User talk:RexxS/Archive 43

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Upcoming changes to wikitext parsing

Hello,

There will be some changes to the way wikitext is parsed during the next few weeks. It will affect all namespaces. You can see a list of pages that may display incorrectly at Special:LintErrors. Since most of the easy problems have already been solved at the English Wikipedia, I am specifically contacting tech-savvy editors such as yourself with this one-time message, in the hope that you will be able to investigate the remaining high-priority pages during the next month.

There are approximately 10,000 articles (and many more non-article pages) with high-priority errors. The most important ones are the articles with misnested tags and table problems. Some of these involve templates, such as infoboxes, or the way the template is used in the article. In some cases, the "error" is a minor, unimportant difference in the visual appearance. In other cases, the results are undesirable. You can see a before-and-after comparison of any article by adding ?action=parsermigration-edit to the end of a link, like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Foss?action=parsermigration-edit (which shows a difference in how {{infobox ship}} is parsed).

If you are interested in helping with this project, please see Wikipedia:Linter. There are also some basic instructions (and links to even more information) at https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2018-April/001836.html You can also leave a note at WT:Linter if you have questions.

Thank you for all the good things you do for the English Wikipedia. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:18, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, WAID. I've just fixed German submarine U-65 (1940), but it took me about half an hour! The whole thing's a can of worms, because the problem was actually caused by a misspelt parameter, which meant I had to read a load of documentation to figure it out. I hope some of the others are easier. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:56, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

The plainlist was the problem, not the misspelt parameter. Actually.. Most of them are very similar - something along the lines(see the wikicode in editor for difference) instead of having:

• bar
• foo

have

• bar
• foo

(as {{small}} has a span tag and beginning and ending span cannot be split across lines). etc etc along the same lines Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:09, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

@Galobtter: Actually, it was the parameter that caused the lint problem. Template:Infobox service record doesn't accept |is ship=yes, only |is_ship=yes – the underscore is not optional. That meant that the template began a new table, rather than embedding itself inside the parent infobox as new rows. That's the error that the linter was complaining about. Thank you for the reminder about span tags crossing line breaks, though – I'd quite forgotten about those. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:17, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah I did see that wasn't true and struck it out. Interesting. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:19, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. We edit-conflicted and I didn't spot the strike until after I saved, sorry. I would guess that there might be a few of these type of errors in that list, but Mike Peel now wants a change to commons:Module:WikidataIB, so I'll have to prioritise that for a while. No rest for the wicked. --RexxS (talk) 16:24, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Some of these are pretty tricky. I think that several of them are going to be straightforward fixes, like not letting {{Citation needed span}} run over multiple paragraphs. WT:Linter seems to be the best place to ask for help right now. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

please help translate this message into your local language via meta

The 2017 Cure Award

In 2017 you were one of the top ~250 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.

Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 02:47, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Comment

"the difference between commenting on the editor and their edits"

Some comments you've made to me and others recently:

• diff: Please stop trying to frighten people away from legitimately editing content that is freely licensed, simply because you want no solution other than complete removal.
• diff: you need to stop trying to patronise other adults
• diff: Now cut out your playground attitude
• diff: Don't talk bollocks... You're ridiculously trying to wikilawyer arguments that have not been made. Either you know that and are editing disruptively, or you don't understand it and have no business polluting these discussions with further nonsense. Some competence is required.
• diff: I don't give a shit about your essay
• diff: Address that for once, instead of childishly pretending I've claimed something else
• diff: I'm not interested in playing your blame-game
• diff: You ought to show the courtesy of letting the members of the project decide what their scope is for themselves, rather than arrogantly deciding on it for them.

I know we've both said heated things to each other over the last month or so. We disagree on the wisdom of trimming the credit/title off of some videos, and the wisdom of random Wikipedians encouraging others to do likewise. You are firm in your view as am I. I have only sought to help both you and others from actions that WMF Legal do not encourage. You can ignore that advice if you wish.

