User talk:SMcCandlish
Status: Busy 
 | Welcome to SMcCandlish's talk page. I will generally respond here to comments that are posted here, rather than replying via your talk page (or the article's talk page, if you are writing to me here about an article), so you may want to watch this page until you are responded to, or let me know where specifically you'd prefer the reply. |
No RfAs or RfBs reported by Cyberbot I since 8:58 9/27/2024 (UTC)
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| Updated as needed. Last updated: 19:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC) |
- recent changes
- purge this page
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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.
| Request name | Motions | Case | Posted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amendment request: Palestine-Israel articles (AE referral) | Motion | (orig. case) | 17 August 2024 |
| Amendment request: PIA Canvassing | none | (orig. case) | 30 September 2024 |
No arbitrator motions are currently open.
News and updates for administrators from the past month (September 2024).
Administrator changes
CheckUser changes
Guideline and policy news
- Administrator elections are a proposed new process for selecting administrators, offering an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA). The first trial election will take place in October 2024, with candidate sign-up from October 8 to 14, a discussion phase from October 22 to 24, and SecurePoll voting from October 25 to 31. For questions or to help out, please visit the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
- Following a discussion, the speedy deletion reason "File pages without a corresponding file" has been moved from criterion G8 to F2. This does not change what can be speedily deleted.
- A request for comment is open to discuss whether there is a consensus to have an administrator recall process.
Arbitration
- The arbitration case Historical elections has been closed.
- An arbitration case regarding Backlash to diversity and inclusion has been opened.
- Editors are invited to nominate themselves to serve on the 2024 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission until 23:59 October 8, 2024 (UTC).
Miscellaneous
- If you are interested in stopping spammers, please put MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist on your watchlist, and help out when you can.
Most recent poster here: 151.64.171.8 (talk)
Mini-toolbox:
- Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Script (req. WP:AWB access and JWB installed or is just a normal redlink)
- Special:LintErrors
- Hunt down abuse of
{{em}}for non-emphasis italics [1] — and<em>[2] - NAC-at-ANRFC geekery to remember
- NAC-at-RM geekery to remember
- Ref consistency checker (use in preview or sandbox):
{{ref info|Manx cat|style=float:right}} - All WP:CUE project participants should watchlist this alerts page.
Articles for deletion
- 30 Sep 2024 – Cue Club 2 (talk · edit · hist) was AfDed by Mika1h (t · c); see discussion (2 participants; relisted)
Redirects for discussion
- 01 Sep 2024 – Eight-Ball (talk · edit · hist) →Eight-ball was RfDed by Thryduulf (t · c); see discussion
Good article nominees
- 05 Oct 2024 – Tessa Davidson (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by BennyOnTheLoose (t · c); start discussion
- 25 Sep 2024 – Mink Nutcharut (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by BennyOnTheLoose (t · c); start discussion
- 30 Aug 2024 – Thelma Carpenter (billiards player) (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by BennyOnTheLoose (t · c); start discussion
- 08 Jun 2024 – 2024 World Snooker Championship (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by Lee Vilenski (t · c); start discussion
- 07 Jun 2024 – 2024 Tour Championship (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by Lee Vilenski (t · c); start discussion
Other:
- MW Editing team e-meetings, /wikimedia.org/edit-tasktriage via Google Hangouts (Tuesdays, noon–12:30pm PDT = 20:00 UTC during DST, 19:00 otherwise, but often half an hour earlier).
- MW Tech Advice e-meetings, via IRC at #wikimedia-tech connect (Wednesdays, 1–2pm PDT = 16:00–17:00 UTC).
- meta:Talk:Spam blacklist – global blacklist requests
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As of 2020-01-21 , SMcCandlish is Active. 
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User talk:SMcCandlish/IP
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Old stuff to resolve eventually
Cueless billiards
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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)
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)
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Some more notes on Crystalate
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Some more notes: they bought Royal Worcester in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.[3]; info about making records:[4]; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:[5]; "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 - 1991wGtDHsgbtltnpBg&ct=result&id=v0m-h4YgKVYC&dq=%2BCrystalate; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:No5 Balls.html. Fences&Windows 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
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No one has actually objected to the idea that it's really pointless for WP:SAL to contain any style information at all, other than in summary form and citing MOS:LIST, which is where all of WP:SAL's style advice should go, and SAL page should move back to WP:Stand-alone lists with a content guideline tag. Everyone who's commented for 7 months or so has been in favor of it. I'd say we have consensus to start doing it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 13:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
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You post at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright
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That page looks like a hinterland (you go back two users in the history and you're in August). Are you familiar with WP:MCQ? By the way, did you see my response on the balkline averages?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
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Hee Haw
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Yeah, we did get along on Donkeys. And probably will get along on some other stuff again later. Best way to handle WP is to take it issue by issue and then let bygones be bygones. I'm finding some interesting debates over things like the line between a subspecies, a landrace and a breed. Just almost saw someone else's GA derailed over a "breed versus species" debate that was completely bogus, we just removed the word "adapt" and life would have been fine. I'd actually be interested in seeing actual scholarly articles that discuss these differences, particularly the landrace/breed issue in general, but in livestock in particular, and particularly as applied to truly feral/landrace populations (if, in livestock, there is such a thing, people inevitably will do a bit of culling, sorting and other interference these days). I'm willing to stick to my guns on the WPEQ naming issue, but AGF in all respects. Truce? Montanabw(talk) 22:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
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Redundant sentence?
