User talk:RexxS

Hinokitiol

So papers like that are primary sources and don't fill the bill. Maybe I can revert the next one. Thanks, --Deepfriedokra (talk) 13:34, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Deepfriedokra: I checked the first few and found three of them were different formats of the same paper:

• Krenn, B. M.; Gaudernak, E.; Holzer, B.; Lanke, K.; Van Kuppeveld, F. J. M.; Seipelt, J. (2009-01). "Antiviral activity of the zinc ionophores pyrithione and hinokitiol against picornavirus infections". Journal of Virology. 83 (1): 58–64. doi:10.1128/JVI.01543-08. ISSN 1098-5514. PMC 2612303. PMID 18922875. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Krenn, B. M.; Gaudernak, E.; Holzer, B.; Lanke, K.; Van Kuppeveld, F. J. M.; Seipelt, J. (2009-1). "Antiviral Activity of the Zinc Ionophores Pyrithione and Hinokitiol against Picornavirus Infections". Journal of Virology. 83 (1): 58–64. doi:10.1128/JVI.01543-08. ISSN 0022-538X. PMC 2612303. PMID 18922875. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• "Antiviral Activity of the Zinc Ionophores Pyrithione and Hinokitiol against Picornavirus Infections | Request PDF". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2020-07-08.

If you look at a PubMed version pmid:18922875 and scroll down to Publication types, you see "Research support". That's a good indication of a primary study, although not infallible. But a quick look at the text, which starts "We have discovered ...", and you can see that it's not a review. As soon as there are claims for the effect of a drug on the body, or its mechanism, we really need quality secondary sources from good academic publishers. You can always point folks to WP:MEDRS if they need a full explanation.

Hinokitiol is currently being hyped quite strongly, presumably by pharma, because of the current climate of desperation to find effective remedies for COVID-19. No doubt it won't subside for some time. --RexxS (talk) 13:54, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Time for a formal SPI ? That is now four accounts, two blocked. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:28, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I don't think so. The last one, Special:Contributions/Amugune has a broad span of interests; they definitely aren't an SPA, and have no detectable POV. Compare that with Special:Contributions/Georgedouglas123 and you can see exactly where the latter account is coming from. The previous IP, Special:Contributions/82.132.185.208 was simply angry with me for reverting the codswallop they had inserted into Buoyancy and decided to revert me at Hinokitiol in retaliation. I think we got the main culprits earlier, thanks to the notification at WT:MED. I suggest we see if we get any more problems before we bother the checkusers. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Since then, I've had another couple of new-ish editors trying to insert the same dodgy content using the same dodgy sources, so I'm trying an alternative approach. I've just requested page protection for Hinokitiol, so it will be interesting to see if another, uninvolved admin sees the same problems. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:43, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping me informed ... watch the calendar so we don't go stale :0 I'm busy cleaning up yukky paid editing-- sheesh. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:55, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Just came across this in the new pages feed. Sigh. Spicy (talk) 11:46, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@Spicy: Thanks for spotting that. I've been through the article and stripped out all of the biomedical content sourced to news reports and primary sources. That left two sentences (and they're a bit dubious). Thank you for also sending it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zinc and Hinokitiol synergism. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:06, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I thought you may be interested in this - a job ad for Hinokitiol appeared on Upwork in early July, and they hired the banned editor User:Barkaat Ahmad. That job is hidden, but since then they've hired at least 15 other editors to translate the version that was posted here (prior to the recent edits bringing it back in line with MEDRS) to different language Wikipedias, including Bulgarian, Serbain and Albanian. My guess is that Barkaat Ahmad was one of those who made recent changes, but I'm not sure if there's anything we can do from here for the other languages. This is the most Wikipedia editing jobs I've ever seen from one group in such a short time. - Bilby (talk) 23:31, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