Wrt WP:NPA the thing is you are allowed to comment on an editor's behaviour, and to some degree speculate on their motive. After all, that's exactly what happens at ANI and other editor dispute forums. The important factor is "evidence", in proportion to the negativity of the remark. So, claiming vandalism, say, simply because someone has deleted some article text they disagree with, would lack the evidence necessary for such a serious remark about motive/actions. Whereas if you had diffs showing repeated random removal of material, you would be quite permitted to describe their behaviour as vandalism. Calling someone a "joker", say, would be always a personal attack since it is just a comment about the person, not their actions or what they wrote.

Clearly it is generally best to stick to commenting on article text, or content discussions like about including videos, rather than editors starting to complain about each other. But it happens and sometimes an editor's behaviour is the problem in addition to what they write. Please respect that I think your behaviour, wrt repeatedly over-confidently claiming there are no serious legal problems with trimming credit/titles, and your enthusiastic enouragement to others to do likewise, is IMO a behavioural problem. It isn't simply that I think what you have written is wrong, but also that fact that you keep writing it is unwelcome and unhelpful. You are, IMO, putting not only yourself at legal risk but encouraging others to take those risks. Comments about "flying fucks" wrt US law do not really represent a considerate level-headed attitude towards the law. Who knows what Osmosis might do next, but at this point I would not rule out legal action to get the trimmed videos removed. We disagree about this and I get that you don't want to back down. So I'm not really wanting to keep arguing about it. I tried to give you and others advice. You ignored it. And now the company is making legal claims on Commons.

Feel free to read-and-delete this. I am not interested in seeing reciprocal diffs, because I already know what I've said isn't always great. I just want you to appreciate that I have honest good faith concerns and that you've thrown more than a few personal insults around yourself. I had rather hoped this video thing had died the death it should have, and I could go back to ignoring Wikipedia. Let's drop this ok? -- Colin°^Talk 13:06, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd love to drop it, Colin and I recognise that it's mischievous of me to ascribe nefarious motives to your concerns. I hope you'll in turn accept that my principle concern is to defend the rights of editors to freely edit within the constraints of the open licence in use. I've said my piece both here and on Commons, so I'll step away now (although I reserve the right to say "fuck US law" as often as I choose). Regards, --RexxS (talk) 13:34, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Credit when there are no credits...

Hi RexxS. You may remember me from such threads as Osmosis Shitshow and Osmosis Shitshow II: We're Still Talking about This? I wanted to flag an issue to you that I've also just brought up in the thread over at commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright#Osmosis Inc wants to specify place and manner of attribution for CC-BY-SA-4.0 videos; I'm reaching out on this talk page since I suspect you probably check in on enwiki more often than Commons.

I'm all for getting rid of the front-and-back ad bumpers and have no objection to that—should we eventually opt to use the long-form videos on Wikipedia at all, which is a can of worms I'm not going to open on your talk page. The difficulty I see is that the last part of each video also includes credits: script writer and editors, illustrators, narrators, and even credits for some non-Osmosis CC-BY sound effects used in the videos. When the credits are removed from the video, we lose those attributions.

In order to fulfill our license obligations under CC-BY and CC-BY-SA (probably to the letter, and certainly in spirit) and to meet our moral obligation to cite sources and give credit where it's due, we need to find some way to preserve the acknowledgement of the contributors to each video. I would recommend simply transcribing the information from the credits into the file description page on Commons. (Frankly, I think Osmosis did a bad job of it by not including those credits – especially for the CC-BY sound effects – in the textual description when they uploaded their videos to Commons in the first place—but their casual disrespect for their own obligations doesn't relieve us of ours.)

Thanks for updating those description files! TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:36, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, morally at least. Technically, the CC-BY-SA licence only requires attribution to the author, but I should have transcribed the "Uncle Tom Cobbly and all" credits to the description page in an attribution parameter, if I were to be as fair as possible. You'll see that c:Template:Cc-by-sa-4.0 has documentation that includes the following:

attribution ... the attribution string as specified by the licensor, that re-users are obliged to name

Of course, as you point out, Osmosis left that blank, and I did the same, without taking too much notice. I think I should add in those credits in the proper manner, to at least show we're prepared to deliver best practice. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:58, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

[Update:]  Done --RexxS (talk) 15:35, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Yeah, Osmosis cut some corners in their rush to use us as an ad platform, and we're left to clean up their mess. There's certainly an argument to be made that their uploads need to be corrected or deleted since they didn't properly attribute the CC-BY content.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:56, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Event coordinator granted

After reviewing your request for the "eventcoordinator" permission, I have enabled the flag on your account. Keep in mind these things:

• The event coordinator right removes the limit on the maximum number of new accounts that can be created in a 24-hour period.
• The event coordinator right allows you to temporarily add the "confirmed" permission to newly created accounts. You should not grant this for more than 10 days.
• The event coordinator right is not a status symbol. If it remains unused, it is likely to be removed. Abuse of the event coordinator right will result in its removal by an administrator.