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The sentence at MOS:LIFE "General names for groups or types of organisms are not capitalized except where they contain a proper name (oak, Bryde's whales, rove beetle, Van cat)" is a bit odd, since the capitalization would (now) be exactly the same if they were the names of individual species. Can it simply be removed? There is an issue, covered at Wikipedia:PLANTS#The use of botanical names as common names for plants, which may or may not be worth putting in the main MOS, namely cases where the same word is used as the scientific genus name and as the English name, when it should be de-capitalized. I think this is rare for animals, but more common for plants and fungi (although I have seen "tyrannosauruses" and similar uses of dinosaur names). Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
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Note to self on WP:WikiProject English language
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Finish patching up WP:WikiProject English language with the stuff from User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language, and otherwise get the ball rolling. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:22, 17 August 2016 (UTC) |
Excellent mini-tutorial
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Somehow, I forget quite how, I came across this - that is an excellent summary of the distinctions. I often get confused over those, and your examples were very clear. Is something like that in the general MoS/citation documentation? Oh, and while I am here, what is the best way to format a citation to a page of a document where the pages are not numbered? All the guidance I have found says not to invent your own numbering by counting the pages (which makes sense), but I am wondering if I can use the 'numbering' used by the digitised form of the book. I'll point you to an example of what I mean: the 'book' in question is catalogued here (note that is volume 2) and the digitised version is accessed through a viewer, with an example of a 'page' being here, which the viewer calls page 116, but there are no numbers on the actual book pages (to confuse things further, if you switch between single-page and double-page view, funny things happen to the URLs, and if you create and click on a single-page URL the viewer seems to relocate you one page back for some reason). Carcharoth (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
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Current threads
Books & Bytes – Issue 36
The Wikipedia Library
Books & Bytes
Issue 36, September – October 2019
- #1Lib1Ref January 2020
- #1Lib1Ref 2019 stories and learnings
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Template talk:Senate of Canada
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Senate of Canada. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!
Hello,
Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.
I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!
From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.
If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.
Thank you!
--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
Ship gender
You said "We've been over this many times before, seemingly about every year or so..." which was also very much my impression, as a distant and uninterested onlooker. But when I asked, a little way above you, for links to the equally interminable previous discussions, the guy who raised the matter said he didn't know of any... Do you have links? Johnbod (talk) 01:29, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
- @Johnbod: Not right off-hand. It comes up in different venues. I know it's been discussed at various MoS talk pages, and at a number of article talk pages, and in some wikiproject ones. Maybe also Village Pump. It's not the kind of thing I keep track of. I directed VPPOL, and various additional wikiprojects (since ships and MilHist were already notified) to the current thread, so the input should be broader this time. Maybe put an RfC tag on i? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:50, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
- PS: If it's important, I would start with searching the MoS archives for "ships". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:51, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Template talk:Infobox officeholder
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Infobox officeholder. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
Arbitration Case Opened
You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Evidence. Please add your evidence by December 20, 2019, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, SQLQuery me! 20:38, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
- Noted. I'm going to start gathering diffs, but not at a fast clip. I want to see how much the scope gets constrained. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:13, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Question about Senate of Canada's seating plan image
Hi @SMcCandlish:
I was mousing over your miniature userbox and user rights' icons at your your userpage and, noticing your file mover rights, wondered if you might be able to resolve an outstanding question I had in this discussion. Long story short, I don't think it's a caching issue or a problem with my web browser because the updated seating plan image that MikkelJSmith2 uploaded to the Commons on 21 November 2019 at 19:14 loads fine when you maximize that version. However, notice the thumbnail for that version shows the older version from 15 July 2019? Similarly, at commons:File:Senate of Canada - Seating Plan By Province.svg, it still shows the old version (without the new Senate groups). Likewise, here, it shows the older version. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I suspect there's something we're not doing piping it over to the Wikipedia file namespace maybe.
Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 00:23, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
- DmehusIt honestly shows the new version everywhere for me just like Huon said in the original discussion. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 13:03, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
- MikkelJSmith2, Nevertheless, there's something somewhere that needs to be corrected—that you and I aren't doing to get it to show up properly on the Commons and on the "File:" namespace. I'm hoping we can get it resolved, so we know what we're not doing for next time. I honestly think Huon prematurely closed, or short-circuited, the discussion I raised to close an active "help me" request instead of taking the time to properly show us what we hadn't done. Doug Mehus T·C 15:47, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
- @Dmehus: If page reload doesn't work, try deleting you WP-related cache and cookies, and re-login. If that doesn't work, try WP:PURGE (or maybe do that first, then the cache/cookie/login thing). I use a user Javascript (in the "Gadgets" section of the "Preferences" menu) that puts a UTC clock top-right (near "... Contributions Log out"). Clicking that clock will purge the current page and everything it transcludes. That's probably one of the best userscripts ever, since you get two useful features in one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:45, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
- MikkelJSmith2, Nevertheless, there's something somewhere that needs to be corrected—that you and I aren't doing to get it to show up properly on the Commons and on the "File:" namespace. I'm hoping we can get it resolved, so we know what we're not doing for next time. I honestly think Huon prematurely closed, or short-circuited, the discussion I raised to close an active "help me" request instead of taking the time to properly show us what we hadn't done. Doug Mehus T·C 15:47, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Legobot (talk) 04:26, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style
DisregardThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
- Legobot, Oh the WP:MOS, that's right up SMcCandlish's alley. Thanks, Legobot. You do us proud. ;-) --Doug Mehus T·C 05:03, 28 November 2019 (UTC) (talk page stalker)
- Yeah, pretty rare for this thing to drop of an MoS RfC notice for something I haven't already commented in (or opened as the OP). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:26, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Giving thanks
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| Cassia javanica, Torremolinos | |
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| ... with thanks from QAI |
Happy Thanksgiving! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:24, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Legobot (talk) 04:25, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
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| Two years! |
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--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:46, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Redirect autopatrol
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers/Redirect autopatrol. Legobot (talk) 04:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Talk:Epstein didn't kill himself
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Epstein didn't kill himself. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
Exemplification of your humourous EFF essay
@SMcCandlish:,
Hope you're doing well. Well, this ANI discussion exemplifies why sometimes it's best when you're the subject of an ANI discussion to just ignore it. It's probably a good thing I was absent from Wikipedia for a few days as I might've been tempted to get involved (to a potential detriment). I'm sure you've probably had an editor take you to ANI before, so I guess I can say I'm no longer a WikiVirgin (if that shortcut wikilink doesn't exist, it might be a useful, humourous Wikipedia essay on ANI). ;-)
Interestingly, this was despite my previously trying to use ANI as a de-escalation medium Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1022#Seeking de-escalation over at User talk:Dennis Bratland#Kinda bitey reply at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Erica C. Barnett, which Britishfinance closed as consensually de-escalated. I realized then, thanks to Rhododendrites, that ANI is not normally known as the medium for de-escalation; indeed it's the opposite.