The original mess is translated to every language I checked, including the copyvio. I removed it from Spanish. Not a good investment: [1] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:27, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Copyvio for revdel ... multiple, but see paragraph beginning with Chemist Martin Burke ... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hinokitiol&diff=prev&oldid=957755138#A_Promising_Future SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:22, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Sandy. I've revdeleted all of the content containing the copyvio from https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/archive/h/hinokitiol.html. What a mess. --RexxS (talk) 16:06, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I did an insource search for "hinokitiol" and then did a bit of clean-up on a few other articles Ionophore, Thujaplicin and Martin D. Burke. We're probably clean of hinokitiol-promo for now. --RexxS (talk) 16:52, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Referencing style

Template:Formerly

• Rousseleau, Raphael (2009). "The King's Elder Brother: Forest King and "Political Imagination" in Southern Orissa". Rivista di studi sudasiatici. 4: 39–62. doi:10.13128/RISS-9116.

• Rousseleau, Raphael (2009). "The King's Elder Brother: Forest King and "Political Imagination" in Southern Orissa". Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici. 4: 39–62. doi:10.13128/RISS-9116. S2CID 54957001.

Both of those link with the doi version being a more stable link that give the abstract and a full version link. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:39, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)@Headbomb: Wow. So much for WP:CIVIL. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 21:44, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@Headbomb: No, I'm not blind. If you have a browser capable of rendering an embedded pdf, then you see the full text immediately without having to follow another link if you use the link I supplied. If readers don't have Acrobat or similar addon, they can still download the pdf just as they would do from your preferred link. As it is preferable to give readers direct access to the full text if possible, I am going to ask you politely to leave that link from the citation title. Thanks. --RexxS (talk) 21:55, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Looking back at this interaction, I have to apologize for my outburst. I was frustrated, and your edit summaries were frustratingly unclear and made them look like straight reverts when they were not, but I should have kept my cool regardless. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:21, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Thank you for saying that. I'm really sorry that my edit summaries were unclear, and I promise I'll try my hardest to do better in future. It was never my intention to cause you frustration.

To be honest, I appreciate the work you do for Wikipedia, especially with citations. Despite our differences at times, I know that your intent is always only to improve the encyclopedia, and I should remind myself of that more often. Regards --RexxS (talk) 17:49, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Likewise. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:51, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Greetings and Semantic Scholar

Hello RexxS! It's been years. We met in D.C. at Wikimania in 2012, and I used to be involved with WPMEDF. But no worries if you don't recall! Anyhow, I'm contacting you because I saw you posted on this thread. I have to say, I do not like this whole citation bot linking to Semantic Scholar bit. I also don't like the aforementioned thread because I feel like the original idea has been generated without sufficient community oversight. It appears as a sneaky backdoor tactic to drive internet traffic in a COI-y way. I'm pinging User:Ocaasi in case he wants to take a look too. I've posted at WT:MED about this previously.[2] A recent edit to DVT added quite a few links to Semantic Scholar. The only one I have investigated thus far (partially because I feel there's no consensus for these links in the first place -- and I feel it's an unfair burden to research this repeatedly -- including having to type out these kinds of posts and do research about them -- when I'd rather just focus on article content) was to this paper cited on the DVT article. As I see it, there's only one link to a PDF that I would imagine is a copyright violation. I suppose that could help someone verify the content. But is that was a Wikipedia citation is supposed to be used for? We now value ease of verifiability so highly that we link to sites that contain links to presumed copyright violations? Of course this is just a theoretical. I'd imagine no human is actually doing that anyhow. I kind of "own" DVT and my observation is that no one else does the same level of research and edits to add sources and prose that I've been able to scrap together over the years in my attempt to keep it updated. To give you context about why I find this frustrating: these days to save time (I have so little right now) I largely don't even add edit summaries anymore when I edit DVT, and I hope to get it published in the WikiJournal of Medicine. Best wishes, and I hope you're doing well. Biosthmors (talk) 01:03, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Biosthmors I do remember you well, both from Wikimania DC and from all your work with WPMEDF (now a thematic organisation using the name Wikimedia Medicine!) – I hope you're keeping well.