If you no longer require the right, let me know, or ask any other administrator. Drop a note on my talk page if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of the event coordinator right. Happy editing! TonyBallioni (talk) 18:38, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Also, I went ahead and removed accountcreator as well per this discussion and the moving over of new requests for account creator to EVC. You will still have the ability to create accounts unaffected by the rate limit. If you need account creator because you are part of ACC and I wasn't aware of it, let me know TonyBallioni (talk) 18:53, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Tony, it's good to see the system is working now. It's been a very long time since I've done any work relating to ACC and the principal reason for my account creator permission was for use at events, so there's no real loss. The increase in security is a sensible reason to drop that flag. We'll probably need to do similar cleanup as other coordinators apply for the permission, so it might be sensible to add a note to the effect of "unless you indicate an involvement with WP:ACC, this permission will replace account creator if you currently have that flag" or something like that, which would also be a hint to the granting admins that cleanup is possible or even likely. What do you think? --RexxS (talk) 19:10, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. I'm also trying to get a list of ACC users and compare against the account creator list for manual review and conversion in case anyone is unaware of the new flag. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:12, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Ryan Wilson (poet) concern

Hi there, I'm HasteurBot. I just wanted to let you know that Draft:Ryan Wilson (poet), a page you created, has not been edited in 5 months. The Articles for Creation space is not an indefinite storage location for content that is not appropriate for articlespace.

If your submission is not edited soon, it could be nominated for deletion. If you would like to attempt to save it, you will need to improve it.

You may request Userfication of the content if it meets requirements.

If the deletion has already occured, instructions on how you may be able to retrieve it are available at WP:REFUND/G13.

Thank you for your attention. HasteurBot (talk) 01:33, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Ryan Wilson (poet) (May 16)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Etothepi was:  The comment the reviewer left was: Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.

• If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Ryan Wilson (poet) and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
• If you now believe the draft cannot meet Wikipedia's standards or do not wish to progress it further, you may request deletion. Please go to Draft:Ryan Wilson (poet), click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window, add "{{db-self}}" at the top of the draft text and click the blue "publish changes" button to save this edit.
• If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk or on the reviewer's talk page.
• You can also use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

etothepi 👽 ^(u)•(t) 15:15, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Hello, RexxS! Having an article declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! etothepi 👽 (u)•(t) 15:15, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

(watching:) How are referenced prizes primary? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:20, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

for external link an interview --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:30, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

looks like we need him for Donald Justice Poetry Prize. see also --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:33, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, Gerda. The draft wasn't written by me: it was written by Ottava Rima, but he's restricted from creating it, so I copied his work into draft space for him and did a bit of tidying. I've dropped a note on User talk:Etothepi #Your review of Draft:Ryan Wilson (poet) to explain how I felt some of the sources are secondary, and hopefully he'll have a look at the issue. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:04, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Ryan Wilson (poet) has been accepted

Ryan Wilson (poet), which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.
The article has been assessed as B-Class, which is recorded on the article's talk page. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. If your account is more than four days old and you have made at least 10 edits you can create articles yourself without posting a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.

• If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the help desk.
• If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider .

Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!

etothepi 👽 ^(u)•(t) 16:10, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Sorry about that! Still learning. etothepi 👽 ^(u)•(t) 16:12, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Please don't apologise! I'm very grateful for all your hard work in reviewing at AfC, and the speed at which the review was done. I've left you a few further thoughts on your talk page, in case you find them useful. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:47, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Lua error

Hi RexxS, I am occasionally getting "Lua error: Cannot read a valid page: first name is ." from a random biography call on Portal:Underwater diving. Is this likely to be a format error in the list of articles, or something more complicated? It is intermittent, at low frequency, leading me to suspect one of the {{Transclude lead excerpt}} parameters is the culprit, but don't really know. Will try to isolate. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:25, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Dont worry, I found the error. One of the templates had a missing parameter. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 10:07, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Accessibility assistance reqd with module

Hi, please use your Lua and accessibility expertise to make the text emitted by {{BSto}} readable. Example: Template:Wherry Lines, the pairs of lines directly below the words "Norwich", "Whitlingham" etc. which are only 8px in MonoBook skin. Vector gives just over 10px but it's barely readable. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:00, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: The smallest text needs to be increased by 35% to meet the minimum size allowed by MOS:FONTSIZE. There are two ways of doing this:

The simpler way is just to scale up the table holding the two lines

Line 887: local result = ' <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="font-size:108%; font-weight:inherit; color:inherit; background-color:transparent; margin-top:-2px; margin-bottom:-2px; display:inline-table; vertical-align:middle; text-align:'..align

Change the font-size:80% to font-size:108% (a 35% increase) – this affects both BSto and BSsplit.

Or the more complicated, but flexible way is to alter the fontsize scaling

Line 1025: return base(args[1],args[2],args[3],nil,nil,args[4],nil,args[5],args.align,args.style,args.bg1,args.bg2,args.line,'105%','92%','0.9',nil,nil,nil,'to')

The '105%','92%','0.9' are the values for the first line fontsize, second line fontsize, and line height, so it would allow the lines to be scaled up individually, perhaps scaling up the larger first line by less than 35%. This only affects BSto; the line for BSsplit is 1034.

I've implemented the first solution (and the second, but I rolled it back to the simpler one) in Module:Routemap/sandbox. The results can be seen in Template:BSto/sandbox, Template:BSsplit/sandbox and Template:Wherry Lines/sandbox. Of course, updating the Module:Routemap from the sandbox is just a copy and paste, but I guess you ought to get consensus before doing that. I'm pretty certain you'll get pushback because the first line is now too big. Well that can be fixed by the second method, but you might keep that in reserve as a compromise for IDONTLIKEIT brigade. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:23, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018

Hello RexxS, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

ACTRIAL:

• WP:ACREQ has been implemented. The flow at the feed has dropped back to the levels during the trial. However, the backlog is on the rise again so please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day; a backlog approaching 5,000 is still far too high. An effort is also needed to ensure that older unsuitable older pages at the back of the queue do not get automatically indexed for Google.

Deletion tags

• Do bear in mind that articles in the feed showing the trash can icon may have been tagged by inexperienced or non NPR rights holders. They require your further verification.

Backlog drive:

• A backlog drive will take place from 10 through 20 June. Check out our talk page at WT:NPR for more details. NOTE: It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing. Despite our goal of reducing the backlog as much as possible, please do not rush while reviewing.

Editathons

• There will be a large increase in the number of editathons in June. Please be gentle with new pages that obviously come from good faith participants, especially articles from developing economies and ones about female subjects. Consider using the 'move to draft' tool rather than bluntly tagging articles that may have potential but which cannot yet reside in mainspace.

Paid editing - new policy

• Now that ACTRIAL is ACREQ, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary. There is a new global WMF policy that requires paid editors to connect to their adverts.

Subject-specific notability guidelines

• The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
• Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies.

Not English

• A common issue: Pages not in English or poor, unattributed machine translations should not reside in main space even if they are stubs. Please ensure you are familiar with WP:NPPNE. Check in Google for the language and content, tag as required, then move to draft if they do have potential.

News

• Development is underway by the WMF on upgrades to the New Pages Feed, in particular ORES features that will help to identify COPYVIOs, and more granular options for selecting articles to review.
• The next issue of The Signpost has been published. The newspaper is one of the best ways to stay up to date with news and new developments. between our newsletters.

