User talk:WhatamIdoing/Archive 8

Requesting your advice and opinion

Hi Whatamidoing

Your comment about references in the 'Astrodatabank' query was of interest to me because I have had almost every reference I have provided for that biography subject to the same degree of intense examination and speculation. If you can find the time, it would be really helpful if you would drop by the biography page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Elwell_(astrologer) - I'm not asking you to read through all the discussion (which would be a lot to ask), but just to maybe read the page itself and leave an opinion on whether the tag, which says that the article is in need of further citation and reference, can be removed. In my opinion it is pretty much referenced to death now, and all the sources are fully reliable, so I cannot understand why the editors - those who have raised issues in the 'Astrodatabank' query - are insisting that the 'needs citation' tag - plus two other tags - must remain on the page. I have a different view to those editors but there are three of them, only one of me. Another voice will help a lot, and if you too disagree with me, well, then I will just have to accept that there is a consensus of opinion and drop my request for the tags to be removed, as flogins a dead horse. In any event, some movement would be beneficial. Thanks (hope you don't mind me asking) Clooneymark (talk) 10:44, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

It looks like an unfortunate conversation is going on that page.

I recommend that you slow down your replies. There are more important things in the world: find one of them to do. High-speed, high-volume, nastiness discourages participation. You can force MakeSense to slow down by slowing down yourself. Think about the advantages of replying only once or maybe twice a day, and completely ignoring the page in between. It's hard to get out of the "talk page as IM client" mode, but it is often highly effective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi - I see you have made some constructive remarks on the Elwell page, and I thought perhaps you should know Clooneymark will not be around to respond for a few weeks - check his page please. Please note that I have actually tried to understand his viewpoint and make constructive remarks myself - I do agree that if something is very obviously a positive in sources, that should be reflected. However I also felt that the article in question did need to be more neutral than it was. Im not proclaiming any expertise and I too found myself feeling very disenchanted with the whole wiki experience on my first edit which was about something I cared deeply about. I was trying to support him and help him as best I could. However, I do feel I was not entirely successful in my efforts. The remaining editors who have been on the talk page have agreed to leave the article alone until everyones had time to cool off. Panderoona (talk) 21:09, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Im suprised and disappointed you havent bothered to reply, having accused me amongst other editors of being aggressive and plain nasty when two of us were asked offer thoughts to try and diffuse an already aggressive situation. Personally, I went to help, now I feel it wasnt wanted. Its not my particular interest, and since I still consider myself to be a bit of a newbie, I shall have no further interest in that page, nor be so quick to try and help another. Panderoona (talk) 13:45, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Unless you are also MakeSense64 (talk · contribs), I can't imagine which of my comments could be interpreted as an accusation against you. For example, I didn't see you telling the (apparently) "new" user that newbies needed to get advance permission to remove tags from an article—but MakeSense64 did, and nobody should have. (MakeSense64 should have gone straight to WP:SPI with the concern that the "new" user wasn't actually new, but shouldn't have posted a single word about the WP:Editing policy not applying to new users.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:45, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no reason to hide behind false ID never have in 10 yrs online plus. I wrote for an other group back in the day, and fended of many and various fights. I have no intention of going voer old ground today, I came here for enjoyment and hobby. I went onto the page in question as a result of another person who helped me very much being asked to do so. I gave what I felt was true input considering the advice given me when I first joined up. I feel "bitchslapped" because you wrote very clearly that ppl ganged up on Clooneymark in way that was unacceptable, and I feel you are wrong in yr assumption. Given that I was also wrong in not knowing the full details of various events which lead ultimately to a ban on a certain persons part, I acted in the best interests of the article in question. I have since wrote to person in question and re-stated what I believe would help - based on my own experience on Wiki. I also feel that certain people had vested interests one way or another which you did not address in your comments, and your comments as far as I can see on the Elwell page were addressed to anyone who took part in the debate about that article. Acabashi was asked to go there by both parties - I am a newbie who felt very reasurred by his input on my account, and went there out of concern and with only best interests at heart. I tried to give the same kind of advice that was given my self, not by Acabashi but by others, all of which is readily available on my talk page. I feel you may have reacted swiftly to end a fight, without knowing the full details of such fight (and neither did I until I saw Clooneys talk page regarding his ban) I have since wrote to him in good faith., I dont care much how you see that. You jumped on me and considered me to be part of a vendetta which I was not. My only endeavour was to try and understand and help a fellow contributor, and I am deeply offended and deeply saddened that you feel this way about me. There is no room for manouvre on your part in this, I feel, This IS how I feel. I have taken page in question off my watchlist, and have left message with Clooney regarding my hope he takes on board my advice - which is only the same advice given me. I am not experienced here, and my time here could easily be cut very short by your reply. I am NOT here for any reason other than an genuine wish to improve existing articles. Panderoona (talk) 21:11, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

If you are absolutely determined to believe that my complaints to MakeSense, and specifically about MakeSense's behavior, constitute a complaint about the behavior of every single person on the talk page, even after I have told you twice now that it's not, then I'm sorry, but I can't help you.

Your emotion-based guess about my intentions and my feelings about you is simply wrong. Unlike you, I actually know what my complaint was about, and it wasn't about you. I have always assumed that you genuinely wished to improve the article. You are not required to believe the truth, however: you have the right to make yourself believe anything you like. On the other hand, I can't really be held responsible for your persistence in this unfounded error. What you choose to believe is your choice, and your problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:29, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

your uncaring attitude to my own feelings says a lot. You wrote on that page directly under my comments but choose to believe that you only targetted one person and that was not me. I suggest you reconsider what you have written and how it may appear to others not so educated or not "well up" on Wikipedia, whos intentions were genuine if not effectual. Your resistance to my comments only leads me to believe even more my own input is neither wanted nor considered reasonable. Is this truely how you wish to persue you own career here?

I don't know why I'm bothering, but I left four separate messages on that talk page. Three of them are immediately after, and in reply to, a comment by MakeSense. Here's the text of the fourth, which follows a comment from you:

"Neutral" on Wikipedia means something more like "follows the sources" rather than "doesn't take sides". If the sources are gushing about something, then Wikipedia should reflect that. For example, if the typical physics textbook got all starry-eyed about Newton's First Law, saying that it is the fundamental principle of matter and motion, without which nothing in the universe could exist, the most important concept described in the history of humanity—then Wikipedia can say that, too, and without trying to tone down the language to be "neutral". While it's more common for editors to show bias by overstating a source, it's just as possible to show bias by understating a source. "Encyclopedic tone" hasn't meant "the most boring writing style possible" since 1911 (when Encyclopedia Brittanica published an encyclopedia with a famously interesting writing style).

In the instant case, it's important to notice the difference between "Some astrologer says it is valuable" and "It is valuable". The first says only that somebody recommends it; the second implies that everyone does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Now, can you tell me exactly which words in that message make you believe that I think you personally "ganged up on Clooneymark" or that you're "part of a vendetta"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

there was no place where you made it plain your comments were reserved for Makesense contributions only. you addressed your remarks in more than one place on that page and one of them was directly under a comment I made. Since you obviously dont care that you have made a relative newcomer feel bad for trying to help and disuaded them from trying to do that again, I wish you well and say goodbye. Its a shame that even clooneymark himself was kind enough to say sorry that I felt awful about the whole thing on his talk page. I wish him well in future endeavours, apart from that Ill be quietly on my way. ttfn. Panderoona (talk) 02:09, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

So the problem is apparently that I complained about someone else on the same day that I also talked to you. You appear to admit here that nothing I said to you or about you could be legitimately interpreted as accusing you of anything. You have decided to be offended and emotional over something that you rationally concluded has nothing to do with you. I'm sorry that you made the choice to beat yourself up this way, but your choices are fundamentally your responsibility. If that's how you choose to treat yourself, then I'm willing to say good bye. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:24, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi - I wasn't able to tell you this before but you were brilliant. Your help was fantastic, thanks! You restored my faifth in Wikipedia. There's some interesting psychology going on here sometimes. I've changed my username so I'm not quite so much 'out there' in future. Also - your advice: absoltutely right. I was too close to see it, but I'll watch for that in future. Cheers for taking the time and trouble to help sort that one out Zac Δ talk 00:35, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad my comments seemed helpful. I know how frustrating it is to need help and not get anything. Perhaps you'll be able to step in with a third opinion for another person some day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Will do . Zac Δ talk 08:05, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Probably a lot to ask, realising that you took the brunt of the 'needing to be expressed somehow' frustration of contributors to the earlier discussion - but if you can find a little time to comment on my question about whether it's OK to include a note in a reference I'd appreciate your knowledge and experience. Or maybe you just know where to point me to get the policy information I need on this? (I looked myself until I got thoroughly lost in the mire of WP advice pages).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dennis_Elwell_(astrologer)#Notes_within_references

I am taking things more slowly, as you suggested, mainly concentrating on adding citations to pages in need of them (knowing that most will be of value, even if some get kicked out for whatever reason). Anyhow, either way, my best regards to you Zac Δ talk 10:11, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - that infor and those links were just what I was looking for. Zac Δ talk 07:17, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Re Village Pump

Thanks for taking the trouble to give an opinion on the problem I raised on the Village Pump page. Ansotu (talk) 15:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Usually, when we encounter persistent abuse from a public library, it's only a single person who is screwing things up for all the library's users. If you really want to solve this problem, it may require going down to the library and pounding on desks until somebody there decides that they should stop the one user's abuse of the library's Internet service, rather than having all of the users blocked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Advice needed

Hello ! I was so happy with your participation in PocketBook article. Ronz again deleted Bookland.net now from "Services:" in infobox claiming it is advertising. Bookland.net is visited by 200,000 people monthly. Do you think it is notable or any guidelines are not OK ? He is experienced user, I don't want to lose a dispute in noticeboard. Should I create Wiki article on it? Any other recommendations are highly welcome.--Brainsteinko (talk) 04:10, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

What makes something WP:Notable (that is, what makes something qualify for a complete, stand-alone Wikipedia article entirely about that subject) is the quality of WP:Independent sources that write about the subject, not the number of visitors. If you find, say, several magazine articles about the website, then write the article. If you find only a website traffic ranking, then don't. You might like to read WP:CORP and WP:WEB.

I don't think that you need to worry about "losing" at a noticeboard. The purpose of a noticeboard is to get other people's opinions, not to "win". If it's just the two of you, then I recommend getting a WP:Third opinion on the link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:48, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

COI guide

Hey, I saw your work on WP:COI and thought you might be interested in looking at the help guide we've made up in the #wikipedi-en-help channel, WP:PSCOI. If you get a chance, let me know what you think. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 21:28, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I haven't finished reading it, but I've made a few changes and left a question on the talk page for you. Overall, I like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:19, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Hey there, thanks for your input and advice at WT:RFC.

I'm still pondering whether I want to go ahead with the RfC, especially whether to actually file it under the article category. The reason is that in my experience, a great many of the group you politely refer to as "subject-matter experts" usually turn out to be article owners who have made up and stick to their own (incorrect) ideas about style (and content, for that matter).

I firmly believe that I have all the compelling arguments I need, but all the best arguments in the world are not enough to convince a typical nay-sayer.

So I'm still not sure how or whether to proceed. Trying and failing with something that should be completely uncontroversial and straighforward just because some people refuse to get the point is the single most frustrating experience on Wikipedia.

... Hm, reading the above, this has got precious little to do with you or the helpful advice you gave me. I guess I just needed a shoulder to cry on. --195.14.220.119 (talk) 13:18, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

You can change the listings at any point, and the bot will update the lists. Another options is to list it as a policy RFC and then leave a friendly note on the talk page of some relevant WikiProject.

BTW, the usual complaint about RFCs is that almost nobody responds, so I wouldn't worrying too much about a horde of article owners. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:16, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks once more. I'll think about it and go ahead as soon as I feel emotionally prepared... :) --87.79.230.112 (talk) 14:57, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Getty Villa

The GA status of Getty Villa is so complicated that even I can't see a clear path toward resolution. On June 13 Amadscientist started an "Individual reassessment" of the article. He then amended the article history template to delist it. An hour later, he then added an new GA reassessment template. He then deleted the article history template entirely. Aside from his technical struggles, he never notified either the prior reviewer or the nominator of his concerns to give us a chance to address his concerns. I have now addressed his comments in Talk:Getty Villa/GA4. Judging by his questions and comments in the reviews of Getty Villa and Getty Foundation it is clear that he does not understand how footnotes are supposed to work (they can be in the middle of a sentence if they source the first half of a sentence) or how quotations with square brackets work (words can be edited to make the quoting sentence grammatically correct). In March after quick-failing Getty Villa, he quick-failed The Incredible Melting Man, and the nominator sought a Community Reassessment. In an earlier Community Reassessment of Incredible Melting Man, Amadscientist [1] did not take part, the consensus was that he quick-fails more than most, and the article was listed as GA. How can we clarify whether Getty Villa is a GA, and what can I do to get it back to GA if it has in fact been delisted? Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 20:35, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

This is just shopping for GA in my opinion. I do not see good faith here at all or his own assumption of good faith. It apears to me he is exaggerating, and finger pointing. The 3rd review was done in a manner that was an outright rubber stamp. I reassessed and de-listed. Race should just take it to community reassessment. I did an individual GAR that he didn't like. He needs to take the proper steps and stop running editors through the mud.--Amadscientist (talk) 21:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, while I believe that WhatamIdoing is able to figure this out, I believe it only fair to point out as well that the GAR for Incredible melting Man did not contain consensus that "I quick-fail[] more than most". That's simply not what the GAR is for anyway. Wizardman did feel that declining the listing without a hold was "overly harsh", which was an honest opinion and may well have been shared by others, but it was not discussed. He also added "The article's not a GA yet, but the writer should've had an opportunity to fix in this case. Might as well use this GAR to many any fixes". Geometry guy stated: "Consequently, the present review was not a "quick-fail", as the "quick-fail criteria" were not invoked (nor do they apply) and the reviewer left a detailed review with reference to all of the good article criteria. Whether to place an article on hold has always been a matter for reviewer discretion: there used to be some guidance at WP:Reviewing good articles, some of which could usefully be reinstated. In any case, there is no obligation to place a nomination on hold; if it is, however, there is also no requirement to limit the hold period to 7 days. I hope that clarifies matters! Geometry guy 17:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)". The same user (Geometry guy) still believed that the article was not ready for listing 7 days later and work continued. On April 5 2011 the article was found to meet GA standards and was listed. It looks great now.--Amadscientist (talk) 21:40, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Amadscientist, what you're calling "shopping for GA" is what I'm calling "none of your business". WP:INVOLVED is policy for admin actions, but it is excellent advice for everyone. You failed the article previously, and in ways that irritated the other editors. You should not be trying to influence the next reviewer. You should ignore it, and trust that the GA process generally gets things right in the end. The alternative is to convince people that you have a problem with WP:OWNership, just like your choice to quick-fail some articles has already convinced some people (rightly or wrongly) that you are unfriendly and uncooperative. If you believe that an article you previously failed was later listed improperly, then you can take it to community GAR, but you should avoid individual GARs and you should adopt a very hands-off strategy at the community GAR. We need the process to look like it is fair and impartial, not like it's dominated by one editor who is determined to prevent the article from being listed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Racepacket, you can list it for community GAR if you want. Alternatively, it can be re-nominated through the usual process. Either way, I hope that Amadscientist will let other editors make the decision. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. I had a much longer comment, but deleted it. I will take your words to heart. Thank you for the reality check. I can't say I agree with all your comments but to say anything further would simply add to your assessment that editors find me unfriendly and uncooperative.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Only Amadscientis...speaks for Amadscientist. I neither agree with or disagree with anything written here, but I do take the words of WhatamIdoing to heart as stated and should not be seen as an ebdorsement of any member or any policy or interpretation of policy and guide line.--Amadscientist (talk) 22:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that the problem traces back to the GA sweeps. During the sweeps most of the nominators were long gone and volunteers such as Amadscientist who entered the process became accustomed to reviewing without the participation of anyone else when they checked "old" GA articles against the current criteria. A fundamental purpose of the GA program is to have the nominator interact with the reviewer to improve the article. A person who is uncomfortable in interacting with others or in having his/her opinions questioned should not volunteer to review articles. When I review articles, I regard a "failed" result as a personal failure, and my goal is to improve and pass every article that I can. Our instructional materials should convey that spirit. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 10:07, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, Amadscientist agrees.[2] Racepacket (talk) 10:14, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

No, and that belief is one of the problems we're having. Nominators are not special people. The GA process is not intended to be an interaction between the nom and the reviewer (or, for that matter, between anybody and the reviewer). The sole purpose of the GA process is to determine whether the article meets the criteria. It's helpful, kind, collegial (etc.) if the reviewer says, "close but not quite, so I'll give you a fair chance to fix these problems" (and if it is close, and you don't give folks a chance, then—rightly or wrongly—they do often get mad at you), but improving the article is not actually the purpose of the review. The actual (sole) purpose is to say either "yes, I believe it meets the criteria, so I'll list it" or "no, I believe it doesn't meet the criteria, so I won't list it". Articles are nominated because the noms believe that the articles already fully meet the criteria. The presence of other editors is not required, because (in theory) zero improvements should be required to meet the criteria. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Burgess Health

No, the CSD tags say that an appeal is not binding, otherwise there would be no point in a speedy tag. I've just deleted again, since for legal reasons, a copyright infringement can't be allowed to stay. Also, as would be expected for copied text, it reads like an advertisement (also not permitted). Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:51, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I see. Can you point me to the paragraph that says this? Because I've read several pages now, and I find nothing that says this. (I do find one page that says we ignore CSD tag removals by the main author, but nothing about outside editors.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:35, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I am not entirely sure what happened here, but I will note that {{copyvio}} is available as an alternative for g12 deletions. If somebody removes your g12 speedy in good faith it is obviously not an "unambigous case" and you should follow normal procedures for copyright violations. Yoenit (talk) 20:36, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe that the original was a copyright violation (or at least not entirely; it was kind of long). The original, which included such typical, encyclopedic information as the name of the founding group and the number of hospitals currently in the organization, was tagged as being "unambiguous advertising".

What replaced it certainly appears to be copyright violation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:10, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, it's not necessary for the whole to be copied, nor to be verbatim — close paraphrasing is sufficient to infringe copyright. Same with spam, you can present true, factual material that still reads like an advertising brochure. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:43, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Except that I don't believe that the previous version was "exclusively promotional", which is the specific requirement. It certainly wasn't "unambiguous", since I didn't agree with it.

But I'm merely asking you to provide me with the line in a policy that says any admin is permitted to delete legitimately contested CSDs, rather than being constrained to sending them through prod or AFD. Does such a policy exist, or not? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:44, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

No idea where to find such a policy, but it's at least implied by the SD tags which say that a "hold on" isn't binding. If you feel strongly about this article, why not write a clean version, if only as a stub. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:07, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Except it wasn't a holdon, it was a removal by an uninvolved editor. Normal course of action is then to take it AFD, not to invoke your admin powers and speedy delete it anyway. @Whatamidoing, I suggest you take it wp:DRV or request userfication if you are serious about improving the article in question. Yoenit (talk) 21:17, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

While I think that the subject easily clears the notability hurdle, that particular article is so far down on my personal priorities that DRV isn't worth it. Making sure that our processes is clear enough that reasonable editors (e.g., Jim) don't justifiably end up with opposite conclusions is almost always worth my time. I don't think that the policy section you link to is clear enough. It seems to have difficulty separating out the author-contested and independent-editor-contested cases. This should be an easy, well-understood, transparent process, not a source of confusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

BigDumpOnYou

Hey sweetie - LTNS. Instead of cleaning out my garage, I decided to write an article. Consistent with this "misbehavior" motif I selected for myself today, I then decided it would be very fitting to dump on the nicest, busiest, most generous person I could think of ... and you immediately came to mind.

From then on, it was really easy for me to just post you here and ask if you'd mind scanning basaloid squamous cell lung carcinoma, removing the "New" tag, and doing whatever else you really dont have time to do for me.

I'd ask Doc James or Axl or someone else to do it, but then I wouldn't be able to just pay them off with a big *SMOOOOCH* ... well, at least not without SOME damage to (what remains of) my hard-earned "rep" for manly manliness :-)~ LOL!

Thanking you in advance, wishing you the best, and thinking I need to take a serious break, I remain

Your #1 Wikifan: Cliff Knickerbocker, M.S. ([[User talk:Uploadvirus|talk]]) (talk) 21:04, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Abortion

You might be interested in whether "death" should be include in the lede sentence of the abortion article. Of course the article is not a medical article because abortion is a much broader topic. There was a consensus lede sentence that for at least 5 years that some editors would like to change. I hope you will drop by abortion and the talk page. 71.3.237.145 (talk) 00:38, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I generally avoid the abortion-related articles, as being timesinks. There are many valid ways to introduce that subject, and whatever choice you make is guaranteed to upset anyone whose agenda it fails to serve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:49, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

See, I knew you were a wise woman. The only way to win is not to play. MastCell ^Talk 01:33, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Although I proved curious enough to see what change is being proposed. They have defined abortion so that it does not include post-viability pregnancy terminations. I wonder what those editors think the world calls a third-trimester, healthy-fetus, healthy-mother pregnancy termination these days, if the words "elective abortion" no longer apply. (Or have they forgotten that these really do happen, e.g., under China's one-child policy or because the Indian mother discovered that she was carrying a girl?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:21, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Technically Late termination of pregnancy typically with pre procedural feticide but this is just my interpretation of the literature and not something we consider here in Canada as except if the mothers life is at risk they are considered by the profession to be unethical. Now even if one does not use this technical definition by far the majority of abortions still occur before viability. Whether or not human cells are able to think has a great determination for example with "brain dead" organ transplantation here in the West. The same rational is applied to abortion. Thus the separation of terms in the view of the medical profession with before and after viability. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:31, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

The LTOP article gives "late-term abortion" as an exact synonym, which suggests that the term "abortion" still encompasses post-viability LTOP. NB that PMID 12173630 talks about "post-viability abortion bans", which in the odd definition you're giving at that article is a completely nonsensical phrase that would translate as "post-viability pre-viability pregnancy termination bans". I'm not aware of any method of having a pregnancy termination that is simultaneously post-viability and pre-viability.

And, yes, I'm fully aware of the Western bias in that discussion. Canadian laws do not apply to most of the world (unfortunately). You need to be writing an article that applies as much to Russia, India, and China as it does to Canada, the US, and the UK. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Japan does not/did not recognize brain death. Thus if one transplants organs on someone with a beating heart they have committed murder. Which is why I stipulate.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:32, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Given the mountains of objective evidence (from WP:MEDRS and other WP:RS) that a non-living fetus is properly called a dead fetus, argumentation to the contrary is tortured POV pushing:

• There are thousands of scholarly publications that use the term "dead fetus" here http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22dead+fetus%22&as_sdt=0%2C10&as_ylo=2000&as_vis=0.
• There are over a thousand scholarly publications that use the term "death of the fetus" here http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22death+of+the+fetus%22&as_sdt=0%2C10&as_ylo=1992&as_vis=0
• There are hundreds of scholarly publications that use the term "fetus dies" here http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22fetus+dies%22+&as_sdt=0%2C10&as_ylo=1992&as_vis=0.
• There are over a hundred scholarly articles that use the term "kills the fetus" here http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22kills+the+fetus%22+&as_sdt=0%2C10&as_ylo=1992&as_vis=0.
• There are hundreds of scholarly publications that use the term "dead embryo" here http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22dead+embryo%22&as_sdt=0%2C10&as_ylo=1992&as_vis=0.
• There are over a thousand scholarly publications that use the term "death of the embryo" here http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22death+of+the+embryo%22&as_sdt=0%2C10&as_ylo=1992&as_vis=0.
• A scholarly 2010 legal article titled Female Feticide in India also notes "the abuse of prenatal screening tests and abortions for sex selective termination of viable female fetuses" is a widespread problem in Asia. https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=26+Issues+L.+%26+Med.+13&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=a4f91c121bb76a2dbb87bbeffa76aaa1
• There is a very interesting article here in the journal Contraception http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824(09)00519-8/abstract, that also explicitly refers to the death of the fetus during both induced intrauterine feticide or by induced caused during the induced abortion. which notes that "There is evidence that women prefer the concept of fetal death by feticide over fetal death during the process of extraction."

