{use dmy dates}}. In my effort to click the browser's back arrow to revert that portion of my editing before saving, I accidentally saved the date changes without an appropriate edit summary. This is my fault, and I apologize for this poor edit. I see that another user changed most of the dates to mdy, and you didn't revert it, so I made a few more date-related edits with descriptive edit summaries.
• My remaining question is whether "ZDNet" and "CNET" belong in the |work= or |publisher= field - i.e. should they be italicized or not. Although Help:Citation Style 1#Work and publisher says to use |work= for web sites, and WP:ITALIC leads me to believe they should be italicized, the articles ZDNet and CNET do not italicizes the names, which is consistent with Ohconfucius' script. Where's the best place to have this discussion? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:14, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hi. ZDNet and CNET are definitely works and definitely not publishers. With the exception of certain areas, they are online newspapers in blog format. And they should be italicized, per WP:ITALIC. But I understand that you are concerned about other forms of work that should not be italicized, like Microsoft Office website, AV-Comparatives.org, SourceForge.net download pages, etc. Well, yes. This problem should be addressed at {{Cite web}} level, not article. Additionally, we can employ {{Citation}} to write the work name without italicizing it.

I urge you and User:Ohconfucius to take this issue to {{Cite web}} talk page or village pump. Since this is a genuine concern I would be glad to participate as well. The course of action that I think we need to follow is to have |work-n=. Alternatively, we can propose "work" to be italicized in all citations, regardless of the nature of the work. (In both cases, it can be argued that it would be abused. The counterargument is: no more and no less than it is now being abused.)

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 06:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that the citation templates talk page is the page for this. We can't just go bash it out on a technical level and then foist it upon the style guideline as a fait accompli. Help talk:Citation Style 1 is but a help resource, and {{cite}} is a tool with its associated documentation. WP:ITALIC is at least a guideline. This would be important point to get right especially if you want to go about italicising all websites, considering there is actually no consensus one way or another at this point. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 07:04, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I wasn't talking about foisting; we propose and try to persuade consensus in fair ways. In Wikipedia, laws aren't etched on stone (or stone tablets); as long as one rule is not a policy, editors have wide latitude to bend it wherever common sense dictates. In this case, the common sense says dumping information that immensely help recovering from linkrot (just because of some technical peculiarity with italicization) is unwise. Extremely unwise. This is exactly the angle which I'd emphasize to persuade a consensus, as opposed to the fait acompli foisting. But I am also ready give credit to the person who has written the original document for having understood the issue. Having assumed good faith in him or her, this seems logical. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 13:41, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

@Codename Lisa: - I agree that dumping information that would immensely help recovering from link rot is extremely unwise. However, I don't agree that someone with a reference containing |newspaper=The New York Times is going to be unable to recover from link rot if we remove the publisher to make the References section more readable. Back to my edit to the Windows 8 article that you reverted, if one of the ZDNet or CNET references stopped working, how would |publisher=CBS Interactive help you recover? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

• Alarics said: "We specifically do NOT want the publisher included in the case of mainstream newspapers. This has been discussed more than once elsewhere. It is absurd to have a ref. saying that The New York Times is published by the New York Times Company, and in fact we never do so." (from discussion at Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#Please_help_make_documentation_consistent). -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 03:30, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Alarics is more than welcome to voice his opinion in Wikipedia just as we all are but at least in this case I am not taking it for the gospel. The counterargument is that in many cases like News Center / Microsoft,Threat Response Center / Symantec, Technical Library / Brigham Young University, we need both the |publisher= and the |work=. (In all three, link rot recovery is almost impossible if one piece is missing.) In addition, there are people in favor of consistency, who believe for consistency's sake, both |publisher= and |work= should be present at all the times. (@Nikkimaria: I believe you had a similar opinion?)

To summarize, both publisher and work are at least sometimes needed (if not always) and I do not agree with your script removing them. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 06:34, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

For the purposes of the script, I'm not treating any of your above examples as "periodicals", so the publisher will not be removed (Hell, the script doesn't treat them at all). You debatably class them as 'works'. You are one of the rare ones as I don't think many people would agree with you.

The linkrot problem you pointed out is that '[Microsoft] News Center', '[Symantec] Threat Response Center', '[Brigham Young University] technical library' are just too generic with the establishment name left off for anyone to identify the units concerned. However, the risk of not finding replacement links is overstated as it is still possible to remedy linkrot as the establishment name is relatively easy to find by following the url. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 08:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. It appears the purpose of the message is getting lost. First, I am not classing them as "works", I am referring to |work= and its aliases like |newspaper=. Second, you are assuming that links are always something like "somesite.com/work_name/subfolder/articlename". Wrong! Sometimes links are like "somesite.com/id=xxxxxx". Third, what do I care if you are going or not going to insert publisher into citations from periodicals! As long as your script does not move "News Center" to |publisher=, I am fine. As for inserting or not inserting |publisher=CBS Interactive from a citation with |work=CNET, it is a matter of optional style and subject to MOS:STABILITY. The rule is simple: Do not fix what is already correct. Last, remember that the subject of discussion here is "Edits in Windows 8". Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 10:39, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Responses as follows. I'd say there was no problem on most of them:

1. our understanding of 'work' parameter seems to be the same
2. I don't care much for what links look like, my script doesn't touch any that are in the |url=
3. my script does not move "News Center" to |publisher=, although it doesn't belong, in my opinion; I might consolidate these manually to |publisher=Microsoft News Center
4. I don't usually revisit an article, so minor changes (without being reverted) will not trigger any reaction from me.
5. I may change things that are already correct, usually only if I'm able to make them better.
6. I am not specifically interested in Windows 8 over other articles, technical or otherwise.

Regards, -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 16:59, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• Ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Should website names be italicized?. --  Gadget850 ^talk 10:24, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		To GoingBatty: in consideration of your fine efforts to improve WP from a technical standpoint; your general good humour and cooperativeness. and thanks also for your continued help with improving my scripts!  Ohc ¡digame!¿que pasa? 13:54, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Ohconfucius! I think the scripts are great, and make it much easier to make article references consistent within an article. Keep up the good work! GoingBatty (talk) 02:05, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

May 2013

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

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 01:22, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed - thanks for the notification! GoingBatty (talk) 01:25, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Hannah Murray may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "[]"s and 1 "{}"s likely mistaking one for another. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 02:46, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed - GoingBatty (talk) 02:50, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Geza Szavai

Dear GoingBatty,

It is about the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9za_Sz%C3%A1vai; I am wondering if the notoces on top coul be removed because that is all the information and links I could get of the person in English and also, his original Hungarian page is linked as reference.

Thank you!

Karoly Gersi