User talk:Scottywong

Module template-protection

Hi Scottywong. You recently template-protected Module:Wd, but there are two submodules that are not on the same protection level yet: Module:Wd/i18n and Module:Wd/aliasesP. I'd recommend to apply template-protection to those as well. Cheers, Thayts ••• 08:50, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Done. ‑Scottywong| [comment] || 21:37, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Christopher Columbus

In your recent change to Christopher Columbus, I have some issues with your text revision.

• You wrote: spanned 91.2 kilometres (56+2⁄3 mi),. But Morison, page 65, says 56 ⅔ arabic miles, which works out to 66.2 nautical miles. The figure you used, 91.2 km, does not occur in the text. The proper way of dealing with this is to use a specific value quoted in the text, and convert from that value. Specifying a converted value and working backwards introduces inaccuracies both by rounding and by misleading the reader as to what was actually specified. In this case, I'd recommend instead: spanned 56 ⅔ Arabic miles, which works out to 66.2 nautical miles (122.6 km). I suspect we don't have a convert template for Arabic mile, but we do have for Nautical mile.
• Given the profusion of units, I'd recommend against converting to miles in the routine text following (in this case, to imperial land miles). Keep it to km and nautical miles, don't use yet a third version of mile. In most cases, just km is fine, don't detract from the text by adding another unit. The idea is to convey the magnitude of the mistake, not the exact values in all units.
• I'd also suggest rounding the units for the actual figure of the earth. Instead of 40,075 kilometres (24,901 mi) at the equator and 34,735 kilometres (21,583 mi) I'd suggest: around 40000 km at the equator and 35000 at 30 ˚N. I think the resulting text is easier to read, without losing anything significant. Maybe add a wikilink to Figure of the Earth for completeness, if you can find a way without disrupting the text.

Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 02:24, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

@Tarl N.: Thanks for the feedback. A few responses:

• The original text of the article just said 56⅔ miles, not Arabic miles, which apparently are different. I'm fine with your suggestion here to clarify it.
• I'm fine with your suggestion to use nautical miles. The main reason for my edit was that the text seemed to constantly switch from SI to Imperial units. For instance, "...spanned 56⁠2/3⁠ miles, but did not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile rather than the shorter Roman mile with which he was familiar (1,480 m). He therefore would have estimated the circumference of the Earth to be about 30,200 km at the equator..." In just a short passage, we're comparing distances in Arabic miles, Roman miles, and meters/kilometers. Reading it made my head spin, so I decided to try to clarify it so that all of these various distances could be easily compared by the reader.
• I kinda disagree with your last suggestion to round distances for known dimensions of the Earth. We know the exact figures, why make them less exact? Imagine a reader wants to figure out the exact error in the calculations that Columbus used for the size of the Earth (let's say the reader is a high school kid preparing a report for school). At best, if the reader realizes that we're rounding these figures, they need to go to multiple articles to get the correct information. At worst, if they don't realize that we're rounding, they get inaccurate information from Wikipedia. 3

‑Scottywong| [squeal] || 22:58, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

I made some changes to that section according to your recommendations above. ‑Scottywong| [confer] || 23:03, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Looks better. I still think the precision is WP:UNDUE, but that's a minor issue. If I ever get back to editing, I'll probably re-write that paragraph to emphasize the confusion between Arabic mile, Roman mile, Nautical Mile and English Mile - but only as a minor factor in all the things he got wrong to get his conclusion. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 15:46, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE has to do with ensuring that all viewpoints are given proportional coverage and weight in an article. You can't have a viewpoint on the circumference of the Earth... ‑Scottywong| [yak] || 16:50, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant something more like {{undue precision}}, although that would not directly apply (We know, even though Columbus didn't). Given we're talking about errors totaling better than a factor of five (20,000 km vs less than 4000 km), giving distances to five decimals precision seems excessive. If I ever get back to editing, I'd prefer to change that paragraph to use approximate numbers with one decimal precision (e.g., "around 40,000 km" rather than "40,075 km"), so a reader doesn't feel buried in minutiae. And my apologies for not responding earlier, I'm formally "retired" and only check wiki every week or so nowadays. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 04:02, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Disruptive user back at it after your block expired

• Mikko101 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

You were the blocking admin two times prior; see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1020#Mikko101 for the last incident. We still have issues with this user – as soon as the block expired, their first edit was restoring this unsourced content. They are still uncommunicative. Can you do something here or do I need to initiate a new ANI case? Thanks -- Bri.public (talk) 16:43, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Indef blocked. ‑Scottywong| [confess] || 20:48, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Jakefrdrck/sandbox et al.

