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Articles for deletion

08 May 2024 – Gerrit bij de Leij (talk · edit · hist) was AfDed by Lee Vilenski (t · c); see discussion (2 participants)

Old stuff to resolve eventually

Cueless billiards

Unresolved

– Can't get at the stuff at Ancestry; try using addl. cards.

Extended content

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)[reply]

Crud fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually. I think at least some variants of bar billiards are played with hands and some bagatelle split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's bocce billiards, article I've not written yet. Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once. Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection. She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. Hand pool might be its own article eventually. Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics". Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have crud), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really. I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-) In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at CfD. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled Category:Pinball just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to Category:Darts soon.

PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted Yank Adams as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a bunch of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.? I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4½ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years. I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for. S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the Blue Book of Pool Cues too for under $200 total. Here it is for $160, plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-) DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh. Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

PayPal Plugin ist kaput. Some banks now issue credit card accounts that make use of virtual card numbers, but mine's not one of them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 19:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for trying. It was worth a shot. I signed up for a newspaperarchive.com three month trial. As far as newspaper results go it seems quite good so far, and the search interface is many orders of magnitude better than ancestry's, but it has none of the genealogical records that ancestry provides. With ancestry I could probably find census info on Yank as well as death information (as well as for Masako Katsura, which I've been working on it for a few days; she could actually be alive, though she'd be 96).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK. PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Jackpot. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nice find! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the main page

Unresolved

– Katsura News added (with new TFA section) to WP:CUE; need to see if I can add anything useful to Mingaud article.

Extended content

Look at the main page --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since you don't appear to have seen this near to the time I left it, it might be a little cryptic without explanation. Masako Katsura was today's featured article on January 31, 2011.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Supah-dupah! That kicks. WP:CUE's (and your?) first TFA, yes?! And yeah I have been away a lot lately. Long story. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, my first, though I have another in the works (not billiards related). I think François Mingaud could be a candidate in the near future. I really wanted to work it up to near FA level before posting it but another user created it recently, not realizing my draft existed, and once they did realize, copied some of my content without proper copyright attribution and posted to DYK. I have done a history merge though the newer, far less developed content is what's seen in the article now. I'm going to merge the old with the new soon. Glad to see your back.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My front and sides are visible too. ;-) Anyway, glad you beat me to Mingaud. I'd been thinking of doing that one myself, but it seemed a bit daunting. I may have some tidbits for it. Lemme know when your merged version goes up, and I'll see what I have that might not already be in there. Probably not earthshaking, just a few things I found in 1800s-1910s books. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 16:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some more notes on Crystalate

Unresolved

– New sources/material worked into article, but unanswered questions remain.

Extended content

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)[reply]

Thanks! I'll have to have a look at this stuff in more detail. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 15:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've worked most of it in. Fences&Windows 16:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cool! From what I can tell, entirely different parties held the trademark in different markets. I can't find a link between Crystalate Mfg. Co. Ltd. (mostly records, though billiard balls early on) and the main billiard ball mfr. in the UK, who later came up with "Super Crystalate". I'm not sure the term was even used in the U.S. at all, despite the formulation having been originally patented there. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SAL

Unresolved

– Not done yet, last I looked.

Extended content

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)[reply]

I'll take a look at the page shortly. Thanks for the nudge. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 23:19, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your free 1-year HighBeam Research account is ready

Unresolved

– Needs to be renewed

Extended content

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Unresolved

– Needs to be renewed.

Extended content

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Thanks for helping make Wikipedia better. Enjoy your research! Cheers, Ocaasi 17:22, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yay! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 10:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Circa

Unresolved

– Need to file the RfC.

Extended content

of Style/Abbreviations&diff=530110577&oldid=530110478 This edit explains how to write "ca.", which is still discouraged at MOS:#Abbreviations, WP:YEAR, WP:SMOS#Abbreviations, and maybe MOS:DOB, and after you must have read my complaint and ordeal at WT:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Circa. Either allow "ca." or don't allow "ca.", I don't care which, but do it consistently. Art LaPella (talk) 15:41, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good WP:RFC. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 17:52, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's been hard to get opinions on circa in the past. Anyway, can I undo that edit, until when and if someone wants to edit the other guidelines to match? If we leave it there indefinitely, nobody will notice except me. Art LaPella (talk) 20:17, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't care; this will have to be dealt with in an RfC anyway. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 20:44, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done (now I don't need to wonder if the RfC will ever be acted on :) ) Art LaPella (talk) 21:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You post at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright

Unresolved

– Need to fix William A. Spinks, etc., with proper balkline stats, now that we know how to interpret them.

Extended content

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)[reply]

Yeah, I did a bunch of archiving yesterday. This page was HUGE. It'll get there again. I'd forgotten MCQ existed. Can you please add it to the DAB hatnote at top of and "See also" at bottom of WP:COPYRIGHT? Its conspicuous absence is precisely why I ened up at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright! Haven't seen your balkline response yet; will go look. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hee Haw

Unresolved

– Still need to propose some standards on animal breed article naming and disambiguation.

Extended content

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)[reply]