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Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Module:Carousel

Module:Carousel has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 23:11, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 12 – 28 May 2018

Facto Post – Issue 12 – 28 May 2018 ScienceSource funded The Wikimedia Foundation announced full funding of the ScienceSource grant proposal from ContentMine on May 18. See the ScienceSource Twitter announcement and 60 second video. A medical canon? The proposal includes downloading 30,000 open access papers, aiming (roughly speaking) to create a baseline for medical referencing on Wikipedia. It leaves open the question of how these are to be chosen. The basic criteria of WP:MEDRS include a concentration on secondary literature. Attention has to be given to the long tail of diseases that receive less current research. The MEDRS guideline supposes that edge cases will have to be handled, and the premature exclusion of publications that would be in those marginal positions would reduce the value of the collection. Prophylaxis misses the point that gate-keeping will be done by an algorithm. Two well-known but rather different areas where such considerations apply are tropical diseases and alternative medicine. There are also a number of potential downloading troubles, and these were mentioned in Issue 11. There is likely to be a gap, even with the guideline, between conditions taken to be necessary but not sufficient, and conditions sufficient but not necessary, for candidate papers to be included. With around 10,000 recognised medical conditions in standard lists, being comprehensive is demanding. With all of these aspects of the task, ScienceSource will seek community help. Links OpenRefine logo, courtesy of Google d:Wikidata:Lexicographical data, Wikidata's multi-lingual dictionary project gets going Ordia tool, a basic search interface for Wikidata lexemes and forms OpenRefine tool 3.0, May update allows wrangling of tabular information into Wikidata d:Wikidata:WikiProject British Politicians pushes ahead with data modelling and imports #1Lib1Ref Returns for a Second Time in 2018, IFLA blogpost 25 May 2018, second chance this year to participate in referencing Wikipedia To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below. Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here. Reminder: WikiFactMine pages on Wikidata are at WD:WFM. ScienceSource pages will be announced there, and in this mass message. If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:16, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Talk page comment indentation

I recall that you once created (in your talk space?) an annotated demonstration of how bad comment indentation harms accessibility - but I can't find it. Do you recall where it was, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:29, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Hehe, Andy, you're asking a dinosaur who can't even remember what he had for breakfast. I've done some searching and it's not in in any subpage, so we must be thinking about talk page archives. I've found a thread at User talk:RexxS/Archive 19 #Threaded discussion, which refers to a discussion at Joseph A. Spadaro's talk page. That latter one might be what you're thinking of. Or maybe not? I have a dim recollection of another example I wrote out, but I've not found it yet. --RexxS (talk) 15:57, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. That is exactly what I was thinking of. I wonder if you could be imposed upon to rewrite it as a stand-alone help page, and perhaps also include the error when people do this:

Original comment
:Nice reply
:::Over-indented reply

Cheers, Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:20, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

NPP Backlog Elimination Drive

Hello RexxS, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel: there are currently 2900 unreviewed articles, and 4000 unreviewed redirects.

Announcing the Backlog Elimination Drive!

• As a final push, we have decided to run a backlog elimination drive from the 20th to the 30th of June.
• Reviewers who review at least 50 articles or redirects will receive a Special Edition NPP Barnstar: . Those who review 100, 250, 500, or 1000 pages will also receive tiered awards: , , , .
• Please do not be hasty, take your time and fully review each page. It is extremely important that we focus on quality reviewing.

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Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 06:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Pyle stop

Hi RexxS, I got a strange notification that you reverted my edit at Pyle stop, but on checking the diff it was not a revert, it was a completely different edit based on the same reference as the reverted material, this time supported by the reference. Any idea what happened? Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:17, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Peter, I clicked the undo as it was an easy way to get the OP's text and ref back into the article. Of course I then dramatically altered the text and fixed the timing for the ref, and then I turned it into a cite template. You're right: it ended up a completely different edit, although it didn't start as one. Apologies for the errant notification that I'd forgotten it would generate. --RexxS (talk) 16:57, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

So nothing broken. No worries. I don't suppose you will be at Wikimania this year? Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:18, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Peter I considered going, but in the end I couldn't justify to myself spending that much money when I don't have anything ready to present. It would have been really good to to meet you (and maybe get a dive in!), but there will always be more opportunities at some point. Maybe I'll help deliver some Board training for the Africa region in the near future - could be near you. --RexxS (talk) 18:09, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. I am going mainly because it is here. It would be a bit daft not to. Cheers, · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:37, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Alma mater discussion

Hey!

