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As of 2025-01-06 , SMcCandlish is Active.
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Please stay in the top 3 segments of Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement.

Old stuff to resolve eventually

[edit]

Cueless billiards

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

Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Crud fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually. I think at least some variants of bar billiards are played with hands and some bagatelle split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's bocce billiards, article I've not written yet. Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once. Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection. She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. Hand pool might be its own article eventually. Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics". Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have crud), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really. I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-) In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at CfD. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled Category:Pinball just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to Category:Darts soon.
PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted Yank Adams as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a bunch of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.? I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4½ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years. I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for. S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the Blue Book of Pool Cues too for under $200 total. Here it is for $160, plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-) DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh. Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
PayPal Plugin ist kaput. Some banks now issue credit card accounts that make use of virtual card numbers, but mine's not one of them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 19:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for trying. It was worth a shot. I signed up for a newspaperarchive.com three month trial. As far as newspaper results go it seems quite good so far, and the search interface is many orders of magnitude better than ancestry's, but it has none of the genealogical records that ancestry provides. With ancestry I could probably find census info on Yank as well as death information (as well as for Masako Katsura, which I've been working on it for a few days; she could actually be alive, though she'd be 96).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sad...

[edit]

How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK. PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Jackpot. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nice find! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some more notes on Crystalate

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Unresolved
 – New sources/material worked into article, but unanswered questions remain.
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Some more notes: they bought Royal Worcester in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.[3]; info about making records:[4]; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:[5]; "In 1880, crystalate balls made of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol began to appear. In 1926, they were made obligatory by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the London-based governing body." Amazing Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Feats. Richard B. Manchester - 1991wGtDHsgbtltnpBg&ct=result&id=v0m-h4YgKVYC&dq=%2BCrystalate; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:No5 Balls.html. Fences&Windows 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I'll have to have a look at this stuff in more detail. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 15:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've worked most of it in. Fences&Windows 16:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cool! From what I can tell, entirely different parties held the trademark in different markets. I can't find a link between Crystalate Mfg. Co. Ltd. (mostly records, though billiard balls early on) and the main billiard ball mfr. in the UK, who later came up with "Super Crystalate". I'm not sure the term was even used in the U.S. at all, despite the formulation having been originally patented there. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 21:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SAL

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Unresolved
 – Not done yet, last I looked.
Extended content

No one has actually objected to the idea that it's really pointless for WP:SAL to contain any style information at all, other than in summary form and citing MOS:LIST, which is where all of WP:SAL's style advice should go, and SAL page should move back to WP:Stand-alone lists with a content guideline tag. Everyone who's commented for 7 months or so has been in favor of it. I'd say we have consensus to start doing it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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

You post at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright

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Unresolved
 – Need to fix William A. Spinks, etc., with proper balkline stats, now that we know how to interpret them.
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That page looks like a hinterland (you go back two users in the history and you're in August). Are you familiar with WP:MCQ? By the way, did you see my response on the balkline averages?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

Hee Haw

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Unresolved
 – Still need to propose some standards on animal breed article naming and disambiguation. In the intervening years, we've settled on natural not parenthetic disambiguation, and that standardized breeds get capitalized, but that's about it.
Extended content

