User talk:104.153.72.218

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Happy editing! Widefox; talk 11:44, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Weak heap

There's a difference between title per WP:COMMONNAME, and valid alternative names per WP:OTHERNAMES. Also see my edit summary, and if you disagree then of course I will revert my edit and we can discuss on the talk, although as sourced and per guideline I would not expect this to be removed now. Widefox; talk 11:47, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your help desk questions

You did not get a response. Maybe you should try asking this question again. I have no idea what I'm seeing, so I can't help you. As for whether it's too complex, I'm not someone who would know.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:47, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You did get a response here.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:55, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Vandal

Thanks for your report at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. I have blocked the account. It is true that usually we don't block when an editor has just received his or her first warning, but in a case such as this one, where there has been such extensive and unambiguous vandalism over a long period, and nothing else, I am willing to consider making an exception. The dishonest edit summaries in addition to the vandalism were enough to decide me in favour of blocking. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:47, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@JamesBWatson: Thanks. In particular, I'm glad that your judgement of the factors was very similar to mine; it suggests I'm on the right track. I started with a stern warning, but then looked through their edit history and... damn. I don't know why they didn't collect a full set of edit warnings months ago. 104.153.72.218 (talk) 16:21, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Sometimes a vandal manages to get away with blatant vandalism for a very long time without getting warnings, for no obvious reason at all, while others doing things no worse get warned, warned again, and blocked almost immediately. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 19:02, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cosmic distance ladder

Just went back to check on the page and I wanted to leave you a little something showing appreciation and thanks for your contribution to Standard siren. Thank you!! Please consider creating an account and don't forget to be bold!

Operator873^CONNECT 19:45, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Operator873: You're welcome. It was just a bit of wordsmithing to explain the idea better; I didn't actually add anything. As for creating an account, I am forbidden to by WP policy. Specifically I am unable, without a level of inconvenience I am unwilling to bear, to comply with WP:NOSHARING. 104.153.72.218 (talk) 22:11, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am intrigued by that. I can't think of any situation where that would be a problem, as each person could have an account. I would be very interested to know your reason, if you feel like sharing that (unlike a Wikipedia account). The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 18:34, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Operator873: In somewhat simplified form, the computer I do most of my editing from is instrumented with what amounts to a keylogger with logs accessible to other people. While this is of no concern when making public edits, it makes it impossible for me to not share the password as WP:NOSHARING requires.

No matter; I like holding up the reputation of IP editors. 104.153.72.218 (talk) 18:44, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that makes sense. As for "the reputation of IP editors", it always annoys me when some editors with accounts treat editors without accounts as though they are some kind of inferior breed. I used to edit without an account myself, and only created an account because one day I found the IP address of my local library was blocked, so that I couldn't edit there. Although I have now been using this account for more than a decade, I don't think I would have been in any way a worse editor if I had continued editing without an account. It is certainly true that a disproportionate amount of unconstructive editing comes from editors without accounts, but that is no reason not to give just as much credit to those (such as yourself) who edit constructively without accounts as we give to those who do so with accounts. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 20:48, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@JamesBWatson: Well, I undid an edit by "what's his number" the other day (see Talk:GW170817#First observed merger — NOT) partly because I assumed he wasn't a reputable editor. I think many or most anonymous edits are either trivial or deleterious. I don't see why he (or she, for all I know) can't log in as a proper user. Probably no one will usurp his computer to edit Wikipedia under his name. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 18:12, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Eric Kvaalen: First, I don't want to. Second, WP:NOSHARING forbids sharing the password, whether it is actually used or not. I suspect this rule is broken very regularly, but it helps avoid arguments about point 1. As for the quality of edits, have you seen Special:Contributions/Aldebarahan? (Already reverted; Talk:GW170817#Changes undone.) 104.153.72.218 (talk) 18:28, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Eric Kvaalen: It is certainly true that a larger proportion of "IP edits" are unhelpful than of edits by registered account users, but to use that statistic as justification for giving less respect to a particular editor because he or she does not have an account is absurd. It is, in fact, as unreasonable as using statistics for numbers of crime convictions for people of different races to justify presuming that a person is a criminal on the basis of his or her race, or any other case of prejudging an individual person on the basis of statistics for some class they belong to. The main reasons that so many IP edits are unconstructive are (1) most editors who do much editing sooner or later create an account, which means that a large proportion of IP editing is done by people who don't do much editing, and therefore don't understand what is acceptable, and (2) people who do an odd bit of casual vandalism mostly don't bother to create an account. When neither of those situations applies to a particular editor, there is no reason at all to suppose that just because the editor does not have an account the editing is likely to be bad. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 16:39, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@JamesBWatson: I don't want to carry on this argument much longer, but I think that if 90% of IP edits are bad (say), then that's a good reason not to take them as seriously as edits by logged-in users. The same goes for crime, by the way. If one race commits a lot more crime than another, then one should have more doubts about people of that race. (This of course depends on what country one is in and so on.) "Prejudice" is just a pejorative word for having prior probability estimates based on previous experience or on learning. I know it's not politically correct, but prejudice has its place and is useful, even if it can sometimes mislead. If it misleads too much then one needs to revise his prejudices. (Now, I wonder what your prejudices are making you think about me right now!) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:40, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Eric Kvaalen and JamesBWatson: "The same goes for crime, by the way. If one race commits a lot more crime than another, then one should have more doubts about people of that race." This is wrong for several reasons. First of all, there may simply be a lot more people of one race. That will naturally lead to more crime. Even if we normalize for overall population, it may depend more on the situation than the race. Being in the ghetto increases the risk of robbery. Is the race of robbers there disproportionate to the race of the inhabitants? Being a Wells Fargo customer puts you at risk of a different, less violent but more expensive, kind of robbery. Is the race of robbers there disproportionate to the race of the employees?