71.3.237.145 (talk) 13:53, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Googling "dead fetus" and "kills the fetus" is the best way to arrive at a balanced overview of the best available sources, but I think that ship has already sailed. MastCell ^Talk 17:28, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The absence of the word "death" doesn't bother me one way or the other, although I agree that a plain, straightforward description could include that fact.

What bothers me is defining abortion so that it includes only those types of abortion that are generally considered legal and ethical in wealthy countries. Wikipedia has enough systemic bias without pretending that deliberately killing and extracting a healthy 28-week female fetus from a healthy mother in India somehow isn't "an abortion", on the grounds that it's illegal to do that abortion in Canada. Western medical journals naturally focus on medical procedures that are legal in their own countries, but that doesn't mean that the other kinds don't exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with you that the abortion article needs to be more global, but it's pretty hard to have a serious, intelligent discussion there, as you might infer from some of the above. When I worked on expanding coverage of unsafe abortion (on grounds that it is, after all, a major public health issue globally), much of the discussion was along the lines of "zOMG what do you mean 'unsafe abortion'? All abortions are unsafe... FOR THE FETUS!!!1!!" At least that's how I remember the experience. MastCell ^Talk 20:56, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I would not be surprised if your recollection was essentially correct. I think that subject (like many others) needs to be not only more global, but less "owned" by medicine. Abortion, like teen pregnancy and rape, is not strictly a medical subject. Imposing the "law-abiding Western gynecologists' view" won't give us a complete on any of those subjects. (It reminds me, naturally, of Doc James' quest to have Rape merged into Sexual assault, on the grounds that his hospital's coding system doesn't distinguish between groping a woman's breasts [one of many forms of sexual assault] and forcible vaginal intercourse [rape, which is another form of sexual assault].) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm. I see your point, but I've always been in favor of a predominantly "medical/public health" view in the article, for two reasons. First, when I look at other Serious, Respectable Reference Works^TM, they seem to cover abortion from a medical/public-health perspective. And second, there's no limit to the crappy partisan sources people bring to that article, so insisting on strict reliable sourcing along WP:MEDRS lines helps keep the POV-pushing down to a dull roar. That's just my take on it, though. MastCell ^Talk 03:34, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Predominantly medical, sure. Predominantly wealthy-country, Western-law-endorsed, medical-academic-experts-only medical, no. There has to be room in that article for the perspective of the one-third of women in the world who can (and often do) obtain legal third-trimester abortions, without us pretending that they're somehow not getting an abortion just because our white experts are squeamish about using the word abortion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that's an interesting question. Viability itself is a moving target. Infants born at 28 weeks typically require antenatal corticosteroids, neonatal intensive care, mechanical ventilation, and exogenous surfactant to survive. If those resources aren't readily available in a developing nation, then a 28-week-old fetus may not be "viable". But yes, I'm not sure that we can be dogmatic about "viability" using only Western/US sources. MastCell ^Talk 20:44, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

A moving target, and often with unfortunate definitions. One definition ("long-term survival") basically defines whole groups of children with genetic and developmental disorders as "non-viable", even if the condition isn't discovered until after an otherwise uneventful birth. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

QuackGuru

What is one to do with all those shenanigans on Talk:Vertebral artery dissection? JFW | T@lk 19:18, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

An RFC/U for disruption of the WP:IDHT variety. The community will actually ban such folks... eventually... but it has to be sufficiently bad that other editors are willing to go through weeks of pain to make it happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I have no stomach for that kind of thing. I'd prefer to write articles, not do battle with armies of strawmen. JFW | T@lk 22:30, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I understand that it's not a pleasant or desirable process. But that's the process that the community chooses. Bans basically require someone to decide that several weeks of concentrated pain is preferable to the prospect of years of chronic pain.

There is no process for making an editor socially competent, able to set aside pre-conceived biases, less interested in POV pushing, or able to hear the other side. The functional options in this case are put up with the editor, or (attempt to) get rid of the editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

This might be relevant - DigitalC (talk) 06:30, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

FYI

I noticed you have been involved in a discussion about the example of Eskimo/Inuit on Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. I have simply removed this example from that page, and so resolved the issue. Debresser (talk) 11:14, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:15, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Civility

You're right of course. Malleus Fatuorum wasn't even cautioned for that attack. I think a wider discussion regarding civility on the project should happen somewhere. Some potential talking points: (1) It's easier and less controversial for administrators to civility block newbie editors than experienced editors, (2) Too many people ascribe attacks on behavior as being acceptable, as it's commenting on behavior, and supposedly not the person, (3) Past civility issues often seem to have no bearing on current problems with a given editor. There's plenty of other potential talking points. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:03, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that a community discussion would make any difference. I think this is a case of the community saying one thing and doing another. Some rude or tendentious editors can be—let's say "useful" to us. So we all know that ____ has a very bad case of IDHT, but we'd rather not have him banned, because we can throw him at newbie POV pushers to save ourselves the bother of explaining the policies politely. We all know that ____ is persistently rude, but we'd rather not have him banned, because we can use him to defend the status quo at a favorite guideline. We all know that ____ is an irredeemable jerk, but we'd rather not have him banned, because we can use him to drive away spammers.

In the long-term, these people are destroying the community. But while we occasionally indulge in public spasms of reform, we don't actually want to give them up yet, because in the short-term, it's easier for us to say, "Oh ____, did you happen to notice the dispute at Example? I'm sure they'd benefit from hearing your opinion" than to deal with the problems (correctly and politely) ourselves.

I'm willing to have the discussion, but I honestly expect no practical benefit from anything less than an ArbCom motion that says, e.g., any editor, once warned, may be blocked for 24 hours every single instance of profanity, coupled with a tag filter that automatically flags violations to people willing to issue the blocks. And even that wouldn't solve the real problem; it would only result in the incivility being slightly disguised. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

• Ah yes, something along the lines of "You have more hair than wit, more faults than hairs, and more wealth than faults" or "I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables" :) --Hammersoft (talk) 18:36, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Not that you asked my opinion, but... I don't think that civility can be promoted or enforced by blocks, no matter how draconian one is in applying them. Being blocked doesn't make people more civil; if anything, it pisses them off and results in a lot of secondary incivility and fighting about the block itself. The only blocking approach that would conceivably improve civility would be to indefinitely (infinitely, really) block people who were consistently uncivil. Thus far, I don't think the community views that as an acceptable approach, largely because of the baby/bathwater conundrum.

Insofar as civility can be improved, I think we need to look at more imaginative solutions than blocking. In general, my experience has been that Wikipedians respond to operant conditioning. If they receive positive reinforcement (in terms of attention, even negative attention) for doing something, they'll keep doing it. If they're looking for attention and don't get it, then they'll either fade away or modify their behavior. So I think the best approach is to model civility (as best one can), and at the same time studiously ignore people who are making asses of themselves.

A secondary question has to do with burnout. If you take a snapshot of people who behave like irredeemable jerks at present, a lot them used to be more polite (not all of them, of course). In the end, one's patience isn't infinite, and it's hard to be as polite to the 100th spammer, or agenda account, as to the first. Moreover, as you allude to, uncivil behavior sometimes works, at least in a pragmatic and short-term sense, in dealing with the various nuisances besetting this project, although I agree it's probably maladaptive in the long term. On the other hand, if we had mechanisms in place for quickly, firmly, and civilly showing the door to spammers and POV-pushers, I think that would go a long way both in reducing the burnout that leads to incivility and in reducing the practical payoffs of uncivil behavior. MastCell ^Talk 18:50, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

• Of note to your second paragraph; I have a personal policy of ignoring people who use insults/incivility as a means to an end. Several times now, I've been taken to task for having this as a personal policy. In fact, I've been repeatedly told that failing to respond to people who use insults/incivility is itself uncivil. There's no win. See, around here Gollum is a respected editor, and held in the highest regard. Very civil chap, that. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:04, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

• Well, you could always cite User:Heimstern/Ignoring incivility... :) MastCell ^Talk 20:42, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

• I already cite WP:HAMMERSOFTSLAW. I've been insulted numerous times for citing it, and someone even attempted to have it deleted. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:54, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

In the general case, I agree that "civility blocks" are counterproductive. In the cases I'm thinking about, however, it could be effective at discouraging certain types of incivility.

An editor who thinks "If I type ___ in an edit summary, I will be blocked" is very likely to choose words that do not predictably produce an unacceptable outcome. At minimum, the editor knows that his choice is between "Say this and be blocked" or "Say something else and not be blocked". In our current system, it's "Say whatever you want, because nobody cares, and being rude is more effective than being polite."

Punishing people for obvious misbehavior is very much in line with your notion of operant conditioning, which is just as effective for teaching "Do not push the button that gives you the nasty shock" as it is for teaching "Push the button that gives you a treat". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:13, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

But if an editor craves attention, then being blocked for incivility isn't really negative reinforcement. It generally attracts more attention, spills over onto noticeboards, draws in outsiders who either take up the blocked editor's cause or vilify him... it functions more like positive reinforcement. I think the punishment - the electrical shock, in your metaphor - would be ignoring the editor, rather than blocking them. The choice should be: "Say this and people will ignore you" vs. "Say something else and people will pay attention to you." MastCell ^Talk 20:47, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Negative reinforcement ("ignoring bad behavior") is what we're doing now with these privileged editors, and it isn't working. See, e.g., the complaint in the first paragraph of this section: "wasn't even cautioned for that attack". The rude, profanity-laced remark was passively ignored. It wasn't even reverted (which, by policy, it ought to have been), because we all know that it's useless. Reversion or complaint are reliably met with edit warring and more insults from the editor and his small cadre of supporters. It reliably produces zero action, and almost zero censure, from the community. There are more than two thousand people watching the page. There are dozens of admins reading that page every day. And not one person (including me) felt like challenging the rude remark would be anything more than a waste of time.

Punishment ("making bad behavior result in pain to the badly behaved person") is a valid approach to operant conditioning, and IMO more likely to work in these situations. Passively ignoring rude remarks has not worked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

• A problem with operant conditioning in this environment is that only a tiny fraction of people are willing to ignore those who use incivility/insults as a means to an end. They still get plenty of attention, notice, etc. for their efforts. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:56, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, that is, at present, the fatal flaw in my proposition. It would require buy-in from a large portion of the community, which seems unrealistic. I think the best we can do is try to model it ourselves. You know, like ignoring it when people call you "bitchy" for no apparent reason (to take an up-to-the-minute example). :) MastCell ^Talk 21:08, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

• Interesting. I went to leave a civility caution for this editor and found there's no template for civility concerns listed at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace. Perhaps there should be. At any rate, the editor in question struck their comment. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:14, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

• You're assuming that the primary goal of the bad behavior is to get attention. I suspect that the more common goals are to achieve some other goal more efficiently or reliably (e.g., we can talk politely for three days, and then you will maybe do it my way, or I can be rude now, and you will do it my way now [or quit Wikipedia in disgust, leaving me free to do it my way]) or to avoid the bother of exercising self-restraint or thinking about other people. The latter exertion doubtless seems trivial to both of you, but it does not seem to trivial to some habitually rude people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Case example

I ran across this incident today; an IP posts this to Δ's talk page. Oh but not to worry, it's not a personal attack. See, it's only a complaint, and sheer exasperation, and the IP was only commenting on behavior. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:16, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

And people wonder why he's not sweet and generous after years of this. That sort of endless attack would sour the disposition of a saint.

It doesn't seem to occur to most of the usual bullies there, but it is actually possible to condemn the IP's bad behavior without endorsing anyone else's behavior. "I know you are upset, but that doesn't excuse you from being rude to the person you think is hurting you" is something I thought was normally taught to children around age six or eight. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

• I have a couple of friends who are teachers in high school. They're still teaching (and failing to get through) that concept to young adults. Δ isn't a saint. He's human. There's an unreasonable expectation that he be a saint, in that if he errs slightly he's considered to be in breach of his restrictions and needs to be site banned. I've taken Δ to task before over some issues, but I treat him with respect. A great many editors do not. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:09, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Some adults never get there, just like some never learn to keep track of their finances or never learn to keep their tempers. But it's still a concept that we expect the typical school child to have heard of. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:00, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

AE for QG

Just a heads up: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#QuackGuru Ocaasi ^{t | c} 20:08, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

username

Your username: What am I doing? Yes, what are you doing? Rather, does it refer to something? See also: my reply to an ongoing discussion, that you have commented on. A person who has been editing Wikipedia since October 28, 2010. (talk) 21:33, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

My username refers to my interest in not wasting my own time: What am I doing—and is this what I want to be doing? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

 regard A person who has been editing Wikipedia since October 28, 2010. (talk) 22:33, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Further reading

I recently posted to Wikipedia talk:Further reading, and I want to get more people discussing what I said here. As you are mentioned in that section as someone active on that talk page, I thought I'd ask what you think. Carcharoth (talk) 23:41, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

It's complicated. For one thing, the right answer depends on the number of sources used in the article, the types of sources, the audience, the breadth of the subject, and the citation system. What would work best in Schizophrenia (the copyeditor's equivalent of a tacnuke?) is not what works best in Cheesecake.

Occasionally, listing a source in both ==References== and ==Further reading== is the Right Thing. Normally—a word that I use to mean "noticeably more than half the time, but less than always"—duplication is not the Right Thing. Normally, non-duplication serves the reader very well. Normally, non-duplication of books between ==Ref== and ==Further== sections serves the reader exactly as well as non-duplication of websites between ==Ref== and ==External links== sections. The reasons why one might duplicate a particularly valuable ref are the same for both sections.

Promoting duplication encourages thoughtlessness, refspam, and mile-long lists (go look at what the author of that failed proposal did at History of Germany#Further_reading: 100+ books is apparently his idea of an ideal further reading list). I think we would be wrong to encourage duplication. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:56, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Is this not better discussed over on that talk page? Anyway, the example that prompted those thoughts from me (merely the most recent in a series of examples) was Manhattan Project (which has no external links and no further reading section), where I was wondering how an ordinary reader would filter the list of sources (currently 24 listed under 'References') to end up with some idea of where to go next after reading the article. Can you accept that just leaving the reader with a sometimes long list of references leaves them with no idea where to go for further reading? Obviously 100+ books is the other extreme, but an example of an excellent further reading section I saw recently was here. That is what all further reading sections should be like, just like the most useful ones in published books. Actually providing guidance for the reader, and not just being a bare list. (Would you mind copying this thread to the Wikipedia talk page?) Carcharoth (talk) 00:14, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I honestly don't think that the location of the comments will make any difference. My experience of that page is that the small group of "pro" editors are not interested in the sort of limits that the community has always applied to such sections, so productive discussion is unlikely. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

AN/I

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at the Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have some information. You are invited to comment at the relevant thread. Thank you. CycloneGU (talk) 15:55, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

AFAICT, my involvement in the Zac–MakeSense dispute is limited to answering one question from Zac at WP:ELN and one question from MakeSense at WT:COUNCIL. I have no information about the dispute beyond what anyone can read. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I feel you should be entirely free to comment so please ignore this if you wish; but hope it's OK to point out that my change of user name might have confused you. Neither of those two involvements were relevant, but you may remember that you witnessed a dispute between us in action on the Dennis Elwell (astrologer) biography when I was posting under the name of Clooneymark. Hope it is OK to point that out in case you were confused. Understand if you have better things to do! Zac Δ talk 20:09, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh, that's right: I even remember you posting a note there about your name change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Hey! I just wanted to show my appreciation to you for all your work explaining how the Article Feedback Tool works to people who have questions and concerns. It's really reduced my workload. So, thanks!

Jorm (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm happy to help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Looking at some of those ratings, I really wonder who thinks that Anger management is a good article in any way. Probably the spammers who wrote it. FuFoFuEd (talk) 18:40, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Then they're some of the most inept WP:SPAMMERs we've got, since there are only three URLs on the page, and none of them are really spammy looking. Psych articles overall tend to be poorly written, though.

I think that it's useful to keep in mind two things: what the "insiders" think is a good article isn't always what our readers actually want; and that it's probably better to compare the article's ratings against ratings received by similar articles, than to interpret them as absolute answers. On the first point, BTW, we've had requests for an option in "Complete" that says "Too much information". I suspect that if we offered it, a substantial number of FAs would get dinged that way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

The only reference, bodhi.name, is a reliable source how? Perhaps you didn't read the drivel they have there, which is exactly the kind that make the object of attention from QuackWatch. Here's an exceprt:

"As a new epoch begins in the life of Humanity, people start investigating enlightened perceptions and their components, characteristics and laws, bring into the light the joyful wishes aimed to change constituents of perceptions and create optimum technologies for these changes. In the process of investigating materials the scientists of the past discovered new substances with unique and incomprehensible characteristics. Likewise in this process, while practicing replacement of negative emotions with enlightened perceptions, the new enlightened perceptions appear with such striking qualities that are impossible to see even in the boldest of dreams. The era of enlightened perceptions engineering begins forming a conglomerate called the “man”. A man starts a new and unique journey, the peculiarity of this journey consists of in the fact, that it’s not a notorious “journey of the mind” usually implying a certain emotional or intellectual process severed from the physical reality and senses, which means the physical body and common chores. A man goes on a journey as a whole entirety. He is not a dreamer that turns over philosophical terms in his mind and experiences a huge number of negative emotions and he has no enlightened perceptions, feels sick and gets worse and worse. His physical body is also a unity of perceptions, we call them “feelings”, and these perceptions can also be replaced directly by effort (e.g. apathy to activeness, from “feeling not well” to “feeling great”), his physical body begins to transform and improve as negative emotions are disappearing from the set of perceptions and enlightened perceptions taking their place.

At this moment (year 2005) there are very few of such travellers, only about 20 (I mean “snouts”), but in the year 2000, when I started my activity, there were no snouts at all. It makes me feel sure there will be more and more of them as money, cars, education, relations or inheritance are not needed to make the journey. It is enough to know that this journey is possible (the task is solved by this book) as well as the fact that you are alive and have the aspiration to be happy, to experience enlightened perceptions and overpower distresses. This is why I am confident the number of snouts will grow every year and the time will come when there will be snouts by the hundreds and thousands. Therefore I have had the most intensive anticipation while realizing my joyful wishes of accomplishing “snout-projects”, when I develop the infrastructure for the snout-culture, get books translated into other languages, be supportive with the “snouts” practices and help them become with time the experts in this field and be enlightened perceptions educators who can assist the beginners independently. All my time and finances are aimed for this and I enjoy it.

The minimum task for “snouts” consists of first mastering the art of lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences and then of learning to keep the conscious clear throughout the process of passing away (when the body is going to die), in between the physical death of the body and the birth of the new and after the reincarnation to recall your practice in the “new life” and to continue from the level you have gone through in your past life. I am sure that to gain this experience it is necessary to get rid of distresses and achieve continuous enlightened perceptions of preferably ecstatic quality. Mankind has already had some similar limited experience (e.g. Dalai-Lama the 14th, Karmapa the 17th, and hundreds of other less famous Tibetan monks, “tulku”, known as people who transferred their consciousness to the new body with some larger or smaller gaps in their self-consciousness and capability to recall their past lives and past experiences)."

Snouts, huh? FuFoFuEd (talk) 20:17, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Garbage ≠ Spam. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Image file missing -- "Article title versus first sentence.jpg"

I see that you originally uploaded the image file entitled "Article title versus first sentence.jpg", which is referenced in Wikipedia:Article titles and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section). The file is now empty and no images appear in these articles. I was considering replacing it myself, but I'm new at this and I wouldn't want to accidently cause additional problems. I suspect that you'd be the one best suited to re-create the image as it did initially (or as you now feel it should) appear. I did also see a message on Commons, as I was looking at this, regarding a problem generating thumbnails of uploaded/updated files, but I wouldn't suspect that would apply in this case. It doesn't look like the image file was erased or anything; at least the wrapper info, CCSA3.0 license, description, and everything else appear to still be intact, save for the fact that the jpg is empty/gone. I am also just a little curious why you would use a Share-Alike license rather than a Public Domain permission; I haven't uploaded anything to Commons so I haven't had to make that decision yet; but just curious why you'd choose one v. other or if it's just a default option thing. ttfn -- Who R you? (talk) 04:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The file is still there, as you can see. (Click through to the full size if you're having trouble with thumbnails.)

As for the license, some elements in the image (e.g., the text of the article) aren't mine to release into the public domain. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:07, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

File:Screen Shot of User talk·Whatamidoing.png

You're obviously seeing something different than I; here are screenshots of what I am seeing for this image (but only this image). Very strange. Just thought I'd let you know. As for the license, I now understand; I had thought the screenshot would technically be your work and the Wikipedia would be public domain; but of course you're right, Wiki work is GFDL/Share-Alike and screenshot is a capture of work by others which must be licensed as such, as you've obviously correctly done and which I hope I have as well. Thanks for the education! – Who R you? (talk) 20:28, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

What do you see here? (Be prepared to wait a few seconds for it to load.)

Are you running any sort of image-blocking software, especially of the sort that might make an image disappear if you click on the wrong menu? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

When looking there (I even double-checked), I only see the empty screen with the standard picture missing (Red X in a grey box in a standard 3−D inset–border box) image. Not running any special software (although I do keep my security settings very high & prompt for most things); and all other WP site images (including your kitty & jpgs, pngs, & multi–frame gifs elsewhere, etc) all display without issue. That's why I looked into this one; it was the oddball missing image that I figured, if necessary, I could recreate. Can you think of any other jpgs and/or png/gifs that you've uploaded that I can check to see if it's just this one image or something weird in your jpg/other image format –vs– my browser? Obviously if you see it, and you haven't had other people commenting in the past, and nobody else has boldly replaced it, then this is likely something different & rare; whether it's just me for only this pic, or IE8.0.7601.17514 on Win732−bit (sp1) w/AVG AV for just your image software, or what, who knows. If memory serves, I don't think jpgs can be infected or contain tracking cookies, so there'd be no reason for the AV to block it; (and the log doesn't show this or any other jpgs). -- Who R you? (talk) 20:19, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

How very strange. I'm not much of an images person, but you can look at this and this, which are the only other two things I've uploaded to Commons. I believe that this screenshot is the only thing I've ever uploaded to the English Wikipedia. All of the files were created/processed on a Mac running OS 10.4, so the likelihood of them containing malware that could affect a Win7 box is extremely low (assuming it's even possible to infect a jpg or png file). Have you tried another browser? Do you have access to a second computer somewhere?