Truce, certainly. I'm not here to pick fights, just improve the consistency for readers and editors. I don't think there will be any scholarly articles on differences between landrace and breed, because there's nothing really to write about. Landrace has clear definitions in zoology and botany, and breed not only doesn't qualify, it is only established as true in any given case by reliable sources. Basically, no one anywhere is claiming "This is the Foobabaz horse, and it is a new landrace!" That wouldn't make sense. What is happening is people naming and declaring new alleged breeds on an entirely self-interested, profit-motive basis, with no evidence anyone other than the proponent and a few other experimental breeders consider it a breed. WP is full of should-be-AfD'd articles of this sort, like the cat one I successfully prod'ed last week. Asking for a reliable source that something is a landrace rather than a breed is backwards; landrace status is the default, not a special condition. It's a bit like asking for a scholarly piece on whether pig Latin is a real language or not; no one's going to write a journal paper about that because "language" (and related terms like "dialect", "language family", "creole" in the linguistic sense, etc.) have clear definitions in linguistics, while pig Latin, an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally-managed form of communication (like an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally managed form of domesticated animal) does not qualify. :-) The "what is a breed" question, which is also not about horses any more than cats or cavies or ferrets, is going to be a separate issue to resolve from the naming issue. Looking over what we collaboratively did with donkeys – and the naming form that took, i.e. Poitou donkey not Poitou (donkey), I think I'm going to end up on your side of that one. It needs to be discussed more broadly in an RFC, because most projects use the parenthetical form, because this is what WT:AT is most readily interpretable as requiring. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I hate the drama of an RfC, particularly when we can just look at how much can be naturally disambiguated, but if you think it's an actual issue, I guess ping me when it goes up. As for landcraces, it may be true ("clear definitions") but you would be doing God's (or someone's) own good work if you were to improve landrace which has few references, fewer good ones, and is generally not a lot of help to those of us trying to sort out WTF a "landrace" is... (smiles). As for breed, that is were we disagree: At what point do we really have a "breed" as opposed to a "landrace?" Fixed traits, human-selected? At what degree, at which point? How many generations? I don't even know if there IS such a thing as a universal definition of what a "breed" is: seriously: [6] or breed or [7]. I think you and I agree that the Palomino horse can never be a "breed" because it is impossible for the color to breed true (per an earlier discussion) so we have one limit. But while I happen agree to a significant extent with your underlying premise that when Randy from Boise breeds two animals and says he has created a new breed and this is a problem, (I think it's a BIG problem in the worst cases) but if we want to get really fussy, I suppose that the aficionados of the Arabian horse who claim the breed is pure from the dawn of time are actually arguing it is a landrace, wouldn't you say? And what DO we do with the multi-generational stuff that's in limbo land? Montanabw^(talk) 00:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not really certain what the answers are to any of those questions, another reason (besides your "STOP!" demands :-) that I backed away rapidly from moving any more horse articles around. But it's something that is going to have to be looked into. I agree that the Landrace article here is poor. For one thing, it needs to split Natural breed out into its own article (a natural breed is a selectively-bred formal breed the purpose of which is to refine and "lock-in" the most definitive qualities of a local landrace). This in turn isn't actually the same thing as a traditional breed, though the concepts are related. Basically, three breeding concepts are squished into one article. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Side comment: I tend to support one good overview article over three poor content forks, just thinking aloud... Montanabw^(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure; the point is that the concepts have to be separately, clearly treated, because they are not synonymous at all. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 02:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the article isn't well-sourced yet, I think that you might want to add something about that to landrace now, just to give whomever does article improvement on it later (maybe you, I think this is up your alley!) has the "ping" to do so. Montanabw^(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, it's on my to-do list. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 22:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Although I have been an evolutionary biologist for decades, I only noticed the term "landrace" within the past year or two (in reference to corn), because I work with wildland plants. But I immediately knew what it was, from context. I'm much less certain about breeds, beyond that I am emphatic that they are human constructs. Montanabw and I have discussed my horse off-wiki, and from what I can tell, breeders are selecting for specific attributes (many people claim to have seen a horse "just like him"), but afaik there is no breed "Idaho stock horse". Artificially-selected lineages can exist without anyone calling them "breeds"; I'm not sure they would even be "natural breeds", and such things are common even within established breeds (Montanabw could probably explain to us the difference between Polish and Egyptian Arabians).

The good thing about breeds wrt Wikipedia is that we can use WP:RS and WP:NOTABLE to decide what to cover. Landraces are a different issue: if no one has ever called a specific, distinctive, isolated mustang herd a landrace, is it OR for Wikipedia to do so?--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have been reluctant to use landrace much out of a concern that the concept is a bit OR, as I hadn't heard of it before wikipedia either (but I'm more a historian than an evolutionary biologist, so what do I know?): Curtis, any idea where this did come from? It's a useful concept, but I am kind of wondering where the lines are between selective breeding and a "natural" breed -- of anything. And speaking of isolated Mustang herds, we have things like Kiger Mustang, which is kind of interesting. I think that at least some of SMc's passion comes from the nuttiness seen in a lot of the dog and cat breeders these days, am I right? I mean, Chiweenies? Montanabw^(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The first use of the word that I saw referred to different landraces of corn growing in different elevations and exposures in indigenous Maya areas of modern Mexico. I haven't tracked down the references for the use of the word, but the concept seems extremely useful. My sense is that landraces form as much through natural selective processes of cultivation or captivity as through human selection, so that if the "garbage wolf" hypothesis for dog domestication is true, garbage wolves would have been a landrace (or more likely several, in different areas). One could even push the definition and say that MRSA is a landrace. But I don't have enough knowledge of the reliable sources to know how all this would fit into Wikipedia.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Landraces form, primarily and quickly, through mostly natural selection, long after domestication. E.g. the St Johns water dog and Maine Coon cat are both North American landraces that postdate European arrival on the continent. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I see some potential for some great research on this and a real improvement to the articles in question. Montanabw^(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redundant sentence?

Unresolved

– Work to integrate WP:NCFLORA and WP:NCFAUNA stuff into MOS:ORGANISMS not completed yet?

Extended content

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)[reply]