I share your unease with Semantic Scholar, principally because I worry about copyright violation. It's certainly a desirable goal to make full text available if it can't be easily reached elsewhere, but not at the expense of possibly breaching someone's copyright. Nevertheless, the community seem to accept it, although it was introduced with very little discussion by a group of bot operators on the assumption that it was a good thing. I'm also concerned about the effect that decisions made by a small group to extend a bot's functionality can have on a huge number of articles. We need a better system of checks and balances for bot operation but until a sufficiently large number of editors become concerned, there's very little that a handful of us can do.

Please keep in touch when you're not too busy and let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you at the article level. I'd love to get a break from mending broken things and do some more article building again. --RexxS (talk) 14:45, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind note RexxS! I was thinking that a formal discussion or RfC might be needed on the topic because I would imagine it's more than a small minority of people who would be concerned by this expansion of citation bot's use, but maybe I'm wrong. Things are going pretty well here. I've started medical school here in the states, so that's one reason why I'm so busy at the moment. Also I'm a husband and father now. I can't complain. As for article work, it might not be fun, but if you're interested, there's a lot of prose, content, and sources that I cite at DVT that could be used at pulmonary embolism (PE) and venous thromboembolism (VTE), since DVT and PE are just two manifestations of one disease process, VTE. I've hesitated to "spread myself thin" by doing this, because I've been focused on polishing DVT over the years, but that's an idea for you in case you're interested! The PE page seems to consistently get higher page views that the DVT page (or the VTE page I believe) so perhaps that would be the best target. I've always hoped to get PE looking good after working on DVT, but I haven't gotten there yet! Best wishes. Biosthmors (talk) 01:24, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Message

I left you a message here [3] please take a look when you get a chance.GizzyCatBella🍁 14:27, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I've seen it, thanks. I need a little time to research the background before commenting at WP:AE. --RexxS (talk) 14:47, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

New article

Howdy, I hope all is well with you. If you get a moment and want to look over User:Berchanhimez/sandbox/depot for me, I'd appreciate it. I have not crafted the lede section yet, and I'm still working on the pharmacokinetics section (aside from three tables someone else had created that I found), but I'm wondering if it is "complete enough" to go ahead and move to an article so I can start linking from other articles/etc or whether you think it may need some more work first. Thanks in advance if you're able to, and if not no worries. bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 14:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I've left you a set of notes at User talk:Berchanhimez/sandbox/depot. Hope you find them helpful. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:48, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:MED Newsletter - August 2020

Issue 3—August 2020

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Despite continued tumult in the real world, the show–and the newsletter–must go on at WP:MED. As always your comments, concerns, and ideas are welcome at the newsletter talk page (and at WT:MED). Here is what's happening this month:

Newly recognized content

Buruli ulcer nom. Ajpolino, reviewed by Tom (LT) Pantothenic acid nom. David notMD, reviewed by HaEr48

Nominated for review

Parkinson's disease At featured article review. Discussion here Prostate nom. Tom (LT), under review by Dunkleosteus77 Niacin nom. David notMD, under review by Ajpolino Willis J. Potts nom. Larry Hockett Dimple nom. MonkeyStolen234 Atul Gawande nom. Vrrajkum, under review by BennyOnTheLoose Louise Bourgeois Boursier nom. Doug Coldwell Ureter nom. Tom (LT), under review by Dunkeosteus77 Anatomical terms of location nom. Tom (LT) Antibiotic sensitivity testing nom. Tom (LT)

News from around the site

• If you've got the time, please review a GA nomination (criteria/instructions). Nominations currently sit two months before review. Let's aim for a month or less.
• Starting July 3rd, the WMF's "Wikipedia" social media accounts will highlight an "article of the week". If you've got the bandwidth, you can watchlist Social media/Article of the week (on meta) where they'll post the article around a day ahead of time for us to clean up. You can also suggest articles to highlight.
• A new sister project has been approved by the WMF Board: Abstract Wikipedia.