It seems Wikipedia has a lot of incivility...I wonder if we could establish consensus to make mandatory dispute resolution prior to taking another editor to ANI? It seems like a reasonable solution.
Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 15:22, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
- ANI is a WP:DRAMA factory. ANI is part of WP:DR. The lower sorts of DR, like WP:3O and WP:DRN are themselves voluntary (and often not applicable – they won't take "cases" than involve things like disruption of internal material, e.g. squabbles over guideline wording). So, ANI already is the first stage of mandatory DR. Which may account for its high drama level. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:49, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
- PS: WP:WikiVirgin would indeed be a funny essay, but since the metaphoric referent involves sex and females, you'd almost certainly get castigated for writing it under that title. Learn from the User:SMcCandlish/It MfD drama, repeated attempts to MfD WP:DIVA (presently WP:HIGHMAINT though even that title and the longer version WP:Don't be high-maintenance have been accused of sexism), and the ongoing brouhaha about ships and she (at WT:MOS), and so on. A spectral WP:BATTLEGROUND can arise from the fog in an instant, like a portal to a hellish otherworld, despite one's best intentions. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Did you know
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Did you know. Legobot (talk) 04:29, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Template talk:Infobox person
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Template talk:Infobox person. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard
DoneThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Off-Broadway
Hey there! I see the discussion has been closed and page moved for off-off-Broadway. Does not the same logic apply to Off-Broadway? Cheers, GentlemanGhost (séance) 14:01, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
- @GentlemanGhost: Yes, it does. I'd already made that change, a week ago, but someone reverted it. Then I did that RM, so I think I'll go re-instate that change. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:38, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
- Ah, I should have dug into the edit history. Thanks for following through! GentlemanGhost (séance) 08:52, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
- @GentlemanGhost: Well, I would almost bet money I'll get knee-jerk reverted again. If that happens, I'll RfC this at WT:MOSCAPS. I'm really getting tired of the "capitalize every term related to theatre, acting, dance, and other arts" WP:SSF nonsense, and it's getting increasingly wearying dealing with it on an article-by-article basis. This is just another sliver of MOS:ACTCAPS. We extended it to explicitly cover non-trademarked games, sports, and dance terms about a year ago, and probably need to mention acting/theatre more specifically (though it already includes "method acting" at MOS:DOCTCAPS, for related reasons). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:29, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
- Yeah, that could easily happen. Experienced editors should be aware of the MOS, but some notions may be hard to dispel. In the case of off-Broadway, The New York Times MOS (and probably the AP Style Guide) may make some editors more familiar and comfortable with the capitalized variation but the bottom line is that the only MOS which applies here is our own. Even though it personally feels odd to me, in the same way that a British spelling of a word does, I see the value in consensus and applying MOSCAPS consistently, so others should be able to as well. --GentlemanGhost (séance) 10:11, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
- The main thing is to not apply an unnecessary stylization (including capitals). The entire problem with the "we should write about theatre the way theatre-centric writers do, and write about birds the way ornithologists do" is every specialization wants to over-capitalize various things within their little fiefdom, and the end result would be nearly everything capitalized on every topic. E.g., the theatre/acting/film/TV people would capitalize every occurrence of "off-Broadway" and "method acting" and "director of photography" and yadda yadda yadda at every occurrence in every article, and the bird people would capitalize every common name of every bird species (and – as we know from direct experience – then go around doing this to every common name of every species of everything), and the skateboarders will capitalize the names of every skating trick, and the dance people will capitalize the names of every dance, style, and step, and there'll just be no end to it. There already is no end to it, just a suppression of it via MOS:CAPS, a sea wall over which the waves frequently crest. It goes way beyond capitals, though, and includes things like mimicry of odd stylization in trademarks (backwards letters, etc.), unnecessary punctuation (like the comma in "Sammy Davis, Jr.", preferred by Americans over the age of about 50), dropping of punctuation (e.g. "St Peter Ave" when every British style guide says it should be "St Peter Ave." – British English only drops the dots from contraction abbreviations that begin and end with the same letters as the whole word, as in St and Dr for Saint and Doctor; the "just drop them all" nonsense is sloppy journalistic writing used by some newspapers desperately trying to save column space, which people them imitate, not knowing any better), and unit symbols and abbreviations (things like "2 foot six" and "2'6''" are ingrained in some styles). And on and on. It simply is not physically possible for editors to all get their personally preferred way on every style matter, because they're going to conflict in many ways and it would just lead to constant editwarring over style trivia. That's how MoS came about in the first place, so stop that constant disruption. That and the problem of letting every specialist camp write in a specialist way leads to material that looks to the average reader like it was written by the barely literate, and even when it doesn't, it results in impenetrable writing that only specialists in a particular field can understand - and even then only if the topic in question is "claimed" by just one camp of specialists imposing one weird set of styles. If you get a topic like "fauna of Madagascar", you end up with ornithologists and primatologists and ecologists and ethologists and etc., etc., all trying to do conflicting things. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:28, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