I would leave it a alone for now; let people get used to the changes. I think it's reasonable to include the "general names" thing, because it's a catch-all that includes several different kinds of examples, that various largely different groups of people are apt to capitalize. Various know-nothings want to capitalize things like "the Cats", the "Great Apes", etc., because they think "it's a Bigger Group and I like to Capitalize Big Important Stuff". There are millions more people who just like to capitalize nouns and stuff. "Orange's, $1 a Pound". Next we have people who insist on capitalizing general "types" and landraces of domestic animals ("Mountain Dogs", "Van Cat") because they're used to formal breed names being capitalized (whether to do that with breeds here is an open question, but it should not be done with types/classes of domestics, nor with landraces. Maybe the examples can be sculpted better: "the roses", "herpesviruses", "great apes", "Bryde's whale", "mountain dogs", "Van cat", "passerine birds". I'm not sure that "rove beetle" and "oak" are good examples of anything. Anyway, it's more that the species no-capitalization is a special case of the more general rule, not that the general rule is a redundant or vague version of the former. If they're merged, it should keep the general examples, and maybe specifically spell out and illustrate that it also means species and subspecies, landraces and domestic "types", as well as larger and more general groupings.
I had noticed that point and was going to add it, along with some other points from both NCFLORA and NCFAUNA, soon to MOS:ORGANISMS, which I feel is nearing "go live" completion. Does that issue come up often enough to make it a MOS mainpage point? I wouldn't really object to it, and it could be had by adding an "(even if it coincides with a capitalized Genus name)" parenthetical to the "general names" bit. The pattern is just common enough in animals to have been problematic if it were liable to be problematic, as it were. I.e., I don't see a history of squabbling about it at Lynx or its talk page, and remember looking into this earlier with some other mammal, about two weeks ago, and not seeing evidence of confusion or editwarring. The WP:BIRDS people were actually studiously avoiding that problem; I remember seeing a talk page discussion at the project that agreed that such usage shouldn't be capitalized ever. PS: With Lynx, I had to go back to 2006, in the thick of the "Mad Capitalization Epidemic" to find capitalization there[8], and it wasn't even consistent, just in the lead. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 11:11, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, certainly "rove beetle" and "oak" are poor examples here, so I would support changing to some of the others you suggested above.
I think the main problem we found with plants was it being unclear as to whether inexperienced editors meant the scientific name or the English name. So you would see a sentence with e.g. "Canna" in the middle and not know whether this should be corrected to "Canna" or to "canna". The plural is clear; "cannas" is always lower-case non-italicized. The singular is potentially ambiguous. Whether it's worth putting this point in the main MOS I just don't know since I don't much edit animal articles and never breed articles, which is why I asked you. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:55, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Will take a look at that later, if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
Beats me. Doesn't seem too frequent an issue, but lot of MOS stuff isn't. Definitely should be in MOS:ORGANISMS, regardless. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 00:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Worked on both of those a bit at MOS. We'll see if it sticks. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 01:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note to self

Unresolved

Extended content
Finish patching up WP:WikiProject English language with the stuff from User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language, and otherwise get the ball rolling. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 20:22, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Diacritics

Unresolved

– An anti-diacritics pseudo-guideline is a problem and needs an RfC.

Extended content

Greetings. I was referring to conventions like "All North American hockey pages should have player names without diacritics.". Cédric ^{HATES TPP.} 23:26, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Cedric tsan cantonais: Wow, thanks for drawing that to my attention. Don't know how that one slipped past the radar. That is actually a bogus WP:LOCALCONSENSUS "guideline" and needs to be fixed! My point still stands, though, that "any" covers both this any any new proposal someone might come up with. :-) Anyway, I'm not sure how to deal with the "screw the MoS, we're going to ban diacritics in hockey" crap, other than probably an RfC hosted at WP:VPPOL. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 23:30, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For your information, I'm using "any and all" on the template so both our grounds can be covered. Cédric ^{HATES TPP.} 05:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fortunately, the universe did not implode. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 18:30, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent mini-tutorial

Unresolved

Extended content

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)[reply]

@Carcharoth: Thanks. I need to copy that into an essay page. As far as I know, the concepts are not clearly covered in any of those places, nor clearly enough even at Help:CS1 (which is dense and overlong as it is). The e-book matters bear some researching. I'm very curious whether particular formats (Nook, etc.) paginate consistently between viewers. For Web-accessible ones, I would think that the page numbering that appears in the Web app is good enough if it's consistent (e.g., between a PC and a smart phone) when the reader clicks the URL in the citation. I suppose one could also use |at= to provide details if the "page" has to be explained in some way. I try to rely on better-than-page-number locations when possible, e.g. specific entries in dictionaries and other works with multiple entries per page (numbered sections in manuals, etc.), but for some e-books this isn't possible – some are just continuous texts. One could probably use something like |at=in the paragraph beginning "The supersegemental chalcolithic metastasis is ..." about 40% into the document, in a pinch. I guess we do need to figure this stuff out since such sources are increasingly common. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 20:29, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes (about figuring out how to reference e-books), though I suspect existing (non-WP) citation styles have addressed this already (no need to re-invent the wheel). This is a slightly different case, though. It is a digitisation of an existing (physical) book that has no page numbers. If I had the book in front of me (actually, it was only published as a single copy, so it is not a 'publication' in that traditional sense of many copies being produced), the problem with page numbers would still exist. I wonder if the 'digital viewer' should be thought of as a 'via' thingy? In the same way that (technically) Google Books and archive.org digital copies of old books are just re-transmitting, and re-distributing the material (is wikisource also a 'via' sort of thing?). Carcharoth (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Carcharoth: Ah, I see. I guess I would treat it as a |via=, and same with WikiSource, which in this respect is essentially like Google Books or Project Gutenberg. I think your conundrum has come up various times with arXiv papers, that have not been paginated visibly except in later publication (behind a journal paywall and not examined). Back to the broader matter: Some want to treat WikiSource and even Gutenberg as republishers, but I think that's giving them undue editorial credit and splitting too fine a hair. Was thinking on the general unpaginated and mis-paginated e-sources matter while on the train, and came to the conclusion that for a short, unpaginated work with no subsections, one might give something like |at=in paragraph 23, and for a much longer one use the |at=in the paragraph beginning "..." trick. A straight up |pages=82–83 would work for an e-book with hard-coded meta-data pagination that is consistent between apps/platforms and no visual pagination. On the other hand, use the visual pagination in an e-book that has it, even if it doesn't match the e-book format's digital pagination, since the pagination in the visual content would match that of a paper copy; one might include a note that the pagination is that visible in the content if it conflicts with what the e-book reader says (this comes up a lot with PDFs, for one thing - I have many that include cover scans, and the PDF viewers treat that as p. 1, then other front matter as p. 2, etc., with the content's p. 1 being something like PDF p. 7). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 08:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Current threads