I suppose this was more or less an inevitable message, given the numbers, but could you elaborate, for the record, on which of the policy-based arguments in this thread you found consensus for in this MfD? As far as I can tell, most of the delete !votes had no basis in the limited rationales we use to delete sandboxes. If there are also admins willing to close in favor of them, we should be changing the policy to match practice. Indeed it looks like you closed several such MfDs today with just the word "delete", and this would seem to apply to some of those, as well. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:48, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

While it's true that there is no policy that exactly says, "You may delete user pages that obviously have no chance of ever becoming a legitimate article, and have been abandoned for the better part of a decade", I think it's pretty well covered by WP:IAR and WP:COMMONSENSE. There was a clear consensus to delete among participants of the discussion, that consensus is not invalidated just because there isn't an exact policy that deals with this exact situation. In the absence of a policy that specifically says we shouldn't delete such articles, I find no reason to invalidate the rationales of the delete voters.

On another note, I don't really understand why people waste their time nominating pages like this for deletion, and equally I don't understand why other people waste their time arguing fervently that they should be kept (to the point of contacting the closing admin and demanding an explanation for an obvious closure). The whole thing is a waste of time. No one is going to notice what we've done with these useless pages; whether they are kept or deleted is inconsequential. My opinion is that it's better to spend your time on to more important things. ‑Scottywong| [spout] || 19:50, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

We don't have many policies which concern themselves with explaining a negative. I.e. we have policies which outline when deletion should happen, and the presumption is that if it is not covered therein, then it is not one of the permitted reasons for deletion. In this case, we have our guideline on user pages, which includes WP:STALE. On the matter of old drafting pages, there are certain circumstances when it is permitted to blank, and "if of no potential and problematic even if blanked, seek deletion". It explicitly says that "drafts have no expiration date" and the guidelines already take for granted that users are inactive. Simply being inactive and having no potential is not a reason for deletion. For some reason, although this guideline has broad consensus behind it, the small number of users participating at MfD sometimes decides to throw those guidelines out the window to delete "junk". Beyond this, there are simply sandboxes being deleted -- not even drafts -- which are there for the purpose of experimentation and do not have an expiration date.

I have no idea why people spend their time nominating other people's sandboxes, which nobody will ever see outside of the creator and people looking for things to delete.

The reason I spend time against it isn't because I think there's great value in the content of these pages, but because I think there's great value in sandboxes and userspace as a safe place for experimentation, learning, drafting, etc. -- in a place that doesn't have any negative effect on the encyclopedia whatsoever. I'm all for CSD when people use userspage for egregious content, but if CSD doesn't apply, what is the purpose? IAR is about dismissing rules if they get in the way of improving Wikipedia. How is Wikipedia improved by deleting these pages?

Some people seem to take a "delete 'because we're here', because it's 'junk', regardless of whether it meets deletion criteria" approach, which just encourages people to keep making faulty deletions outside of policy.

The damage caused by the deletion notifications and deletions, sending off messages to people who haven't been active (or, in case of some that get nominated, users who are active but simply new) that their contributions are being deleted, is, as far as I'm concerned, far greater than whatever is gained by removing some nonsense added in good faith that nobody will ever see. Saying "they can get it back if they want it" just underscores that the content isn't actually problematic, and at the same time ignores the alienating effect of the deletion and that our deletion/undeletion processes are opaque to new users. All of these are the reasons I argue to keep them. I work with a whole lot of new users at offline events, and I want to be able to tell them that their contributions matter and that there's no deadline. If they add a sentence while learning, I don't want them to get a big warning message about how their sandbox is being deleted. I want them to be able to come to an event, start something, and then if they don't edit for a long time, to still feel welcome to come back and resume work later. There's just no reason to do it any other way.