Oh, and I didn't know this until today, but you might be interested in knowing that there's a special license template at {{Wikipedia-screenshot}} for Wikipedia screenshots. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Those other 3 images all look good; but (I checked again) the "Article title versus..." image is still blank for me. Bizarre. Maybe if you're chatting w/one of the other editors, u can ask them what they see in the thumbprint above; but beyond that, I guess the image needs to be recreated, reuploaded (either replacing the original or to a new name), and, if new name (which I'd suggest just to permit the opportuntity to try to figure out what's different about the current version), amended in the 2 linked articles. I haven't got access to another sys, and the hard-drive on this one's so full I'd prefer not to add another browser; otherwise I'd try to do some more checking. Thanks for the info re the WP-screenshot licence; (I think) that's what I used when I uploaded the two shots I included above. Anyways, if you like, let me know if you replace the images in the Wikipedia:Article titles and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section) articles and I'll double check that they show up ok, but I'm assuming there's just something unusual about the previous version, whatever that something may be. ttyl — Who R you? (talk) 19:20, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I've left a note at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Check_an_image_on_Commons_for_me.3F. Perhaps we'll find someone else that has similar trouble, and see if we can identify any similarities. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:42, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think that we've figured out the problem (IE8 doesn't know how to read all 'legal' JPEG formats). It sounds like someone has uploaded a replacement that it should be able to read, but Commons seems to be having some difficulties with thumbnails, so while you should be able to see the file itself, if you click all the way through to the full-size file, it may not be visible on the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The image shows just fine now, thumbnail & all. Don't ya just love technology!¡ Glad an answer was found. ttyl — Who R you? (talk) 03:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

The fix is easy enough to do (and a CMYK JPEG [rather than an RGB JPEG] is frankly a silly format for a screenshot; I must not have checked the defaults in Adobe Illustrator before saving it), and IE's pretty commonly used, so I'm hoping that someone will figure out how to identify such files automatically and tag them for conversion. Commons has more than 10 million files, and even if this is a very unusual combination, we could still end up with tens of thousands of these "traps" out there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────┘
Yeah, image compression algorithms definitely aren't my thing; but no doubt someone with an image crunching background could write a simple enough scanner to check the color palette of the image. If memory serves (which more and more these days it doesn't necessarily; but if it does) the Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black -vs- the Red-Green-Blue palette selection is just a flag set at such&such a bit location in the image header record. I thought I saw talk of an image group/lab/support/something somewhere, probably in Commons, who are probably capable of writing a quick scanner to flag all the CMYK J-Pegs in Commons. I guess we should all be using PNGs but, of course, they aren't quite as universal as jpgs but I don't know what would still be around that doesn't support png. I guess maybe if someone in Africa or China is using a 15-year old computer running IE6 (tongue-in-cheek assuming that's how long ago microsoft created png), and I have no idea how long (or if) all other platforms like Mac fully support viewing/creating/editing microsoft's portable network graphic format. I know in recent times I have run into the odd occasion where I had to convert something from a png to a jpg in order to satisfy something that couldn't handle png; so I guess until it's ubiquitous, jpgs still the best option (still better quality than gif for a lot of/most things like screenshots and photos).  Ya like how subtle I am about showing off that I once knew something almost useful about this kinda stuff?  :) Once upon a time not many people knew this kind of stuff and they used to pay people that did.  Meanwhile I guess us IE users either have to finally dump ms (not that I'd mind on a lot of levels), or just follow-up if we see a missing image. But it was interesting to learn why that happened; apparently the saying's still true that one can learn something new every day. — Who R you? (talk) 05:27, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

It was a different world back before the dotcom bust.

Hey, I wanted to say thanks for your comments at Syphilis. It's so easy to fall in the trap of "writing for other professionals" (I'm not one, but I find that the writing style in the professional-level sources is contagious). It's really useful to have someone waving his arms and saying "doesn't make sense! Try writing in English next time!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:22, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Happy to try to help; I was concerned I was being more of a hinderance repeatedly bringing up the same issue, but glad to know (at least on some level), that wasn't the case. :) Great to see the article earned the GA; & deservedly so! — Who R you? (talk) 01:24, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Open wikis query

Just a note to say thanks for your comments in response to my query at Wikipedia:External_links/Noticeboard/Archive_8#open_wikis. The feedback was very useful to help crystalise my thoughts about how to take this forward. AndrewRT(Talk) 17:11, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad it was helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Non-accredited

I think a more up to date source (2011 vs 2007) is here. FuFoFuEd (talk) 18:28, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to change it, if you think it's a better source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Syphilis GA nominee

Hi, Syphilis is currently being reviwed for GA by me. As you have contributed major to it i want you to participate in current going reviewing and debate thanks.  Sehmeet singh  Talk  13:54, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

GARs

Wow, maybe I need to get you to review my next GA candidate; you seem like an easy reviewer. Or is it just much harder to get delisted? I have seen much better articles fail GA, and others get delisted. Did you actually look at my candidates and think they are representative of good articles? Would you pass them? I think you have to grade articles so that any GA article has a similar level of quality, no? I am not sure I understand what you want me to do to verify the sources, with the templates and all, but I have not been allowed to use those same sources in the past in a failed GA review. BTW, I also see reviewers complain about reference formatting as well, even down to consistent date formatting across refs. BollyJeff || talk 01:47, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know enough about the articles or the sources to form an opinion on the specific articles.

On the other hand, I know quite a lot about the GA criteria, and most (but not all) of your complaints have nothing to do with the GA criteria. Fake criteria invented by reviewers is one of the major problems that the GA program has, and I oppose it whenever I encounter it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I was just going by what I encountered from other reviewers in the past. I though that the method of style was important too, but apparently only 5 pages of it, as defined here. So what should one do when finding reviewers who are too strict? And also what specifically should I do to determine if these sources can in fact be used? I know several editors of Indian cinema articles that would say no because they have been questioned in the past. I'll just fix the formatting myself. The only thing I could find on Idlebrain.com is this. But the source that you showed me said a site cannot be blanket banned and must be evaluated for reliability on a case by case basis. Now how is that supposed to work? BollyJeff || talk 12:53, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

When you encounter fake criteria like that, the first thing to do is to remember that (like yourself) the reviewer is probably just going by what someone else did in the past. The "fake criteria" problem is a problem that we want to fix, but not one that we really need to assign blame for. Also, sometimes even if it's not technically required, it's still the kind of good idea that you'd want to do no matter what—so if that's the case, then why not do it anyway?

Then I'd point them at WP:What the Good article criteria are not. If that's not good enough, you can leave a note at WT:GAN to ask for help resolving the difference between the criteria and the reviewer's opinions. You can also contact me or User talk:Geometry guy (the other major contributor to GACN) to ask for help directly.

As for identifying reliable sources: We have to go case by case for sources because how exactly you use the source is important. To give a silly example, a children's book like The Very Hungry Caterpillar is an impossibly unreliable source for a statement about Albert Einstein's physics theories, but it's a 100% reliable source for a statement like "This children's book is about a caterpillar".

According to policies, a reliable source has these characteristics:

• It has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.
• It is published by a reputable publishing house, rather than by the author(s).
• It is "appropriate for the material in question", i.e., the source is directly about the subject, rather than mentioning something unrelated in passing.
• It is a third-party or independent source.
• It has a professional structure in place for deciding whether to publish something, such as editorial oversight or peer review processes.

A standard, commercial celebrity magazine or gossip website would typically have most of these qualities. The fact that this class of scummy, muckraking publications pander to some of the worst qualities in humans, profit off the destruction of people's reputations, and report information of strictly dubious importance to the world is irrelevant. In fact, some of them are feared by their targets specifically because they have formidable reputations for accuracy, and, consequently, whatever hateful, destructive claims they publish about you are highly likely to be believed by everyone who reads it. (Others are merely rumor mills.) I don't know enough about these sources to help you sort them out, but the question is always the same: Is this source good enough to support the specific statement in question? The question is never, "Is this the sort of respectable magazine that decent, moral people would be proud to tell their families they worked for?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:31, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Social media links

Hi there,

after the removal of the social media links at British Red Cross, I have restored them, as I believe that is not the correct interpretation of WP:EL which says "Official links (if any) are provided to give the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself. These links are exempt from the links normally to be avoided" (emphasis mine). This preceeds the section you quoted, and reading around it, these links are permitted provided they are the official source of information for the organisation. That is also why the {{Twitter}} and {{Facebook}} templates are allowed to stay.

Hope that helps, OwainDavies ^(about)_(talk) edited at 04:22, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Have you read the second half of WP:ELOFFICIAL? That's the bit that begins with Minimize the number of links. It says that while under some circumstances such links might be allowed, they should only be included "when the additional links provide the reader with unique content and are not prominently linked from other official websites". The Facebook and Twitter links at redcross.org.uk look "prominently linked" to me. This is why I removed them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I note for others that you did the same at Quick Chek New Jersey Festival of Ballooning. Richardc020 (talk) 07:19, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

And a {{dead link}}, too. WP:DEADREFs are kept, but dead external links should be deleted on sight. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

An olive branch

An olive branch

I am concerned by the time that we are both expending on high school notability. You have spent a lot of effort working your way around Wikipedia guidelines and I have spent a lot of effort following you around and reverting you! Though we may have a philosophical difference, in practice it is only just possible to get a playing card between the effect of our differing positions. I take the pragmatic position that since 99% of high schools have sources available (whether on Google or not) to meet WP:GNG treating them all as de facto notable (note I don't use the loaded term 'inherently notable') saves the Community spending an inordinate amount of time chasing them all through AfD in order to weed out the very few that may not be notable. This pragmatic approach is not unique to high schools. It is taken, for example, on:

• Designated settlements
• Numbered highways
• Airports
• Railway stations
• Fauna and flora
• Named bridges
• High court judges
• Peers of the realm
• Super-regional malls
• Sportspeople who have played in a fully-professional league

None of these would get deleted at AfD even without a sniff of sources (note I am not justifying these merely exemplifying them). It is also not helpful inaccurately characterising supporters of high school notability as 'teenagers' or a 'minority'. Also, the various attempts at a school notability haven't foundered on this issue. What happened was that any standard that we suggested was considered too restrictive by schools inclusionists and too permissive by schools deletionists and it only takes 2 or 3 determined editors to scupper any standard.

Your concern appears to be that taking high schools as notable might allow home schools or small all-through private schools, for whom there are little or no reliable sources, to survive. In fact, this is not the issue. The problem, with the lack of an agreed standard, is with Indian, Pakistani, Filipino and Bangladeshi high schools where major public schools are continuously put forward for deletion. This is due to the generally woeful standard of writing and that there is only a very limited amount of reliable sources on the Internet. To avoid systemic bias it has to be argued that reliable sources probably exist but that ample time needs to be given to allow local sources to be researched (at local libraries and the like).

My offer of a compromise is that if you will row back from knocking the de facto notability of high schools, I will support you in getting deleted such schools as home schools, tiny private all-though schools for which we know reliable sources won't exist. That way we can both concentrate our efforts in doing some of the much-needed work of article writing and improvement. TerriersFan (talk) 19:34, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I am concerned about the "ageism" for multiple reasons. It is frequently used to justify the improper deletion of notable middle schools and elementary schools. I know you've seen AfDs in which people argue that a dozen sources doesn't show notability of a middle school, and others in which the high school's own website (a non-independent source and thus completely worthless for determining notability) is somehow proof that the high school is notable.

I expect you to support the inclusion of all schools that are likely to meet the actual, source-based standard, and I expect you to oppose the inclusion of all schools that are unlikely to meet the actual, source-based standard. I think it would help Wikipedia immensely if you and other editors would stop !voting "Keep, because it's a high school" and start !voting "Keep, because I found some independent sources" or "Delete, because unfortunately I can't find any independent sources". If you would stop promoting the rejected age-based standard, we might get more thoughtfulness at AfD and better articles in the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

It may look like ageism but in fact it's not. Sure high schools have older students but that's not the prime issue. High schools are considered to affect the future lives of their students in the way that elementary schools do not; they tend to be cited by notable people as an influence on their careers; and high schools are major institutions in their local community. The problem with the middle school article in question is that you hadn't added and woven the sources into the article. Had you done that then it might well have been kept. Indeed it is not too late; if you would like to develop it I will userfy it to you and I will help you source it up. The bottom line is that I am spending valuable time continuously debating the same issue with you in various forums. If you row back from doing this I will have the time to help you keep some elementary and middle schools; I have much expertise and experience in successfully getting them through AfD; it is not though a matter of voting keep, it is a matter of sourcing them up and I am happy to assist in this if you will accept my olive branch. TerriersFan (talk) 17:03, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem with "the middle school article in question" is that it's not just one middle school: this is a systemic problem, and one that wouldn't exist if people didn't keep repeating the false story that high schools are inherently notable and middle schools are inherently non-notable.

(For the most recent example that I bothered with, "the problem" you report is apparently a complete inability of certain editors to read the guideline, which explicitly states that notability is not dependent on anyone ever "adding and weaving the sources into the article". If that's your impression of what the last half of WP:NRVE says, then imagine how much more ignorant the average AFD participant is on that point.)

Now that college is normal for people likely to become notable, I hear remarkably few people saying that high school had much of an influence on their lives or careers. That was true in the mid-20th century, but it's not any longer. And even if it were true, it's completely irrelevant: Notability is not determined by whether something is actually important. It's determined by whether independent sources have taken notice of the subject. (Also, the education literature suggests that your first grade teacher has more actual effect than anything else, so if we were going by real effects rather than nostalgia, we'd be profiling elementary schools.)

The fact is that I don't actually have an interest in schools of any type. I have a strong interest in stopping the continuous, public misrepresentation of Wikipedia's notability guidelines. WP:Nobody reads the directions. If someone pushes a fairy tale about notability as if it were true, then that fairy tale will be widely believed.

That's why you believed it initially, right? You came to Wikipedia, you looked around, and you heard a bunch of people repeating the 'high schools should always be kept' story at AFDs, right? I know that you never actually saw any official guideline that supported this story, because none has ever existed. You simply believed, in good faith, that the editors before you knew what they were talking about, and since it seemed sensible to you, you went along with it.

And now, even though you know it's more complicated than that, you are repeating this story yourself, and therefore teaching it to the next 'generation' of Wikipedians, who are going to believe, in good faith, that when you make a statement backed up by a shortcut, that this is the official advice from the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Third-party

Template:Third-party has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. FuFoFuEd (talk) 23:06, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. Please read WP:Secondary does not mean independent. For that matter, please go read the template itself. You don't seem to have realized it, but your deletion rationale is a ringing endorsement of the template's contents. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Please retract your accusation

I quoted a statement from WP:TITLECHANGES that has been in there since at least May 2010. I did add wording to WP:NDESC yesterday that was a clarifying paraphrase of this statement, but that's not what I quoted in my statement. Please acknowledge at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests.

Please retract the accusation you made of me: " make a significant change to a policy and then quote it as if it had always been part of the policy."

I would NEVER do that! WP:AGF, please! --Born2cycle (talk) 05:32, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

No matter how well-intentioned you felt, or how minor you personally thought the change was, the fact remains that changing a policy to strengthen your argument in an ArbCom case is a problem. "Gaming the system" makes people distrust you and believe that your opinion is too weak to stand on its own.

Also, duplicating text within the same advice page is discouraged by WP:Policies and guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Appreciating your contribution

		The Barnstar of Integrity
		Just want you to know that I admire your integrity and appreciate the help you've given as an uninvolved editor Zac Δ talk 22:00, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey, you may hate these things, I don't know. If so delete it, but wanted to show my thanks. Zac Δ talk 22:00, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm glad to see that you're helping WP:REVIVE WikiProject Astrology. I hope that you and the other editors will make a particular effort to make solid progress during the next six months. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

thanks

Hi. Thanks for the help with the Vermillion Literary Project Magazine. Wanted to know if you can see my user pages? I am working on another article, Lifelines, a literary journal out of Dartmouth. Hope I have done this right so far....Jimsteele9999 (talk) 18:46, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I fixed the category for you at User:Jimsteele9999/Lifelines (literary journal), although you might consider <!-- commenting it out --> if you're not going to WP:MOVE the page to the main namespace soon. A page like that always looks more "professional" if you add an infobox. (Just copy it out of the other, and fill in the blanks.)

What you really need is some non-Dartmouth source of information about the journal. If none exists, then it would probably be better to WP:MERGE it into the article about the medical school (with a suitable WP:REDIRECT to help readers find it). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Having some difficulty finding sources outside of Dartmouth, but I am sure they are out there. Also, tried to add info box but it didn't work. Jimsteele9999 (talk) 02:08, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

You need the code from the top of the article (visible in the edit box). It looks like you tried to paste in a diff. I've swiped the code out of the other; all you need to do is to change the "answers". Any line that is irrelevant can be removed. Just be sure to take out the whole line, from the pipe (the "|") through the equals sign (and the line break, if you want it to look organized in the edit box). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed article creation trial

I'm contacting you because you participated in the proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles a few months ago; and particularly because you had some interesting ideas on how to implement the trial. I have set up a discussion page for various aspects of implementing the trial at WP:ACTRIAL. Please feel free to join the discussion if you are interested. I am not initially contacting a large number of users (in an attempt to keep the discussions contained and manageable), but feel free to invite any other users who might be helpful. Thanks. —SW— ^spout 00:12, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the invitation. I agree that trial design by enormous committee usually degenerates into silly arguments about the color of the bike shed and disruption from people who don't want the change to happen in the first place. I'll look at the page later today. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:20, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi!

I was just Wikisurfing and I found your username. I have to say, It's awesome!Mike 289 18:38, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad that you like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:13, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

1st party, 3rd party sources

Hi, I'm interested in your opinion on a question that came to mind after reading the following sentence.

"An article written using entirely first-party sources (e.g. a biographical article using only a published autobiography by the subject of the article, or an article about a scientific experiment sourced only to a reliable, peer-reviewed paper where the experiment was published) could meet WP:V without meeting WP:N."

Is a peer-reviewed journal article about a scientific experiment by the author, considered a first-party source or a third-party source? My thinking is that it is a third-party source because the peer-reviewed journal where it is published is a third-party source. If instead the experiment was reported only on the website of the experimenter, then it would be a first-party source. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 23:48, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

My own report of my own actions is a first-party source no matter where I publish it. So if I mix some chemicals in a lab, and write up a description of what I did, then that is a first-party source, whether I publish that description in my blog, in the local newspaper, or in a peer-reviewed journal.

The first-party/third-party distinction is about the distance that the author has (or doesn't have) from the subject matter. The identity of the publisher, whether the publication uses proper editorial control, etc., is irrelevant to this determination (but highly relevant to determining whether it is a WP:Reliable source).

Your two examples sources would be classified as a first-party, non-self-published reliable source (for the peer-reviewed article) and as a first-party, self-published reliable source (for the web page). Either of them might be totally acceptable for WP:V purposes. The first might (or might not) be useful for WP:N purposes, depending on the details. Naturally, it would not show that either the author, the experiment, or the publication is notable. However, it might (help) show that the chemicals are notable under certain circumstances, e.g., if the chemicals are owned by one company and the author works for someone else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:34, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate your response.

Re "The first-party/third-party distinction is about the distance that the author has (or doesn't have) from the subject matter." - This seems like the distinction between primary source and secondary source. How is the 1st/3rd distinction different from the primary/secondary distinction? Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 21:30, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

All of these systems are efforts to show different kinds of distance—distance measured by my personal involvement as well as distance measured by how I learned the information. So if I mix the chemicals, and write up what I did, then my paper is first-party primary; if I mix the chemicals, but you write up what I did, then your paper is third-party primary. If I take my paper and write an essay about the flaws in my work, then my essay is first-party secondary; if you take my paper and write an essay about its flaws, then your essay is third-party secondary.

Have you read WP:Party and person? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the wikilink to the essay. I just finished reading it. I thought it was well written and organized.

The part that I would like to discuss with you, if you have a moment, is in the Combinatorics section where the example for First party Primary source is: Scientist publishes original report about his experiments. No distinction is made between self-publication and publication in a peer-reviewed journal. I recognize that this is consistent with what you wrote above, "My own report of my own actions is a first-party source no matter where I publish it."

Here's my take. The important difference between self-publication and publication in a peer-reviewed journal, is that the scientist's report is evaluated by the journal's staff and they are third parties to the scientist's work. Submissions are routinely rejected with some journals having higher rejection rates than others. The journal is a third party source and the scientist's report that appears in the journal is part of this third party source. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 00:15, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

There is an important difference, but the difference is not in whether the source is first-party or third-party. The difference is whether the source is self-published or credibly published. These are completely separate considerations, and which consideration is more important will depend on the specifics. A first-party peer-reviewed primary source has a lot more credibility than a third-party self-published celebrity gossip blog. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:34, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the discussion and useful information. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 00:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

BTW are you satisfied with the title of the essay Party and person? Bob K31416 (talk) 17:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

No. I have been finding one of the redirects more useful for one common problem (WP:Secondary does not mean independent) but that move would require admin intervention, and I'm not sure that it's really the best name for the whole thing, anyway. If you have ideas, please feel free to boldly rename it. (Whatever you think of couldn't really be any more obscure and unhelpful than what I started with there.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the encouragement to move it, but I would prefer to work through you, if you have the time. Also, I think you have a better understanding of what works with other titles in Wikipedia and what would be acceptable by others in this subject area. With that in mind, is Types of sources a possibility? Bob K31416 (talk) 18:49, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

That's a possibility, although I think that would be a bigger subject. "Types of sources" should include self-published vs properly published, and it could include far more (e.g., peer review).

I guess the next thing to do is to send you over to Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources, which is where a related page (mostly about telling the difference between primary and secondary sources and how to use them), rather than the conceptual difference between first-/third-party vs primary/secondary) is under construction.

Of the long-standing pages on this subject, WP:Third-party sources and WP:Independent sources (which might get merged) are probably the most important ones. Ultimately, all of these pages should fit together in a more or less organized fashion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll defer to your opinion about using "Types of sources". Trying to define types of sources seems challenging.

I looked at some of Sandbox 4 and I thought it was well written. In the science section I agree that raw data is primary, but I think that the analysis of the data is secondary, whether by the scientist that took it or by someone else. I think that the purpose of Wikipedia discouraging articles that have only primary sources is so that the article won't contain analysis of the data by editors. If the data is analyzed in the source, then it should be considered a secondary source and perfectly acceptable for Wikipedia. Just my opinion. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 07:09, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Long discussions elsewhere have resulted in most science editors declaring original reports of experiments to be primary according to real-world standards, but my thought here is that—no matter what some expert in the real world might or might not call them—we need to give editors the "correct answer" according to Wikipedia's practice, and as far as Wikipedia is concerned, such reports should be treated like primary sources.

In practice, if you try to use a paper like "Spilling beer into cell cultures: effects on the lab manager's blood pressure" or "Case study: Length of employment after spilling beer in the lab" in the same way that we regularly use literature reviews and meta-analyses, you can expect someone to fuss at you about overstating its conclusions. On the other hand, if you treat it the same way that we would treat any other primary source, they won't fuss at you for mishandling it.

We normally want editors to handle these reports like primary sources, which normally means describing them ("One uncontrolled study concluded that spilling beer into cell cultures may cause a lab manager's face to turn purple"). Compare that to what you would say if you had a meta-analysis that combined multiple studies to conclude that spilling beer into cell cultures resulted in involuntary termination of employment for 97% of spillers, with a median post-spilling length of employment of 6 normal business hours: you would assert as a fact that spilling beer in a lab almost always got people fired promptly, with no temporizing about only "one study" reaching that conclusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Re "no matter what some expert in the real world might or might not call them—we need to give editors the "correct answer" according to Wikipedia's practice" - I agree with this attitude, but I'm not sure about using a term like "primary source" if it has problems with its meaning. My first preference is to give guidance without using a term, but I understand that might not work. One would have to try it to see.