DYK

Hi Stanton, hope you are well. Just a quick message to apologise if you were worried about me nominating the ground billiards article for DYK. I wasn't sure if you were ok with that. I've done quite a few pool dyks recently, but realised I didn't ask about this one before nominating. Hope that's ok. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:47, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, have it! I'm so happy to see this stuff actually get into the 'pedia proper. I kept sitting on it for too long, lingering over the unresolved bits you wisely just commented out. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:49, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. It's a notable topic; so it's more likely someone will find all those missing bits of information. I don't have a great deal of knowledge on the subject, so thanks for giving it a once over. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:18, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Good one. I have an interest, as you may remember. This sentence jarred, despite having just read who he was, "probably most commonly made of wood. Cotton, writing" However, it is late, the rabbit is the article I'm wrestling with today, Nabarlek. cygnis insignis 22:12, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I never would have guess that. As for that sentence, I'll try tweaking it. Some kind of joke about cottontails is probably in there, but I can't seem to ferret it out. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:02, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Done. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:05, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Brought back by the crusaders, as so many things apparently were, but the point the author makes about being maintained by the clergy rings true. It is easy to imagine how that allowed refinement of rules and equipment, regional competitions, and so on. I would probably have joined the clergy to get access to the billiards. cygnis insignis 07:10, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Stein & Rubino make a really good case for it, and it can be backed up well with parallel histories of other games that became sports. A large number of them were developed in monasteries, during a period when much of Europe tried to forbid any organized game-playing of any kind to the common people (as the Devil directing idle hands away from work toward pursuits that too often turned violent in and of themselves and led to gambling and other vices). We got tennis and various related games via the church, as well as several forms of bowls and bowling (both obviously related to ground billiards – start whacking the ball into the air, or abandon the stick and use your hands), and they helped preserved in Europe various gentler Eastern games like chess and backgammon. Suppression of peasant games was hardly successful all the time, of course, especially with regard to big events like bull-runs and early forms of football (more like inter-village brawls) – sometimes troops were sent to suppress the events. And lots of dice and card games also survived (having easy-to-conceal implements of play). The rationale for the suppression was secular profiteering off the serfs and maintenance of power over them. Within the cloister walls, the church had different concerns, like keeping young monks from getting bored enough to seek out prostitutes, etc. The games developed within their walls – often with complex rulesets and requiring considerable skill – were eventually picked up in royals' courts (there was a lot of permeability between the two spheres, with higher clergy almost always being from the nobility, as with military officers, who also helped preserve and refine some games), and they spread out of court to the gentry then trickled down to commoner people, but mostly only as feudalism wound down. It was very gradual, tracking the progress of the Renaissance from around the 14th century until the real florescence of sport in the 18th. One interesting thing I ran across a while back was that the Spanish language simply did not have a word for 'sport' at all until well into this era, and had to backform deporte as an intentional neologism, along the same lines as the more natural disport in English (later shortened to sport) and desport in Old to Middle French (both from a Latin root meaning 'to behave', i.e. in that context 'to follow gentlemanly rules'). By the time of renewed wide-scale public game-playing by the people, the French had lost this meaning of what became déport, and borrowed sport directly from English. It's weird to imagine entire cultures with organized game-play so suppressed they didn't have the words for it. (They did have words for simple games, like juego in Spanish and jeu in French; like English joke, they're both from from Latin iocus, 'play, jest, pastime'.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:14, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page watcher) I call bullshit on entire cultures with organized game-play so suppressed they didn't have the words for it, at least with regards to Europe in this period. Because of sport's utility in getting young men fit for service should they be called on to join the militia, if anything the authorities in this period had an obsession with sport unparalleled in modern times, from the jousting tournaments of the nobility, to buhurt mass brawls, to weird-ass sports like goose pulling and fox tossing (and the even weirder stuff that grew up in the Spanish Empire like pato), to compulsory participation in archery contests for yeoman farmers, and that's before we get on to the entire competitive hunting-shooting-fishing subculture. The sports played may have changed from that day to this, but the concept of organized sport has been a part of all major European cultures right back to the start of recorded history; it's only the specific notion of professional team sports that's a 19th-century development ‑ Iridescent 22:08, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Military-oriented competition (mostly target oriented, or directly martial, like boxing/wrestling) were a big deal, but largely controlled by the military (i.e., the nobility); if the lord of your land wanted an archery competition, then he got one, and might authorize various other things at a festival (a controlled gathering with guards aplenty), but he'd not take too kindly to 100 of you having a near riot on his land for your own amusement and without supervision. The common people weren't able to participate in things like jousts, just watch them. Organized games without a practical and regulated aim like fight-training were banned (for the common folk) in various places by various rulers for considerable periods, including in England, along with gambling-oriented activities like card games. The latter were seen as vices, and the former as threats to order and the gentry. The army was sometimes sent out to stop things like bull runs. Didn't stop people, entirely, of course, and this kind of oppression wasn't universal; it came and went, and affected some areas barely at all. A lot of animal-oriented stuff seems to have been exempted (bear-baiting, etc.), but not when it got too many people together in one place for landholder comfort. England was trying to suppress bull runs well into the 19th c. (for the "lawlessness" reasons, not out of animal welfare concerns. Even in English, "sport" and "sporting" and such often referred to hunting-related activities until pretty recently; the lines blurred, and "let's kill some animals" was often in the mix.) So few forms of football survived probably as a result of the suppression; we know that villages had quite violent matches between each other without permission (there are some eyewitness accounts) but little is known of the rules, to the extent any existed and lasted more than a generation. Things like Rugby come down to us because of later institutions (of the upper class). Same with cricket and many other sports; they weren't pastimes of the common folk, though folk forms of stick-ball in general were clearly being played in numerous variations whether it was approved of or not. The suppression for long stretches does see to have had a language effect, since French lost its general word for it, and Spanish didn't develop one, and even the words for "game" in these languages doubled as a word for "joke" and other forms of amusement. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:52, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Without most of my relevant books available (in boxes due to moving), the earliest game-ban stuff I'm finding in a trivial amount of searching around is Henry III of England banning boules among the military, so they would practice archery and such instead of gambling over ball games. So, even the military dispensation for competitive activity had limits; if it wasn't practical, it was out, at least inasmuch as something like that would be enforceable. PS: Bowling-type games (which would have included ground billiards probably) were legally banned for all commoners in France (to whatever actual effect) starting with Charles IV and Charles V in the 14th c., and the ban wasn't lifted until the 17th c., which is quite a long time. The games were still played but largely by the gentry, including the clergy (we know they were since detailed account of them survived, and the games, including jeu de mail, spread around from court to court and eventually became popular in England, as bowls and pall-mall). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:55, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have some scrawled note about laying blame on you for some errors propagating out across the interweb, "lOcal con-census [exclamation points]" and something about placating creationists in flyover states for "bALance [more exclamtion marks and an interrobang]" … you would think I would remember what that was about. Can you remind me? And how are you. cygnis insignis 15:39, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Okay I suppose. :-) As for that stuff, I'm not sure. I move from thread to thread pretty fast. I'm the furthest thing from a placater of creationists, though. "Conservative" and "religious nut" aren't synonymous, though they overlap rather too uncomfortably in the US. To anyone overly equating them, it might easy for a suggestion of balance in articles on fiscal policy and other purely political left–right issues to be mistaken for a suggestion that FRINGE should be suspended for "balance" at articles that touch on religious matters. Any WP:LOCALCONSENSUS arguments to so so ("[[WP:OWN|Those of us who mostly wrote this article want it to read this way") are kind of out the window (per WP:CONLEVEL – site-wide policies and guidelines can't be trumped by individuals or WP:FACTIONs). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:12, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's coming back to me. Those sort of labels are not synonyms, and it is annoying when people equate it with foul and stupid for their factional purposes. Likewise when people presume to know another party's positions, as you pointed out. There is some consensus here, at wikipedia, and some manufacture of consent. My concern is a marginal concern in 'the scheme of things', communicating that without the awkward constraint of one of the local consensuses and the reactionary know-nothingness of 'goddam scientists takin' away muh name' that is the only concern of those with no 'vested' interest. cygnis insignis 17:23, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, when it comes to damned scientists wrongfully re-naming and re-classifying things, the real victims are obviously Pluto (being demoted from a planet), and dogs and cats (renamed to Canis lupus familiaris and Felis lybica catus, respectively, as just subspecies). Heh. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:40, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
SMcCandlish, Pluto deserved what it got, don't pretend otherwise. I don't think cat or dog has been a universal term for 250 odd years, still isn't, but I thinking along those lines: core vocab for the diversity of things people don't generally give hoot about. "is this a cat or a dog" "dog?" "correct!" [child beams with delight] cygnis insignis 17:54, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion review for Template:Puke

