User talk:Mikeblas/Archives/2020/January

correcting references

Hi Mikeblas. I fixed a lot of these problems before. Its about copy/pasting the correct ref one to the one that is causing the problem. What apparently is the last one session you edited. So that narrows it down. I will fix it in the next week. Thanks for pointing out the problem. BasBr1 (talk) 03:01, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Wasn't feeling it to fix it today, but i did. Thanks for pointing out the problem. BasBr1 (talk) 03:13, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Yep, I've fixed a few thousand, too. I think it's better to remove the reference name because someone will always eventually come along and change one of the references -- reformat the dates, fiddle with spacing, whatever. And that just breaks the pages again. -- Mikeblas (talk) 04:00, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Dan Deacon source change

Hi Mikeblas, thanks for correcting the recurring link in Dan Deacon's bio. However, please notice that it is currently creating a display error due to what looks like an incomplete cut-and-paste. Can you please correct? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Onetet2019 (talk • contribs) 20:59, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I think I've got it fixed! -- Mikeblas (talk) 21:15, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

On attribution of mistakes

Mikeblas, thank you for fixing the duplicate refdef here. I don't know why you thought it worthwhile to attribute that problem to a particular editor but, since you did, I should think you would have wanted to make sure your attribution was correct, which in this case you did not.

I have reverted your edit so as to correct the erroneous edit comment, and redone the duplicate refdef fix - without public attribution of either mistake to any particular editor.

In the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, I assume Wikipedia edits are made in an effort to improve the encyclopedia. To publicly call out an individual editor for what can be understood as a good faith mistake is at best impolite and at worst corrosive of the good will necessary to our collaboration. These undesirable effects are compounded when the attribution of a mistake is itself mistaken. I hope in future you will avoid the latter, at least - and, if you agree with my assessment, perhaps also the former. Thank your your attention.

Dayirmiter (talk) 20:27, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello! This version of the article has no duplicate definition errors. You edited the article to produce the next version, which shows an error in red text in the "References" section: "Cite error: The named reference "McAuleyTerrorism" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page)."

In your edit, you removed a definition of a reference named "McAuleyTerrorism" from the first paragraph in the "Public reaction" section. You added a different definition to the paragraph earlier in the article that begins "The police are believed to have ...". The version you added is different from a third definition in question, which appears near the end of the article in a paragraph tat starts with "in 2017 The Washington Post revisited ...". The two pre-existing definitions were identical and therefore not duplicates. The definition you added used the same name as an existing definition, but wasn't precisely the same (character-for-character, including case and white space) as the existing definition. Thus, it was your edit that produced the error.

Do you think my analysis is incorrect? -- Mikeblas (talk) 21:31, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

I think your analysis is correct. I was mistaken about your being mistaken, and I apologize for that. I see now that I confused the duplicate definition of reference 26, which was not my doing, with the duplicate definition of reference 7, which was my doing. Again, thank you for the correction on reference 7.

Now to what I view as the more important point: The main reason I initiated this conversation was because I didn't like that you included my name in the edit summary. Had you not done that, I would have gratefully accepted the correction without comment. But to include my name appeared to me to cast public blame and shame without purpose. Perhaps you see it differently. Do you have another explanation for why you did that?

Dayirmiter (talk) 06:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Great! I'm glad you can see the problem I was trying to fix.

When I clean up referencing errors (in particular, duplicate references) I mention the editor in my comment for several different reasons. Shaming isn't one of those reasons -- that's just an assumption you've made yourself.

One reason is simply that duplicate reference definitions are ambiguous. Maybe the editor meant to keep the definition that they added and edited, or maybe they actually wanted to keep the other one. (What if there are more than two? It happens!) It might depend on which order the definitions appear in the article. Some cases, such as when a reference definition is injected by template use, are even muddier. And there are multiple possible fixes to any of these problems.

So I think it's important for the editor to come back and check my work. I am, after all, directly undoing (or re-doing?) an edit that they made, so it seems only fair to let them know so they can look it over.