- Yeah, that could easily happen. Experienced editors should be aware of the MOS, but some notions may be hard to dispel. In the case of off-Broadway, The New York Times MOS (and probably the AP Style Guide) may make some editors more familiar and comfortable with the capitalized variation but the bottom line is that the only MOS which applies here is our own. Even though it personally feels odd to me, in the same way that a British spelling of a word does, I see the value in consensus and applying MOSCAPS consistently, so others should be able to as well. --GentlemanGhost (séance) 10:11, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
- @GentlemanGhost: Well, I would almost bet money I'll get knee-jerk reverted again. If that happens, I'll RfC this at WT:MOSCAPS. I'm really getting tired of the "capitalize every term related to theatre, acting, dance, and other arts" WP:SSF nonsense, and it's getting increasingly wearying dealing with it on an article-by-article basis. This is just another sliver of MOS:ACTCAPS. We extended it to explicitly cover non-trademarked games, sports, and dance terms about a year ago, and probably need to mention acting/theatre more specifically (though it already includes "method acting" at MOS:DOCTCAPS, for related reasons). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:29, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
- Ah, I should have dug into the edit history. Thanks for following through! GentlemanGhost (séance) 08:52, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard
DisregardThe feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
Please comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Partial blocks
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Partial blocks. Legobot (talk) 04:27, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
It’s that time of year!
 Atsme Talk 📧 18:17, 13 December 2019 (UTC) |
Happy Holiday Cheer!! |
in the spirit of the season. What's especially nice about this digitized version: *it doesn't need water *won't catch fire *and batteries aren't required. |
and a prosperous New Year!! 🍸🎁 🎉 |
Cheers
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Damon Runyon's short story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a fun read if you have the time. Right from the start it extols the virtues of the hot Tom and Jerry
No matter what concoction is your favorite to imbibe during this festive season I would like to toast you with it and to thank you for all your work here at the 'pedia this past year. Best wishes for your 2020 as well SMcC. MarnetteD|Talk 02:00, 17 December 2019 (UTC) |
Thank you ...
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| missing Brian |
... for improving article quality in December! There's a peer review open for Clara Schumann and a FAC for Jauchzet, frohlocket!, DYK? We miss Brian who would have helped. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:01, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
Merry Christmas!
| A very happy Christmas and New Year to you! | 
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Season's greetings
Hello SMcCandlish: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, North America1000 15:42, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
New Page Review newsletter December 2019
- Reviewer of the Year
This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.
Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.
Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.
Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.
| Rank | Username | Num reviews | Log |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rosguill (talk) | 47,395 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 2 | Onel5969 (talk) | 41,883 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 3 | JTtheOG (talk) | 11,493 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 4 | Arthistorian1977 (talk) | 5,562 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 5 | DannyS712 (talk) | 4,866 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 6 | CAPTAIN MEDUSA (talk) | 3,995 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 7 | DragonflySixtyseven (talk) | 3,812 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 8 | Boleyn (talk) | 3,655 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 9 | Ymblanter (talk) | 3,553 | Patrol Page Curation |
| 10 | Cwmhiraeth (talk) | 3,522 | Patrol Page Curation |
(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)
- Redirect autopatrol
A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.
- Source Guide Discussion
Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.
- This month's refresher course
While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.
Io Saturnalia!
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Io, Saturnalia! | |
| Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:37, 20 December 2019 (UTC) |
Merry Merry!
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Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2020! |
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Hello SMcCandlish, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2020. Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages. |
Happy Holidays
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Thank you for continuing to make Wikipedia the greatest project in the world. I hope you have an excellent holiday season. Lightburst (talk) 21:39, 22 December 2019 (UTC) |
Happy holidays!