Done

– Commented at the DRV.

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Template:Puke. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 21:15, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I just reviewed that AfD and thought I'd summarize it to save other editors time:

Q: "Why should we keep the template?"

A: "Because it is puking on McCandlish."

Closer: "QED."

Leviv ich 21:32, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should be deleted because it's an insensitive mockery of people with eating disorders. Keeping this template is a trigger and is harming people. Someone might suicide over it, and even if they don't, it sends a terrible signal to the entire world, which is always watching every petty dispute on Wikipedia, that the project is hostile to people who are nutritionally different and gastrically challenged. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:07, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I object to your insensitive use of the phrase "sends a terrible signal" I had a terrible experience with a railway signal (I won't get into the painful details, but it also involved a platypus and an ornithopter), and any mention of "terrible signals" triggers me. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:23, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't all this "trigger" talk an insensitive trivialization of the victims and survivors of gun violence? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:53, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You are right! How could I be so thoughtless? I think that the paqge I linked the "T" word to above says it all. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:16, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies in advance to any thoughtless-Americans who might be offended by the above. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:16, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Getting back to the deletion review, I just !voted and at the same time asked the question "Would it be possible within the rules for deletion reviews to do what Kusma suggested late in the TfD, which is to delete and then re-purpose it as 🤮? --Guy Macon (talk) 02:31, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Could be done after-the-fact regardless; WP:CSD has a line-item for re-creating previously deleted material, but it doesn't apply to re-using now-vacant page titles for something else. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:42, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Done. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:45, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Combining parameters in Template:Db-t2

Almost exactly three years ago, you added a parameter (reason) to {{db-t2}}, basically treating it as a parenthetical to the unnamed 1. Was there a reason for that as opposed to just using combining them? I've merged them in the sandbox, what do you think about doing it that way? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 16:46, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Merging is fine my me, along with also supporting |rationale=. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:45, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User page

"Coincidentally, I was briefly a tech roadie for Aerosmith in 1994; they were probably the first band to do live online chat stuff with fans backstage at shows."
– How funny. It must be a genetic/fate thing, like you were somehow meant to be there! Let me guess, Oakland Coliseum Arena? North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 19:57, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, I was on the East Coast back then. The shows in question were in Chicago and a few other places on that side of the country, I forget. Tyler was funny. He's much smaller than he looks on stage. And he's weird. The band were all "clean" by then (backstage, they did some meet-and-greet, then had a quiet dinner with their wives – no drugs and sex parties and whatever). But Tyler would be talking, in that raspy voice, then burst into random song lyrics, then go right back to the sentence he was in. Like: "Yeah, I remember this one time, on our third European tour, we were at some club in London and WALK THIS WAY, WALK THIS WAAAAAY, yeah, I think we we hanging out with AC/DC, and ...". Nice guy though. I didn't think he was clear on who I even was or what I was doing there, then on the third night, I was watching the show from the over-by-the-amps crew seating, and he came over behind the amps for a breather while a guitar solo was on, and he's all like "Stanton! Man, you wouldn't believe how hot it is up here!" Then went back to the show. So, he knew me by name already. The tech crew was me, and Selena Sol (author of some CGI-scripting books), plus someone who wrangled the hardware. It was just for a week, I think, but quite a kick. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:44, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I love stories like this. Awesome. The singing could have been his way of warming up (if it was before the gig). You're the second person I've met on-wiki that has met Tyler (pinging Atsme), per File:Steven Tyler & Atsme.jpg. It's a small world after all. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:55, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fun times, huh, Mac? Na1000, I've learned that what happens in Sturgis stays in Sturgis especially during the bike rally. 🙊🙈🙊 I will add that we were neighbors in a quaint, sparsely populated valley about 50 miles outside of Sturgis. There was a little bar/restaurant across the highway where we all hung out in the evenings for hamburgers and drinks - it was local stuff, far removed from the ravages of the rally. Steven behaved normally - mmmm...normal might be stretching it for some...and like Mac said, he'd randomly burst into a few lines of song during a conversation. He played country songs on the juke box and just hung out with the locals. I don't think the man ever meets a stranger. He was in Sturgis to check on his chopper shop and the progress of his new bike but mostly to have fun. He really liked my new biker hat - it's the kind that won't blow off your head. Bikers treat him like he's just another biker, and I imagine he appreciates it. I've dealt with quite a few celebs when I was doing TV production, and when I was active in the cutting horse business. When they're away from the stage, they just want to blend in like everybody else. Anyway, like Mac said, Steven is much smaller than what he looks on stage, although I've never seen him on stage. I think maybe my arm is bigger around than his leg. 😂 ^Atsme 📣 📧 03:44, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Make that four–I met him about fifteen years ago. I was surprised he was shorter than me, but he was still very cool. He sang a bit of Sweet Emotion a capela shaking an Altoids tin for rhythm, sounded great. Leviv ich 03:44, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Levivich: Actually, that makes you #3, as I've never met the man. Seen them live though, and I was close to the stage. Good enough for me. Atsme: Yeah, I can dig that stance of the bikers treating him like anyone else; that's how it should be, really, particularly at a rally. Fact is, I've never bought into the celebrity idolization hype at all (not implying that you do). Funny thing is, being a Grateful Dead fan, at shows they never really tried to hype up the audience, and actually rarely spoke much on stage after the 70s. This is all despite the fact that later in the 80s and 90s, they were often the top-selling concert act in the U.S. No "hey New York, how ya doin' tonight?! Wooo hooo, we've got a great show for you tonight!" No stylized showmanship, just music, although the showmanship would come out in the playing/jamming/improvisation. They also dressed rather normally, essentially in street clothes. I liked these aspects of their approach a great deal, for various reasons. Another funny thing is, they're the only celebrities that I would actually get a bit hyped about when they were mentioned in mainstream media, because mainstream didn't really cover them that much, so it was like, well, all right, they're getting some deserved credit. Pinging another Wiki-friend, Mudwater, at this point, to see if they've met Tyler too! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:36, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not to worry, Na1000. I was the one signing autographs for celebs...on their paychecks.

