User talk:VQuakr

Wikipedia Women's Health Information Edit-a-thon: Tuesday, May 12 at OHSU

You are invited!

• Tuesday, May 12, 2015: Wikipedia Women's Health Information Edit-a-thon – 1 to 4pm
• Wikipedia Edit-a-thon hosted by OHSU's Center for Women's Health in honor of National Women's Health Week
• Location: Biomedical Information Communications Center (3280 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239)
• This edit-a-thon is intended to address some of these important differences and to generally improve women’s health information in key articles and topics. Areas for improvement have been identified in cooperation with WikiProject Medicine. Prior Wikipedia editing is not required; assistance will be available the day of the event. Attendees should bring their own laptops and power cords.

Hope you can make it! If you have any questions or require any special accommodations, please post to the event page.

Thanks,

Another Believer

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VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).  

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
• If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
• If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Re: FYI

Yes, and so I self reverted. First I've heard of it, TBH -- Kendrick7^talk 08:21, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Mediation for Ghouta chemical attack

I started Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Ghouta chemical attack on 6 June 2015. I didn't originally include you, but you are welcome to join if you would like. I think your experience would be helpful. In particular, two editors have added conduct issues to the "Additional issues" section. I've tried to get them to remove them, but to no avail so far. But even if you want no part of the mediation itself, I could use any wisdom about the process itself, as this is my first experience with mediation at all. Can you critique my request and further actions to improve the request? I realize I have to wait for the Mediation Committee to get up to speed, but can I expect any more information or action this week?

I also am trying to get someone else to restore this edit by Volunteer Marek until mediation is rejected or completed. Here are my reasons: Talk:Ghouta chemical attack#Mediation. BTW, I see no likelihood of success in trying to engage Volunteer Marek myself directly about this, but perhaps he will listen to others. Thank you. Mnnlaxer (talk) 16:59, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Mnnlaxer. I will have a look, but there is a good chance I will stay hands-off on that one unless the mediator wants me involved. Re you other request, please consider focusing on rebuilding a collaborative environment on the talk page rather than what the content of the article is right now. The attack occurred almost two years ago; how the content is presented over the next couple of weeks during mediation is not very important overall. VQuakr (talk) 19:22, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Ok. I understand and agree with the environment on the talk page and the long-term focus. I can myself improve on the first one. Thanks. Mnnlaxer (talk) 20:03, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

McKinney, Texas pool incident not notable?

I am most surprised by your contention that the recent McKinney, Texas pool incident is not notable. Just the existence of a video (actually several videos) of an angry white police officer pinning a black teen girl to the ground, then unholstering his gun and aiming it at two other black teens guarantees that this story will never be erased from the public record. Such a video has never before been seen.

Do you also think the recent video of the shooting of eight rounds into the back of a black man running away by a white officer is a non-event? How about the single-photo story of the Vietnamese girl child running away with burns on her body from her village, on which napalm has been dropped by US forces -- is that not notable? How about fire hoses aimed at blacks demonstrating for civil rights in the 1960s? Can that be eradicated?

from the Help page for Wikipedia:NEVENT:

"An event is presumed to be notable if it receives significant, non-routine coverage that persists over a period of time. Coverage should be in multiple reliable sources with national or global scope."

From the BBC:

McKinney video: Texas officer Eric Casebolt quits BBC News‎ - 1 day ago The US police officer filmed wrestling a black girl to the ground and pointing his gun at teenagers in Texas has stepped down, officials say. Protest over Texas pool party policing BBC News‎ - 1 day ago The police video that shocked America

From the Australian Broadcasting Corp:

www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-09/protestors-march-through-mckinney2c-texas/6532494 Hundreds march through McKinney, Texas, calling for the firing of a police officer who threw a bikini-clad teenage girl to the ground at a pool party disturbance. 9 Jun 2015

From Deutsche Welle, Germany: DW News - Bonn, Germany - Broadcasting & Media ... https://www.facebook.com/dw.english DW's English service, bringing you global news from the heart of Europe. ... an out-of-control pool party in McKinney, Texas has revived the debate about police ...

From Singapore: Texas policeman resigns after video shows him toppling ... www.straitstimes.com/.../texas-policeman-resigns-after-... The Straits Times 1 day ago - Texas policeman resigns after video shows him toppling teen: ... Protestors listen during a rally against what demonstrators call police brutality in McKinney, Texas on June 8 ... The seven-minute video, viewed 9 million times on YouTube as of ... Enjoy 2 weeks of unlimited digital access to The Straits Times.