Discussions of interest

• Several medicine-related FAs promoted 5+ years ago could use a review and update. An effort to organize our efforts is at WT:MED.
• A large university class is working on medicine-related articles this month. They're largely focused on articles with maintenance tags. The students are working in small groups and posting their goals at each talk page. Consider watchlisting some of the assigned articles and helping the students (and us regulars) have a positive experience.
• Tom (LT) is spearheading an effort to clean up and organize medicine-related templates, resulting in many active TfD discussions. See a list of active TfDs at WP:MED/Article alerts.

For a list of ongoing discussions in WP:MED-tagged articles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Discussions
Also, a reminder to see Article Alerts for a list of medicine-related AfDs, CfDs, merge discussions, and more!

Under the Wikimedia Research Spotlight

Number of academic papers focused on Wikipedia's health content each year

This month's Wikimedia Research Showcase was on the topic "Medical knowledge on Wikipedia". It featured two presentations from invited academics (link).

First, Denise Smith (Mcbrarian) at McMaster and Western Universities received a WMF grant to review the academic literature on "Wikipedia as a health resource". She found 89 papers on the topic, most of which aim to assess our health content's accuracy, comprehensiveness, or readability. Findings vary, but are complicated by poor comparators (e.g. Wikipedia vs. a surgery textbook), the fluidity of content (research becomes dated quickly), and attempts to generalize to "health content" with no discussion of how our content is a patchwork of articles in vastly different states. The remaining papers fall into one of three categories: the use of Wikipedia as (1) a general medical resource, (2) a tool for health education, or (3) a tool for research. Interesting papers in each group, but I'll leave further exploration to the reader. There's a general trend of more papers on this topic over time; Smith is hopeful the stigma towards Wikipedia in academia and healthcare could be eroding. With any luck, her review will help orient academics as they consider studying our content. For more, see her paper in PLoS ONE.

Second, Giovanni Colavizza at the University of Amsterdam sought to assess the reliability and comprehensiveness of our covid-19 coverage by studying our citations. He collected the ~3k citations in our covid articles and compared them to the ~160k total papers on covid/coronaviruses. He found we disproportionately cite articles in more reputable journals, as well as articles that are highly cited, mentioned on Twitter, downloaded on Mendeley, etc. We disfavor citing preprints. To investigate the comprehensiveness of our citations across topics, he used the titles and abstracts of all covid papers to cluster them into five broad topical groups. He finds our citations to each group largely match its proportion in the total literature, with some exceptions (we overcite molecular biology and epidemics papers relative to their proportion in the literature, and undercite clinical medicine and public health papers). One might assume this means our coverage of covid-19 is fairly balanced to the broad topics of the literature. For more, see Colavizza's slide deck and biorxiv preprint.

For the time/interest constrained, see summaries from the authors and from WhatamIdoing.

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

Ajpolino (talk) 20:37, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Paragraphs

After thirteen years of not knowing anything about this, I now find I am in the habit of using the same number of colons on the blank line between paragraphs.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:23, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: you're a star! Screen reader users will love you. --RexxS (talk) 19:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it was there before, or I didn't see it, but I think this is what you said to do and now it is in the directions for indenting on talk pages.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:11, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

18.4%

I did not mean to say that it killed 18.4% of people over 80. Rather, I meant to say that it killed 18.4% of cases in cases over 80 years old

@4thfile4thrank: That's not what the source says. Please learn to sign your posts. --RexxS (talk) 15:43, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@4thfile4thrank: I've only read the summary and scanned the rest, but all I can see is that "...estimates of the proportion of infected individuals likely to be hospitalised increased with age up to a maximum of 18·4% (11·0–37·6) in those aged 80 years or older." Hospitalised isn't dead. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:23, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Edit war accusation

How did I edit war? "An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions". I took it to discussion and only reverted it once? How is this an edit war?