^Atsme 📣 📧 08:03, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Atsme, I want your autograph! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The easiest way to get over being star-struck by celebs is going to sci-fi and comics conventions. For cheap entry fees, you'll end up meeting half the cast of every sci-fi, fantasy, and horror TV show and movie made in the last 30 years. Virtually all of them are chill, and they do seem to like being treated as regular folk instead of icons. I remember talking to Richard Hatch about Hatch chile and New Mexico's green chile culture, at the Albuquerque Comic Con; that kind of stuff. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:58, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense. Haven't made it to one of those yet. Hey, is it just me, or is there something horribly wrong with a celebrity that is famous for being famous, who became famous for having a corporation set-up video cameras in her family home when she was a child, becoming a 21 year old billionaire from hawking makeup products designed for women to adhere to society's imposed standards of what should define female beauty? Ugh (Womp Woooooommp). North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:56, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds worthless to me, but would hardly be the first FfBF case. What chaps my ass even more than, say, "reality" TV people who get way more press attention than they deserve (but do in fact get it, a bit like Zsa-Zsa Gabor back in the day, so are in fact notable) is when we have articles on little-known character actors that don't get any coverage other than passing mentions and maybe some trivial interview fluff, but we have articles on them because they have fans who lobby to keep them using rather IMDb-like rationales ("has been in 7 feature films and a guest start on 15 TV series so must be notable") My favorite example is Chipo Chung, an article that has not improved in the slightest since it got a no consensus at AfD years ago, and arguably worse now being full of non-encyclopedic trivia. The actress herself gets less work now than she did 5 years ago. Unless she pulls a Robert Downey Jr, and pole-vaults back from obscurity, she's never going to actually be notable. I get the impression she doesn't even focus on acting any longer, but on some nonprofit/charity work. Then there's the cat breeder I'm AfDing as we speak, and being met with a towering wall of heartfelt, hand-wringing WP:AADD arguments. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:57, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, well, I have my share of complaints. I laugh at the formula of how anyone who has been on SNL is then essentially guaranteed to be a millionaire through subsequent, certain movie deals to follow. I am not impressed with some musicians who became actors, with the A&R people shoeing them in per their musical popularity. Some of them are not necessarily the best actors, imo (hello Markie M, J Lo). I cringe at how the same actor has been used for all of the Harry Potter films, essentially shoeing-in another millionaire. Why not use different actors and give other's a chance? The list goes on and on, but there are a few pet peeves. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:22, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hard to argue with any of the above. The comic genius I became accustomed to back in the 70s-90s at SNL has changed, but isn't that typical of generational change? I can speak to the talent of Bill Murray because I worked with him while on-location in NYC in the 90s. "What About Bob" was in the can, so Bill had some free time. My old friend, the late Bob Boyle wanted me in NYC to shoot the International Sturgeon Conference. Bob was in charge of the logistics. I had no idea at the time that Bob & Bill were neighbors - both residents of the Palisades (Hudson River). I also wasn't aware that Bob had arranged for Bill to appear as a surprise guest at the International Sturgeon Conference. It wasn't until Bob came by the Museum of Natural History where we were shooting that I knew we were having lunch with Bill Murray. I was still in my work clothes!! I don't remember the name of the restaurant but the food was outstanding. Bob seated me next to Bill so I could do a casual interview. It was far more than I expected, and rather difficult to work with him because he kept everybody in stitches. He prepared his whole presentation for the conference on a napkin during lunch - asking me questions from time to time (I pretended to know the answers). I included a short clip of his conference appearance in the documentary, Sturgeon: Ancient Survivors. I had another opportunity to visit with Bill when we were shooting the dinner that was arranged for us by the Hudson River Foundation. They served smoked sturgeon and caviar they had shipped in from a white sturgeon farm in California (first time I had ever eaten smoked sturgeon or caviar). I also remembered that I needed a release from Murray, so I jotted something down real quick on a small note pad I kept in my purse. Bill wrote "Yeah, sure!" and signed it - never bothered to read it. Fun memories!! ^Atsme 📣 📧 02:45, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bill Murray. "Dat's da fac', Jack!" — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:19, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Atsme: Back in the day, Jerry Garcia bought the bought the film rights and penned a script of Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan, which he then worked on with Tom Davis. During a quite serious meeting about moving forward with a film, with Garcia, Davis, Bill Murray, a Hollywood exec, attorneys, etc, Murray was hanging out at the edge of the table "making his mouth like a billiard pocket" while Davis rolled gumballs across the table trying to make them into his mouth (pp. 256-257). Figured you guys would like this anecdote, with SMcCandlish being a cue sports enthusiast and both of you apparently being Murray fans. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 15:58, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely believe this. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:05, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

😂 - the kind of loose & fancy-free things that make you a regular on SNL! ^Atsme 📣 📧 21:29, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hey SMcCandlish, Atsme and Levivich: Nice discussion. Perhaps a phoenix out of the ...