Thanks for your comment on my discussion. I've left a reply here, and just thought I'd let you know.

Dathus • Talk Contribs 22:49, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

@Dathus: I watchlist the page, but thanks for the note anyway. Alma mater has been discussed multiple times in the past, so I though you might be interested in a couple of the more pertinent debates.

P.S. Before you get moaned at for having a 330 character signature, you might want to condense it a little:

• [[User:Dathus|<big style="font-family:times;color:red">'''Dathus'''</big>]] • <i style="font-family:cursive;>[[User_talk:Dathus|<span style="color:green">Talk</span>]] [[Special:Contributions/Dathus|<span style="color:blue">Contribs</span>]]</i> → Dathus • Talk Contribs

245 characters just squeezes in under the 255 character limit for the same effect. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 12:36, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Greetings RexxS

Hello RexxS, I hope all is well for you? I'd like to know your thoughts regarding this edit notice, tempered by your remembrance of this request for clarification and the clearly held opinions stated at this RfC. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 08:55, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm well, thank you, John, and I hope you are too. This is a tricky one, not least because of the issues surrounding ownership of pages by functionaries. Putting aside for a moment the editors involved in the creation of that edit notice, there would seem to be two questions:

1. Does a group of editors have the right to insist without consensus that other editors must not edit a given page?
2. Is there consensus that the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures should not be editable by most editors?

You would expect me to answer the first question in the negative, but I suspect that many would agree with allowing arbs the right to dictate who may edit their pages. Clearly that is a debate that could be held.

The answer to the second question is much less clear, IMHO. The page claims to be merely documentation of previously agreed "internal rules and procedures of the Arbitration Committee", so by implication should not have need of editing; but that denies the possibility that typographical errors may occur, or (more importantly) that the documentation may contain interpretation not present in the sources, and hence be challengeable by editing. On the other hand, the edit notice has been in place since 2013 and the actual Arbitration Committee/Procedures page has had virtually no edits other than by a handful of arbitrators. From that point of view, it could easily be argued that both the wording of the edit notice and its effect enjoy consensus, simply by virtue of remaining unchallenged for many years.

Perhaps it might be better to look at the issue from another angle? What outcome are you looking for if you raise this issue? Would the encyclopedia be improved if that edit notice were removed? or made subject to an RfC to determine its validity? Personally, I'd keep this in reserve for when some arbitrator claims that the principle exists that no group of editors can forbid others from editing their pages. Then I could pull the edit notice out of the bag as an embarrassing counter-example. --RexxS (talk) 19:59, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, RexxS. I am never left wanting for asking a question of you; I appreciate that, and admit it's why I message you when the questions are complicated by nuance. As far as an outcome that would meet my expectations, I'd say: protect the page and simply state why editing is restricted on that page, or impose 1RR discretionary sanctions which the page could surely endure, IMO. Leaving an appearance of edit-ability to then stifle editing by an overbearing command to not edit the page just seems pompous and rude (to me). I acknowledge that long standing stability factors weight for the status quo, but I do believe it has a grammatical error leaving room to improve the page (except for being prevented by the notice). I have to leave right away, on a real world mission, perhaps I'll follow on a bit later, if you don't mind. In fact, if your time permits, consider commenting at this related thread. Thanks again.--John Cline (talk) 23:15, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words, John. The Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures page is already semi-protected and was once fully-protected, but in March 2013, The ed17 quite reasonably lowered the protection ("no reason to full protect, reverting isn't that hard""). We don't normally preemptively protect pages, and there's scant evidence of any vandalism or edit-warring on that page. My advice on any grammatical error there is simply to raise an edit request on the talk page just as if it were fully-protected. I'm sure somebody who feels entitled to edit the page will come along eventually and implement it. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 23:30, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the clean up

Re: your edits to the List of Man'yōshū poets. FWIW, if I can offer a piece of advice to you and anyone else who might be reading this based on what I've learned from this experience: don't base 90% of your edits to every article other than your single most-edited article over an extended period of time on a source from 1983, and all your edits to that one most-edited article on one from 1985; you will get them mixed up. ;-) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:01, 28 June 2018 (UTC)