@4thfile4thrank: You twice inserted the same incorrect content into a highly-visible article under general sanctions, and now you want to argue about whether you are edit-warring? You need to read WP:CIR. --RexxS (talk) 17:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Jaydoggmarco

Jaydoggmarco (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Testing behavioral policy enforcement, perhaps? [4] --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 16:42, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Quite possibly, thanks for the heads-up. The problem with being able to take decisive action in these sort of cases is the lack of discussion on the relevant article talk page(s). I know it's a hassle, but if you always open a discussion on the article talk, the moment you revert, you put the onus on a problematical editor to actually justify their edits. Subsequently, if you get deadlock on the talk page about a source's reliability, posting at RSN will often result in a situation where you're not just in a one-vs-one argument. I understand you already know all that, but I just wanted to ensure if I do take admin action, I've got a solid case to defend if it gets challenged. I promise I'm keeping an eye on the present situation. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:44, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Much appreciated. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 19:23, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

He only made one edit. I don't get your overreaction.2600:1700:BFA1:AEB0:B960:7AF:BB57:4A82 (talk) 23:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Sock/meatpuppet? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 16:00, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Not worth an SPI, so no way of knowing. They've been around for a while, though: see their contributions. They are interested in conspiracy theories involving the CIA and are currently engaged in an edit war at Kiki Camarena, where Jaydoggmarco is involved. See Talk:Kiki Camarena #Recent edits (May 2020) and nearby threads. --RexxS (talk) 16:47, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

(talk page watcher) Reversion of removal of challenged content on a WP:BLP? --Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:19, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Yep, and seems to be a habit. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 03:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

User Smartbash

Hello RexxS, user Smartbash was requested (multiple times) to disclose link(s) to all active accounts at websites where they advertise paid Wikipedia-editing services but, instead of replying, they removed the paid disclosure from their user page. Can you please take a look? Thank you, GSS ^💬 05:13, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Category:Short description with empty Wikidata description has been nominated for deletion

Category:Short description with empty Wikidata description has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Fram (talk) 12:04, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:OnlyOffline

Template:OnlyOffline has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Tom (LT) (talk) 04:36, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

A med-related copyright problem

Hi RexxS, sorry to bother, but you're the first medicine-interested admin that comes to mind. I was happily cleaning up Mycobacterium ulcerans the other day when I thought some of the existing wording seemed a bit fishy. I plugged it into Earwig's and lo-and-behold nearly the whole article was copy/pasted from a 2000 WHO report. I went to check when the material was copy/pasted, and it goes back to SEPTEMBER 2006! The copy/paste is the first substantive edit to the page (the previous edit created the page as a redirect)! In a tizzy, I posted at WT:Copyright problems and was gently guided to re-post at the more appropriate Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2020 August 9 but it seems like there's quite a backlog there. I'm not sure what the normal course of action here is. I don't think I've ever seen a copyvio that stood for so long. So a penny for your thoughts? I'd like to clear this up so I could go back to editing the page. Thanks in advance for your guidance! I hope you're staying well! Best, Ajpolino (talk) 00:23, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

You Need to RFA ;) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:22, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

@Ajpolino: Thanks for the heads-up, but there's not much for me to do right now. You've followed all the right steps by removing the suspected copyright-violating content from the article, posting a report at WP:CP and placing the warning notice on the article. It's a bit late for me tonight, but I'll look again tomorrow, although one or more of our copyright specialists like Diannaa might have dealt with it already by then. As it's been in place since 2006, it probably won't be a problem to give it a day or two for the investigation. After that's sorted you'll be able to get back to cleaning up the article. In the meantime, I found https://www.who.int/buruli/resources/who_cds_cpe_gbui_2000.1/en/ which you might want to check to see if it's the same as the document you suspect is the original source. If so, you can probably then summarise that to replace the excised content. Please let me know if you run into any problems. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 02:33, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Cases that are listed at WP:CP normally stay on the page at least one week before being cleaned. I have downloaded a copy of the WHO report but I am unable to search within the document to check whether there's any overlap. Beats me how you checked it against that document using Earwig either. So I won't be able to help check that particular document. Hut 8.5 has confirmed there is indeed overlap, so it must be a quirk of my laptop. The current version has a lot of overlap with this paper which is copyright, and the 2006 big edit has a lot of overlap with this one. At the bottom of that big edit, the person who added it says it's a copy of their thesis. I have added my findings at WP:CP.— Diannaa (talk) 04:15, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