Your children's children will probably see the video of that officer pinning the girl in the bikini to the ground. Dratman (talk) 00:47, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

@Dratman: notability discussions are based on guidelines, not silly melodrama such as your post above. This event is likely too trivial to have any lasting effects as required by WP:EFFECT; we are not locked in step with the 24 hour newsreel on a slow week. Please take to the article talk page rather than edit warring, and work on concision. VQuakr (talk) 01:51, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

You have made more than 13 edits to the article we are discussing. All of your edits move the article in one clear direction: minimizing the incident. Now you claim the incident is not even notable, despite numerous articles in news organizations around the world. You are transparently violating NPOV. Meanwhile, I made one edit, which you reverted. Who exactly is edit warring here? Dratman (talk) 02:16, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Cleaning up BLP violations can never be a 3RR violation, and is required by policy. They also were not edit warring, because edit warring is attempting to force a change by repeatedly editing - precisely what you did. VQuakr (talk) 03:14, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Primary sources

Please read the primary source article. News sources, dating from the time of an event, are primary sources: they are associated with an event in time, and they cannot provide any historic context because it hasn't occurred yet. See this guide from Georgia State University, for example. A huge reason encyclopedias are written from secondary sources is that they are separate from the event in question: they can put a concept in its historic context, concentrating on topics that have proven to be important in the long term, rather than things that are only momentarily important. Nyttend (talk) 14:25, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

@Nyttend: I think the policy needs to be amended then, because this is not clear. Seems like a reasonable subject for an RfC; if I post a draft RfC to your talk page would you be willing to review it? VQuakr (talk) 17:52, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

@Nyttend: ok, so in sentence 2 of primary source: Information for which the writer has no personal knowledge is not primary. This covers all news accounts unless the reporter also happened to be a witness to the actual event. This seems pretty unambiguous; would you be willing to revise your response at Talk:Dennis Hastert? VQuakr (talk) 06:19, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

No: this is not the point. News articles are part of the event itself: they're not independent, viewing the situation from a chronological distance. The article's writer has personal knowledge of the circumstances because they're ongoing. Please re-read the GSU page; if you're convinced that newspaper articles are secondary sources, please in turn convince GSU Archives that they're wrong. Nyttend (talk) 14:15, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Can you frame your reasoning in the context of existing policy rather than external sourcing guides? I still do not see where WP:PRIMARY says anything about news sources, but on the talk page you opposed changes to the policy. VQuakr (talk) 19:35, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

As I have told you multiple times, you have failed to understand what primary sources are, to the point that you believe me to be saying that all news stories are primary sources. Once again, news sources dating from the time of an event are primary sources for the event in question; at the same time, they're secondary sources for other events in the past, e.g. a news story about an event happening at the current edition of 7 World Trade Center is a primary source for that event, but if it talks about the destruction of the previous building, it's a secondary source for the terrorist attacks of fourteen years ago. External standards are the standards of scholarly activity, not something we can ignore, and we must not tolerate separate interpretations in contravention of them. Nyttend (talk) 20:05, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I do not think, and have not thought at any point, that you are saying that all news sources are primary sources. Surely, though, you agree that our policies should align with our practices? Our policy does not appear to align with practice or scholarly standards now, and my proposed modification to the policy was an attempt to address that by adding "same historical context as an event" language to WP:PRIMARY. As it appears my proposed change was not optimal, I would appreciate your input about how best to update the policy. VQuakr (talk) 20:19, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

My apologies for misreading or misunderstanding you. Yes, I thoroughly agree that policy should align with best scholarly practice. My suggestion would be something along the lines of "The definitions of 'primary source' vary from discipline to discipline; for example, medical definitions include journal articles with new discoveries, journalistic definitions include articles written by someone who observed an event, and historical definitions include sources written in the context of, at roughly the same time as, an event. Follow the definition appropriate to the field(s) in which you are writing." This is a profoundly rough draft: please don't propose anything with this wording. Nyttend (talk) 21:00, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

This is WP, not a scholarly institution. The definition of primary sources in WP has nothing to do with the scholarly definition. If we applied your understanding, tens of thousands of articles will no longer be compliant. - Cwobeel (talk) 21:47, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

"Nothing to do with" seems like an overreach. WP is somewhat notorious for making up its own meta rules, from word definition re-appropriations to grammar and style idiosyncrasies. Ultimately, though, the relationship between WP's rules and the standards that govern academic writing are usually at least recognizable. It seems to me that a problem has been identified: the section of WP:NOR regarding primary and secondary sources does not provide adequate guidance on how to treat news sources. I think it is worthwhile to discuss how to close that gap, and I think WT:NOR is the best place to have that discussion. VQuakr (talk) 02:33, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Spin off article

As per your suggestion, see my sandbox User:Cwobeel/sandbox2. Comments will be appreciated in the sandbox talk page - Cwobeel (talk) 03:23, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

@Cwobeel: it seems solid; I do not know how it could be moved to article space without looking like an attempt to bypass the AfD, though. VQuakr (talk) 05:11, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I will wait till that is closed and then attempt to re-ignite a discussion. - Cwobeel (talk) 14:59, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

antisemitism

The version you reverted to reintroduces a whole bunch of inaccuracies and grammatical problems. I am sick and tired of wholesale reverts that neglect to review what was changed.Scientus (talk) 19:23, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

@Scientus: when an editor fails to use edit summaries or uses misleading edit summaries, it invites wholesale reversion. It is not other editors' jobs to sift through your edits to see if any can be retained and which are just editing warring in the same rejected content. VQuakr (talk) 21:13, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I actually left the part you had reverted, about the "units" of "antisemitism", and brought the issue up on the talk page. What specifically did you object to?Scientus (talk) 21:16, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