In the case of Wikipedia medical articles, in which we both seem to have some experience editing, I would guess that a large majority of the references are primary sources, according to your definition. (What's your guess?) This would seem to go against Wikipedia's advice to use mainly secondary sources.

P.S. I got a little chuckle about the beer in a microbiology lab. Microbes may be the dominant form of life on Earth, depending on one's criterion. Here's a clip which shows them saving the planet from invaders, in the end. (Sorry for the digression.) Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 17:00, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

It depends on the article. Some (e.g., Medicinal mushrooms) rely far too much on primary sources; others (e.g., Syphilis) rely heavily on secondary sources, with the occasional primary source to fill in a detail. A bare count of sources isn't the determining factor. I've seen many articles that name a small number of literature reviews or textbooks along with a couple dozen primary sources, but the primaries are cited once each for some minor point, and the secondaries are cited dozens of times, and for major material. There's still work to be done, but overall I think we're making progress on this front.

In theory, it would be nice not to have to shoehorn every area into the historian's framework, but the fact is that the community has decided to use that framework to deal with 100% of sources. If we don't tell editors how the policy's language maps to non-history sources (I'd like to add more than just science to that section), then we'll get confusion and disputes, as each editor makes up his own system (that just accidentally happens to support his side of any given content dispute, of course). So I think that we need to use that language, even if the framework feels a little unnatural from the perspective of an "insider" in the field. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

All I can say is that I think you have taken on a very challenging task and I wish you good luck. Best regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 00:43, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (high schools)

Sorry, but this contribution is starting to come close to failing to meeting the spirit of WP:AGF even if it may meet the letter. Please do not ascribe motivations to me, or any editor, particularly since the ascribed motivation is incorrect. TerriersFan (talk) 22:24, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I honestly wish that I had a different impression of your motivation. I readily agree that the appearance of your motivation may be deceiving. However, please note that in saying that I believe you want to keep all American high schools that happen to have a sports team, I do not say that you do this for any reason except to improve Wikipedia, according to your idea of what best improves Wikipedia. I am doing more than just assuming good faith: I do not have even the smallest doubt that you believe your approach improves Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Words

Your name came up in the history of Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites and your talk page is full of all sorts of grammar fun. The essay Wikipedia:Video links could use a copy edit to improve its readability. No worries if you are too busy, but it would be awesome if you had 10 minutes for it.Cptnono (talk) 07:17, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, it needs more than ten minutes' work, but I had a go at it, and hope that you will think it somewhat improved. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks for the hand.Cptnono (talk) 20:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool

Just wanted to a drop a note saying that despite a vocal minority of complainers, there are long time editors like myself who really appreciate the efforts being made to launch this tool. It's not perfect, but rarely is the most viable product released in a perfect state. I've made a few comments on the Media Wiki page (as an IP since I don't particularly care to create another Wiki account) voicing my support and trying to point out to the objectors that there are sound market research principles behind your methodology. I do hope that you have the support of the WMF to give this project the time it needs to iron out the bugs. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:12, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note and your support. I'm just an editor like yourself, but it's amazing to me how half a dozen people think that all half-billion Wikimedia readers always agree with them and so the opinions of the 90% of people using the tool don't matter at all.

It's like the problems over at m:Talk:Image filter referendum/en, with the young, single, white males declaring that it's evil for parents, non-whites, and women to not want to have pictures of mutilated bodies, pornographic images, and such displayed on their own computers every time some editor (or vandal) puts such an image on a page—as if the whole world was as squarely in the middle of the violence-and-porn market as they are.

Speaking of which, if you haven't shared your opinion on that question, then please consider going to Special:SecurePoll/vote/230 and doing so. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Notability: Schools

As I know you like contributing to policy issues, there is currently a long and important thread on Jimbo's talk page that might be right up your (High) street. This may finally be the opportunity we are hoping for to get any ambiguities cleared up regarding any perceived interpretations of (non)notability. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:42, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

That's an interesting discussion. I don't really have much time for en.wiki today, but I will keep an eye on it. Thank you for letting me know about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for responding to my lament about not being able to vote on hide-ability of ˈoffensiveˈ images.

I appreciate your taking time to explain to me why I am not invited to vote on this issue.
Had I known prior to seeing the notice yesterday, I would have worked like a dog much earlier to meet the eligibility requirements.
It seemed a bit abrupt to me that the referendum was announced such a short time before the voting date cutoff.
Admittedly, perhaps my sense of such timing is simply out of whack with some standard procedure.
I only hope at this point that enough others share my pain concerning even the serious consideration of this action.
Thank you for reading my rant on it. I can now at least take solace in knowing that someone read it and even bothered to send me a comment. Such a compliment is becoming rarer and rarer these days.
Oh, by the way, I just read an earlier paragraph on your page. I now surmise you are in favor of such censoring,
so let me point out that I'm neither young nor single, just white, (whatever that has to do with anything).
Do you really think this is only young white men wanting to push porn and violence? Please!
This reveals far too much about your personal bias of who's trying to do what to whom.
I assumed all readers had the ability to make suggestions for editing articles individually if they had the gumption to get involved.
Readers censoring all of Wikipedia with mere a click of the mouse to accommodate their 'taste' smacks of caving in to Political Correctness, to me a dirty-word expression for insidiously turning information.. its very content, into Pablum and everyone into a 'Hey, don't look at me!' innocent bystander.
What's controversial? Where does it end? Where do you judge it to become silly?
Are you in favor of removable paragraphs, even entries, if they offend? Who dictates what varieties of what topics of material might need filters built and installed for them?
Can I assume for a moment that you're not a Fundamentalist who believes the world was created 6,000 years ago, like many, many here in the U.S. do?
Do you believe a mother should have a button to click on the home computer to filter out any possibility of her kids reading the entry Darwinism?
Do only young white males think like I do? You make me laugh.
No images of Christian crosses, but Maltese crosses are OK? Sexual matters? Which ones? Animal kingdom, too?, AIDS? How about Homosexuality? Segregation? Maybe someone wants to wipe from view any and all articles about communism? Capitalism? Anything at all about Islam? Karl Marx? Ayn Rand?
It rather defeats the purpose of a group of individuals getting together to decide how to honestly, intelligently and correctly present the facts on any given topic, doesn't it?

Mykstor (talk) 20:06, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia has had a problem with vandals adding pictures of Goatse to inappropriate articles. Is it okay with you if some people don't want see those pictures whenever some vandal decides to spam it into an article? Is it "censorship" to defend themselves against such vandals? I believe that a user who truly doesn't want to see a goatse picture should not be required to see that kind of picture—ever, and not just so long as the user magically knows which page was most recently vandalized to include it.

As for your other worries, I'm not sure that you understand the proposal. It applies to images only, and it will not prevent anyone from seeing anything they actually want to see. As a form of parental control, it would be completely and utterly ineffective. The mother might say "No porn pictures for you!", but the child can say "Click here to see it anyway!" as soon as the child can touch the mouse. A single click bypasses the filter.

BTW, more than half of the English Wikipedia's users are white males under the age of 25. That such men (and teenage boys) dominate the English Wikipedia is not really disputable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Let me give you another example: Do you know what Rickrolling is?

There are software filters that stop that harmless video from loading from hundreds of websites. Is it censorship to install a filter that blocks it from loading? If someone e-mails you a link, or if you click on a link to that video, are you morally obligated to view the video? Are you engaging in morally reprehensible behavior by refusing to load or view the video?

If it's okay with you for someone to say "I don't want to have videos of Rick Astley on my computer screen", then why isn't it okay with you for the same person to make exactly the same statement about images of (for example) goatse in Wikipedia articles? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

For your thorough explanation. And I apologize if WTF's answers made me cross the line, I tried, as hard as I could, not to (and not to overreact). But as I've said, I was appalled by such replies (go away from this wiki, and the obsessive use of the f word). --Vlad|-> 05:15, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad that the grammar explanation made sense. The English Wikipedia really needs multi-lingual editors. Have you considered listing yourself at Wikipedia:Translators available? We have identified very few people who can translate from Romanian. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:22, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your offer, I'm afraid that my day to day life doesn't allow me too much time for wiki editing. I've given up administration on ro.wiki 4 years ago for lack of time, I'm afraid that I still don't have time, especially not for translation (which is more time consuming). I'll keep helping with what and whenever I can. It's been a pleasure interacting with you (this is what I've been accustomed on en.wiki until recently). --Vlad|-> 15:08, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Re:Speedy

Very well, I realize now that the user was still working on it, but bear it mind there are many pages that are created and an hour later it's still only contains "born in New Zealand..." so I assumed that the article was either created as a test or an A7. SwisterTwister talk 22:03, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I fully acknowledge the too-frequent creation of garbage, but it's just not possible to tell which is which three minutes after creation. That's why we've long recommended that people look further back in the queue. At least then, you've got a fair chance of identifying things correctly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

High schools

I think the beliefs you have laid out are fairly well reflected in my edit Wikipedia:All high schools can be notable. Care to take a look? Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:37, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

• I do not agree with the first sentence. Some high schools are not notable. I include in this category any high school that has never been mentioned in any newspaper or other type of independent, reliable source. This includes thousands of legally constituted, very small, independent (=not government-run) high schools just in the United States.
• School articles are normally measured against ORG rather than GNG. ORG is slightly higher.
• A decent article on a school (high or otherwise) also includes information about its funding and facilities. Significant amounts of non-routine coverage in reliable sources is about facilities: NIMBYs complaining that a high school might be built near them, anti-tax people whingeing about the expense, etc.
• IMO all such essays would benefit from a direct statement that if a good-faith search indicates that no reliable independent source has published more than a trivial or routine mention of the school, then the article can be, should be, and has normally been merged into a larger subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll incorporate your concerns into the essay. Your first concern actually came from a difference in opinion on what a high school is (the ones you described, I would not call valid high schools, they seem similar to home schools to me). I do see what you mean and the article will probably require renaming. Really, the essay is something like A well written, well sourced article on a high school is notable. That title seems long though, got any other ideas? I will be busy for most of today, so you can feel free to make some of those changes yourself if you like. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:38, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Many of those thousands are legitimate schools, enrolling students who are not related to each other, not being taught by their parents, and not operating out of someone's home. These are "real" high schools. The number of students isn't what makes a school notable; it's attention from independent sources that matters. It happens that large schools (like large businesses) are more likely to get attention than small ones, and that older schools (like old businesses) have had more years in which to get that attention than new ones, but it's the sources that matter, not the number (or age) of the students.

It's also not the current state of the article that matters. It must be possible to write a well-sourced article, but Cancer was a notable subject when it contained zero proper bibliographic citations (which it did, for nearly three years after its creation). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:37, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Request

Hi there,

Although I've edited wikipedia for years, I still have no clue as to how to give a standard warning that a particular article likely violates NPOV. Please, where is the wikipedia advice page which shows me how to add that to the top of an article or other statements such as the claim that the article may have original research in it etc. Thanks. Loki0115 (talk) 17:36, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi Loki,

It sounds like you're looking for Wikipedia:Template messages (which links to several sub-pages and ultimately dozens, or maybe hundreds, of templates). The main template for POV problems is {{POV}}. Don't forget to start a discussion on the talk page to explain your concerns, if you add that one to an article. We had a problem with people adding the template merely because they personally disagreed with the articles (e.g., a person who believes in homeopathy being unhappy because an article didn't say that homeopathy worked), so we've made discussion a rule for that particular template. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

If I may interject, this is exactly the issue at hand WhatamIdoing. Loki0115 has issues with the content of several articles concerned with cooking, which Loki0115 appears to have a strong opinion against.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

The goal behind that rule is only to stop drive-by tagging, not to prevent people from expressing disagreement in a method that is likely to result in discussion and resolution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

If I may make a point. I recently deleted some very seriously biased pro-cooking "data" which was contradicted by other studies showing the exact opposite. Ryulong is perhaps right. I should have also prrovided refs showing such, even though they are easily accessible online. I will do so now. As for the Margaret Mead assertion by Ryulong, that has nothing whatsoever to do with cooking, but Ryulong is trying to promote an anti-raw assertion here, of course, which, again, has nothing whatsoever to do with Margaret Mead, solely in order to make a biased attack on me. I will add the necessary refs. Loki0115 (talk) 21:13, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad that you will be adding some references. When studies contradict each other, it's often best to present both sides, not just one or the other. The "mainstream" view should normally get more emphasis than a minority view, but all significant sides can be presented. (Whether a side is "significant" is determined by how many sources support it, not by how many Wikipedians think it's sensible.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I am not being anti-raw or pro-cooking. The article Control of fire by early humans (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) discusses cooking, and Loki0115 has been removing statements that have sources that say cooking happened at some point in prehistory. There is no reason to remove information on cooking or provide information on the raw food perspective when the article (in part) is about cooking.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:39, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I did not provide pro-raw info. I simply deleted some extremely questionable pro-cooking claims, such as the decidedly scientifically-unsupported notion that cooking allowed humans to proliferate. I showed that the ref in question did not actually back up that notion, that it, instead supported the notion that the discovery of fossil fuels allowed humans to proliferate, not cooking per se, and pointed out that other data showed that human populations remained stable during the palaeolithic era. In short, I am not against solid data about cooking, I just don't want blanket pro-cooking statements which have already been debunked elsewhere in scientific circles.Loki0115 (talk) 07:19, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

It is more common to provide both sides of the story, rather than removing information that you disagree with. That way, readers get the whole story of who believes what, rather than an incomplete story. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The trouble is that including all views can make an article really longwinded and unclear. For example, your suggestion would involve first citing studies which show that cooking makes meat easier to digest, followed by studies showing that cooking makes meat more difficult to digest. That way, everybody gets confused, when, in reality, the issue of raw/cooked meat being more/less digestible hasn't really been sorted out yet for any definitive claim to be made as yet. Plus, it makes the article needlessly longer than it should be, also, the article isn't really about cooked food or raw food, it is about the control of fire. So any pro-cooking info really belongs in the cooking wikipedia page.Loki0115 (talk) 18:55, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

You don't have to take the long-winded approach. You can say, for example, that "Some studies claim that cooked meat is easier to digest than raw meat,<syntaxhighlights here> and others come to the opposite conclusion.<syntaxhighlights here>" That's one sentence, which is not at all long-winded or unclear. You can do the same for other issues, such as "Cooking food reduces the incidence of food poisoning<syntaxhighlights here>" (which it does, since cooking kills some bacteria that would be harmful if the food is eaten raw).

You can also reduce the tendency towards confusion by relying on high-quality, scholarly secondary sources rather than individual experiments or other primary sources. This is not an impossible task. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, WhatamIdoing. You have new messages at Cerejota's talk page.
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Cerejota (talk) 00:47, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, WhatamIdoing. You have new messages at Cerejota's talk page.
Message added 00:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Cerejota (talk) 00:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

A (trans fat filled) cookie for you!

Apparently you edited the Wikipedia article on Polycystic ovary syndrome, on august 11. It is a tragedy since the only likely CURE for PCOS has been wiped off the net by you. If PCOS is dominantly inherited (as you have edited with a 2001 dated reference) then the human race is doomed! On the other hand, since 2007 (after reading the American journal of Nutrition article on trans fats and PCOS) I have put numerous infertility patients on a trans fat free diet (absolutely no trans fats - believe me it is very difficult in todays world) and ALL of them have documented sonographic improvement and several of them (about 30%) have conceived. You can try this out with anyone known to you who has PCOS and see the response yourself. Your grounds for deleting my contribution was that the relevant reference was about 'ovulatory' infertility and not PCOS. Any doctor treating infertility will tell you that PCOS is the largest cause of 'ovulatory' infertility! If you own a trans fat related business, perhaps you could be forgiven, otherwise you have done the human race a gross injustice. Fullwill (talk) 14:29, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that you do not understand the difference between "Cause" and "Treatment". A diet free of trans-fats is likely to be an effective treatment for many conditions, and in my opinion, all women with PCOS ought to strive for a diet low in refined carbohydrates and trans fats and high in fiber and protein. That does not mean that trans fats actually cause PCOS.

To name a parallel situation, Adrenoleukodystrophy is caused by genes. It is treated primarily through diet. The same is true for PCOS. In both cases, a perfect diet might prevent symptoms from bothering the affected person, but the person would still have the underlying genetic condition and would still be able to pass those undesirable genes along to the next generation.

Some people inherit genes that make them susceptible to breast cancer. Others inherit genes that make them susceptible to heart disease. PCOS women have inherited genes that make a poor diet screw up their ovaries and give them acne, heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure. These genes are the cause; fixing the diet is the first-line treatment. In some PCOS women, even a perfect diet is insufficient treatment, but it's IMO always the place to start. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

From FULLWILL -

The reference given by you says that autosomal dominant mode of inheritance is likely in view of 'familial' clustering; is it not also likely that the same environmental factors may apply to the members of the same family (in this case, it is the amount of trans fat in the food they eat)? Autosomal dominant also implies that we are more likely headed for extinction! There are different standards of medical research. An article on head injuries based on Asterix comics has been published! Anyway, in practice PCOS is completely cured by a trans fat free diet, so this argument is for your sake only. I contributed to Wikipedia to help PCOS patients who are more often than not mislead by vested interests; the trans fats lobby is huge indeed, especially in the country where I live. Here large business corporates owning factories which convert palm oil into trans fats for the food industry, also own newspapers and television channels. Hence the only way to inform the affected public is through the web.

Once patients are thus created by trans fats (whether coronary heart disease, PCOS, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's, NASH etc) other vested lobbies take over - like the pharmaceutical and some health care providers. The situation is already quite hopeless. If you have a conscience, you know what to do. Fullwill (talk) 18:41, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

• In practice, PCOS is not "completely cured" by any diet, any more than a tendency to high cholesterol is "completely cured" by any diet. Some of the symptoms are alleviated, but that's not the same thing as a cure. Antibiotics (usually) cure bacterial infections; diets may treat, but diets never cure genetic conditions.
• Dietary practices do follow family patterns, but your novel theory does not explain why PCOS existed hundreds of years before trans fats were common in people's diets.
• Dietary practices follow family patterns, but your novel theory does not explain why PCOS appears only in certain families, and never in other families that eat just as much, or even more, trans fats.
• Autosomal dominance does not imply that we are headed for extinction. Many extremely rare genes are dominant. Did your education perhaps not include very much about modern genetics?
• Wikipedia requires information to be WP:Verifiable to a high-quality, properly published reliable source, such as a medical school textbook. It is not sufficient for you to say that something is true—not even if it really is true. We report what the balance of reliable sources say. The overwhelming majority of sources at PCOS say nothing at all about trans fats causing PCOS, and nothing at all about any diet curing PCOS (although most indicate that it helps treat symptoms, which is importantly different). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:55, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

My opinion in this case is that, because of the potential controversy of the subject, a reliable medical source (and one that specifically includes people with PCOS) is necessary for any mention of trans fats in the Cause section of PCOS. I've opened a section at Talk:Polycystic ovary syndrome#Trans fats as a cause? for anyone to make further comments on the issue. Mikael Häggström (talk) 10:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a mop reserved in your name

I have observed some remarkable contributions from this account. I am curious, why are you not an administrator. Pardon that you have struck me as the kind of editor who could be a good one, and that you seem qualified by a cursory review. You exemplify the essence of an Administrator without tools! I hope you will consider serving in the fuller capacity.

My76Strat (talk) 02:48, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps. Malleus Fatuorum 02:56, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I think it would be worthwhile for you to run. --Rschen7754 03:03, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

You have a longstanding and still open invitation: I'd be happy to nominate and/or support you for adminship anytime. MastCell ^Talk 05:44, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

You've said before you don't need the mop but it seems to be a prerequisite for arbcom membership, where I think your good sense would be an asset. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Recruiting Professionals

Thanks for your thoghtful comments at User_talk:Ottawahitech#Recruiting_professionals. Do you already know about the info at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=wikipedia? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:25, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I knew that a number of papers had been written; I hadn't ever bothered to do the search. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:17, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Drugbox issue with Vincristine / Vinblastine / Mustargen

WhatamIdoing,

You and I spoke briefly on an issue I was having with Vincristine, Vinblastine and Mustargen drugboxes. It's not happening anymore, and what you thought was happening is right. I'd attempted to install Chrome on my computer, it wasn't successful, however, Chrome left residual registry keys and they were causing my browsers to display incorrectly (happened with a few other applications at work, but never happened at home ). I cleaned my registry out of any mention of "Chrome" and now the drug boxes are displaying normally.

I wanted to ask you about the data within them. YOu stated that they can't have any breaks in them. They're not links of any kind, so what would the problem be ? @-Kosh► Talk to the Vorlons►Markab-@ 23:33, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that was DMacks, but the answer (so far as I can tell) is that it's supposed to be machine-readable, and apparently the machines in question (unlike humans) aren't smart enough to assume that "123456" and "123 456" are the same thing. Perhaps it is used by some bot for some purpose. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Cite web template fields

Hi, I have belatedly responded to your reply at [3] Regards. Eldumpo (talk) 16:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

weintraub.a transnasal esophagoscapy

thank you for your feedback on Transnasal esophagoscopy. I have reviewed the article and the editorial guidelines and agree that there was too much directly sourced material. I have removed the article, which I was the sole contributor to, for a complete rewrite. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weintraub.a (talk • contribs) 23:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for your edit to Wikipedia:List of monthly maintenance categories with templates. Debresser (talk) 21:25, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Username Policy

I have reverted your edits to the username policy. Changes to police require discussion. Mlpearc Public If you reply here, please leave a {{Talkback}} on my talk. 18:31, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, "changes to policies" do not require advance discussion, according to the policy on changing policies: "Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other Wikipedia page. It is not strictly necessary to discuss changes or to obtain written documentation of a consensus in advance.... Consequently, you should not remove any change solely on the grounds that there is no formal record indicating consensus for it: instead, you should give a substantive reason for challenging it, and open a discussion to identify the community's current views, if one hasn't already been started."

If you have a substantive objection, I'd be perfectly happy to discuss it with you on the policy's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I have replied Here Mlpearc Public If you reply here, please leave a {{Talkback}} on my talk. 20:31, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations!

The Executive Director's Barnstar

Hello Whatamidoing! Congratulations on being awarded the Executive Director's Barnstar, which was created for me by my colleague Frank Schulenburg, and which I award occasionally to editors who are making a major contribution to the Wikimedia projects. You've been nominated by User:Jorm (WMF) and User:Moonriddengirl, because, they tell me, you're a "consistently sane and friendly voice" "who does amazing work all around the project." Reading your talk page and edit history, it's obvious that you're a stellar Wikipedian: clear, constructive, prolific and knowledgeable. Thank you, and congratulations! If you, or anyone reading this, would like to nominate someone else for this award, please feel free to do that on my talk page. Sue Gardner (talk) 03:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I love the California poppy in your beautiful barnstar, and there's nothing so valuable as respect from people you respect. Jorm and Moonriddengirl are fantastic people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

E-mail

Sent you a quick one. Courcelles 22:56, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Re: Thanks

Hello, WhatamIdoing. You have new messages at Jorm (WMF)'s talk page.
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Canvassing

When asking people to come participate in a discussion it's important to make the request as neutral as possible to avoid violating WP:CANVASS. Your request here seems to do the opposite, asking for people who already have particular views to comment.[4] Could you please review the guideline and revise your request to make it less pointed?   Will Beback  talk  23:53, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Encouraging people who are knowledgeable about a fairly specialized piece of information to respond, if that knowledge is directly related to the question at hand, is not generally considered canvassing. It doesn't much matter if the knowledge in question is about historiography or medical anatomy or statistics (and I've done all three, at different times).