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Hi SMac! All the warmest wishes for this seasonal occasion, whichever you celebrate - or don't, while I swelter at 27℃ (80.6℉), and peace and prosperity for 2020, hoping that you'll join me for a cool beer in Bangkok in August when it will be even hotter! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:04, 24 December 2019 (UTC) |
Happy Holidays
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Hello SMcCandlish: Enjoy the holiday season, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, DBigXrayᗙ Happy Holidays! 17:59, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
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- Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings1}} to send this message
Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Cue sports external link templates
DisregardA tag has been placed on Category:Cue sports external link templates requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:29, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
- UnitedStatesian, I see no such CFD-speedy, listing, nor a speedy tag on the category. I do see that at least one template has been added back into the category since I last looked at it. I'm not sure we need a category for what now many only be two templates (there used to be more), but it's also an internal-purposes category, not reader-facing, and it's of use at the wikiproject level, so I would oppose deleting it. The maintenance is helps likely exceeds the maintenance it requires. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:10, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish: the tag was removed once the category was populated. Best, UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:45, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry, this one is on me. I populated the cat as it became empty after the deletion of the cuetracker links. I added the two external links templates we had. I always prefer templates over regular links, as they can have metadata and such added. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:50, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Lee Vilenski: Yeah, someone or other a few years ago was on the warpath against single-source citation templates and got a lot of them deleted (mainly just because TfD isn't well-watched and not always well-reasoned). This "campaign" has stopped, and various cue sports templates might be worth re-creating (in substantially better form than originally) so that the citations we keep making to the same sources over and over again are more consistent and easier to make. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:53, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
- I think at the very least, an external link template to the snooker.org entry for tournaments would be beneficial. I might spend some time in the new year on this.Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:59, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish: the tag was removed once the category was populated. Best, UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:45, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
In case you weren't aware
ResolvedYour name was recently invoked on ANI, with the implication that you were promoting the fringe content that (from where I'm reading your comments, anyway) you had actually been arguing against. According to the above comment (in which you weren't pinged) you had become "not too sure" about your original support for version C over versions A and B, but I'm really not seeing that.
In case you actually interpreted my reply as "bludgeoning" you, I should apologize. I meant merely to clarify why I was asking your opinion on later developments in the RFC.
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:40, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Hijiri88: I don't agree with either of those interpretations by Francis Schonken, and said so at the ANI thread. I don't think your case for blocking the other editor is good, though a T-ban might actually be appropriate. I do think your decision to back away is wise, though. When one gets too worked up about a topic here, it can make one seem like the real problem, as I've had to learn the hard way myself. :-) 21:03, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
- So, what happened to that break? :-/ — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:27, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
RfC notice (low priority)
Based on your participation in an earlier discussion, you are invited to comment at WNGH-TV#RfC about TV and radio station style variances. Thanks. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:11, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
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MMXX Lunar Calendar
Have a great 2020 and thanks for your continued contributions to Wikipedia.
– 2020 is a leap year – news article.
– Background color is Classic Blue (#0F4C81), Pantone's 2020 Color of the year
– North America1000 22:33, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Some advice?
Hijiri88 (talk · contribs) here. Posting this logged out for obvious reasons (but doing so "publicly" rather than by email so as to dispel any impression that there's any "funny business" going on).
Background: I came across the email address of the author of one of the sources that was being quoted out of context, for a point that was peripheral to their main argument and so apparently came from Wikipedia. I briefly considered emailing them myself to ask if they could recall where they actually got the information (since their cited source says nothing of the sort), but then decided that emailing a scholar in a field related to my own with a message asking/insinuating "did you get this from Wikipedia?" was not a good idea. I then figured maybe explicitly placing the burden of doing that on the four parties still advocating for the apparently-circular citation to be restored might be a good idea; then, right before clicking "Publish changes", I realized that that could potentially open the door to "Yeah, I emailed him and he replied -- he said he would never dream of getting information from Wikipedia, and his copy of McCullough has linguistic footnotes that do support his text", and the only ways for me to disprove such a lie would be to (a) contact Taylor myself to ask if he had written such an email, which would be borderline harassment far worse than just emailing him in the first place, or (b) |prove that no such edition of McCullough exists.
Long story short, I'm asking you for a second opinion on posting the following at the bottom of Talk:Mottainai#"Genpei Jōsuiki".
- I didn't notice until now, but Taylor's staff profile at the University of Memphis gives an email address for him. {{ping|Martinthewriter|Francis Schonken|IvoryTower123|Challenger.rebecca}} Since you are all apparently still advocating for our citation of Taylor for content that was in this Wikipedia article seven years before he wrote the "source" in question, would you like to contact him and ask him where he got the information? I've already checked his cited source, which doesn't say anything about mottainashi one way or the other, leading to the most reasonable conclusion being that, because it was a peripheral point to the one he was making in his essay, he checked Wikipedia and then located the corresponding passage in a translation of the Heike, without verifying that the Japanese text supported our assertion. ~~~~
Any advice you could offer on the matter (even unrelated to posting the above -- if you were in my shoes would you just bite the bullet and email Taylor yourself?) would be most appreciated.
Cheers, 211.135.108.100 (talk) 06:41, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
- I would just write to him myself, but post something like the above explaining why I was doing so. (But I'm not an academic; I was a professional online activist for over a decade, so writing to important people with difficult questions wasn't something I shied away from. >;-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:56, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
- For what it's worth, I didn't "look hard to find potential insult in every phrase" -- I looked hard at every phrase of Francis's proposed change, much of which was, yes, insulting to me (since it contained numerous grammatical errors, misreadings of sources, and outright nonsense, while he repeatedly referred to it as an "improvement" on my work), but I didn't actually mention that anywhere in my long commentary on the edit (which, as I will give you credit for not failing to notice, he admitted to not having read). I think if you change your !vote just because you want the RFC to end in "no consensus" sooner ... well, that's somewhat unsettling and bad for the project -- did you find something in all of that discussion that convinced you that either version A or version F is not inferior to version C?
- Yes, I think a simple !vote count at present would probably come out to "no consensus", but a proper close would take into account the fact that several of the !votes (virtually all of the ones for version A) were clearly drive-by comments by editors acting in bad faith.
- And ... well, I will seriously consider whether I intend to take your above advice. Not because I don't think it is sound on its face, but because I am really having serious doubts about whether any of this has been worth my time, and now even you are apparently saying you think the best solution would be for us to wait another month for a new RFC to be opened and then closed. I honestly don't think any good could come from that proposal, and would rather just change my !vote to version A and walk away from the article, if not the entire project, to allow me to enjoy my life again.
- Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:49, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Union Jack's knives in the back
IMHO, Welsh, Scottish & Irish nationalism is behind a lot of the push to use Welsh/Scottish/Irish-N.Irish/English in such UK-related articles. Anyway, just mentioning it here, as one gets blasted out there for bringing up the elephant in the room. PS: Feel free to delete this post. GoodDay (talk) 16:17, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
- I'm sure that's true, but it's a common perspective and isn't "wrong". It's not any less or more righteous than a "blur away all these distinctions and let them go the way of Cornwall and the Cornish" extreme unionism. Over here in Yankeeland, we have a similar split between states'-rights advocates and fans of increased federal government authority (which also tend to align with right-wing versus left-wing politics, respectively). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:26, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
- Except on issues where it's the other way around. Happy New Year. Dicklyon (talk) 05:27, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
- Yeah. The Republicans tend to be big fans of things like the Dept. of Homeland Security, and lots of dope-smokin' liberals love the fact that California legalized pot. >;-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:57, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
- Except on issues where it's the other way around. Happy New Year. Dicklyon (talk) 05:27, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year snowman}} to people's talk pages with a friendly message.
A message to all and sundry
I'll refrain from delivering these on a zillion talk pages. Heh. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:57, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
– North America1000 06:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
- Oh, yeah! I find this variant all the time. Kept a few around (fed them fruit flies) for a while. A visitor was checking out the terrarium: "Hey! This worm ... it has legs!" — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:54, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Zigbee vs ZigBee spelling
ResolvedHi, I just left a note at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:ZigBee#Capitalization:_Zigbee,_not_ZigBee about your Zigbee -> ZigBee modifications a month+ ago -- I think the changes should be the other way around. Maybe discuss this further on the Talk:ZigBee page? Vskytta (talk) 20:07, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
WP:ANI
Resolved
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:52, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
Nine-ball History
Hi Stanton, long time! I hope you are well. I've been working my way through the nine-ball article, cutting some more of the in-depth parts, and expanding some more on the game as a whole. I'm looking to do up a history section (I know it's a 1920s America thing, but outside of that I'm lost), and expand the section on tournaments. I know you have an encylopedic knowledge of these things, so if you have any sources, or ideas where to look, I'd appreciate it. I currently have the following:
- very minor mentions of history
- The Pool Bible - just says about it's preported beginnings
- - not sure if reliable
- History.co.uk basically barely mentions it.
I know A Brief History of the Noble Game of Billiards by Shamos is a good reference, but I don't see a great deal on the origins and history of the sport (I'd assume that's why we don't already have one.)
Any ideas for this one? Thanks for your help. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:50, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Lee Vilenski:. Nine-ball originated in the US, so UK sources will likely be late and dubious (like American works on snooker). Probably the best bets are:
- Shamos, Mike (1999). The New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Billiards. New York: Lyons Press. ISBN 9781558217973 – via Internet Archive. – Inexpensive, commonly available, and a real trove.
- Stein, Victor; Rubino, Paul (2008) [1994]. The Billiard Encyclopedia (3rd ed.). New York: Balkline Press. ISBN 9780615170923. – It's possible there's a later edition, but every ed. of it is very expensive, so it's better found via inter-library loan. The work is important enough some UK libraries probably have it.
- Shamos also regularly writes/wrote a history column for one of the pool mags (I'm pretty sure it's Billiards Digest). I know he did an in-depth piece on the history and development of eight-ball, so it's probable he did one on nine-ball (and likely earlier that the eight-ball piece, given the pro pool focus of the mags). I doubt back-issues are common in the UK, and I don't know if they have a full archive of back issues online.
- One way to really dig into it is to dig up past editions of the Billiard Congress of America and earlier Billiard Association of America rulebooks. The WPA's later rules are based on those (I think they are now kept in sync). BAA probably produced the first published rule set, other than maybe in booklets produced by table manufacturers like Brunswick, Balke & Collender (they produced two early rulebooks for what became eight-ball, as "B.B.C. Co. pool", around 1912 and 1925 if I recall correctly).
- I no longer have a collection of these books and magazines, after downsizing about a year ago (my back could no longer take dealing with 4,000 books and 15,000 comics and magazines, and my bank account wasn't happy about paying for space to store it all). As for BAA/BCA rulebooks, they're often available on eBay for $5–10, but most are likely also available through ILL in the US and Canada (not sure every year's edition would be, though; libraries tend to divest old editions of books that are regularly updated). That likely doesn't help you in the UK, since these books would not have made their way across the Atlantic very often. I don't know what year the nine-ball rules first appeared in BAA/BCA rulebooks, though asking someone at BCA via e-mail might work. For all I know, they might even have archival PDFs now.
- — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:57, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
- Holy moly, 4,000 books and 15,000 comics and magazines, that's a veritable mountain. Hopefully you made some cash selling them at bookstores, even though nowadays they offer chintzy buy pricing, likely thanks in part to the internet, which has eliminated the need for books! North America1000 00:34, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- That, and Amazon in particular is putting local bookstores out of business. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:15, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I've migrated my library to work, and hope that my company will take care of the 3000 volumes (many of which they paid for) after I retire, so I won't have to deal with them. Selling is hard and slow. Used booksellers that I know buy up books for about $1 at "Friends of Library" sales and such, and sell them online via abebooks.com and such (now part of Amazon, sadly). I still buy a couple of books every week via abebooks.com, because you can't argue sources without sources. Google book search is good for finding snippets, but then you need to get the book to find more. In this way the Internet has been good for used book sellers, by making their wares searchable, but instead of stores they have storage. Turnover is very low, so storage needs to be cheap. If you're in a hurry to unload, you might as well give them to the library and let someone else try to make a buck off them. Dicklyon (talk) 01:39, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Yeah, I guess it's resulting in a general "consolidation" of bookstores; those that could adapt to the model of a storefront plus a whole lot of e-tailing survived, while traditional ones just running as storefronts have had a tendency to go under. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:47, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I've migrated my library to work, and hope that my company will take care of the 3000 volumes (many of which they paid for) after I retire, so I won't have to deal with them. Selling is hard and slow. Used booksellers that I know buy up books for about $1 at "Friends of Library" sales and such, and sell them online via abebooks.com and such (now part of Amazon, sadly). I still buy a couple of books every week via abebooks.com, because you can't argue sources without sources. Google book search is good for finding snippets, but then you need to get the book to find more. In this way the Internet has been good for used book sellers, by making their wares searchable, but instead of stores they have storage. Turnover is very low, so storage needs to be cheap. If you're in a hurry to unload, you might as well give them to the library and let someone else try to make a buck off them. Dicklyon (talk) 01:39, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- That, and Amazon in particular is putting local bookstores out of business. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:15, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Holy moly, 4,000 books and 15,000 comics and magazines, that's a veritable mountain. Hopefully you made some cash selling them at bookstores, even though nowadays they offer chintzy buy pricing, likely thanks in part to the internet, which has eliminated the need for books! North America1000 00:34, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for this mate. I knew you had gotten rid of the books, but thought you'd know better than me where to start looking. Something on how/why/when the game was founded would probably be enough, as it's not fantastic just saying "around 1920, America". Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:15, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- It's been said it originated as a children's and a training/practice game. Oh! Another likely source is Robert Byrne's book series; Byrne's Wonderful World of Pool and Billiards, Byrne's Book of Great Pool Stories, and Byrne's New Standard Book of Pool and Billiards in particular have all kinds of info in them (the third of those is primarily instructional, but still contains a fair amount of background info; Byrne had a hard time not making what could have been dry, rote material into entertaining prose). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:57, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
conversation you may be interested in
DoneHi Mac, hope you are well! There's a topic at WT:SNOOKER#Power Snooker that I would appreciate your comments on. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Trust me
He wasn't kidding. EEng 04:04, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
- P'r'aps so, but it was an excuse to make a username joke (and "is no" ones are pretty stale at this point). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:58, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Per your reply to me at the DRV to review the AfD for List of REITs in Canada
Hi SMcCandlish,
Per your reply to me at the DRV to review the AfD for List of REITs in Canada, where you wrote, "[s]ounds like a good talk-page discussion after closure of this brouhaha (which is really about whether there was a BADNAC, not what to do with the content, if anything)," I'm wondering, since the discussion has been relisted, should we invite MrOllie and DGG in to the discussion via pings? I thought I'd approach you first before randomly pinging them.
Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 22:08, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
- Well, I meant more the article talk page (and if a merge is what's going to be on the table, that would be the talk page of the merge target, the better article). However, that may be just premature until the renewed AfD closes (which might be for delete anyway). Regardless, I'm okay with some side-band discussion of it now, whether that be here, or on the AfD's own talk page, or whatever. If merge-and-redir is the goal, it could even be now, at the target's talk page, as an "If that isn't deleted, should we merge it to here?" thread. Despite being all Mr. Process when in a process, I'm anti-bureaucracy outside of one. :-) PS: I may be overdue for nap time, so I might not get back to this stuff until tomorrow, after I'm done with the two on-going RfAs. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:13, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
- SMcCandlish, Thanks for the reply...I get the thinking behind a redirect or a merge, though I'm not sure a merge is necessary since all of the blue-linked REITs are at the target article (as far as I'm aware). A redirect is possible, but like I said at DRV, I'm just not thinking the need to preserve the attribution history here. Either editor could've very easily compiled this list of REITs from primary or otherwise non-independent secondary sources so I don't really see the need for keeping it in a refactored List of real estate companies of Canada combined list.
- As for RfA, kudos to you for participating in that. I personally just avoid that as S Marshall described it best and most concisely for what it is, a ritual hazing. I'd kind of actually prefer the bureaucrats to have the powers to appoint administrators, similar to the processes for page mover, pending reviewer, etc., based on an extensive list of defined criteria. In exchange, I'd like to see the community develop a formalized process for de-sysoping (whether by consensus or by bureaucrat based on an extensive checklist as to whether the bar for de-sysoping had been met). I realize that sort of goes against our mantra of consensus-based decision-making, but from what I've observed, the bureaucrats we have, for the most part, shown themselves to be highly competent and neutral administrators of administrators. Doug Mehus T·C 23:27, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
- Not sure I see a reason to avoid preserving the page history, but I might not really care. I'm not a "history nut" when it comes to revisions no one's going to care about anyway. I don't disagree with your description of RfA (and I kind of comment on that a bit, in different terms, at User:SMcCandlish/RfA standards). But I figure I don't have a right to complain about any "badmins" if I did nothing to keep them out of "office". We have two long-term problematic but still standing ones whom I could have almost certainly prevented being given the mop (or in one case getting it back!) with just a few diffs, but I was on wikibreak at the time (I actually wonder if that's why they RfAed when they did). And a couple of times I've seen people who'd be good admins just barely fail to pass, due to a couple of histrionic opposes over trivial crap, where just a few more supports would have mattered. We definitely need a community desysop process, because ArbCom basically won't do it most of the time, unless the need to do so is so bad that there'd be a wikirevolt if they refused to. (Reminds me of a certain president of a certain country and the difficulty of impeaching him). Would rather see RfA seriously reformed than 'Crats turned into an admin electoral college; the risks are too high, even if the current process is so very, very shite-full. Anyway, I'm getting "grainy eyes" now and gotta hit the sack. I'm yawning like the cat in my editnotice. PS: I appreciate that our debatorizationing at DRV, though grumbly at parts, remained generally aloof and not very personalilzed. Sometimes it's hard to really hash out an issue here without someone getting butt-hurt. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
- The community elects sysops but can't impeach them, and all sysop errors no matter how egregious are automatically forgiven if the sysop retracts and apologises. It follows that the only time you can ever remove a sysop is when you can show Arbcom smoking-gun diffs and evidence that the sysop has doubled-down on their error. You usually need several examples so it's basically hopeless. Once a sysop has tenure, the will to remain a sysop, and the absolute minimum of clue, the community is permanently stuck with them.