WP:ANI#Александр_Мотин_reported_by_Zefr

Hi RexxS, I have moved the AIV report to WP:ANI#Александр_Мотин_reported_by_Zefr. Perhaps it is no longer relevant or dealt with already; you might like to comment. Thanks and best regards, ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:35, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Page-level sanctions

Re. the page level sanctions you added at Talk:Gam-COVID-Vac, you probably want to add that into the editnotice as well. {{Gs/editnotice}} isn't really ready for usage, so I guess some kind of generic notice banner with the info would work. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:57, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: I created Template:Editnotices/Page/Gam-COVID-Vac at the same time as I added the sanction. I used {{COVID19 GS editnotice}} per the instructions. That template currently only takes a |expiry= parameter, so isn't capable yet of displaying page-specific sanctions. I'll hack it now to allow for that. --RexxS (talk) 17:39, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Please see discussion at Help talk:Table

Link to discussion:

• Help talk:Table#Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and scope

--Timeshifter (talk) 16:12, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

@Timeshifter::

1. Learn how to use the WP:Notifications system. I don't need a talk page message every time anybody replies to me on a thread.
2. See the prior discussion: Help talk:Table #Scope.

--RexxS (talk) 22:01, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Looking for an easy way

One way to handle a major time sink and still look cool. Just ask RexxS to wave his magic wand.^Atsme _Talk 📧 23:19, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi, RexxS - hope all is well on your end, and that you have managed to avoid cabin fever, or worse - boredom, which can get an editor in deep poopoo if they're not careful. I was hoping you might have a magic wand that can fix a relatively minor but time consuming issue; i.e., reorganizing table entries in chronological order. See Jeffrey Richards (producer)#Stage. It would be such a time saver if we could just reverse it with a single command, like reversing chronological or alphabetical order in an MS Word doc. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 19:53, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

@Atsme: all is good here and I'm keeping busy. Hope you are too. I only have means of sorting tables if there are no rowspans, so I've removed them and reverse sorted the table offline then pasted it back in. See if that is what you want, or feel free to revert if not. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:28, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

DAY-EM, you're good, RexxS! GIANT hugs for sparing me a major time sink! Thank you very much! ^Atsme _Talk 📧 23:19, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm too tired to think up a suitable section header.

I've just seen http://www.metropolis2.co.uk/StRexx/. It raised a chuckle. JBW (talk) 22:31, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

@JBW: I was at an AfD where a contributor was insisting that all secondary schools were notable, so the sourcing wouldn't be an issue. I was trying to make the point that you had to have sources to prove it existed first. --RexxS (talk) 22:40, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Somebody showed me that website in the pub once. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:19, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Raul Cătinaș

Hello, RexxS,

Welcome to Wikipedia! I edit here too, under the username Onel5969 and I thank you for your contributions.

I wanted to let you know, however, that I have tagged an article that you started, Raul Cătinaș, for deletion, because a consensus decision previously decided that it wasn't suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia. If you wish to restore a page deleted via a deletion discussion, please use the deletion review process instead, rather than reposting the content of the page.

If you feel that the article shouldn't be deleted and want more time to work on it, you can contest this deletion but please don't remove the speedy deletion tag from the top. If the page is already deleted by the time you come across this message and you wish to retrieve the deleted material, please contact the deleting administrator.

For any further query, please leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|Onel5969}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ . Thanks!

Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.