I'm sure you don't mean to sound like the appearance of knowledgeable editors would be undesirable from your perspective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:09, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:BLPCAT

Hi WhatamIdoing, please see Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Infobox_statements. Best, --JN466 22:02, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thanks for the assessment and edit on IVRA. I had not known when it is appropriate to remove the newpage tag and the sheer number of guidance articles is slightly overwhelming. ~ Wafflephile (talk) 16:02, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Great work defending the right of Wikipedia to be understandable

I just came across Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable. That is a great essay, and I'm glad you're around to defend it. In fact, it just inspired me to go the article Dalvik (software) and add the statement "It is the software that runs the apps on Android phones" as the second sentence in the article. (It wasn't made clear anywhere else!). Any time you need moral support for the cause, I'm on your side.
--Qwerty0 (talk) 11:38, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for making that improvement to that article. It's amazing how often we run into articles that don't quite manage to impart the most basic information, or that do so in the most technical language possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:53, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I often find that for technical topics the 2nd sentence is actually the most important. The first sentence has to explain what the subject is, but often misses the essential gist of the subject's importance. Speaking of matter, I added the 2nd sentence of quark, which I hope makes the topic a bit more understandable. Kaldari (talk) 23:43, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree: the basic questions are "What is this?" and "Why should I care?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, WhatamIdoing. Please check your email; you've got mail!
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Infobox

You left a comment at the infobox debate but I wasnt sure if you had a strong enough opinion to leave a !vote as to whether the articles in question are better served with or without the infobox. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:38, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

No, I really don't. I think there are good reasons to use them sometimes, and good reasons to skip them sometimes, and I haven't spent enough time at the article to have a firm opinion. I do have a firm opinion about people edit warring and about people asserting that some prior discussion between irrelevant people on some irrelevant page has already settled matters (we all know that there are no binding decisions), but I have no opinion about what the best outcome for this particular article is. I would have made the same comments if someone said that the WikiProject demanded the inclusion of the infobox. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for commenting. I think your comments have been informative. Of course, some people in the discussion did indeed say that Wikipedia now requires infoboxes in all articles, notably DGG. I think that most people, including me, take your point that the previous consensus at the G&S Project does not decide the current discussion and can only be considered a recommendation by the project members. So, here we are discussing this particular infobox. Why not take a look at the box and the article (and the various arguments made pro and con) and add your opinion? I think it would take you less time to do that than you have already spent at this talk page. In any case, all the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 13:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Pavle Kovacevic

Per Wikipedia:Translation#How to translate please do not add machine translated content to this wikipedia as you did with above article. If you are unable to properly translate it then leave it to be translated by someone else or deleted when the time comes. Thank you--Jac16888 ^Talk 23:54, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

For simple sentences on simple subjects, giving people some idea of what the article is about is always helpful. Wikipedia works by small steps. There is no rule that things must be perfect on the first try. See meta:Eventualism. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

meta:Eventualism is not policy. As a profession linguist, my personal view is that machine translations should should either not be used at all in mainspace or should be cleaned up as quickly as possible, as this reflects on the quality (as opposed to the content) of Wikipedia articles. This took only 30 seconds to clean up; no knowledge of the source language was required. A simple comment on the page submission at WP:QTN would be sufficient indication to the translators. Just my opinion. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:06, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:Translation is also not policy, nor is it a guideline. It happens that I agree with its actual advice, which is not to use solely machine translation for whole articles. I also agree that all rough translations, regardless of origin, ought to be cleaned up as quickly as reasonably possible.

However, I still believe that making it possible for everyone, not just our tiny group of Croatian speakers, to figure out that this undersourced page is a BLP is a valuable step forward. (The sole item linked under ==References== is an interview with the subject, which is a weak source.)

By the way, I'm concerned about the specifics in that article: the subject-free sentence fragments (now hidden by your clean up) are far more typical of the style of a résumé than an encyclopedia article. It might be a quirk of the source language, or this might be a WP:NOTCV problem. Also, I would have retained the mention of psiho sinteze, which appears to be a term of the art. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:01, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

WAID, if you were to take a look at Category:Wikipedia articles needing cleanup after translation, you will see that it is filled with over 400 articles by people who created an extremely poor machine translated article and left it for some else to fix "eventually". But that is not exactly happening, because often fixing a bad machine translation is an extremely difficult thing to do, I would argue its more difficult than actually translating in the first place. You are not helping by adding machine translation, and its possible for anyone to determine the subject by using google translate to look at the article themeselves, since its linked to in the {{notenglish}} template--Jac16888 ^Talk 09:05, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, do we understand the difference between "whole articles" and "two sentences"?

And, yes, in theory, people could go to the trouble of searching for information about the subject, except that in practice, (1) they don't actually do that and (2) I've been unable to find a single English-language source on this person. (Feel free to provide several counterexamples... or to withdraw your assertion that an English-only reader could actually do this.)

Also, the fact that you personally find it easier to translate from the original is nothing more than your personal preference. We have several active translators who routinely start with the machine translation (especially, it appears, for Romance languages). Providing a rough translation of the first two sentences does not make the original disappear. If you personally prefer to work from the original, then you personally can pull the original out of the article's history. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps I should clarify, the point of my original message was to inform you that your addition of the machine translation was not helpful so that you would refrain from doing it for the rest of the article, it would be more harmful than helpful--Jac16888 ^Talk 16:27, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

On that point, we definitely agree. I never had any plans to go any further than I did, because the risk of running into translation disasters increases with every sentence. (Machine translations from German, for example, don't cope well with double negatives, so you can actually get sentences that say "This is X" and are translated as "This is not X".) These looked reasonable enough, but that's the end of my personal risk tolerance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Pls take a look at User:Cbakker edits

Was wondering what you think of this contributions. Do we normally consider random thesis reliable? I ask because this guys is spending hours every day adding links to here. What do you think - do we have a spammer more interested in the site or are this of great interest to us? Asking for a second opinion here.Moxy (talk) 03:40, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Moxy,

This is a busy week for me, so I only took a brief look. It seems to me that we might have some undesirable WP:PROMOtional behavior here. I suspect that it's all good-faith efforts to improve things, and a master's thesis is typically a better source than, say, a personal blog, but it's certainly not the best source of information, and in some cases it might not even rise to the level of a "good enough" source. I believe that the usual rule is that theses fall under WP:SPS, whose rules for separately published expert status exclude the majority of them. 16:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

So how do we go about fixing this? Do we seek a mass revert or what?Moxy (talk) 16:58, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd suggest starting with a friendly conversation that says you've noticed the user adding a lot of links to student theses from this one university, and you're curious why he's doing that rather than using sources that might seem to be higher quality (like textbooks). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

For you, this is not the encyclopedia you can edit

I know this would be trollbait, but it would be interesting to see a list of the forms of advocacy that are not permitted by consensus to be in articles. Would it be strictly legal (as in pedophilia or would it include cultural taboos as well? patsw (talk) 17:33, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

The list at WP:COI would probably be a reasonable starting point for making such a list.

I believe it would include cultural issues as well. People get pretty upset at editors who add panegyrics to revered figures in Muslim or Hindu traditions, and I expect that these non-Western newbies are surprised by the reaction to what seems (from their perspective) to be perfectly typical ways of describing the subjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:15, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

That's pretty much covered by WP:NPOV and WP:V. We get similar hagiographies of Western figures, especially those involved in "good works"; and that's part of why we have WP:NOBLECAUSE as well. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:15, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the difference is that the Western editor usually knows that he's writing a puff piece, but the other editors seem to believe that they are only saying what any other reasonably educated person would write in similar circumstances. That is, these Western editors don't like our rules about encyclopedic tone (because it interferes with their POV pushing), but the non-Western ones who are engaged in similar behaviors seem confused by our rules about encyclopedic tone, because they think they have already provided the normal, proper, formal tone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:44, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a WP:PBUH. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 23:54, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

British and American Spelling

Some time ago, I came across numerous edits by 1 or 2 people who mainly wanted to change words which used British spelling over to the American version. I recall trying to re-edit them back , but this was foiled repeatedly so I gave up. Now, I know that wikipedia policy is that pages based on the american sphere of influence are supposed to have american spelling while wikipedia pages focused on anything to do with the British sphere of influence(commonwealth etc.) but what is the policy on wikipedia pages which have no such influence, such as, say, pages on Roman or Kazakhstan culture or whatever? I am also wondering if it would be OK for me to frequently alter spellings of words to the British version on pages which have nothing to do with the US or the UK? Loki0115 (talk) 07:58, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The normal rules are outlined at WP:ENGVAR. Basically, it's a first-come, first-served system, with exceptions for articles with close connections to a specific country. Also, not included in the rules, but generally accepted, is that if you completely re-write/dramatically expand an article, you can pretend that you're the "first" major editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Blocks and punishment

As you appear well-versed in psychology perhaps you can comment on the "Blocks should not be punitive" issue at WT:BLOCK. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 23:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

That discussion looks like a waste of time. People have such wildly different concepts of what punishment means, and such wildly different ideas of what consequences they personally would consider a punishment if applied to them, that it's probably not worth anyone's time. "Go to your room and stay there until dinner" is a punishment for a four year old, but a reward for a teenager.

If you're curious, I believe that the page ought to say that blocks are not intended as retaliation, because that language is more precise and less susceptible to misinterpretation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I wrote a little essay

Verifiablity and plagiarism are the hammer and anvil of astute wikilawyers. For now it's in my user space. I think the language used may be a little too caustic. The problem is real though and not addressed by any other essay. I invite you to edit it if you fell so inclined, or at least provide some feedback on it if you so please. Thanks, Have mörser, will travel (talk) 03:58, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Are you familiar with WP:CPUSH? This tactic seems to be related to that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:38, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Gaussgauss encore

I seem to recall that you were trying to develop Gaussgauss (talk · contribs). This editor has again assumed an accusatory tone on Talk:Diabetic ketoacidosis (diff), now with the added ingredient of pulling rank (see for yourself). I have responded to the talkpage post and on the user's talkpage. Could you possibly have a look? JFW | T@lk 22:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I have only just noticed the disturbing rant on the userpage! I have posted a request for removal, but I am increasingly concerned about this user's attitude (yes, the message was posted on 3 July and does not mention anyone by name). JFW | T@lk 15:24, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

New Page Patrol survey

New page patrol – Survey Invitation Hello WhatamIdoing! The WMF is currently developing new tools to make new page patrolling much easier. Whether you have patrolled many pages or only a few, we now need to know about your experience. The survey takes only 6 minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist us in analyzing the results of the survey; the WMF will not use the information to identify you. If this invitation also appears on other accounts you may have, please complete the survey once only. If this has been sent to you in error and you have never patrolled new pages, please ignore it. Please click HERE to take part. Many thanks in advance for providing this essential feedback. You are receiving this invitation because you have patrolled new pages. For more information, please see NPP Survey. Global message delivery 13:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

On another note - 'm just dropping you a message because you've commented on (or expressed an interest in) the Article Feedback Tool in the past. If you don't have any interest in it any more, ignore the rest of this message :). If you do still have an interest or an opinion, we're holding an office hours session tomorrow at 19:00 GMT/UTC in #wikimedia-office to discuss completely changing the system. In attendance will be myself, Howie Fung and Fabrice Florin. All opinions and comments are welcome :). I've seen you defending and commenting on the project rather a lot, so your perspective would be most appreciated.

I appreciate that not everyone can make it to that session - it's in work hours for most of North and South America, for example - so if you're interested in having another session at a more America-friendly time of day, leave me a message on my talkpage. I hope to see you there :). Regards, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind invitation. I dislike IRC and do not plan to attend. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:22, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Layout improvement

WhatamIdoing: I think we both have the same goals on the Layout MOS talk page, but I feel like we've started off on the wrong foot. My goal is very simple: I just want to make FNNR clearer so novices can get a better understanding of notes/citations. That is all. I'm not trying to create any new policy, or impose my personal preferences, or push any agenda. I'm perfectly satisfied with the fact that FNNR endorses many different ways to do refs/notes. I get the impression that other editors in the past have tried to impose a particular "standard practice", and you had to spend a lot of time fighting the good fight to keep the MOS sane and sensible (if you did, I thank you). But you may be jumping to the assumption that I am one of those editors. I'm not. My only goal is to provide clear guidance to novices. If that guidance ends up being "there are twenty ways to do it, and none is recommended" that is fine by me: I just want that stated in a clearer fashion. Does that make sense? --Noleander (talk) 17:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm short on time for now, but I want to say that I'm not at all upset with you. Writing pages like this is far more difficult than it seems like it should be. Like you, I'd like to have a page that is both accurate and useful to real people (not just experienced editors like ourselves).

But we've got to deal with reality: the community has never adopted a consistent pattern for dual-ref sections. That's the plain fact, and there's no way around it. We shouldn't say "what you should do" (because you're permitted to do anything), and we can't say what's most popular for dual-ref section headings (without lying), because the actual facts show that there simply is no "most popular" approach. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying. A couple of comments: (1) You say "We shouldn't say "what you should do" " .. but I've never said that. I think that's the third time you've said I'm trying to impose a prescriptive standard, when all of my suggestions have instead been of the nature: "here is what is commonly found in top-quality articles ... take it or leave it". (2) You say "actual facts show that there simply is no most popular", and yet that is exactly what FNNR is saying now. To quote: "The most frequent choice is "References"; other articles use "Notes", "Footnotes", or "Works cited" (in diminishing order of popularity)." I'm not saying that is good advice, I'm just pointing out that FNNR is already documenting what is commonly done, with some suggestion of frequency. Do you think that FNNR sentence should be removed? changed? clarified? --Noleander (talk) 22:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

• There is a very strong preference for the titles of single-section reference systems. There is no such preference for the titles of dual-section reference systems. I'm happy to say what is most common: it is a single section titled ==References==. I am not happy to tell people what is most common for the rare dual-section refs, because no pair of titles can honestly be called common, even (last I checked) among the small proportion of articles use two or more sections.
• You advocate here for a removal of what you called "raw frequency/statistics" and the substitution of "words like should/ought/common/rare, etc". If we are now agreed that "should" and "ought" are not words that we want to use, then I'm willing to proceed—but, sadly, tomorrow, when I hope to have both more time and more brain cells avaialble. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

teenage pregnancy

I disagree that teenage pregnancy is a formal "universally held definition" referring to pregnancy by women under the age of 20. Teenage refers to ages with the suffix -teen, however this is something only recognized in the English language. Furthermore, women can become child bearing prior to 13 which voids even the English language based argument. While it is a universally held definition that each water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, the statement "pregnancy prior to 20th birthday is teenage pregnancy" is not. To be considered "universally held" it must be truly universal like mathematical proof and science. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cantaloupe2 (talk • contribs) 06:17, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I completely understand where you're coming from, and I personally think the definition is odd. (Why should a deliberately planned pregnancy in a healthy, married, economically independent, legal adult be stigmatized as a "teenage pregnancy"?)

But the fact is that Wikipedia doesn't care about our personal opinions. The only question that matters is: Can you produce reliable sources that announce a different definition? Because I've spent hours trying to find such sources, and I've come up completely empty handed. Every single peer-reviewed scientific paper (and these are the ultimate sources for every single statistic in the entire article) that I've read defines it as described at the top of the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:56, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

So perhaps this is one of those that depends on who and where in world you ask. Perhaps inability to find sources suggests lack of authoritative evidence to backup the claim "universally held". WP policy doesn't define "universally held" as "commonly accepted in America" and this claim is not incontestable like 1+1=2. Cantaloupe2 (talk) 17:56, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm telling you that I have looked at many dozens, if not hundreds, of reliable sources from around the world, including major international agencies like the WHO, and they all use this definition. I have no interest in using only American sources.

I notice that you have failed to name even one counterexample. Presumably this is because you, too, have been unable to find any reputable sources that use alternative definitions. Wikipedia cares about what the actual, published, reliable sources say, not what you and I believe they should say. If you can't produce even a single scholarly source to prove the definition wrong—and I'm telling you that there are literally hundreds that prove it right—then your personal opinion about what the definition ought to be is just as worthless my personal opinion about what the definition ought to be. Wikipedia sticks with the sources, not with our personal opinions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:02, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

AFT dashboards

As you were one of the people asking for per-article dashboards – the index on the AFT table I have been insistingly asking the toolserver folks for since August has eventually been released, so I started playing with this data, here's a first stab:

• http://toolserver.org/~dartar/aft2/?p=Justin+Bieber
• http://toolserver.org/~dartar/aft

Cheers, --DarTar (talk) 20:58, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

On the subject of the AFT; WhatamIdoing, first, thanks for all your useful comments on the AFT talkpage over the last few months :). The Foundation is trying to move forward and develop a new version of the tool, which is described at WP:AFT5. Can you give the page a read, and then give us your opinions on the talkpage? All comments are welcome - the WMF is really focusing on letting editors (to some degree) shape where the AFT goes. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:08, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

DarTar, that shows the number of ratings each day, but it doesn't show what those ratings are. I think a sort of trailing average for each of the four questions would be more useful than how many people rated it each day. The question people want to answer (as far as I can tell) is whether there is any overall trend in the ratings (and does any such trend happen to correlate with their subjective, but "expert", opinion on how the article did or did not improve during that time).

Okeyes, I've put the page on my watchlist and will get back to it after I've had time to think about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:19, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

That's fair enough :). Hope to see you moseying around the talkpage soon! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, yes that will be the next step. The first concern was to display the daily volume of ratings/feedback as this is one of the main concerns we need to address: in many cases, including very popular pages, we have a ridiculously small number of data points. --DarTar (talk) 13:41, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Well Said

Right on with this one [5]. You're absolutely correct. Dayewalker (talk) 04:23, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm glad that I'm not the only person who remembers being a newbie who benefited from other volunteers' patient and friendly help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

My first round of edits, I met another editor who was really crappy to me. Very arrogant and dismissive, if not for a friendly editor who dropped by my page, I might have left Wikipedia and not returned. I try and remember that when working with the newbies. Dayewalker (talk) 05:10, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I believe that those first interactions are the key to turning capable newbies into top editors. And if we're not providing a positive initial experience for them, then it's really our own fault that we're not seeing good new editors emerge from the newbies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Sorry this is so long after the event, but I want to thank WhatamIdoing for her patient, complete and so very helpful advice on my lame efforts editing parts of Talk:Breast Cancer. She thoroughly deserves a Barnstar/Burger/Furry kitten or whatever she fancies as appreciation for her hard and useful work. Treagle (talk) 17:51, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind note. I hope that your friend's wife is doing well at the moment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Office Hours

Hey WhatamIdoing. Brandon Harris, Howie Fung, Fabrice Florin and I will be holding a second Office Hours session on IRC in #wikimedia office on Thursday, 3 November at 24:00 UTC. This unusually late time is aimed at permitting East Coast editors, who would normally be at work, to attend. We will be discussing the new Article Feedback Tool designs; if you have any questions about Office Hours, or how to get on IRC, feel free to leave me a message on my talkpage. I hope to see you there; thank you for your suggestions thus far, and your contributions to discussions about the existing AFT over the past year :).Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry not to see you there; the logs can be found here if you're interested :). I should have an answer (re NOINDEX) very shortly, and I've responded to your other talkpage query :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:19, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

We've also started a discussion here on access issues for some of the features - I'd love to hear your thoughts :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oh - and the next Office Hours session will be held on Thursday at 19:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. Give me a poke if you can't make it but want me to send you the logs when they're released - we'll be holding sessions timed for East Coast editors and Australasian/Asian editors next week. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/First sentence/Procedural#RfC management, RfC bot tags

FYI, There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/First sentence/Procedural#RfC management, RfC bot tags.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:45, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the list of regular subject areas is inappropriate. No, I don't think that it's an enormous problem. Yes, I think the choice of subjects will result in charges of canvassing by attempting to include "the right" subject-area people (e.g., history, but not science). No, so long as they're determined to dump illegible, incomprehensible garbage onto those pages, I don't think it will actually make any difference. Nobody is going to respond to an RFC that is listed like this:

=== RFC Proposal re first sentence

The proposal is in two parts...

• 1) change the opening paragraph:

{

People are busy. They're not going to respond to garbage. Consequently, it doesn't much matter how many pages that garbage is listed on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:BAN

Hi! Recently a user asked me to see why was this done. I tried to explained him to be WP:BOLD, since i am feeling a little uncomfortable reverting it. He said that the user is not banned, so the revert should had been not done. Kindly see if the edit was done in mistake. Thanks. :) ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ ^{Talk Email} 14:07, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

It's a User:Random account 39949472 sock, and she is banned. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:50, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Gratuitous offensive content

Hi. Can you please remind me where that guideline is that you directed me to the other day? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:07, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you looking for WP:Offensive material? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Yep. thanks. :) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:40, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:VPR

Hey, thanks for commenting on the shared IP talk page proposal. I put up a comment at the bottom there to try and reach a compromise decision about how often to archive. Feel free to comment. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:33, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Car

Hi. With regard to this question, it might cut down extraneous argument if we were comparing (car + nude person) with (car +clothed person). --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:20, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It might, but it might provoke only a speech from the nudists about the preference for a clothed person is purely cultural and thus the images ought to be treated equally. My goal was to produce an example that included "offensive material" that was completely irrelevant. If your goal is to show readers what a sports car looks like, then the presence of any human is completely irrelevant, and the presence of a naked human is not only completely irrelevant, but additionally potentially offensive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:33, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

MEDRS

As our primary/secondary/tertiary expert, and somone who is wise wrt sourcing issues, I think you may have something useful to say at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#Secondary sources verses a paper by the Institute of Medicine. Colin°^Talk 15:32, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, and for being a calm, rational voice in these discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:17, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

So sorry...

I have recently accidentally reverted this edit of yours:

m Talk:Vitamin D‎; 17:20 . . (+95) . . WhatamIdoing (talk | contribs)‎ (Reference formatting) [rollback]

so sorry! Gandydancer (talk) 18:04, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Accidents happen. I've twice clicked on the red "rollback vandal" button when I thought I was clicking on a completely different link. Don't worry about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 6 November 2011

Patrolled or not patrolled. That is the question.

Hiya!
Just dropping you a note to let you know that I really am working on it. I am a bit slow but reliable. I'll let you know here as well as on the technical props page when I have a definitive either working or not result. So far I have a button that does nothing and a desperate need for more tea! fg^t_c 10:03, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Fred. I really do appreciate it, and I hope that the cup of tea provides the necessary inspiration. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:59, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok. As far as I can tell this works. I can't figure out how to make event listeners work if the script is imported so unfortunately you'll have to add this directly to your common javascript. Just paste all of it into the page as it is and save. When you visit the search results page you'll see a button top right of the list. Click and wait. It is not super fast (depends a little on your PC) so be patient (it's still faster than doing it by hand!). It will hide all the entries that have been patrolled. Drop me a message if it fails or you need help with it in any way.

importScript("User:Fred Gandt/getUnpatrolledOfAlexNewArtBotResultsPages.js");

 fg^t_c 06:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! It appears to work—or, at least, it erases all the links from the list, which suggests that nothing needs patrolling at the moment.