The best model is the one we use in the real world with police officers. The community elects commissioners; the commissioners set standards and they recruit, train, monitor and if necessary, discipline, the enforcers. Our existing body of bureaucrats consists of people who didn't volunteer for this commissioner role, and the community hasn't assessed their suitability for it, so we clearly can't ask them to do the job. We need the commissioners to be a separate, elected body that's subordinate to arbcom. But I can't build consensus for that big a change -- simply put, Wikipedia's consensus model means we can't get there from here.
On the matter of retaining people's contributions in the history, that's a terms of use issue. We don't pay our volunteers, but we do promise to give them credit for their contributions in the article history. Therefore wherever their contributions appear in the encyclopaedia, even if it's in very highly modified form, the article history needs to reflect their work. It's literally the only incentive we offer to build Wikipedia, so I feel quite passionate about not reneging on it.—S Marshall T/C 00:09, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
- On history: Sure, but if we do not retain any of the mateiral at all, there is not need to retain history. In this case, the argument is that the target page of a potential merge-and-redirect already contains all the entries we would keep, so it may just end up being blank-and-redirect. On adminship and self-governance stuff: Interesting idea, but I don't see how to get there from here without much deeper changes to how WP works, i.e. a "revolution" of sorts, or in other terms a crash and burn followed by a restart, at least at some level. This will almost inevitably happen anyway as part of the organizational lifecycle, and an argument can be made that it is already long overdue (like a decade+), both as to some of how the community operates, and as to how the WMF as a whole is still populated by people from the commercial software world and still operating like a software and online-services company instead of like a globally important NGO with a constituency (probably the largest constituency in history – everyone – though that scope is also shared by a few world health and civil rights organizations, I suppose). Many of the things wrong with WP and with WMF more broadly are not going to change until most of the board are replaced, and WMF's goals and charter are reworked, and WMF imposes some changes on the community. I've already been through this multiple times at other major organizations like EFF, which had precisely the same problem. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
Hey, can you take a look at my colon?
Hi, SMC. I think you've given me formatting/markup advice before, so maybe again? RE: display of verse in articles, I'm aware that indenting with colons produces bad markup, but my sense is that if they are used within {{quote}} or simlar templates, they get transformed into harmless leading spaces, so they're OK. Or, to put it in terms that even I would understand:
:Indent with colon even once: :The markup gods will curse your bones.
(archaic rhyme intended)...but...
{{poemquote|
My sense is that colons
:in {{quote}} are legit-y;
But maybe I'm wrong
:and they're totally shitty!}}
I haven't found precise direction on this, though, and I can't recall how I formulated these ideas. Any insight? Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 22:14, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
: to cause indentation in articles is a bad idea (even if it's a lost cause on talk pages); use some other method like {{blockindent}} or {{in5}}. (That's covered in MoS somewhere, maybe near the stuff on quotes, or at paragraphs, or layout, or accessibility.) Whether the <dd>...</dd> (the :) is inside a template or not is irrelevant; the templates aren't doing any kind of conversion on them. However, for this exact case, you can dispense with a lot of this, by just using <poem>, which preserves whitespace as-entered, or using {{poemquote|<poem>...</poem>}} if you need the template's additional features. (It's weird to me that the template doesn't use the <poem> markup internally.) Anyway, entering:
{{poemquote|<poem>
My sense is that colons
in {{tnull|quote}} are legit-y;
But maybe I'm wrong
and they're totally shitty!</poem>}}will produce:
But unless you're using the attribution features of the template, you can just remove theMy sense is that colons
in{{quote}}are legit-y;
But maybe I'm wrong
and they're totally shitty!
{{poemquote|...}} part and use only <poem>...</poem>. Hope that helps. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:26, 21 January 2020 (UTC)Thank you ...
 | |
| ... with thanks from QAI |
... for improving articles in January! Today - 20 in 2020 - is a birthday, she is pictured on the lower choir pic, enjoy listening. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:32, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Hello SMcCandlish, I'm writing to you because yuor nmae is in the member list of the "WikiProject Dogs" and you're one of the last still active. There's a discussion you might be interested in, here. I'd be glad to know your opinion about this matter, so I hope that you'll read the thread I opened. Thank you in advance if you decide to join. 151.64.171.8 (talk) 11:33, 21 January 2020 (UTC)