/rant :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:15, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

FWIW

The lack of a clear consensus on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Hijiri88 was due almost entirely to editors with a bone to pick with me showing up to oppose deletion purely for the sake of it. On a purely numerical basis it was 6-5 against deletion, but of those six, one was "weak" and had said they would have changed to delete if pinged back after Ivanvector's comment, and four more were clearly acting in bad faith -- ignoring them would have put it at 5-2, 5-1 or 6-1 in favour of deletion (depending on how one counted User:Robert McClenon).

Per your advice, I've already asked Ivanvector what to do about the page going forward, but I would like some assistance in dealing with the editors who are hounding me. I can understand that if I was the only one at the MFD explicitly pointing out the bad faith comments you couldn't really take my word over theirs and dismiss them accordingly, but it's going to be really hard getting anything done going forward if I have a block of editors who routinely show up and oppose me just for the sake of it. Could you perhaps reexamine their comments from the point of view of "is this editor acting in good faith or just trying to get back at an editor they don't like" rather than with a view to establishing whether there was community consensus to delete the page?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:53, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't really have time to examine the complex interactions between all of the editors that contribute to a deletion discussion. People generally show up at deletion discussions for topics that they are familiar with, it's not necessarily hounding if someone who has interacted with you in the past finds a deletion discussion related to you and puts forth their opinion. This is often a good thing; it's good to have people contributing to discussions that they're knowledgeable about and familiar with. It doesn't automatically mean that their comments should be invalidated, even if they disagree with you. If you can really show that someone is following you around to multiple discussions, reverting your edits to articles, and other such things, with the intent to annoy you and inhibit your ability to work, then present that evidence at ANI and ask for an interaction ban. (Please don't post that evidence here; I don't have the time or the interest to investigate it. And besides, interaction bans generally require a consensus at ANI anyway.) ‑Scottywong| [verbalize] || 04:54, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you've ever been subject to an interaction ban, but I have (due to one-way harassment from this or that user I'm not going to name), and I can tell you it's not a pleasant situation -- if and when the other party violates it, all you can do is report them and hope that someone blocks them out of the goodness of their heart, but more often than not some other editor with a bone to pick will claim that the act of reporting the violation is in itself a violation. And then if you have two or more active IBANs at any given time, every time you open an ANI thread about another editor people will start saying "how many IBANs do you have? why haven't you been site-banned yet?" Doesn't anyone ever get blocked for one-way harassment anymore? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:26, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

No, I've not been the subject of an interaction ban. For most editors, that is unnecessary. I'm sure if I spoke to the editors you're accusing of harassment, they would complain to me that you are the one harassing, and that you should be blocked. Who am I to believe, you or them? I've taken a very brief look at some interactions between you and the other editors you accuse of harassment, and I don't see any evidence of anything that rises to the level of actual harassment. Someone disagreeing with you is not harassment. Someone expressing their dislike for you is not harassment. Even someone being somewhat rude to you is not harassment. Someone who thinks that you've done something wrong, and votes to prevent the deletion of evidence of that alleged wrongdoing... is not harassment. I certainly understand that you don't like when people do those things, but they're not harassment. Please read WP:HARASS to learn Wikipedia's definition of the word. My advice is to ignore the people that annoy you, avoid interacting with them, be polite even if they're not, don't get baited by them... just do what you do and don't let them affect you. In other words, be an adult. ‑Scottywong| [confabulate] || 16:50, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Furthermore, you may want to take a step back and consider your own behavior, and its influence on the way you're treated by other editors. How many editors do you believe are harassing you? Three? Four? More than that? The vast majority of Wikipedia editors receive harassment from zero users. Do you realize what a crazy coincidence it would have to be for that many independent users to randomly choose you as the target of their harassment? Do you think it's more likely that you just randomly won the harassment lottery through no fault of your own, or that your own behavior has something to do with the treatment you receive from other users on this site? Food for thought. ‑Scottywong| [gab] || 17:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

You might believe the one who didn't create a frivolous SPI on an editor they didn't like, then repeatedly defend its existence. I have not done anything to merit the recent attacks from these editors except argue that such-and-such page should be deleted/redirected and point out that plagiarism is bad. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:52, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