It also gives the editor a chance to understand the mistake they made. They actually made the article worse, by introducing a big red rendering error. And worse in an important way, since at last one intended citation is now not visible--and citations are fundamental mainstay of Wikiepedia's veracity. Maybe a simple repeated reference definition is kind of obvious (then, why did the editor leave it in the article?), but in other cases, transclusions, LUA macros, repeats, and weird wikimedia formatting quirks make noticing and fixing the errors a lot harder.

I guess I have very much the opposite view you do. If I changed the article the way I wanted it to be without mentioning the editor who's work I was undoing, I'd be undoing their work in a presumed-better, passive-aggressive way, with no collaboration. (Multiple people working on the same thing without communicating doesn't match my definition of "collaboration".) Instead, I spot a problem, fix it, and call their attention to it. To me, that's actual, active collaboration: "Hey, I think this fixes an error due to your edits. Can you have a check to make sure it's closer to what you probably wanted?"

Sometimes, the returning editor had something else in mind and fixes it up the way they wanted. (And sometimes I actually do incorrectly identify the editor who caused the error in the first place!) But in the vast majority of cases (more than 99 percent of the time) they thank me and move on.

Hope that helps! -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:27, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

It does help. I understand and agree with each point of your explanation and appreciate your taking time to proffer it. Your comments on collaboration I found especially enlightening and insightful. You've helped me to see from a different perspective and I thank you for your efforts, both on the encyclopedia and in our communication.

Dayirmiter (talk) 16:16, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Regarding this edit summary, in what way did my edits require the repair of duplicate refs?

The only edit I ever made to that article this change of a cite template's parameter name from "work" to "publisher". How did that create a problem with duplicate refs? Nightscream (talk) 18:45, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello! Your change created two different definitions for the reference named ":5". One looked like this:

<ref name=":5">{{Cite news|url=https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-missile-attack-iraq-intended-kill-pentagon|title=Iran's missiles intended to 'kill personnel' in Iraq, Pentagon says|last=Rambaran|first=Vandana|date=8 January 2020|work=Fox News|access-date=9 January 2020|url-status=live}}</ref>

and the other looked like this, which I think was the one you changed:

<ref name=":5">{{Cite news|url=https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-missile-attack-iraq-intended-kill-pentagon|title=Iran's missiles intended to 'kill personnel' in Iraq, Pentagon says|last=Rambaran|first=Vandana|date=8 January 2020|publisher=Fox News|access-date=9 January 2020|url-status=live}}</ref>

There were two definitions before your edit, but they were exactly the same. Exactly -- including casing and white space. After your edit, the two definitions conflicted and created the message "Cite error: The named reference ":5" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page)." in the references section of the article.

I agree with your change that "Fox News" is really the publisher and not the work. But the change must be made to both of these identically-named reference definitions, not just one. Otherwise, it's not effective. Ideally, you'd consolidate the duplicates by making your fix to the first one, then changing the second to an invocation of that reference rather than a redefinition.

I hope that helps! -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:51, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

"But the change must be made to both of these identically-named reference definitions"

Um, no, the cite's publication info should only be given once, with subsequent citations of that source using the REF NAME tag. If an editor wrote out the entire citation twice, or added it a second time, then the error in question was "due to" that editor, and not to me. That editor appears to be User:Hebsen, who added that cite a second time with this edit, before I ever edited the article. Nightscream (talk) 22:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

That's why I said "ideally, you'd consolidate ..." Before your edits, the article had duplicate definitions that were character-for-character identical. This isn't ideal, but it doesn't generate an error message when the page is rendered. Lots of templates rely on this attribute of the rendering in order to avoid duplicate errors when the page is built.

Before your edits (in this version), no error was displayed when the page was rendered. After your edits (in this version), an error was included in the rendering.

One of the downsides to the page rendering allowance of exact duplicate definitions is that editors must be careful to check for repeated definitions when making changes to existing references. Also, check for error messages in the rendered article after editing it. -- Mikeblas (talk) 23:34, 21 January 2020 (UTC)