However, when I go to Special:NewPages, the first article in the list (Frederick Masoudi) is still listed as unpatrolled. So something's not quite right: it's removing pages that still need to be patrolled. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:37, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah ha! I thought something was amiss. Turns out (I didn't know this) that the [mark page as patrolled] link only shows if you are visiting it via Special:New Pages. I'll set to work on attempting to solve it asap. I actually manually checked the first 47 of the listed articles during tests to make sure everything was working right but didn't realise the [mark page as patrolled] link wouldn't....blah blah blah. Get right back to you. fg^t_c 16:11, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

To not put too fine a point on it; This is going to be quite complex. I know what to do but it won't be a 5 minute fix. Going to have to send requests (http) in all directions to get id's and all sorts. No worries though. Just hold on in there and all will be well. fg^t_c 16:27, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. There's no rush on my end. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I've replaced the text in the code pane above to save space. It seems to be working ok. Give it a whirl and let me know if anything isn't right. Sorry the first one was a failure. I didn't mean to waste your time. I may post updates to you if I find anything wrong with it before you do. fg^t_c 20:05, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

It correctly (in my spot check) removes about two-thirds of the list, but it still leaves me with some false positives. For example, none of the Eulimastoma species should be left in the list. (I'm resisting the temptation to patrol anything, so as not to interfere with the testing process.)

Speed, by the way, isn't important to me: I'm happy to open it in a tab and let it process for as long as it needs to. I've been having kind of spotty internet errors recently (although none that I've noticed today), and I wonder whether the false positives could mean that it didn't get a response back for those pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:08, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I've added a quick fix. The immediate issue was that the Eulimastoma were mass created by a bot. The resulting list(s) of that users creations are much longer than I would have reasonably expected. I've added a 500 result parameter to the php http query which should be way more than enough for human creations but apparently many hundreds of pages are being written by machines! I have an idea for a rewrite but in the meantime try this version out. fg^t_c 22:21, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

FG- anything I need to do to get this working on the NewArt results? For instance, User:AlexNewArtBot/ArchitectureSearchResult. I'm coming here with my botwriter hat on, not as a page patroller- in other words, let me know if I need to add any hooks to the search result pages. (I'll watch this page for a while) tedder (talk) 22:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Redundant

Simply changing the recognition condition for the button creation function (how many tions?) will set it up to work on any page with the same html structure of results. If there is possible wider use for this script than for one set of results I can rewrite it to add a button to all (how many are there? OMG!! I just looked. Lummy that's a lot of search results.) results pages. I thought this medical results page was just a one off thing. With regard to hooks: Element id's are always useful (cuts down on the sheer number of nextSiblings etc.) but where there's a will there's a way and I wouldn't want to cause a fuss. I need to twiddle with the script above to solve an issue I wasn't expecting so while I'm at it I'll set it up to function on any of your search results pages. I'm a bit too tired to think clearly about it right now though. Thanks for your interest  fg^t_c 23:17, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Fred, I thought about mentioning all the others, but then I thought there'd be time enough to scare you later, especially when I realized that it was very late in your day. If I've made sense of the code, adapting it to other groups is just a matter of swapping out the file name.

Since we're on the subject: I suspect that MILHIST will be interested, because they're large enough to be interested in just about everything. I really, really hope that some of the music projects will be interested, because we get so many new articles in that area. I thought it'd be best to use my own favorite project as the guinea pigs, though: WPMED's pretty competent about things like this and pretty resilient if things don't work on the first try. It might be handy if it could somehow be bundled up into some sort of file that people could add with a single line (or two: one for the code and one for the file name) instead of possibly making dozens of copies of the code.

Tedder, would it be easy enough to add a plain link to the end of each line to make the "mark as patrolled" button appear? I don't want to replace the very useful wikilink at the start of the line, but ultimately it would be nice to have a straight path to the patrol button, without having to go find the article in Special:NewPages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree, MILHIST and others will probably want it. I can do whatever FG says I should do; I think he's going to change the javascript to show up (right?). I can't simply add a link because I can't tell if it's been patrolled or not. tedder (talk) 23:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I realize it's not an elegant solution, but my thought was to add the link to all of them, even if it has been patrolled. Then I can click on it or not, depending on what FG's script says. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I just found a false positive (or a true negative o.O) so there are still bumps. The basic approach works but to be honest I wasn't expecting the mw software to actually allow it so kinda just threw it together to test and tidied it up when I realised it worked. I can add a "patrol" button to the end of each result left behind if you like (once I get it working 100% to start with). I'll have to grab the correct rcid for each entry instead of just check if there is one, but that isn't too tough at all.

Teddar: I have no idea what to say. You're clearly an extremely generous person. I'll get the basics working (hopefully without any errors (just need a loop in a loop (mhmm nested loops! My fave.))) then worry about how to improve efficiency. Right now I can't think of any obvious requirements. You can see it's really quite simple. Who made what? Query vars. They made these. Find the page. Has it got an rcid? If not hide it.

I'll make it more sophisticated tomorrow. fg^t_c 00:22, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm generous because I hate developing in javascript, but doing backend work (Java) is just fine to me Great work! tedder (talk) 00:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Lolz. Yeah I prefer PHP myself. Would lend its self perfectly to this job. But I'm 1/2 way there now so no point whining.

I've replaced the code panel again (saves space). In the process of doing this I have figured out what I was doing wrong before when trying to import event listeners so all good. Every update I make to that file will now echo down the line so you can keep on top easily. So all you need now is that one line in your common.js (at least I think so, you may need another bit but we can sort that out later). fg^t_c 03:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I've made the switch.

Checking the first dozen left in the list after running the program, I get three false positives: Dr Gopal Kundu (has been moved to Gopal Kundu), Elias Mossialos (has been deleted), and Treegasm.

(The Nobel committee seems to be biased against software work, but maybe we could put you in for a Grace Murray Hopper Award, if you meet the age limit.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Aww poop too old as usual I wouldn't bother testing for a while yet. I have to turn it inside out and back to front to fix the problems. Basically speaking it isn't always finding it's target (I think) so it reports erroneously. It should be fixed and ready to roll before I next sleep (Just woke up). fg^t_c 16:55, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Latest

• Things are trotting along nicely. I have yet to add some rather complex looping but at least it appears to work within reason. If an editor has created more than 500 pages the lack of complex looping will make for slight error but otherwise it is basically done. I want still to speed it up (this is a matter of efficiency not impatience) but that will come with going loopy!! Give it a go and see what you think. Before telling me it's all screwy check you are using this version. fg^t_c 06:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
• Got some good work done. Latest working (not middle of rebuild) version is this one. fg^t_c 11:36, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
• Typically I spoke too soon. There are still issues (there always are). Moving swiftly on... fg^t_c 12:02, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

  I love the counter. However, it says "Unpatrolled (31)" (out of 173 originally) at the end, but the list on the page shows five screenfuls, or about 125. Also, did you intend for it to change the title (at the top of the browser window)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:31, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

  Ah you are using the very latest (ish). Unpatrolled 31 is how many are unpatrolled (ish(still not perfect but very close)). Yes the title changes to alert you if you have the page tabbed. I did a similar thing for a webchat I built. So you can see what's going on when you're not looking directly at the page. Whatever doesn't make sense for a while; don't worry. The script is undergoing constant change and some changes are purely to test things out. I'll let you know when it's complete. Then you can tell me what's wrong with it  fg^t_c 15:45, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

  I've no objection to the title changing (actually, I kind of like it, because I use tabs extensively); I just thought I'd check to make sure it was intentional. I'll be off and on wiki all day, so feel free to ping me whenever you'd like me to play with it. It's the beginning of the day here, and I don't expect to be away for more than an hour or two at a time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:04, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Okies. I'm just fiddling with it for a while. I am reaching the end of my day. I'll be around though (I don't sleep regular hours at all). fg^t_c 16:12, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Is the " - Patrol" link showing up for you? It should appear at the end of the result entry if that entry is unpatrolled. fg^t_c 16:18, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes! I've got exactly 31 green "Patrol" links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:32, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Cool. I just wondered if for some reason you might not have seen them. You know it works on any of the AlexNewArtBot...SearchResults pages too. I'll try and get it working on the archives too if needed but then don't unpatrolled pages quietly die if left unpatrolled for too long anyway? No matter. One thing at a time. fg^t_c 17:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Pages fall off of Special:NewPages after 30 days; a bot usually tags anything at the end of the list as needing review. I'm not sure that anyone really looks at the archives, so it's probably not necessary to expand it to those.

Are you ready to share this, or do you still have plans for further changes? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not fully working yet. As far as I can tell the hits it gets are correct but it is missing some. I know why and need to install some dastardly loops to fix it. It won't be long. The basics are all done now. The Special new pages results are not as simple to search as I'd have liked. There are occasional variations that change how the search needs to be carried out. Thank heavens for Chrome or I'd be crying in a corner by now. JavaScript is also lacking somewhat in the range of functionality I'd like for this kind of job but, I won't go on. Bad workmen blaming their tools etc. Probably have it finished by this time tomorrow. fg^t_c 18:34, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this. I'm pretty excited about it. There's no rush on my end: I've been wishing for this for months, so even if it takes a few more days, that's more than I had hoped for. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. Tell me (honestly) what you think of the style now. You'll have to clear your browser cache etc (I'm sure you know this). fg^t_c 19:21, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I like the fact that the buttons are bigger and the little ones (but not the main one?) "light up" when you mouseover. I'm more of a high-contrast person, so green-on-medium gray wouldn't be my first choice. On the other hand, I make no claims of having a highly developed aesthetic sense, and what I care about is really just that it works reasonably reliably. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've changed it all a bit. The grey is really quite light now (the mid grey was quite short lived in fact. I lightened it last night). The text of all elements my script creates (what you are calling buttons) all "light up" now. All "Patrol" buttons that link to pages you have already visited are now marked in red (I could make them disappear altogether but you might want to revisit). I fixed a couple of little technical errors. Now I am setting to work on the last leg which is a complex series of loops that should both speed it up and make it more reliable. fg^t_c 10:55, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Hiya. It's unlikely going to get any more accurate (at least for a while). I will however continue to work on making it more efficient. In other words, as it stands it's as good as completed. Any further changes will not change how it looks or appears to behave (except for possibly being a bit quicker). I did check it using IE and didn't even get a button. It may be my IE settings or it may be a general IE incompatibility. I really cannot abide that browser and refuse to bend over backward to pander to its idiosyncrasies. The script works in Chrome so should be fine in Safari. I'd be surprised if it didn't work with Firefox but am not going to download and install it just to find out (I'm a bit grumpy about cross platform compatibility since standards exist that if followed would guarantee compatibility without developers having to... seriously, I should stop now. I have). So go ahead and use it and tell others (if they're interested) where it is. Let me know if it breaks or has bugs etc. I'l be quietly tweaking off and on for a few more days but you shouldn't even notice (other than possible speed changes or if I make a mistake (which does happen (quite often))). fg 21:38, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Yay! It works for me, and I'm using Firefox. I've just patrolled two and re-run it, with the correct results. I'll announce it at WPMED in a few minutes. Thanks! WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:32, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. When I am fully satisfied I'll add notes and documentation. Let me know of any issues in the meantime. fg 11:22, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

New version

Hiya! I have not quite but very nearly finished the update. It is working but I like to twiddle to optimize. It's slightly faster. It's more efficient insofar that it makes fewer requests of MWF servers and databases (that was the whole point of the redesign). I'd appreciate if you could try it out and see if it works ok for you too. As far as I can tell it's accurate (within acceptable tolerances).

importScript("User:Fred_Gandt/test.js");
//importScript("User:Fred Gandt/getUnpatrolledOfAlexNewArtBotResultsPages.js");

Make sure (if you test it) that you comment out the other as above. Once I'm sure it's behaving I'll replace the original with the new code so no one will have to change anything (that's the usefulness of importing). Thanks! fg 18:52, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Works for me. It says "gathering data for __ unique authors" first, and then produces the usual links. I've tested one link (you'll get only 26 unpatrolled pages next time), and it all seems to work fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks for trying it out. Always best to get a second opinion just in case of delusions brought on by staring at a screen for too long. fg 21:36, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

All swapped over now so use the long named script. There'll be no more changes to the import link to worry about. I may still fix it up a bit later but basically it's all done. fg 04:12, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I've reverted to the old name, and it seems to be working well. Thanks again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Okies. Lemme know if it falls apart or if you want any others. fg 18:55, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

New Thanks

User:WhatamIdoing, Thanks for getting in touch with me and sharing the editing info about which I knew nothing. I'm a fairly eclectic reader and originally got interested in editing by seeing a notice on the Osama bin Laden article that requested an edit of a section for improved readability. I played with the idea of making the articles related to various aspects of Islam more NPOV. I'm a native English speaker, a non-Muslim, and my professional background gives me a mindset of "withhold judgment." I'm not sure what I could do, and I know I have a lot to learn, but I think I have something to offer. I've been extremely frustrated. I would really like to work with a group of people rather than in such an isolated manner. Again, thanks! Tina Carmaskid (talk) 20:14, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you enjoy copyediting, then Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit lists almost 4,000 pages that need attention. Controversial topics, like Osama bin Laden, seem to attract people who care more about fighting than about grammar or whether the reader can figure out what we're trying to say.

If you're interested in women's issues at all (there are too few of us women around Wikipedia), then WP:WikiProject Women's history seems to have some nice folks and a fairly broad interest area. If you posted a note there to say hello and offered to copyedit, I'd bet that you could find an appreciative response. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:27, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

hello

Hi and a question. I think the Vermillion Literary Project Magazine article ought to be listed as such, seeing how the Project it is affiliated is a seperate entity. I'm working on improving the article, and also want to put an image up too. Thoughts? Thanks!Jimsteele9999 (talk) 22:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, basically you're asking a dyed-in-the-wool mergeist whether she approves of splitting, so take my response with a grain of salt:

I wouldn't do it. Since it's not a "famous" subject, it's already at risk for notability challenges. Splitting the two either divides your sources across two articles (making both more vulnerable), or it results in substantial duplication, which puts it at risk for an WP:A10 deletion (officially, just in the short-term, but certain people have rather expansive definitions of some WP:CSD criteria).

Also, I believe that many readers will get more value out of a single article, and I know that they're far more likely to read about both the organization and the magazine if they're presented on the same page. It doesn't matter what the subject is: the law of the web is that every click loses readers.

In terms of images, organization logos are pretty common. You have to upload those to en.wikipedia, not to Commons. Be sure to click through to a couple of description pages on similar logos and have a look at how they write their fair use rationales. The process of complying with copyright laws isn't exactly difficult, but it is definitely not something anyone gets right if they're just guessing, and there are people who patrol that area fairly closely. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:45, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Usage share of operating systems

There is a poll Talk:Usage share of operating systems#Is there a consensus to include the median line. You might want to comment. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 23:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Dispute resolution for Usage share of operating systems

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "Usage share of operating systems, Usage share of web browsers". Thank you. --Jdm64 (talk) 00:45, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Interview

Hi, I am a Wikipedian and researcher from Carnegie Mellon University, working with Professors Robert E. Kraut and Aniket Kittur. We’ve published many scholarly papers on Wikipedia and are partnering with the Wikimedia Foundation on several new projects.

I have been analyzing collaboration in Wikipedia, especially Collaborations of the Week/Month. My analysis of seven years of archival Wikipedia data shows that Collaborations of the Week/Month substantially increase the amount and nature of project members’ contributions, with long lasting effects. We would like to talk to Wikipedians to better understand the processes that that produce this behavior change.

We’ve identified you as a particularly good candidate to speak with because of your involvement with the WikiProject Medicine' Collaborations, which is one of those we’ve been investigating. It would really help us if you would be willing to have a short talk with us, less than 30 minutes of your time. We can talk via skype or instant messenger or other means if you’d prefer. Do you have time at any point during this week to chat? If so, please send an email to haiyiz@cs.cmu.edu or drop a line on my talk page.

Thanks! (This my personal website)Haiyizhu (talk) 02:41, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Since it's now Thursday evening, "this week" effectively means "tomorrow". My schedule for tomorrow is already as busy as I would like it to be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:53, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

AfD on those hockey players

WhatamIdoing: Please see my 19:41 post on the talk page of that hockey player. As I wrote there, I could use some help shoehorning this into little-finger-out, proper form for an AfD. Greg L (talk) 19:43, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure it's not just a doomed effort? The folks who hang out at certain sections of AFD do not always seem to care very much about things like whether any reliable sources have been published. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

COI at Labiaplasty?

Thanks for your reply at WT:MED. I have responded there, but I find your blanket response a bit glib, and I would prefer an actual assessment of the changes that have been made.

When edits are made to an article about a controversial procedure by somebody who actually undertakes that procedure for money, I don't think there needs to be promotion of that individual's individual practice or publications for there to be the potential for COI. Jheald (talk) 10:36, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure—in the real world. On Wikipedia, COI violations are limited to situations that actually harm the encyclopedia. If the person's interests and Wikipedia's interests happen to coincide, then we call that a win-win situation, not a COI problem. This is because there's actually no conflict between the two entities' interests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure why tilting the article to bury the controversy should be "in Wikipedia's interest". Changes to make the article more silently complicit with attempts to manufacture normality for this procedure quite realistically do harm our readers, and WP's reputation. Jheald (talk) 09:33, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "tilting the article to bury the controversy". After Otto's work, the criticism section is three times as long as it was, and its location in the article has not changed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems notable to me that the discussion has been excised completely from the lead section; and for all the increased length (some of which is rebuttal), the criticism section is now actually much less direct, with the viewpoints now presented to seem more extreme and more marginal. Jheald (talk) 22:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I think it reasonable for a criticism section to acknowledge perceived flaws in the critics' positions, just like I think it reasonable for the rest of the article to acknowledge relevant criticism. For example, if some particular surgical approach has (or might have) some particular failing, that ought to be explained right next to the procedure, not just in the criticism section.

Is there some particular reason you have not attempted to WP:BOLDly improve the lead? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal

As advised by ItsZippy at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard‎, applied to Mediation Cabal. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 00:43, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

TNBC prevention

Hi, perhaps you have an idea where to place this -- "Among younger African-American women, we estimate that up to 68% of basal-like breast cancer could be prevented by promoting breastfeeding and reducing abdominal adiposity." ? PMID 17578664. -- Richiez (talk) 00:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, as an estimate from a single primary source on an extensively studied disease, about a single subtype in a particular population during low-risk (younger) years, I'm not sure that I'd put it anywhere. But Risk factors for breast cancer (an article that needs a lot of work) would be the obvious place to consider. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal: Request for participation

Dear WhatamIdoing: Hello. This is just to let you know that you've been mentioned in the following request at the Mediation Cabal, which is a Wikipedia dispute resolution initiative that resolves disputes by informal mediation.

The request can be found at Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/13 November 2011/Usage share of operating systems.

Just so you know, it is entirely your choice whether or not you participate. If you wish to do so, and we'll see what we can do about getting this sorted out. At MedCab we aim to help all involved parties reach a solution and hope you will join in this effort.

If you have any questions relating to this or any other issue needing mediation, you can ask on the case talk page, the MedCab talk page, or you can ask the mediator, thehistorian10, at their talk page. MedcabBot (talk) 20:59, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for adding to the discussion at Vitamin D. I've learned not to try to form coherent opinions after spending a few hours relearning antibiotics and TB. The Haz _talk 04:38, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

What a complete mess that dispute is. Perhaps in ten years that article will quit being a hot-button. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

To say the least... I understand people wanting to get away from primary sources, but using some sketchy secondary sources doesn't make an article any better. I'm staying away from Vitamin D for awhile, at least the article on it. The Haz _talk 18:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Surgury Book

Hi. Not sure exactly what you were looking for, but here is the table of contents from that surgery book I've got my hands on:

Unit I
1 Concepts Basic to Perioperative Nursing
2 Patient and Enviromental Safety
3 Surgical Modalities
4. Infection Prevention and Control
5. Positioning the Patient for Surgery
6. Sutures, Needles, and Instruments
7. Anesthesia
8. Postoperative Patient Care and Pain Management
9. Wound Healing, Dressings, and Drains
10. Patient Education and Discharge Planning

Unit II
11. Gastrointestinal Surgery
12. Surgery of the Liver, Biliary Tract, Pancreas, and Spleen
13. Repair of Hernias
14. Gynecologic Surgery and Cesarean Birth
15. Genitourinary Surgery
16. Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery
17. Breast Surgery
18. Ophthalmic Surgery
19. Otologic Surgery
20. Rhinologic and Sinus Surgery
21. Laryngologic and Head and Neck Surgery
22. Orthopedic Surgery
23. Neurosurgery
24. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
25. Thoracic Surgery
26. Vascular Surgery
27. Cardiac Surgery

Unit III
28. Ambulatory Surgery
29. Pediatric Surgery
30. Geriatric Surgery
31. Trauma Surgery
32. Complementary and Alternative Therapy.

I'm not exactly sure what you'd like out of these. I have zero medical background at all. The books basically ended up in boxes shipped to me and I was asked to hold onto them until my boss finds someone who wants them.--v/r - TP 16:07, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking of Chapter 5, "Positioning the Patient for Surgery". It would be good to know if our seriously undersourced page at Surgical positions had a reasonably complete list of positions. Also, if we could get a simple description of each one, that would also be helpful. (For example, the Trendelenburg position has the patient lying down with his legs elevated higher than his torso.) Even if you don't know anything at all about the subject, I don't think that it would be too complicated for you, unless the book relies solely on the most obscure anatomical jargon and doesn't provide any pictures. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Would you mind if I gave you an oversight of what the chapter is about here and you can identify which parts I should try to paraphrase for that article?--v/r - TP 17:21, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure, that would be fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Huh?

What book is this? ISBN or title+author? tedder (talk) 19:03, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Alexander’s Care of the Patient in Surgery, ISBN 0323016227

If you have opinions about simple ways for a non-medical person to improve the article in question, please feel free to comment below. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm generally clueless, just didn't know the context; Mrs.Tedder is in med school, and this sounded somewhat familiar. In other words, let me know if there are content areas I can ask her for citations on. tedder (talk) 19:10, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

IMO being "generally clueless" is a fantastic qualification. We non-medical folks help keep the professionals from wandering off into their impenetrable forests of jargon.

If you can tell me what topics Mrs Tedder is studying, I might have some specific questions. For example, the articles on pregnancy and pediatrics are generally awful. Constipation and Infant both could stand to have a definition of what counts as constipation in the newborn, which has nothing to do with how much the baby grunts, and everything to do with the texture of the poop.

Have you invited her to improve Wikipedia's medicine-related articles? WP:MED is a great group of friendly, helpful people, and we've got nearly the whole of Gray's Anatomy online due to the effort of a few med school students a few years back. Besides, all her future patients are going to be reading Wikipedia, so fixing articles should count as "preventive medicine". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

She's getting ready for the Step1. In other words, in her second year of med school Yeah, I encourage her to edit, though she rarely has done so (six edits in her user account, plus a few dozen on IPs, usually working on bacteria, antibiotics, medication). Every time the signpost talked about medicine I forward it to her . Obviously the first two years are very wide-ranging, but the current system is pulm, next is endocrine. tedder (talk) 19:43, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Positioning

Factors

The book talks about pressure put on the patient's body including from the surgury itself but also from instruments, drills, the bed and attachments, bandages, ect. It describes factors such as duration and intensity and the limit of how much pressure the tissue can withstand (32mm Hg). Then it describes intrinsic factors such as the length of the procedure, position of the devices, and physiological changes.

If this section of the book could be summarized in a one- or two-paragraph section titled something like "Factors influencing the choice of position", then I think that would be adequate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree completely. All factors need to be sourced, and I think one or two sources will be able to give us all the info that we need. The Haz _talk 19:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Forces

The book discusses three forces: shear, friction, and maceration. Shear forces are the folding of tissue then the skeleton moves. Friction is the tissue rubbing against each other. Maceration is when moisture on the skin causes it to be more vulnerable to pressure, friction, and shear.