Onel5969 ^{TT me} 14:39, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I've declined the speedy deletion request, as WP:G4 is only applicable if the new version is "sufficiently identical" to the deleted original version, which it isn't. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:37, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Dude! You've been templated! --Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Twice! I've left an appropriate bollocking on his talk page. Shitty Page Curation tool. --RexxS (talk) 17:47, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I will to try avoid giving a bollocking of my own here but no promises. Onel is, in my mind, an incredibly valuable Wikipedian; not perfect but who is? He does important work in several areas and was responsible for some ridiculous percentage of New Page Patrols over a more than 2 year period. He felt discouraged after some of his work had been deleted - see the LOADS of templated messages on his talk page - and had retired. I am guessing you might have seen the retired banner at the top of his user talk. Fortunately, like many editors, he just needed some time away. I am appreciative of the work that he does for however long he decides to stay with us - I hope it will be a long time and would hope that important members of the community like yourself would help create that desire.

Having just returned in the last few days, perhaps he didn't deserve a bollocking because of mistakes made when an administrator incorrectly restored deleted material. Perhaps, there could have been another way of expressing your point; as I read it bradv didn't give you any bollocking and you've understood his point. Perhaps you could have taken your clear outrage and used it to improve community endorsed practices rather than laser beaming on one editor. Just some thoughts. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:57, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, Barkeep49, and I've apologised to him. That particular automated tool is sub-optimal for that job and it's not Onel's fault. Another NP Patroller gave him the advice to use Twinkle for the notifications, which looks a sensible improvement. Turns out that the article in question had been created and deleted as two separate articles, one with diacritics and one without, so Bradv was able to merge their histories. Looks like we fortuitously managed an improvement after all, despite my ill-temper with the templates. --RexxS (talk) 00:59, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Rexx for doing that. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:12, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Category:Short description with empty Wikidata description

This category seems to be containing articles which have no wikidata description, rather than an "empty" description. If I'm right, I think it should be renamed for clarity. SD0001 (talk) 05:06, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

@SD0001: That's exactly what was intended. The point was that for entities that had no description or an empty one (which is almost certainly the same thing on Wikidata), there would be a potential to export the enwiki short description to Wikidata as an obvious improvement. We could rename the category, but is the effort worth it? --RexxS (talk) 11:01, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

August

August

Sunflowers in Walsdorf

A first for me today: a featured list (= a featured topic in this case) on the Main page, see Wikipedia:Main Page history/2020 August 21, an initiative by Aza24 in memory of Brian. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:13, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Outdated security on a certain site related to "Russian vaccine"

@Александр Мотин: that site uses an outdated security configuration. That's normally a red flag for anything we want to use as a reliable source (no pun intended). --RexxS (talk) 21:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Erm... sorry to disturb you --- I wanted to ask what exactly is outdated. If you warned Motin, you probably saw what is actually wrong with the site.

Reason: не ну а чо, я им напишу, errr, well, i will write them about it, so they will patch it out.

Or even better, I will tell them they need to "ask" their admin to patch things up. Uchyotka (talk) 01:42, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

@Uchyotka: when I attempted to follow the link to https://grls.rosminzdrav.ru/Grls_View_v2.aspx?routingGuid=d494c688-0bc6-4c30-9e81-23f043ceb43e&t= Chrome immediately warned me

Your connection is not fully secure

This site uses an outdated security configuration, which may expose your information (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards) when it is sent to this site.

NET::ERR_SSL_OBSOLETE_VERSION

I can't recommend anybody to follow a link that is insecure. I can see that the domain is registered to the "Russian Federation ministry of public health", but even so, using an obsolete version of SSL is an astonishing mistake for a state-owned institution. --RexxS (talk) 15:36, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

China has recently banned connections using TLS 1.3 for censorship and/or snooping reasons; I would not be surprised if the Russians had a similar regime or distaste for private traffic or disinterest in encouraging their users to use secure connections. --Izno (talk) 16:26, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

LUA stuff

You know more about "Lua module coding" than I ever will. Would you have any comment or advice at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Historic sites#Recent template changes broke a few list-type articles, recommend splitting them to fix the problem relating to list articles which now exceed Wikipedia:Template limits#Post-expand include size, which is all getting a bit technical for me?— Rod ^talk 18:48, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi Rod I've looked at the discussion and the solutions offered seem to be taking care of part of the problem for the moment. The bit about Lua is a red-herring, because nobody is going to spend the time transforming {{Vcite}} into a Lua module. It's just not used enough to be worth it. It looks like all of its uses have been converted to {{Cite web}} and its siblings anyway.