"I was cryin' when I met you, Now I'm trying to forget you, Your love is sweet misery ..."

... ashes could be for a new article to be created, such as Band outreach, as per SMcCandlish's commentary above about the band's outreach to fans via online channels. Also, what with ...

"Livin' on the edge, You can't help yourself from fallin', Livin' on the edge, You can't help yourself at all ..."

three users just from this convo having met Tyler, I guess he gets around a lot! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:49, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Dream on! LOL. Seriously, we might want to have some kind of piece on early interactive use of the Internet by bands, including the MBone and simulcasts on it (dating to ca. 1991 or 1992, I think). I'm not sure that "bands having websites" would be useful; rock groups were sometimes among the earliest adopters, outside academia, of the Web, but a website is a website. Not much to tell. It may be too investigative for WP, though. That is, I'm not sure any RS have actually covered this sort of thing yet; the development of e-broadcasting, streaming A-V, etc., may be an Internet history book that hasn't been written (and will mostly have more to do with pr0n than, uh, other entertainment). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Antisemitism in the UK Labour Party

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Antisemitism in the UK Labour Party. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No such article

Hi,

FYI Runaway climate change does not exist. It has been recently merged to Tipping points in the climate system. There is also a merge discussion underway about merging [{Abrupt climate change]] to the tipping points article. However, as the involved eds got into it, there is a slowly evoloving thought that they really are separate things. In any case your recent edit at Exitinction Rebellion restored the wikilink to the redir. Could you clean that up pleaes? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:17, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@NewsAndEventsGuy: That's perfectly fine, per WP:NOTBROKEN, though of course I have no issue with replacing the redir with a piped link to Tipping points in the climate system. The entire point at that article is that this group is concerned about those; their belief is that society and the whole planetary ecosystem is on the brink of disaster (i.e., a tipping point); they are not up-in-arms about every sub-sub-sub-topic of climate change. The anon going around changing these links is doing so specifically to make left-leaning groups look extremist (or, in this case, even more extremist than they are) and to make right-wing ones look centrist and entirely rational. He/she/it has been changing left-related links to either re-point from something general the subject supports to something extremist and specific to imply a far-left agenda, or to re-point from something specific the subject opposes to something general to make their position seem to be against much more than it is (and vice-versa with the right-leaning links). I caught wind of this at one of the noticeboards, probably WP:NPOVN. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:46, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I updated the link to bypass the redirect. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:03, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You probably saw my thread at NPOVN. At the top of my sandbox I have some links to monitor the known IP ranges. As for the Tipping Point article, I'm one of the main editors there. As we're overhauling the climate sub articles the ground is probably in flux so I'm not going to care about which article is the target at this point. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:29, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that was it. I ended up there for something else and noticed that one and started going over the anon's "contributions". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:28, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Gender feminism

Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Gender feminism. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NPR Newsletter No.17

Hello SMcCandlish,

News

The WMF has announced that Google Translate is now available for translating articles through the content translation tool. This may result in an increase in machine translated articles in the New Pages Feed. Feel free to use the {{rough translation}} tag and gently remind (or inform) editors that translations from other language Wikipedia pages still require attribution per WP:TFOLWP.

Discussions of interest

Two elements of CSD G6 have been split into their own criteria: R4 for redirects in the "File:" namespace with the same name as a file or redirect at Wikimedia Commons (Discussion), and G14 for disambiguation pages which disambiguate zero pages, or have "(disambiguation)" in the title but disambiguate a single page (Discussion).
{{db-blankdraft}} was merged into G13 (Discussion)
A discussion recently closed with no consensus on whether to create a subject-specific notability guideline for theatrical plays.
There is an ongoing discussion on a proposal to create subject-specific notability guidelines for chemicals and organism taxa.

Reminders

NPR is not a binary keep / delete process. In many cases a redirect may be appropriate. The deletion policy and its associated guideline clearly emphasise that not all unsuitable articles must be deleted. Redirects are not contentious. See a classic example of the templates to use. More templates are listed at the R template index. Reviewers who are not aware, do please take this into consideration before PROD, CSD, and especially AfD because not even all admins are aware of such policies, and many NAC do not have a full knowledge of them.

NPP Tools Report

Superlinks – allows you to check an article's history, logs, talk page, NPP flowchart (on unpatrolled pages) and more without navigating away from the article itself.
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--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:18, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on Talk:Assamese people

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Assamese people. Legobot (talk) 04:25, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A side note on the gender kerfuffle

There was some recent drama I got embroiled in here, about an essay criticizing shitty writing practices, which turned out to be controversial to a certain subset of editors because one of these shitty writing practices, in one particular variant that I didn't even illustrate, has a fanbase among language-change activists who have a fixation on transgender people. This drama is part of a broader wave of extremist browbeating and non-encyclopedic advocacy. Someone pointed me to this article, as just one example. It's a quick and interesting read. Précis: Someone in a philosophy journal made the case that arguments in support of transgender/non-binary (TG/NB) identity can also be used in support of the less common idea of transracial identity (which takes several forms, including "passing" as a member only of the dominant ethnicity despite ancestral admixture, to adoption of another ethnic identity that doesn't match one's genetics at all, which is often claimed to be a form of cultural appropriation and something of a social fraud). Rather than take this as it was actually written (same problem in the way my essay was received and reinterpreted), in this case as a potential defense of transracialism and tolerance toward it (or at least an argument that our rationales need to be clearer), the same kinds of TG/NB "allies" who misrepresented and attacked me started a letter-writing campaign of opprobrium against the paper's author. Their idea is that transracialism isn't actually acceptable (at least not the appropriating kind), ergo any argument in support of it that relies on logic in any way related to TG/NB is an actual attack on TG/NB people (i.e., as saying that TG/NB should be suppressed because TR should be suppressed). It's an obvious straw man that reverses the actual meaning of the paper, and all in the name of being blatantly intolerant while posing as tolerance activists. As with Wikipedia Signpost caving in and one of its editors "apologizing" under duress and the publication subjected to actual censorship of its e-pages, the publisher of the journal article also retracted the paper with an "apology". These are not actual apologies, they're PR moves to bring negative attention to an end, at the cost of some public shaming and – important here – throwing the individual author under the bus, despite what they wrote not saying anything like what the ranty critics said it did. This is not a good trend for broader reasons, since it suggests that rational discourse no longer has a place; it's telling us that as long as you can generate enough angry ranting, you can get what you want, both on Wikipedia and in real life.