If you want to restore the change changing the adjective "governmental" to a noun, I have no objection. Take the rest of the changes to the talk page if you must; they all clearly have already been contested in the past. VQuakr (talk) 21:20, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Homeopathy

Sir,in the article homeopathy its told that the system is cheating people with their false laws ,but the truth is that its helping the sick in many ways its principles are proved facts ..medicines were well proved reproved and confirmed..recent development research works tells that homeopathy medicine has nanoparticle proving its wide range action...in the world still people believe homeopathy very much because its effective in most of the conditions.please do read the book of organon of medicine and materia medica pura written by dr Samuel Hahnemann ...still we have life examples of dr James Tylor Kent who was a strong follower came to homeopathy after it cured his wife illness,like that many people came to homeopathy after it proved its effectiness helping them from nearby death stage to life....plz do reconsider this small request.... Akhilssbhms (talk) 17:22, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Welcome, and thanks for the message! We have a requirement that information about medical claims be sourced to survey studies, not primary sources; it is located at WP:MEDRS. You may want to review it before editing in the homeopathy subject area. Regards! VQuakr (talk) 01:52, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Not MLM

It is not MLM so that pretty much explains it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jadeslair (talk • contribs) 07:23, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@Jadeslair: don't forget to sign your posts. No, that does nothing at all to explain removal of links from a disambiguation page. VQuakr (talk) 07:25, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I did it by the sidebar, first time I used it. Since it is not mlm, I did not see the issue. You can rag on me all day, It does not bother me. I am learning in the process. Should a page about MLM link to a non MLM company? I forget to sign all the time but I am getting better at it. Jadeslair (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 07:30, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@Jadeslair: I assume you are talking about this? What exactly does that edit and revert have to do with MLM? No one is ragging on you. VQuakr (talk) 07:32, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

That was a mistake, my first time using the tool. sorry about that. Jadeslair (talk) 07:36, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Help in AfC

Hello There are problems in Draft:Ultrasonic pulse velocity test. But as Civil engineer I couldn't find them as every thing looks ok from Engineers POV but it cant go through AfC. So please help me by highlighting the sections in the article which needs revision and in which manner. Thanks in advance Happy Editing. Prymshbmg (talk) 13:54, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@Prymshbmg: I had a look; it needs a lot of work but seems ok to exist in article space. I moved it to Ultrasonic pulse velocity test. Encyclopedic tone includes avoiding use of the pronoun "we" and how-to instructions, which are probably the main reasons the AfC reviewers did not feel it was ready for mainspace. VQuakr (talk) 19:23, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank for considering the request I am on the article and improving it right now. Happy Editing Prymshbmg (talk) 05:25, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for improving the article.Prymshbmg (talk) 05:35, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for reviewig the article and doing a tedious work of improving it. Prymshbmg (talk) 05:37, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikihounding by EvergreenFir of Editor Frysay

(copied from my Talk Page), you ensure you will see this.

The key thing you said was that I _APPEAR_ to be ENGAGED in an edit war. Two valuable points must be made: An edit war could indeed be going on, even if only one party (in this case EvergreenFir) is actually engaged in that war. That's the situation today. I am NOT "edit warring". I am being "Wikihounded" by EvergreenFir.

Then, your boilerplate text claims "Users are expected to collaborate with others", in Talk Pages. Which, of course, I _DO_. But you will also notice that I am 98% of the use of the Talk page: EvergreenFir is violating your instructions and WP policy, by failing to actually employ the Talk page to resolve the controversy. So, your boilerplate text is misapplied: I strongly suspect that you haven't warned HER! Which would demonstrate YOUR bias. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that just as other thugs brought EvergreenFir in to torpedo me in January 2015, she probably brought _YOU_ in, within the last day or two, to repeat the process. Hmmmmmmm???? I will USE the Talk Page, and then I will make edits entirely consistent with WP Policy. EvergreenFir will probably continue to fail to use the Talk Page, and maybe she will continue to make edits (or reverts) entirely INconsistent with WP. She has already violated WP:BLP, and she is violating WP:BRD on an ongoing basis. Are you here to back her up? Frysay (talk) 18:01, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Okay, VQuakr, I have just verified that you have failed to give an equivalent 'anti-edit-war' message to EvergreenFir. This shows that you have already started to approach this as a biased person, acting against only one side, me. If you genuinely believed that an 'edit war' was going on, you should have included anyone arguably participating in that. Since you have only warned one person, me, that telegraphs to everyone that you have already decided that I will be selected to be the guilty party, regardless of the facts. I also notice that your boilerplate threatens a block, precisely like EvergreenFir illegally did to me in January 2015. She claimed, for example, that my own statements on my own Talk page amounted to a 'personal attack', even though WP:NPA (No personal attacks) very clearly states that a person's own comments on his own Talk page DO NOT AMOUNT to a personal attack. Making up the rules as she goes along is precisely what EvergreenFir does. Since you have already clearly demonstrated your bias, I strongly suggest that you immediately back away from this controversy, and let's get somebody in who hasn't already demonstrated that he is on the side of the person who called him in. Frysay (talk) 18:17, 3 July 2015 (UTC)