Looking at the Scheduled monuments in West Somerset article, I can see that it exceeds the "Post-expand include size" so you won't see the references beyond about #209. I've made an example of what you get if you substitute the "EH listed" templates. That reduces the templates enough to see all of the references and brings the Post-expand include size down to about 1.8 MB (the limit is about 2 MB). Unfortunately, it increases the text size from about 250 kB to 440 kB and it's messy to work with, because the main templates have gone. It also takes 6 seconds to render a preview, so I think the only real solution is to reduce the size of the list by splitting the article into two. I suggest something like Scheduled monuments in West Somerset (A–G) and Scheduled monuments in West Somerset (H–Z) would be a nearly equal divide. What do you think? --RexxS (talk) 13:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for trying (several others have also been attempting fixes). Doing an alphabetical split may be possible but a complication since I wrote this (and similar lists) is that the West Somerset council has since combined with Taunton Deane to create Somerset West and Taunton so the scheduled monuments list should really be combined with List of scheduled monuments in Taunton Deane. Having moved from Somerset I really don't feel up to this fairly massive bit of work (along with the lists of listed buildings etc) at the moment.— Rod ^talk 13:47, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

This edit

Actually, I disagree with you on experienced user being poorly defined. It's actually defined right here. If you'd like I can change my wording from "Experienced Editor " to "Senior Editor". Making this a sysop only edit violates assume good faith, so this would need to be changed to comply. W.K.W.W.K...^{Toss a coin to the witcher, ye valley of plenty} 11:56, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Wekeepwhatwekill: Nonsense. The "service awards" are a joke. It's ludicrous to claim that someone who reaches their 6,000th edit and 18 months of editing is then transformed into someone with the judgement needed to close a discussion where "the outcome is a close call (especially where there are several valid outcomes) or likely to be controversial." It's complete bollocks to try to claim it violates good faith, and assuming good faith is not a suicide pact. We have sysops for a reason – and that reason includes the community's confirmation that the sysop's judgement is trusted sufficiently to do those tough closes. There is a process to go through to meet that bar, and "experienced editors" (whatever they may be) haven't been through it.

Now understand that arguments about what you may or may not disagree with are off-topic for my talk page, so I'll thank you to take them somewhere else where they will be appreciated. --RexxS (talk) 12:37, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) @Wekeepwhatwekill: I saw this a little while ago, wrote a comment, then forgot to publish it and just left it here. Anway, RexxS has answered now, but why let my words go to waste? The Service Awards things are just a social/amusing aside, with names and statuses that are totally made up just for fun - notice at the top it says "displaying the right [award] does not indicate authority or competence". There is nothing "official" or consensus-based behind them, and Wikipedia simply does not define those levels of users. So those made-up titles like "Experienced Editor", "Senior Editor", "Grandmaster Editor" etc have no meaning whatsoever in the wider Wikipedia community. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:25, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Well....yes and no. Yes, they might be made up, but, no the edits aren't nor are the years. For a person to remain active on Wikipedia for that number of years with that many edits indicates this person has some kind of competence with Wikipedia, otherwise they'd be blocked, banned or indeffed. So I see them as a guideline, so to speak. Also, it's pretty well documented that being a sysop is WP:NOBIGDEAL so I tend to disagree with you. I guess the best way to state my position is this, if a user closes , say , an AFD with "Delete", that would need to be reversed because the closer wasn't a sysop, because a user can't delete anything. However, a user closing a discussion in good faith shouldn't have his close reversed unless there's something wrong with the close other than "the user isn't a sysop". That's absurd and is an automatic assumption of bad faith to the user, even if it is a close call. So I agree to disagree with you on that. W.K.W.W.K...^{Toss a coin to the witcher, ye valley of plenty} 14:34, 24 August 2020 (UTC)