Well, fuck that noise. I've said this before and will say it again: The real danger to Wikipedia's long-term future isn't the kind of vandal wave we survived in the 2000s; it's creeping takeover by people with socio-political and other agendas. More broadly, TG/NB (and LGBT+ more broadly) are not well served by "allies" like this. They do far more harm than good, and turn centrist, neutral, open-minded people to the political right, just to get the hell away from these creeps. And they are creepy. Nearly none of them are themselves TG/NB, but are privileged, cis-gendered, white, and mostly hetero New Left activists engaging in an in loco parentis "manufactured outrage" posturing party, and rather objectifying actual TG/NB people in the process (it's closely related to "inspiration porn"). They have no real-world political power, and rather than try to do anything about Trump, et al., they verbally attack people for imaginary doctrinal faults. It's kind of a form of public mental/verbal masturbation. It's so much easier to start shit with people on the Internet over fake interpretations of what they said than actual do any real-world grassroots effort to make the world a better place.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:58, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your point eludes me, perhaps because I keep tripping up at "adoption of another ethnic identity that doesn't match one's genetics at all", ancestral admixtures and so on. Are you assuming that these premises can be verified objectively, or do they merely accord with the american obsession with 'race' and otherness? I hope I'm getting this wrong :| cygnis insignis 23:02, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe read it again? My point has nothing whatsoever to do with how such matters are actually defined. :-) My point was that the same "gender warrior" types are making everyone miserable everywhere about everything they can think of, using the same "distort what you really said and claim you're saying something very different and that it's an attack on TG people" bullshit, and they're crawling all over Wikipedia like ticks. As for the background matter, the controversy seems to be about "reverse passing", namely white folk self-identifying as some other ethnic group. (And I'm sure it is probably is bound up in racialist thinking, a common fault in North American and European thinking, though it's worse over here in the US of A). I really don't care about the "issue", or any side on it; I care about reasoned writers being witch-hunted by censorious TG/NB "allies", a bunch of hypocritical busybodies – over things the writers didn't actually say or mean. It's just one example of the sorts of PoV crap that hits us in waves, of course, but it's one hardly anyone will dare to speak up about, because even doing so garners accusations of "transphobia" (it has nothing to do with that at all, but with calling TG-obsessed, cis-gendered extremist activists on their bullshit). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:47, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Need advice about an article title

Hello! May I pick your brain about how to disambiguate the title of an article I am writing? I thought you would be the person to ask because I notice you have written several authoritative explanations about how to deal with nicknames, and that is how I am thinking of disambiguating the title.

The article is about a man named Jeff Berry; you can see the draft at User:MelanieN/Jeff Berry. There are already three other articles here about people named Jeff Berry so it needs disambiguation. Normally I would use a parenthetical word describing his occupation for the DAB, but his occupation is hard to sum up in a single word; basically, he is an authority on the history and mixing of tropical drinks. So I would like to use his nickname, Beachbum, which is the name he uses on all his books for the article title. Would something like that be acceptable, do you think? Should it be done as Jeff "Beachbum" Berry, or just Beachbum Berry, or in some other way? Thanks for any advice. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:44, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker)I would suggest Jeff Berry (mixologist), even though I find that term cringeworthy. --Orange Mike | Talk 00:00, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion. That would be possible, although he only got into the business of actually making and selling drinks a few years ago. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:45, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page contributor) Mixologist came to mind immediately, then I saw the same suggestion just above. If that's what the subject is mainly notable for, I'd go with that. Hey, MelanieN, nice article, by the way! North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:20, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 339: / Line 339: @@
 Well, {{em|fuck that noise}}.  I've said this before and will say it again: The real danger to Wikipedia's long-term future isn't the kind of vandal wave we survived in the 2000s; it's creeping takeover by people with socio-political and other agendas.  More broadly, TG/NB (and LGBT+ more broadly) are not well served by "allies" like this. They do far more harm than good, and turn centrist, neutral, open-minded people to the political right, just to get the hell away from these creeps. And they are creepy. Nearly none of them are themselves TG/NB, but are privileged, cis-gendered, white, and mostly hetero New Left activists engaging in an {{lang|la|in loco parentis}} "manufactured outrage" posturing party, and rather objectifying actual TG/NB people in the process (it's closely related to "inspiration porn").  They have no real-world political power, and rather than try to do anything about Trump, et al., they verbally attack people for imaginary doctrinal faults. It's kind of a form of public mental/verbal masturbation.  It's so much easier to start shit with people on the Internet over fake interpretations of what they said than actual do any real-world grassroots effort to make the world a better place.<br /><span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 21:58, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
 :Your point eludes me, perhaps because I keep tripping up at "adoption of another ethnic identity that doesn't match one's genetics at all", ancestral admixtures and so on. Are you assuming that these premises can be verified objectively, or do they merely accord with the american obsession with 'race' and otherness? I hope I'm getting this wrong :|  [[User talk:Cygnis insignis|cygnis insignis]] 23:02, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
+::Maybe read it again?  {{em|My}} point has nothing whatsoever to do with how such matters are actually defined. :-)  My point was that the same "gender warrior" types are making everyone miserable everywhere about everything they can think of, using the same "distort what you really said and claim you're saying something very different and that it's an attack on TG people" bullshit, and they're crawling all over Wikipedia like ticks.  As for the background matter, the controversy seems to be about "reverse passing", namely white folk self-identifying as some other ethnic group. (And I'm sure it is probably is bound up in [[WP:RAE|racialist thinking]], a common fault in North American {{em|and}} European thinking, though it's worse over here in the US of A). I really don't care about the "issue", or any side on it; I care about reasoned writers being witch-hunted by censorious TG/NB "allies", a bunch of hypocritical busybodies – over things the writers didn't actually say or mean.  It's just one example of the sorts of PoV crap that hits us in waves, of course, but it's one hardly anyone will dare to speak up about, because even doing so garners accusations of "transphobia" (it has nothing to do with that at all, but with calling TG-obsessed, cis-gendered extremist activists on their bullshit). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 03:47, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 == Need advice about an article title ==