What matters is, when encountering a person in a particular situation, does their race predict their criminality?

Remember, even if there's a detectable statistical correlation with race, it may be so small compared to other factors that it has negligible predictive power. Race may change the odds by 0.25%, but if gang tattoos change the odds by 25%, I know what I should pay attention to.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, even if race has predictive power, it's morally desirable to pretend that "all men are created equal" and not use factors outside a person's control to prejudge them. That's why it's moral to judge based on the voluntary act of making a Wikipedia account, but one should strive to minimize automatic stereotyping based on accidents of birth like race, tribe, caste, sex, etc. Consider modern vs. historical attitudes toward left-handedness, for example. 104.153.72.218 (talk) 01:08, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you

for using your expertise to help improve GW170817 among others. Gap9551 (talk) 15:54, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Gap9551: Thank you for your help, too! This current discussion of the plausibility of optical signals from BH-BH inspirals is definitely interesting. 104.153.72.218 (talk) 16:03, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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I dream of horses If you reply here, please ping me by adding {{U|I dream of horses}} to your message (talk to me) (My edits) @ 03:01, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Linear congruential generator

Hi, I don't think $n!m$ could be written any more clearly. It's a standard notation for factorial of $n$ multiplied by $m$ . Maybe explicit dot would help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MwGamera (talk • contribs) 06:31, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MwGamera: D'oh! That's... embarrassingly obvious. I thought it was some special combinatorial notation for a two-argument function like

\left({m \atop n}\right)

binomial coefficient or

_{m}P_{n}

. Factorials are prone to that, with

n!!\neq (n!)!

and

!n.

Yes, I like your suggestion of an explicit dot. 104.153.72.218 (talk) 10:44, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your report about the edit filter

Recently you posted about one of the filters. Though I'm not the person who wrote the filter, I did notice it catching this bad change, in which someone inadvertenly messed up the <ref> style of reference brackets by converting them into HTML brackets. In the case of your changes, the only thing it did was issue a warning, it didn't prevent your edit. Your edits were obviously beneficial. This now exhausts my knowledge of the problem, but if you read more about Special:AbuseFilter/879, you might be able to learn more. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 18:29, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@EdJohnston: Thanks for the info. I have a hard time imagining how they screwed that up, but I see the point now; the "notes" on that edit filter (which I read before making the report) just confused me. Maybe add that link to them?

Or explain "some people with HTML-aware editors replace markup symbols & < > with the escaped entities & < > while cutting and pasting. Detect and warn on edits like Special:Diff/800088943."

BTW, due to what I suppose is a Mediawiki bug, it does prevent my edits. If you hit an edit filter warning and a CAPTCHA for adding external links in the same edit, then "Save changes" on one bounces you to the other, ad infinitum. Unfortunately, that filter starts with a namespace test so it's hard to demonstrate in WP:Sandbox.

Until it's fixed, I wonder if there's a way to make it narrower, like:

 ( contains_any(  added_lines, "&lt;")  & !contains_any(  added_lines, "<") &
  !contains_any(removed_lines, "&lt;")  &  contains_any(removed_lines, "<") ) |
 ( contains_any(  added_lines, "&gt;")  & !contains_any(  added_lines, ">") &
  !contains_any(removed_lines, "&gt;")  &  contains_any(removed_lines, ">") ) |
 ( contains_any(  added_lines, "&amp;") & !contains_any(  added_lines, "&") &
  !contains_any(removed_lines, "&amp;") &  contains_any(removed_lines, "&") )

(I'm totally guessing at the syntax there.) 104.153.72.218 (talk) 21:11, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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