User talk:Colonies Chris/Archive/2010/Jun

Latin translations of the 12th century

I came here because of your delinking of country names at Latin translations of the 12th century. You delinked all instances of Spain and Europe. Please note that the text you cite as justification states "Unless they are particularly relevant to the topic of the article, avoid linking ... the names of major geographic features and locations." These terms are specially relevant to the article and I have reverted your edit. Please read the articles carefully before you edit them. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:49, 9 May 2010 (UTC) Adding to the above, I noticed that AWB is set to expand state abbreviations in reference lists; abbreviations are appropriate there. Bots are useful tools, but you are still expected to be thoughtful in your edits. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:56, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you really think that any reader of that article will follow the link to Europe? It's hardly likely is it? And therefore it's a valuelsss link and should be removed to avoid distracting attention from the important links. If there were a link to something like 'Europe in the 12th century', that might be useful and relevant and I would support its inclusion.

And why does a reference list benefit from state abbreviations? They're no clearer there than anywhere else. The only place such abbreviations might be useful is in a table that's constrained for space. Colonies Chris (talk) 08:09, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I have taken this up on Steve's talk page. Tony (talk) 08:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Delinking

I was just curious what your rational was for delinking things like WWII, Caribbean and Amazon. Thanks. Guettarda (talk) 14:15, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I see. I misread the diff on the Amazon. But, FWIW, Amazon parrot aren't parrots from the Amazon basin. They're parrots in the genus Amazona. Guettarda (talk) 19:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Can't say I agree though that WWII is a common thing that should be delinked. Guettarda (talk) 19:51, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

When you change a link from a dab page to an article, you are responsible for the link you choose. It just isn't true to say that the problem was with the original link and not your change - the dab page clearly lists Amazon parrot among the choices, and readers could have found the proper article. Your change, on the other hand, would have led readers in an entirely incorrect direction.

As for WWII - it's no more "common knowledge" than is "Amazon". In fact, the impression I get talking to American undergrads in that they know a good bit more about the Amazon than they do about WWII, and (although my sample size is smaller) this seems to be far more true among high schoolers. WWII is ancient history for people born after 1990. Guettarda (talk) 05:09, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

You don't know what WWII was? It's not whether US undergrads know a lot about WWII: it's whether the link guides them to a useful and relevant place that will increase the reader's understanding of the current topic. The whole article WWII is rarely going to do that—this looks like a browsing facility, which wikilinking is certainly not. Tony (talk) 07:44, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Veracruz, Veracruz

All the quotation markers and Spanish language markers were distracting and unnecessary. Better to put foreign language words in italics if you feel the need to mark them in some way. Even then, you dont need to do it for place names and for words such as "son" just do it for the first instance it appears in the article.Thelmadatter (talk) 16:52, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Make whatever changes you deem appropriate. Im kind of busy.Thelmadatter (talk) 23:31, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Ostoja Coat of arms

Thank you for your help in improving the article!

Sincerely,

Camdan (talk) 21:41, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes I saw that You moved the contact records, I did not see that in first part, Im to tired! I tryed to remove my post living just thanks for for Your help! I would be grateful if you could remove my first post!

Sincerely

^^^^ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Camdan (talk • contribs) 21:49, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Revision to Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri articles

I noticed that you have revised either Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire.

I intend to revise those articles following the Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines. There are more details on the discussion pages of those articles. I'd be interested in any comments you have. It would be best if your comments were on the discussion pages of the two articles.

Thank you.