For What It Isnt Worth

Since I was mentioned, I will comment (before going back to Deletion Review to see whether I need to Endorse the closure). I commented, with a Weak Keep, and then didn't pay any further attention. If I had, I would have taken note of the analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl, which was on the mark, and would have changed my Weak Keep to a Keep. This appears to have been a strange case of User:Hijiri88 playing some sort of game. I have very little sympathy for any editor who requests a self-block, and no sympathy at all for an editor who then evades the self-block by using an IP address, when they could instead request a voluntary unblock. My specific conclusion is that User:Hijiri88 devised some sort of game, outwitted themselves, and then cheated, and now is/was asking to have the record of the cheating wiped clean. More generally, as User:Scottywong says, why does it seem to User:Hijiri88 that so many editors are harassing them? I disagree in specific with Scottywong that most editors get harassed by zero users. I think that most frequent editors occasionally get harassed, but only by users who are not here to contribute, who then get indefinitely blocked or site-banned. I have been harassed, but only by two or three flamers or trolls. If multiple editors appear to be have it in for User:Hijiri88, maybe they are an editor who is almost as much of a negative as they are of a positive. Maybe they got off easy in their ArbCom case. Just commenting. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:09, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

FWIW/FWIIW, it seems to me that User:Hijiri88's conduct in relation to this is a disruptive, attention-seeking time sink. I have had no other encounters with Hijiri88, and don't know what else they have contributed to Wikipedia. But I do hope that Hijiri88's other work is great, because this second round of doubling-down on self-inflicted folly is the complete opposite of constructive.

Hijiri88, it's long past time to drop the stick. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:16, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I was not playing a game. I was seriously done with the project after receiving serious abuse from a large number of editors who were playing a game (responding every time I had a dispute with another editor by requesting a two-way IBAN, then remarking that someone with X number of IBANs really should just be site-banned). I changed my mind later when I noticed that my leaving the project had only made the problem worse.

@BrownHairedGirl: So ... you are not going to do anything to protect me from this kind of targeted harassment, and are instead just going to tell me that I need to "drop the stick"? If you are not going to help solve the problem, the least you could do is leave me alone.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:48, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: I don't have the time or energy examine the history which you claim lies behind this. So I remain entirely open-minded about whether or not you have been harassed.

However, regardless of any of that, I stand by my view that you have acted very foolishly in relation to this block, for all the reasons that I have set out. If you request a self-block, don't evade it for any reason. And having evaded it, don't make a drama out of the consequences of your folly.

If your are indeed being persecuted, that this is a self-inflicted addition to your injuries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:03, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

"this block" was almost a year ago, and the SPI had nothing to do with the block. CUs can't disclose any relationship between named accounts and IPs, and I had been entirely open, both logged out and logged in, that the IP was me, so the SPI could not have possibly served any constructive purpose.

I thought that by stating up-front in the MFD nomination that I had openly stated that it was me and the only remaining "question" is whether it is block-evading to request a self-block without fully understanding the terms and then a few weeks later regret that decision (something editors I trust and respect have had differing opinions on). I was saying "Yeah, that block was a brain fart on my part, and evading it via an IP was worse. Sorry again. Now let's focus on the SPI." (Bishonen and I guess you are among the "editors I trust and respect" who felt one way about the block evasion at the time. Curly Turkey, Swarm, and I think some others -- don't particularly want to go back and read through the discussion to check who -- saw it differently.)

If my intent in writing that wasn't clear, I apologize.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:16, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Hijri, if you would be kind enough to just drop that stick, my dog will appear in a moment and eat it. Then we can all move on to productive tasks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:22, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia talk:Article Incubator/2013 June mass MfD

Don't worry, not here to challenge the close, just that it seems you neglected to actually do the deletion. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:34, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Weird. Must have been a script error. Fixed now, thanks for letting me know. ‑Scottywong| [squeal] || 17:59, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

A Star

		The Special Barnstar
		Sometimes editors need a star! Keep on advising! Lightburst (talk) 00:39, 7 November 2019 (UTC)