I can see the importance to the surgeon, but I'm not sure that it matters to us mere mortals. Unless Hazmat disagrees, I'd skip this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I partially agree. I think that forces can be summed up into one sentence and placed in the factors paragraph(s) with wikilinks to the appropriate articles on those forces. The Haz _talk 19:16, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Stress

The book then discusses stress on the musculoskeletal system and nervous system. Then it gets into something called Peripheral Neuropathies (?) and Upper Extremity Neuropathies (?) and Lower Extremity Neuropathies. I dont really get this part but I think it has something to do with the position of nerves in the body in relation to placement of the legs and arms.

It then discusses how anesthesia changes the body's vascular system and how vessels dilate causing a drop in blood pressure. It discusses the pooling of blood and compression in the vessels (?).

It discusses how in all types of positions (except Fowler, sitting, and reverse Trendelenburg), the abdominal viscera (?) are pushed toward the diaphragm putting stress on the respiratory system.

I think I'd turn this into a paragraph or two. I'm not sure whether it should be part of the "Factors" section. I'd say that staying in the same position for a long time causes problems with blood flow and can put stress on muscles and joints, and then what you said here about the effects of anesthesia. Proper positioning (and padding, as noted below) is supposed to improve those problems.
(You know that tingling when your arm or leg goes to sleep? That's neuropathy. It's a sign that you aren't getting proper blood flow to the area, which freaks out the nerves. In the surgical context, poor blood flow increases the risk of blood clots and other Bad Things.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

This might make for a good sub-section of factors, or just a few sentences. As for the neuropathy comment, it's funny you say that because I was just reviewing the topic last week. The pins and needles feeling is actually called paresthesia, which can be due to a neuropathy (to be specific). Typically it's just caused by a compression of nerves such as in Saturday night palsy. I'm not so sure about the blood supply being a common reason. Though it is possible considering nerves need nutrients supplied by blood. Improper blood supply can lead to muscle weakness as well for the same reason. The Haz _talk 19:31, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Preoperative Nursing

It then discusses nursing considerations such as planning, implementation, and evaluation. This part discusses beds, matresses, and gel packs (pressure-reduction considerations).

At a first glance, I think I'd skip this, since it's likely to be more how-to than encyclopedic information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Skip!!! There are articles where procedure is important, such as in staining methods, but not this one. The Haz _talk 19:33, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Positions

Then it gets into the actual positions. All of these also discuss transferring the patient and anesthesia.

Supine

The most common. Patient lies with back flat on OR bed.

Trendelenburg

Same as supine but upper torso is lowered.

Reverse Trendelenburg

Same as supine but upper torso is raised and legs are lowered.

Fracture Table Position

For hip fracture surgery. Discusses transfer of patient to the bed. Upper torso in supine position with unaffected leg raised. Affected leg is extended with no lower support. Strapped at ankle with padding in groin area to keep pressure on the leg and hip.

Lithotomy

Used for gynocological (sp?), anal, and urological procedures. Upper torso in supine position, legs raised and secured, arms extended.

Semi-fowler

Like a lawn chair. Lower torso in supine position. Upper torso bent at a nearly 85 degree position. Head secured by u-shaped restraint.

Fowler

Begins with patient in supine position. Upper torso is slowly raised to a 90 degree position.

Prone

Patient is lying with stomach on the bed. It seems like the abdomen could be raised but if I understand it correctly it doesnt have to be.

Jacknife

Patient's belly faces the bed. The bed is kind of scissored so the hib is high and the legs and head are low.

Knee-chest

Kind of like the jackknife except the legs are bed at the knee at a 90 degree angle.

Lateral

Also like the jackknife except the patient is on their side. Discusses lateral recumbent, lateral decubitus, and Sims. Other similar positions are Lateral chest and Lateral kidney. I don't understand the verbiage so I can't paraphrase.

Hope this helps.--v/r - TP 18:00, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

The problem with an article on positioning is that it needs to be very brief and only describing the position as well as when and why it may be used. The positions used are often just at the discretion of the surgeon, not by any established recommendation (even when there is one established). For instance, a central line may often be put in while the patient is in Trendelenburg, but a slightly taller surgeon may choose to use a supine position instead. The Haz _talk 18:17, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't know. I just have some books that are temporarily in my possession and I'm offering to look through them if someone wants something out of them. WhatamIdoing is the only person who has taken me up on the offer.--v/r - TP 18:25, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying not not to! In fact I'm glad you're helping and thanks for the offer. What I'm saying is that the article needs to remain very factual as there are too many opinions regarding which surgical positions are best for which procedures. The Haz _talk 18:29, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I generally agree with Hazmat's suggestions. In fact, I might even skip the "when and why" aspect in most of the cases. Right now, if we can just get a one-sentence "what it is", it would be a significant improvement.

I'll add comments above in {{green}} type. Hazmat, perhaps you'd add your thoughts in {{blue}}? (If you haven't looked at the target article, then please do. It's barely a couple of sentences.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Alrighty. I'll see if I can give it a go. I'll spend a day or so reading the chapter so I understand the context and then I'll try to paraphrase it.--v/r - TP 19:59, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

That would be fantastic. Thanks. The Haz _talk 20:33, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Office hours

Hey; once again, office hours for the article feedback tool! These will be held at 22:00 UTC this evening; logs from the last session can be found here. Hope to see you there :). Do drop me a note if you're not familiar with IRC and would like the cliff's notes, or if you can't attend but would like the logs/have some questions for me to pass on to the devs :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Filter

Hi. Can you please point me to some pages that will give me the full back story on the image filter? So far I've got the Harris report and Meta:Controversial content/Brainstorming Will that do it? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 19:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "the full back story"?

The Harris report will tell you at least most of the story from the perspective of the Foundation and the Board. meta:Image filter referendum/en and especially its endless talk page archives will tell you about the referendum, and a good deal about the complaints from the German-speaking community about the idea that their readers might be given control over what appears on their readers' computer screens. The strong support from Asia, Africa, South America, and Middle East cannot be found there, but is suggested by an analysis of the broad range of results split by project language (and is also indicated by the Harris report, if memory serves).

None of the community discussions are remotely edifying. Basically, it's the usual situation: white people from northern Europe get attention for declaring that the prudish Americans are trying to censor them, and the rest of the world gets completely ignored or even insulted when they say that the libertine Americans are filling their computer screens with smut and they want some tools for self-defense. There's a good deal of fearmongering (good old Uncle FUD) among the opponents, some signs of ego-driven panic among a few divas who are re-discovering that they don't own Wikipedia, and some rather tedious "won't somebody think about the children!" from supporters who misunderstand the proposal (it will not allow parents to lock down settings).

What you won't find is much recognition by regular community members that they can't actually prevent the Board from ordering the staff to create a filter, which the Board did months ago. It's going to happen, whether we like it or not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I haven't been following this at all. Didn't even notice the referendum. I'll do some reading. I was pretty gobsmacked by Jayen's description of how it's going to work (if "work" is the right term). --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:04, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

At this point, I don't think that anyone can even guess how it will be implemented. The previous proposal (a handful of master lists based on content categories), although IMO neither a great solution nor a truly horrible one, produced noisy complaints from some users. The alternatives proposed since then seem IMO less effective (most of them require the user to see the images that they do not want to see), but the whole thing is still in the early design stages, and it's possible that whatever today's favorite idea is (it changes approximately every week) will be rejected by the devs (insert your favorite technical excuses here) and something else entirely will happen.

I ultimately expect this to follow the normal website change path, i.e., noisy complaints for a few weeks after implementation, then a few months of occasional grumbles, and finally "it's always been that way and we love it". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Request assistance

Hi, I am trying to post something on the project medicine forum [6], but for some reason the second half of my text is not appearing. It is visible if I go into edit mode, but not showing in the preview or in the published draft. Any suggestions? Puhlaa (talk) 23:04, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I've fixed it for you.

You had an unpaired <ref> tag. Whenever you have just about anything at all that begins with the letters "<ref", there must be a closing tag (one that beings "</ref"; what you've seen as <ref name=Blah /> is just a shortcut for both opening and closing the tag within the same pair of angle brackets). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks alot whatamIdoing! I didnt mean to have actual refs....so I should have removed the <>. Wont make that mistake again :)

Best regards!Puhlaa (talk) 01:55, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dispute Resolution

You may be interested in this. Peter jackson (talk) 17:53, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts?

Hi. If you think there's a problem with controversial image use on Wikipedia, would you mind telling me what you think it is here? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:39, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Let me think about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

While you're thinking about that, what are your thoughts on the upcoming ArbCom election? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

That if I close my eyes and wish very hard, it will eventually go away.

Serving on ArbCom is a difficult, time-consuming, pain-inducing, thankless task. I can't imagine why any basically rational person would volunteer for it. I haven't yet been able to bring myself to find out which of the people I like and respect might have volunteered for it this round.

Normally, though, there are a handful of people who are unhappy with "the system" (usually as exemplified by a single case) and stand for election on the rather naïve notion that (1) while working in the same system and with the same people, they would produce radically different results, and (2) the presence of one or two gadflies will somehow revolutionize the process, resulting in peace and liberty and personal maturity for all. These people tend not to get elected and are generally ineffective when they are.

Among the rest, some will have the "wrong" personality (e.g., tend to assume that personal insults directed at individual ArbCom members are meant to be taken personally, rather than as an interesting clinical signal about how threatened the insulter feels at the moment), which means that they are likely to find participation exceptionally painful, and any of the rest would likely be fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. I've voted, fairly conservatively I think. Coincidentally my + votes matched Wizardman's. If I've made a dreadful mistake, let me know. I've believed for a while that you'd make a good candidate but, given your comments, I'll stop wishing that on you, for now. :) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:13, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Disruptive comments and false accusations on RFC

You have made disruptive personal comments and several false accusations here[7]. Please retract and address the subject or further action will be taken thx ... talknic (talk) 10:48, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

My my, sweetie pie - I had a myself a look at your "disruptive personal comments and several false accusations" heretofore referenced. You're SUCH a bad girl!

My bet is you are just gonna hafta decloak the Warbird Sarcasm a little more or she ain't gonna be noticed ... of course that's just my biased opinion *smooch*

Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 13:17, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

more on reliable sources

Ive done some research and found that hrafn has been raving against sources contrary to his personal beliefs for some time. And has been twisting WP policy to force his view. See this small sample of discussions (if you can call them that):

• Talk:Scriptural_geologist#Mortenson.27s_PhD_thesis
• Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_42#Suspect_PhD_thesis
• Talk:John_Murray_(science_lecturer)

--- SmittysmithIII (talk) 22:54, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

hey

I just realized that I overlooked somehow a perfectly lovely note from you. I hope you remember what I'm talking about. Anyway, just wanted to let you know it was appreciated, if belatedly! I know I'm not always the most cuddly editor around, but I do think it's important to recognize the good-faith efforts of new editors. Best, Cynwolfe (talk) 15:20, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I do remember, and thinking about the friendly welcome you all gave to the new editor makes me happy all over again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Mount Sinai

There has been a bunch of editors adding external links to Mount Sinai web site. User:Cardioeditor is only one. I assume that they are linked.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:58, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I see that he's adding ==External links==, and they weren't all the best possible choices for links, but he's trying to improve things in good faith. ELNO #1 is frankly hard for people to grok, and it's probably not the best explanation of the real problem. For example, the "Only look, this hospital has a clinical program on this subject" link was pretty weak, and the problem is that nobody cares whether some individual hospital has a program, not that it didn't contain information that belonged in the ideal article. That information didn't belong in the article, but there wasn't any really clear description in any of the guidelines about that particular pitfall. For the press release, it would be better to have found a great source and added it to the article, but simply reverting it isn't going to help him figure out how to do that (and it's complicated: remember how much you got hassled about mistakes during your first few months?).

Now he's upset and thinks you're the primary source of his difficulties, which isn't going to help Wikipedia—and we desperately need some cardio-savvy people. Those are some of our most important and most neglected articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Student analysis

I would be interested to know what you make of this: User:Colin/Introduction to Psychology, Part I. Colin°^Talk 23:00, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

At a sixty-second glance, I'd say that you need to define your scale, and that you probably shouldn't assign any score to no-content editors. (It's not reasonable to say that someone who has done nothing at all did a better job that someone who tried, but screwed up.)

Also, I'd say that you've done a huge amount of work, and that it's not easy to spot patterns in a narrative review of someone's work. (Must run for now,) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:43, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

The scoring is defined at the bottom, but not meant to be a scale. Essentially it is

• Did something useful (two levels)
• Did nothing
• Did something bad (two levels)

The narrative is mostly an aid to memory but also some examples to look at. Peter.C has done one group but used a different score to me. Colin°^Talk 07:14, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Notabilty

You may be interested in this. I can't remember where the last debate was. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:54, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't have time to comment there right now, but the last discussion was probably at Wikipedia:Notability (high schools). It would be good if someone explained the "no inherent notability" concept to Night. "Being 100 years old" does not make it possible to write a decent or policy-compliant article. We absolutely must have independent sources, no matter how old the school is, or what age students it enrolls, or anything else. Perhaps pointing him at WP:WHYN would be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Reply to You..

whatamIdoing- thanks for the message. I'm a new user, would be grateful for any tips on best practice for the link added. OncologyMD9 (talk) 20:09, 12 December 2011 (UTC)OncologyMD9

Welcome to Wikipedia. I know it can be incredibly confusing and complicated when you're just getting started. I hope that you'll hang in there during the learning curve.

As a general rule, I wouldn't link to webpages like that. We get readers from all over the world, and most of them aren't looking for a place to get treatment for any disease at all. So the information that such a link provides to our typical is pretty much worthless: "Oh, look, some hospital treats breast cancer!" Well, that's not very informative, and literally thousands of hospitals can make the same claim. So why would we want a link to any hospital's "look, we treat this kind of cancer" department page?

The usual goal for links is to provide detailed information about the subject, not about people "selling" something related. (Not that a hospital is necessarily trying to "sell" cancer treatments, but I think you'll understand what I mean.) So a good link is something interesting and informative that we can't put into the article (like the survival calculator) or that contains information that has more details than what ought to be in the article. Ideally links would be just as useful or interesting for a high school student who has to write a paper for school or for someone who was just randomly clicking around Wikipedia as it would be for a patient. What I mean by that is that the links are supposed to be primarily "educational" (like a bunch of detailed information on some aspect of breast cancer) rather than "practical" (like where to get treatment for breast cancer if you happen to be willing to travel to New York).

Let me also suggest that articles about women's health are, on average, pretty weak. The cancer-related articles also tend to attract strange viewpoints or good-faith errors by people who just didn't realize that their personal experience was different from average. Our goal isn't to suppress alternative viewpoints, but we do want mainstream medicine to be presented as the mainstream viewpoint. So if you see problems in the main body of any of these articles, especially if it's a dubious factual claim that is not supported by an WP:Inline citation to a decent medicine-related reliable source (like a med school textbook or a good review article), then please feel free to WP:BOLDly fix it. You can always leave a note for me if you run into problems with formatting or anything like that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:09, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure why all the links are to Mount Sinia. I have seen probably 8 new editors adding these links. I am wondering if they are all the same person. But none of them communicate enough to determine this.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:43, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Admin tools

I noticed this: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Lists#Page_name. I looked back at your talkpage and note that you haven't been keen to become an admin. Being an admin doesn't mean that you have to do anything. It means you are trusted with extra tools so that you can do things like page moves yourself as and when you need to. It was the page move tool that I wanted. I got fed up with asking other people to make what were obvious moves, but were protected because of some prior move. You have plenty of experience, are widely trusted and respected, and are level headed, so there shouldn't be a problem with an RfA. I'd be happy to nominate you if you'd allow me. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 10:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Richard Arthur Norton: Revisiting topic ban; Should it be removed or made indefinite?

Hi WhatamIdoing. You participated in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive228#Richard Arthur Norton copyright violations, in which a one-month topic ban on creating new articles and making page moves was imposed on Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk · contribs). The closing admin has asked for community input about whether to remove the topic ban or make it indefinite at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Richard Arthur Norton: Revisiting topic ban; Should it be removed or made indefinite?. Cunard (talk) 08:58, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Recent Update of Aortic Valve Stenosis

Hi WhatamIdoing-

Thanks for your recent Helpful tips, I added some information under the Percutaneous Aortic Valve Replacement section of this page as you suggested. When you have a chance, please let me know if a link to the page should be provided in this section as well. THANKSCardioeditor (talk) 16:47, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Cardioeditor

It's a good start, but it needs some work. Here are my quick ideas for improvements:

• Wikipedia never highlights trademarks with either ™ or ®. (See WP:® if you want more details.)
• It just doesn't matter who the people involved were. We're not trying to make them famous, and no matter how integral they were to the procedure, it's pretty much irrelevant for the purpose of this section, which is more like "There's a treatment that works like this" rather than "There are these important researchers and clinicians."
• Yes, you'll want a link to a decent reliable source. That article seems to use the most common system for formatting WP:Inline citations, which is usually called "ref tags" (because you type <ref> just before starting the bibliographic citations and then </ref> (with a slash) at the end of it). WP:REFB is supposed to have simplified instructions, but I think if you type something that seems like it should be useful and appropriate between those two codes, you'll get something that's good enough for now. Alternatively, if you can find a good peer-reviewed paper about it on PubMed, then you can paste the PubMed ID number into this website, and it will spit out perfectly formatted citation template gobbledygook just like what is being used by the citation earlier in that section (and save you a lot of typing). Then all you have to do is paste it in between the ref tags and you're done. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

This was a copy violation of the content found here [8] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:06, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, dear. That's a serious problem. Fortunately, it can be fixed by doing exactly the kind of editing work that needs to be done anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

HOW Can this be modified/edited to include this information about such a first-time historic implantation event? Can you please advise or add this to the article in the best manner-Maybe a link would work best.Thanks in advance for your helpCardioeditor (talk) 14:29, 19 December 2011 (UTC)Cardioeditor

First, you remember that nobody except the people directly affected by the "first-time historic implantation event" actually cares much about it. There are similar "first-time historic events" every day of the week. So if you're a typical reader, rather than someone who expects to be made either famous or wealthy as a result of this (or the patient and the patient's immediate family), then this one just isn't that important. It's just as unimportant to the reader as all of the other hundreds of similar "first-time historic events" that happened this year.

Try this thought experiment: every single treatment in that article, and all of the treatments not mentioned yet, have an equivalent "first-time historic event". But you're not really excited about any of those enough to bother naming the people who did each of those, are you? And if you think back to the medical encyclopedias you've encountered in the past, you wouldn't normally expect them to bother listing the names of all the clinicians and researchers that happened to be the first to do something in a particular country, would you? So that kind of detail doesn't belong in Wikipedia, either.

As for how to modify the text, you basically need to say two things about this device:

1. What it is: There's a new type of aortic valve prosthesis made by Medtronic.
2. How it is different: Rather than requiring open heart surgery, it can be inserted through an artery.

You probably know more things that could be said about this particular device, but those are the two basic concepts that the reader wants to hear about: what is this thing, and what makes it different from all the other things. Explain those two points in your own words, using the same kind of jargon-free language that a good surgeon uses when talking to a patient. Then cite the strongest source you can (which is probably something similar to PMID 20671369 rather than a press release from a hospital). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:12, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Bed blocking listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Bed blocking. Since you had some involvement with the Bed blocking redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Beeblebrox (talk) 21:41, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

just an observation

err… I don't want to bring this up in article talk, but it would probably be wise to quietly edit out the with the trait in question bit of this post. I'm assuming it was unintentional (because you're the last person I would expect to indulge in that kind of thing) but implying that someone has a paraphilia of this sort is really dicey. best it just fades away… --Ludwigs2 23:18, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

BitterGrey is quite open about having paraphilic infantilism; a link to his website, which contains (or did, last I looked) stories about his personal experiences, is on his user page. I don't see any reason to treat his open declaration of having this paraphilia as being any more shameful than other editors' equally open declarations that they are gay or transgendered. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, my mistake. I hadn't realized it was an open declaration. Too much text… never mind. --Ludwigs2 00:30, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

We can't know everything, especially on Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

TOS - Logos

Thanks for your comprehensive responses at my questions regarding the new TOS. It didn't occur to me that trademarks can sometimes be "organically produced" and can become used more widely than initially intended-- my presumption was that, as you said, some group is designated to create official logos and so, it would be easy to create an exhaustive list and add to it as needed. I can see why The Foundation would want to cover these cases as well, and so I now understand why the TOS is worded as it is. Thanks again for your clarification-- hopefully you haven't given Geoff too much more work to do. I'm sure he's busy enough as it is.  :) I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 20:36, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. I can be a fountain of trivial knowledge sometimes, so I'm glad that it was helpful to you.

(Geoff is probably used to being overworked. A sensible person probably would have run screaming from his job shortly after starting. I'm just amazed when I read that he's actually enjoying the endless discussions. The WMF did a good job when they chose him.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Your messages to Wikipedia projects

Your concern for policy is commendable but please guard your comments and do more research before unilaterally sending out critical blanket comments. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

"Critical"? In what way is telling a few groups that some other groups have been voluntarily choosing to move their pages a "criticism"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:29, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

You can perhaps ask people '..to consider -ing...' but 'telling' people what to do and telling them that their projects are nailed to their perches when they are extremely active is just out of line. You message was a authoritarian lambast. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, here's what I said (at one WikiProject; I changed the wording slightly over time):

...some of the WikiProjects are renaming their pages to something like "Article advice", "Recommendations", or "Style advice". This is just a friendly suggestion (by no means a requirement) that your group consider doing the same.

Now can you tell me what about this is lambasting anyone? Does anything about the phrasing "just a friendly suggestion (by no means a requirement) that your group consider doing the same" sound authoritarian to you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:12, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm talking about the speech you made at WT:WPSCH - there was nothing friendly in that by any stretch of the imagination, even taking cross cultural communication in English into consideration. It's an extremely busy project but you never bothered to check. I left an answer there just after you posted, but I didn't expect you to follow up. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:21, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm just not seeing it. That message, too, says, "some of the WikiProjects are renaming their pages to something like "Article advice", "Recommendations", or "Style advice". This is just a friendly suggestion that your group consider doing the same".

Do you want to take another try at explaining how the words "suggestion" and "consider" is ordering that group to do anything at all? Or perhaps you might want to re-read the message and consider whether your initial reaction might have been misplaced? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I was taken aback by this comment: While you're at it, if it's been a long time since anyone overhauled those pages, this might be a good time to do that, too. I don't know what the history is for your group, but it's pretty typical for a page to get written and then neglected for a long time. If you happen to find anything that no longer matches up with the community-wide Manual of Style or other general guidelines, then perhaps it would be good to fix it, which would appear to suggest that you are not aware that some projects are actually doing quite well without your policing, and are regularly maintained by experienced editors. We have hundreds of projects at Wikipedia (maybe thousands), perhaps it would be more constructive to single out the really dormant ones and send them to MfD. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:17, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

There's a wide variation in WikiProjects, and MFD is not considered an acceptable response to a formerly active project. That's why my suggestion said "if it has been a long time since anyone overhauled those pages...", not "since". Some WikiProjects have extremely well-maintained advice pages. Others have completely neglected pages that no one has paid the least attention to for literally years (and the community-wide guidelines have changed dramatically in the last several years) or that one member started writing and nobody else ever paid attention to. They, not I, are best positioned to figure out whether their advice is what they want it to be, and my suggestion that they look over the content while they've got the page on screen anyway is nothing more than a suggestion: it might be a good time to look it over, and perhaps they will find something that they want to improve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Some WikiProjects have extremely well-maintained advice pages - exactly, and this is one of them. If you're on a mission to police Wikipedia in all it's meta areas, please consider doing some basic research (I don't know what the history is for your group) before issuing such blanket messages, otherwise all you will achieve is discussions such as this that really only disrupt peoples' workflow. Do bear in mind that projects that may be worthy of your good faith efforts are probably dead or dormant and won't be watched or produce any reaction anyway. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:00, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I generally expect an experienced user like you to be able to evaluate an if...then clause, and to ignore the "then" whenever it doesn't, without disrupting his workflow. Perhaps my assumption is invalid in your case.