Vyeh (talk) 17:13, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

AWB on Cologne

Hi. Could you check your AWB code? I've just looked at the edit you made to Cologne [1] and although most of the (minor) changes are positive, there are also a couple of mistakes or inconsistencies. For instance, you de-linked the first instance of "Berlin" but left Hamburg and Munich linked in the same sentence. You de-linked "London" while keeping "Brussels" in the very same sentence. You also created a bunch of inconsistencies by de-linking some countries and not others. What makes Pakistan and Spain de-linkable but not Tunisia or Turkey? There should be consistency within an article, even if that means a bit too many or a bit too few blue words. Thanks, Pichpich (talk) 23:47, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

It's often a hard call determining the boundary between what most English-speakers know, and what baffles them. If it were me, I'd avoid linking all but the most obscure countries. Perhaps Tunisia, probably Upper Volta and Sikkim. I wouldn't link "Brussels"; nor Hamburg and Munich: is anyone going to divert to those articles in the middle of reading that one? Tony (talk) 02:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

You'll note that I ended up delinking all the countries in the relevant section (especially since they're all linked via the silly flagicons) but my real issue here is about consistency. As a general principle, I support the fight against overlinking but I don't think AWB is the right tool, especially if it leads to results such as "Berlin, Hamburg and Munich" or the confusing sister cities section. As I just said, consistency is more important than an occasional extra blue link or, for that matter, an extra non-link. Pichpich (talk) 11:01, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate that partial delinking can cause inconsistencies of appearance; there's no easy resolution to that if we want to avoid linking familiar terms in a list of which some are less familiar. It comes down to a matter of taste about the relative weight to be placed on consistency of appearance vs. avoidance of overlinking. (And I'll definitely add Brussels to my unlinking list now it's been pointed out.) Colonies Chris (talk) 12:24, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I've asked these and other questions before as well, and am yet to have an answer, let alone one that tallies with any known guideline or policy. As has been pointed out previously, by others who have come across these scripts before (and who don't actually have a problem with the removal of redundant, trivial or repetitive links) -

1. it's impossible to make a coherent or definitive universal judgment about "what most English speakers know" in respect of thousands of different things
2. individual editors certainly shouldn't be attempting to make those judgments, and then imposing their personal interpretations on the rest of us by running rigid but arbitrary scripts through thousands of pages, removing all links to specific terms, regardless of context, consistency issues or relevance to the topic/page at hand
3. wp:link says nothing about only linking to things that "baffle" people, or to things they supposedly don't know about. It says pages should link to relevant terms, in such a way as aids navigability

The discussion at the LINK talk page remains open for answers on these points .... N-HH talk/edits 11:07, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

N-HH, the logic of your three points, particularly point 1, is that because there are differences of opinion on, for example, which countries or cities are familiar to most readers, we should always link every country and city. And indeed, that we should always link absolutely everything, since we can't agree on what might be unfamiliar. Let's get away from this combative approach where you see marauders removing links, and treat it as a simple difference of opinion between editors. If you believe that a link to London would be useful in a particular context, and I disagree, we can discuss that particular case. The question of using scripts is irrelevant. My unlinkings are done by regexes I set up myself. Anyone who wants can have a copy of them for the asking, they're no secret. The fundamental question we need to ask ourselves when making a link is simple: 'is a reader likely to click on this?'. If the answer is no - and in the case of many many links the answer is overwhelmingly 'no' - then the link has no value - in fact negative value, it's a distraction - and is best removed. Otherwise we insult our readers by treating them as so ignorant that they need to be told, in any article that mentions London, that London is a city in England. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:24, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, no, the logic is that whether people are supposedly familiar with a thing or not - however one would assess that and draw the line - is NOT a valid criteria anyway for making a definitive decision about universal linking or delinking of that term. Relevance is what matters, for common terms as much as for anything else. Hence, a link to Germany in a thing from Germany is fine, even recommended, especially if the option is there to place it in an infobox or list rather than in main article text. A link to Germany in an article about a band whose article mentions that they once went on tour there, probably not needed. That kind of judgment is much easier to make, and less likely to be disputed.