I have little interest in "policing". I have a good deal of interest in informing people of discussions and decisions that might affect them significantly and which I can be reasonably confident they are unaware of. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

You have not addressed what I have said above nor apparently followed the link - I'm not here (as a professional linguist) to discuss your use of grammar, I just think that there are more constructive ways of 'policing' the project, so let's just leave it at that for now. I'll get back to improving NPP, schools, and RfA, and you can continue your excellent work on the AfT. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Refs

Are there refs to support this?

Palliative care is often confused with hospice and therefore only involved when people approach end of life. Like hospice care, palliative care attempts to help the person cope with the immediate needs and to increase the person's comfort. Unlike hospice care, palliative care does not require people to stop treatment aimed at prolonging their lives or curing the cancer.

Specifically the "often confused" part Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

The confusion is substantial enough that every single palliative care organization I've seen makes a point of explaining it. Sources are trivially available, e.g., [9][10][11], etc: a short trip to your favorite web search engine will show you what I mean.

I'm not convinced that this sort of simple definition truly requires a source, but if you want one, you might consider ISBN 9780824210137 p 127, which says, "Palliative care is not hospice care, though the two can be confused easily", or ISBN 9780415950671 p 45, which says, "The concept of palliative care is often confused with hospice service." WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Aside from Talk:Ariel A. Roth

I saw this and knew I had to respond somewhere. I chose your talk page. Feel free to move it:

Thank you WhatamIdoing for that myopic and unhelpful piece of WP:WIKILAWYERING (which ignores the fact that WP:N clearly leaves open that it may indirectly "limit the content of an article"). Does your comment add any useful insight whatsoever? "Nope".

Someone else already called WP:UNCIVIL on this so I don't need too. What's remarkable is the charge of WP:WIKILAWYERING to your common-sense distinction between WP:WEIGHT (or WP:UNDUE) and WP:N. Compounding that error is the bizarre creative twist that all the tests of WP:N and its children spill into article content because of the "do not directly limit the content" phrase in the text of the guideline.

The reason for that phrase is that the content is limited because editors cannot omit the stuff that allows other editors to evaluate its notability. That is the total extent of the indirect limitation of content. Does this need to be brought up in WT:N? patsw (talk) 16:24, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I'm completely failing to keep up with my watchlist.

Given that editors can (and regularly do, e.g., in a quarter-million completely unsourced articles) "omit the stuff that allows other editors to evaluate its notability" without actually affecting the notability of the subject, I think we might benefit from dropping the word "directly" entirely. It might also be clearer to rephrase the second sentence there as something like "Many other policies, however, do limit the content of the article, including NPOV (especially its UNDUE section), WP:V, NOR, NOT, and BLP". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Season's tidings!

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 03:48, 25 December 2011 (UTC).

Some bubble tea for you!

Thanks for dropping a thank you note to one of my students. It is unlikely they'll return to editing, but such messages make it more likely :) Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for your great comments on the Terms of Use draft--you've been nearly tireless at explaining points that people have questioned, with clarity and admirable patience! Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 03:39, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Help Please

Hi –

Can someone please help me. I am trying to figure out why Ameya Pawar has not gone live yet. Please advise. Thank you.

rideittowin 17:09, 28 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rideittowin (talk • contribs)

Offhand, I'd guess that it's because you didn't formally "submit" it to the WP:Articles for creation (AFC) process for review. But you don't actually need to do that; AFC is mostly for people who don't have user accounts. You can WP:MOVE the page to the proper name and make it "live" yourself.

If you'd like some advice, articles about people often benefit from having as many WP:Inline citations as possible to as wide a variety of WP:Reliable sources. If you changed things so that there were more references than WP:External links, I think it would improve the article. (The way you link to a newspaper story online is the same, only you put the link at the end of a sentence or paragraph that it relates to, and put the "<ref>" and "</ref>" tags on either side of the link.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Surgical positions

Hi. I've gone ahead and expanding this article. Would you mind giving it a copyedit? I might like to send this to DYK.--v/r - TP 17:51, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I've copyedited the lead, and looked briefly over the rest. It looks pretty good. I think you should submit it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Is it what you were looking for or do you think it's weak in any area? GorillaWarfare suggested I make sure that the changing positions section isn't "How to".--v/r - TP 02:46, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a solid improvement and addresses more than what I'd initially hoped for. Also, ==Changing positions== doesn't strike me as how-to; it's more like why-to. (If you don't, you'll get this complication; if you do it this bad way, you'll get this other complication; etc.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Re: Personal wedding website

Hi, thanks for reviewing the article! I think that it greatly benefited from the GA review as we were able to iron out some kinks. I agree that the article hasn't yet meet GA criteria. When I have the time, I might do additional work on it (I still think the chart is an eyesore). Bejinhan talks 13:56, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I was really happy with having you involved. It'd be great if you (or anyone else) decided to improve the article further (or any of the other nearly four million articles, of course), but I'm actually pretty satisfied with it having gotten just this far. It is such a dramatic improvement compared to what they started with. Thanks again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

A tool for you!

Hi WhatamIdoing! I've just come across one of your edits (or that you have been patrolling new pages), and noticed that you might appreciate some help with references.

I case you're not aware, you might consider using this tool – it makes your life a whole heap easier, by filling in complete citation templates for your links. All you do is install the script:

// Add [[WP:Reflinks]] launcher in the toolbox on left
addOnloadHook(function () {
 addPortletLink(
  "p-tb",     // toolbox portlet
  "http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py/" + wgPageName 
   + "?client=script&citeweb=on&overwrite=&limit=30&lang=" + wgContentLanguage,
  "Reflinks"  // link label
)});

onto Special:MyPage/skin.js, then paste the bare URL between your <ref></ref> tabs, and you'll find a clickable link called Reflinks in your toolbox section of the page (probably in the left hand column). Then click that tool. It does all the rest of the work (provided that you remember to save the page! It doesn't work for everything (particularly often not for PDF documents), but for pretty much anything ending in "htm" or "html" (and with a title) it will do really, really well. You may consider taking on Category:Articles needing link rot cleanup. So long! --Sp33dyphil ©^hat_ontributions 03:04, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

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Don't understand a thing about the Village pump

I have been trying to discuss ["Change of policy towards Dutch ..."] and wonder how this "village pump"-thing is supposed to work. Is there anybody of notice who decides to close a discussion, promote it to a serious policy- proposal, flush it down the history (as has happened here). Someone is allowed to tilt the discussion out of scope by adding a "subheading" to discuss the quality of a specific article. I see some things are done by bots. Guess someone operates them.

Isn't it time someone starts a villagepump policy policy discussion which stays on top until resolved? I think it's not in my way, being far to unnoticeable.

Sorry to bother you with this but saw no better chance. Victor50 (talk) 22:41, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The Village Pumps work like a regular, face-to-face conversation with other people. Imagine that you're talking the people standing next to the coffee pot in an office. The conversation might start by talking about sports and end up talking about politics: that's okay. The conversation might start with an important idea and end with something trivial: that's okay. The conversation might result in a firm decision, or people might just walk away and forget about it: that's okay.

If you believe that people understand and support your ideas (and I am not convinced that either is true), then you should probably read about how to make a serious policy WP:PROPOSAL. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Tx for your answer. As you observed: although there is some understanding and support for the idea the tone is set by some Dutch contributors who feel it as a personal attack. I am disappointed at the fact that the pump is not systematically watched by some committee of notice. Anyway, no one was there who was prepared to help and take the idea one step further. Unfortunately I am not in a position to follow the lines in WP:PROPOSAL by sheer lack of time to absorb a lot of present policies, become 'noticeable' and then advertise and campaign for my proposal. Still I am very frustrated at the poor level of the Dutch Wikipedia. Probably other languages with a small user base are as bad, but I have a hunch they leave more non-local subjects alone, so when you Google "Bob Dylan" you won't get any references. I sketch here an alternative and much easier to implement pre-proposal, hope you know of someone who can and will take it further and leave it at that.Victor50 (talk) 10:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Hepatitis

From what I can understand from your comment on the causes of hepatitis you appear to think that the list of causes I provided were not cited from reviews or similar secondary sources. This is incorrect: this can be confirmed from the references themselves.

It appears that you would prefer to see a single source for all the causes rather than the multiple sources I provided. Most textbooks of general medicine will list for example parasites as a cause at least in part because of their association with cirrhosis and liver cancer. They may be slightly less informative on the replication sites for (say) the Ebola fever virus which has the liver as its primary replication site but these can be found in infectious diseases/virology/microbiology textbooks. When I pointed this out I simply ended up in a row. For this reason it seemed sensible to provided multiple sources. There may perhaps be some diversity of opinion on this point.

As the record shows provision of suitable references by itself was not sufficient to prevent a minor edit war when these were then deleted without even being read - which seems (to me anyway) at least a little rude.

As to the importance of the infectious causes I think it is clear to say that virtually all if not all of the categories listed could be regarded as important. In medicine a cause is regarded - generally - as important if it is treatable. If a disease is untreatable the precise cause of the problem is usually not regarded as a priority: there are exceptions. Most of the infectious causes listed are thankfully treatable.

A secondary consideration in importance is the transmissibility of a disease. Tuberculosis is regarded as an important disease partly because of the difficulty treating it but also because of its transmissibility. Ebola is not very treatable but is an important cause because it is very easily spread to the health care staff treating the patient.

Other considerations in the importance of a disease include their likelihood of being confused with another disease. The causes of granulomatous hepatitis are among these. An inexperienced clinician may think of these as only being caused by tuberculosis when the actual list is much longer. Red faces soon follow when this is pointed out. Before dismissing this as nonsense I have seen this very error with my own eyes. I am sure I am not unique there.

Another consideration is the age profile of the patient. A number of conditions occur only in children. These are uncommon or rare in the population as a whole but worthy of serious consideration to those treating children. Parvovirus as a cause of hepatitis springs to mind here. Parvovirus and its relations infect only dividing cells. Children particularly smaller ones tend to have more dividing cells in their organs than do adults. For this reason it is thought parvovirus tends to be a cause of hepatitis in children rather than adults. There may well be other reasons but if there are I have not yet come across them. Numerically parvovirus as a cause of hepatitis in the population as a whole is a miniscule quantity. However in children with hepatitis without an obvious cause parvovirus is high on the list of differentitial diagnoses.

Importance is not even a matter of being listed in textbook as textbooks take different slants. A textbook of paediatrics will list different causes for many things than an adult textbook. A textbook on infectious diseases normally will give a much more extensive listing of infectious causes than a textbook on general medicine. Larger textbooks tend to give more causes than smaller ones.

For these reasons and others, while your comment on importance is of note, importance is not a simple issue.

You mentioned a list of drugs that can cause hepatitis. This is an extensive list. Your point as regards importance of the agents is again interesting. I do not pretend to any expertise in deciding which should or should not be included in such a list. Perhaps an appeal for an expert opinion on these matters is indicated. The current listing gives no indication which if any of these drugs are important causes of hepatitis. Suggestions as to its revision seem desirable for this reason.

I agree with you over the causes of fatigue - a veritable nightmare list of causes. I would argue that where there is a defined clinicopathological entity such as hepatitis the causes thereof listed may need to be/can be justified as being more extensive than in cases where there is no defined pathology such as fatigue. Perhaps you may have an opinion on this?

Finally a minor note not directly related to your comment. JWD has stated that cardiac failure does not cause hepatitis. This - as I have pointed out to him - is incorrect. That this condition does cause hepatitis is stated in the usual undergraduate textbooks of pathology as well as the references cited. The pathology cardiac failure induces is very similar to that produced by ischemic hepatitis which is a cause that was earlier included. DrMicro (talk) 10:37, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

It appears that we have three separate things to discuss:

Importance

I agree that it's not always simple to determine how much weight (from "any mention at all" to "entire section entirely dedicated to") should be given to any particular cause. Unlike your model of determining importance from real-world effects (commonness, transmissibility, threats to particular populations), we determine importance based on what our best sources consider important. We know what they consider important because they talk about the important stuff more than they talk about the unimportant stuff. "Follow the sources" is our method for getting an "expert opinion" on what is important enough to mention and how much attention to give it: we mention what our best secondary sources (like a good textbook) tend to mention, and we don't mention what our best secondary sources don't mention.

So if you look at a handful of textbooks and see that most of them write (for example) a whole chapter about Hep B, multiple paragraphs about parasites, and merely mention Ebola in passing or as part of a list, then we (because we summarize, i.e., write less than a textbook) should probably discuss Hep B in a few paragraphs, maybe dedicate a sentence or two to parasites, and probably omit Ebola. Because we're writing a summary, we also try to write at a more general level. For example, we would normally write about "liver flukes" as a class, rather than specific, named, individual families or species of liver flukes.

Secondary sources

You assert above that you're using secondary sources, but PMID 19478873 (Lujo virus) is a primary source. PMID 7991040 (Hantaan virus) is a case study. PMID 21474206 (Dengue) is a primary source. PMID 21322282 (Cytomegalovirus) is a randomized controlled trial—another primary source. PMID 21951624 (Influenza) is a primary source. And so forth. Please don't expect me to believe that you are using "reviews or similar secondary sources" when your list still names so many primary sources.

Purpose

I'd like to understand better why you're interested in creating a list of causes. It seems to me that your goal may be to create a reasonable comprehensive list as a practical aid to differential diagnosis, i.e., for the laudable purpose of saving lives in the real world. But perhaps I have misunderstood you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:27, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe these might suit you better

CMV: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/215702-overview

Dengue: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15361994. Admittedly this is an analysis of <1500 cases of whom over 40% had raised liver enzymes. The sheer number of cases in this paper argues for dengue's inclusion in such a listing. Raised liver enzymes are also highly characteristic of dengue fever.

Influenza: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16565492

Hantaan virus: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2895603

Lujo virus which causes haemorrhagic fever is a notifible disease. Part of its clinical presentation is a form of hepatitis. It is thankfully rare but because of its causative role in haemorrhagic fever it probably justifies inclusion on that ground alone.

Concerning your comments on (say) liver flukes chapters in in textbooks on parasitology are devoted to each of these individually. They are listed like cigarettes and Helicobacter as class 1 carcinogens. One of the primary cells for the replication of Ebola is the liver something that has been known for several decades now. One of the major problems with Ebola and similar viruses is the effect it has on the coagulation system - proteins produced by the liver. Post mortums in fatal cases show extensive hepatic changes. It is a notifable disease which means it has separate legal status in most countries. It is well known to the general public in part because of books such as the Hot Zone

http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385479565

The Centres for Disease Control have a section on Ebola in their handbook (somewhat less dramatic in their account)

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola.htm

In passing it may be worth noting that almost all the infectious causes already have pages on Wikipedia which argues for their individual importance.

Since we are on this topic the lack of references for the remainder of the page might also be worth discussing. For example while it is a commonly known fact that alcohol is a cause of hepatitis there are not supporting refs on the page. For ensure consistency perhaps this should be deleted as cause until suitably referenced? If some causes may be included without providing refs being provided what criteria are to be used? DrMicro (talk) 22:09, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

• Your new Dengue and Influenza citations are still primary sources. Is there some reason why you aren't using textbooks or other guaranteed-to-be-non-primary sources?
• It doesn't matter if a page exists. That a subject is notable (=gets its own article) does not mean that the subject must be mentioned in every other possible article. IMO an article should (eventually) be written for every single virus that's had more than two publications about it. That doesn't mean that every single virus should be mentioned in every single other article—or in any other article. WP:DUE weight is determined by the context of the specific article in question. For example, a cause that is really not important enough to even mention in Hepatitis might well deserve inclusion in the more specific article on Viral hepatitis.
• See WP:MINREF for the list of what must be provided with an inline citation. "Commonly known facts" isn't on the list. Furthermore, trying to destroy the rest of the article as retaliation for being (correctly) told that you're using primary sources when secondary sources are strongly preferred is not going to help improve either the article or your relationships with other editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:11, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I provide here new refs for your opinion

Dengue: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2006.01678.x/full

Influenza: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1606546/

I agree with you over the viruses. I have been moderately active in that given area: the DNA virus families and most of their genera now have pages devoted to them: all are consistent with the ICTV. I hope to try to improve the situation of the RNA viruses in the not too distant future.

Due weight seems a topic worthy of discussion. Consider Egypt a country whose population of ~80 million are mostly fairly observant Muslims. Alcohol related disease is rare there at least in part because of the prohibition on the use of alcohol by Muslims. Until relatively recently virtually the entire population were have been infected with schistosoma. Public health efforts made significant inroads into this problem. There are 300-500 million cases of malaria each year. While all of these develop a mild hepatitis ~1% develop clinical hepatitis making a total of 3-5 million cases each year. The drug methyldopa is now only rarely used as better alternatives have been available for years. I would have to check to be certain but I think the incidence of this side effect is <1% of people who take the drug on a long term basis and that the total number of cases reported is <10,000. Since this agent lacks an inline citation presumably this is because this drug may cause hepatitis is a 'commonly known fact'. Perhaps there may be some other reason that I am not familiar with. If this is the case I would be grateful if you could enlighten me.

My understanding of the term 'encyclopedic' agrees with that in this dictonary

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/encyclopedic

An encyclopedic article IMHO should tend to be complete - something that this definition seems to agree with. The causes I have listed in the Hepatitis article I believe can be justified on the grounds that they are treatable and/or are significant public hazards. I have not - and do not intend to try - to list the entire litany of causes - principally because I lack the expertise to do so.

I do not disagree with you that because the list of causes is of some length - and currently is only partly complete - that the lay out of this article cannot be improved. This is not a problem unique to Hepatitis. The liver is a body organ. Inflammation is universal response in body organs to injury. The list of unique causes of injury to the body is not short for any organ. A useful solution in the case could and probably should be used elsewhere. I recall that both I and Doc James requested opinions/suggestions on method of improving it. Perhaps these were deleted?

I think it is safe to say that Doc James and I agreed that there should be discussion in the article on the relative importance of these causes. This is not IMHO a simple matter. The prevalence and incidence of causes differs considerably between countries and over periods of time. Halothane for example is rarely used if at all because of its association with hepatitis. Whether such agents should be included in such a list since they are now rarely used but are mentioned in virtually every review on drug induced hepatitis because they spawned a number of law cases I do not know. Perhaps you may have an opinion?

Finally I have misunderstood you here but I would tend to regard 'destroy', 'retaliation' as having some difficulties complying with the instructions on this page - Wikipedia:No personal attacks. I also fail to see how your choice of words on this occasion helps your relationship with other editors. Perhaps it may be useful if you could how the choice of words here is (1) compliant and (2) helpful DrMicro (talk) 23:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

• The influenza ref is just commentary. Look: this is not difficult. High school students can manage this task. If you're absolutely determined not to use a sensible, reasonably comprehensive source like a medical textbook, then go to PubMed, put in a relevant search term, and click the button under "Filter your results" that says "Review".
• Use the secondary sources to figure out due weight. Due weight is not determined by how many people in the world die from something. It's determined solely by how much good sources have written about it. If good sources go nattering on about something incredibly rare, and gloss over something incredibly common, then we follow their lead. We do not actually care what the prevalence of a given cause is: we care how much ink has been used to talk about the cause.
• NPA is generally interpreted quite strictly, and my comments do not transgress it. If you'd like to learn more about behavioral advice, you might want to read WP:Tendentious editing, which (among other problematic behaviors) embraces your idea of deleting obviously accurate and verifiable information (e.g., alcohol as a cause of hepatitis) merely because it isn't being presented perfectly, especially in the context of people wanting good sources for the less obvious and quite possibly UNDUE causes you've been adding.

Basically, I don't think that you understand the job of an encyclopedia article. The whole encyclopedia—all of the nearly four million articles taken together—is supposed to be "Embracing many subjects; comprehensive". Individual articles are not. Individual articles are supposed to provide summaries. They are not supposed to include every detail. WP:NOTEVERYTHING actually prohibits this: individual articles are not permitted to be "a complete exposition of all possible details". And if you go look at any other encyclopedia ever published, you will discover that the individual articles are normally quite brief, and that absolutely none of them provide complete lists like you're looking for. Encyclopedias are a mile wide, but only an inch deep. If you really want to make a complete exposition of all possible causes, then you need to be writing at Wikibooks or Wikiversity, not at Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:53, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:NOTEVERYTHING - 'The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts...' That seems compatible with a list of causes.

'The influenza ref is just commentary.' This paper is an editorial review of a number of papers on viruses and hepatitis.

As I have stated before I have not and would not try to list all the possible causes. Please do not suggest that I have attempted to advance such a idea. My apologies if I have misunderstood your comments on this point.

The record shows that alcohol as a cause was not deleted. To be consistent with your policy of requiring references this would seem to suggest that alcohol might also might also require a reference. Wikipedia does not require and indeed advises against providing citations for everything.

I think it is probably safe to say that there are more articles written on jaundice in malaria (where it is regarded as a poor prognostic sign) that there are on methyldopa as a cause of hepatitis. Malaria is referenced: methydopa is not. Your policy appears to be inconsistent. An explanation of the reason for this inconsistency would be nice.

'NPA is generally interpreted quite strictly, and my comments do not transgress it.' That I think is a matter of opinion. Nemo iudex in causa sua. Even if your comments do not violate the NPA they do seem (IMHO) to transgress one of the five pillars of Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Civility. Your milage may differ. DrMicro (talk) 12:00, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Why isn't alcohol followed by an inline citation? Because nobody's gotten around to adding one yet. Someday, somebody eventually will.

Why are people fussing at you about the inline citations you've added? Because you've been adding weak sources—sources so weak that they don't demonstrate that we should even be mentioning some of these causes at all.

There is no point of policy here, unless you consider the fact that Wikipedia is a work in progress to be a "policy". This is just reality: the article is not finished.

Let me give you an analogy: Imagine a pile of dirty dishes. You get one dish half-clean, and people say "That's not good enough." Your response is "Well, nobody's ever attempted to wash this other dirty dish, so you should be perfectly happy to eat off of this half-dirty one!"

As for your concerns about civility, you may want to reflect on the substantial gulf between civility and friendliness. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:29, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Separate funding of Wikipedia's

Open the possibility to earmark donations to Wikipedia to specific languages.

Alternative: Have all (localized) Wikipedia's campaign for themselves.

(Arguments are given above and in my villagepump-proposal)

Victor50 (talk) 10:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

This isn't practical. Most of the money isn't spent on a single language's Wikipedia. When the developer spends a month creating a new feature, that work benefits all of the languages and all of the projects equally.

Also, we depend on other projects. Most of the money comes from readers of the English Wikipedia. Would you like to have Commons, without which the English Wikipedia would be seriously limited, starved of resources merely because the readers didn't know that's where we keep most of the images they like? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:31, 31 December 2011 (UTC)