Yes this is, overall, a difference of opinion, but your actions and the actions of others are making a very large number of changes, and you are not justifying them other than by vague reference to "distraction" or "dilution" or unsupported claims that no one uses - or should be using - certain links, along with false suggestions that anyone who queries any of the delinkings "wants everything linked". Nor do you have any consensus for these changes - until you do, explicitly, it doesn't seem unreasonable that you should take a step back. Plenty of people have raised concerns or queries about aspects of these removals. And of course I'm not adding hundreds of links, or constantly trawling your voluminous contributions history looking for problems - I have no wish to, nor do I have the time - so the burden isn't on me to justify anything. Nor should I or others have to engage in frequent debates about individual cases, after you've made the removals. Where, for the 50th time, is the consensus that every single link to New York, Paris, London, Germany, France etc etc should be deleted, even from articles where those terms have a direct, significant and obvious relevance? N-HH talk/edits 13:06, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear: my issue is not with a particular regexp but with the blind use of regexps. More precisely, I don't mind and in fact I'm more or less happy with AWB-assisted delinking if consistency is verified manually. Pichpich (talk) 13:14, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Scripts or other automated processes are by nature a blunt tool. However, if they are the easiest way of removing the no doubt hundreds of repetitive and pointless links to common terms such as United States, then fine. Nonetheless, those running them are however under an obligation surely to review the effects, and to err towards restoring some of the links that have been stripped out where those links are in fact relevant, or where there are consistency issues, especially in lists. This normally does not happen. I suspect it will not happen in most cases, even if others ask for it, because most of the (small number of) editors running them are more than happy with the extent of removals in their entirety. There have even been cases where other editors have restored a couple of links, and then one of more of the "delinking editors" often come right back in to revert that restoration, eg recently on the Vancouver, Washington page or, a while back, on the Queen (band) page. N-HH talk/edits 13:32, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

• Normally do review them and unlink more. Only occasionally does a link need to be restored. Tony (talk) 15:34, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

As I said ... N-HH talk/edits 12:16, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

AWB on Rune Storkaas

Your edit here introduced stray \r\n\r\n characters to the top of the article. Oddly User:Yobot had this bug back in April and left those 8 characters on lots of other pages. 24.44.14.186 (talk) 02:11, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

This was a bug in an earlier version of AWB. I thought I had cleaned up all of them. Thanks for fixing this one. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:15, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Delinking

Why are you delinking people's nationality? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:43, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

How is a person's nationality "obvious"? And you're not removing the name of the country, you're removing their nationality. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:52, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this action. There was a user years ago who wound up getting banned for the same behavior. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:54, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

It's on ANI. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 23:04, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Colonies Chris, why are you ignoring the fact that WP:OVERLINK is not absolute on this matter of common terms? It has a caveat that you neglected to include when you quoted it to Everhard Proudfoot, namely "Unless they are particularly relevant to the topic of the article...". Please stop removing en masse links that are indeed "particularly relevant to the topic of the article", such as the nationality of a person or the location of an event. Fences&Windows 23:22, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

If you feel, in any specific case, that the 'particularly relevant' clause is so significant that it overrides the fact that the link and is 'obvious' and 'understood by most readers' and is useless as it will probably never be used, and distracts attention from the important links, please feel free to reinstate the link. I'm not going to get into an edit war about it. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:30, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Chris's reasoning here. What is to be gained by linking a well-known nationality in a sentence such as "Joe Bob is a [[Germany|German]] actor"? Is there something in the Germany article that signficantly aids the reader's understanding of Joe Bob's life or accomplishments? Most likely, there is not. We had this discussion about dates a year ago. Birth and death dates are very relevant, but does that mean we should link them? The community's opinion is a resounding no. Dabomb87 (talk) 14:26, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Al(y)ona Bondarenko

I see you are replacing Alona Bondarenko by Alyona Bondarenko in a lot of articles, for example [2]. The latter is currently a redirect to the former so the replacements appear a little odd, especially in piped links where the 'y' is not displayed. Note Wikipedia:Article titles#Common names. I think Alona is most common in English. WTA says Alona at http://www.sonyericssonwtatour.com/player/alona-bondarenko_2257889_984. Her official site at http://www.alonabondarenko.org apparently also said Alona but it looks like her domain registration expired. Her sister also says Alona at http://katerynabondarenko.org/en/ (but signs her own blog as Alyonushka). See Wikipedia:Requested moves if you want to suggest a move of the biography to Alyona. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:52, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you have to go back and revert. Most or all the links I saw were piped without displaying the 'y'. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:23, 22 June 2010 (UTC)