Yeah, we did get along on Donkeys. And probably will get along on some other stuff again later. Best way to handle WP is to take it issue by issue and then let bygones be bygones. I'm finding some interesting debates over things like the line between a subspecies, a landrace and a breed. Just almost saw someone else's GA derailed over a "breed versus species" debate that was completely bogus, we just removed the word "adapt" and life would have been fine. I'd actually be interested in seeing actual scholarly articles that discuss these differences, particularly the landrace/breed issue in general, but in livestock in particular, and particularly as applied to truly feral/landrace populations (if, in livestock, there is such a thing, people inevitably will do a bit of culling, sorting and other interference these days). I'm willing to stick to my guns on the WPEQ naming issue, but AGF in all respects. Truce? Montanabw(talk) 22:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Truce, certainly. I'm not here to pick fights, just improve the consistency for readers and editors. I don't think there will be any scholarly articles on differences between landrace and breed, because there's nothing really to write about. Landrace has clear definitions in zoology and botany, and breed not only doesn't qualify, it is only established as true in any given case by reliable sources. Basically, no one anywhere is claiming "This is the Foobabaz horse, and it is a new landrace!" That wouldn't make sense. What is happening is people naming and declaring new alleged breeds on an entirely self-interested, profit-motive basis, with no evidence anyone other than the proponent and a few other experimental breeders consider it a breed. WP is full of should-be-AfD'd articles of this sort, like the cat one I successfully prod'ed last week. Asking for a reliable source that something is a landrace rather than a breed is backwards; landrace status is the default, not a special condition. It's a bit like asking for a scholarly piece on whether pig Latin is a real language or not; no one's going to write a journal paper about that because "language" (and related terms like "dialect", "language family", "creole" in the linguistic sense, etc.) have clear definitions in linguistics, while pig Latin, an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally-managed form of communication (like an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally managed form of domesticated animal) does not qualify. :-) The "what is a breed" question, which is also not about horses any more than cats or cavies or ferrets, is going to be a separate issue to resolve from the naming issue. Looking over what we collaboratively did with donkeys – and the naming form that took, i.e. Poitou donkey not Poitou (donkey), I think I'm going to end up on your side of that one. It needs to be discussed more broadly in an RFC, because most projects use the parenthetical form, because this is what WT:AT is most readily interpretable as requiring. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 00:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I hate the drama of an RfC, particularly when we can just look at how much can be naturally disambiguated, but if you think it's an actual issue, I guess ping me when it goes up. As for landcraces, it may be true ("clear definitions") but you would be doing God's (or someone's) own good work if you were to improve landrace which has few references, fewer good ones, and is generally not a lot of help to those of us trying to sort out WTF a "landrace" is... (smiles). As for breed, that is were we disagree: At what point do we really have a "breed" as opposed to a "landrace?" Fixed traits, human-selected? At what degree, at which point? How many generations? I don't even know if there IS such a thing as a universal definition of what a "breed" is: seriously: [6] or breed or [7]. I think you and I agree that the Palomino horse can never be a "breed" because it is impossible for the color to breed true (per an earlier discussion) so we have one limit. But while I happen agree to a significant extent with your underlying premise that when Randy from Boise breeds two animals and says he has created a new breed and this is a problem, (I think it's a BIG problem in the worst cases) but if we want to get really fussy, I suppose that the aficionados of the Arabian horse who claim the breed is pure from the dawn of time are actually arguing it is a landrace, wouldn't you say? And what DO we do with the multi-generational stuff that's in limbo land? Montanabw(talk) 00:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not really certain what the answers are to any of those questions, another reason (besides your "STOP!" demands :-) that I backed away rapidly from moving any more horse articles around. But it's something that is going to have to be looked into. I agree that the Landrace article here is poor. For one thing, it needs to split Natural breed out into its own article (a natural breed is a selectively-bred formal breed the purpose of which is to refine and "lock-in" the most definitive qualities of a local landrace). This in turn isn't actually the same thing as a traditional breed, though the concepts are related. Basically, three breeding concepts are squished into one article. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 00:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Side comment: I tend to support one good overview article over three poor content forks, just thinking aloud... Montanabw(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sure; the point is that the concepts have to be separately, clearly treated, because they are not synonymous at all. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 02:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the article isn't well-sourced yet, I think that you might want to add something about that to landrace now, just to give whomever does article improvement on it later (maybe you, I think this is up your alley!) has the "ping" to do so. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Aye, it's on my to-do list. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Although I have been an evolutionary biologist for decades, I only noticed the term "landrace" within the past year or two (in reference to corn), because I work with wildland plants. But I immediately knew what it was, from context. I'm much less certain about breeds, beyond that I am emphatic that they are human constructs. Montanabw and I have discussed my horse off-wiki, and from what I can tell, breeders are selecting for specific attributes (many people claim to have seen a horse "just like him"), but afaik there is no breed "Idaho stock horse". Artificially-selected lineages can exist without anyone calling them "breeds"; I'm not sure they would even be "natural breeds", and such things are common even within established breeds (Montanabw could probably explain to us the difference between Polish and Egyptian Arabians).
The good thing about breeds wrt Wikipedia is that we can use WP:RS and WP:NOTABLE to decide what to cover. Landraces are a different issue: if no one has ever called a specific, distinctive, isolated mustang herd a landrace, is it OR for Wikipedia to do so?--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have been reluctant to use landrace much out of a concern that the concept is a bit OR, as I hadn't heard of it before wikipedia either (but I'm more a historian than an evolutionary biologist, so what do I know?): Curtis, any idea where this did come from? It's a useful concept, but I am kind of wondering where the lines are between selective breeding and a "natural" breed -- of anything. And speaking of isolated Mustang herds, we have things like Kiger Mustang, which is kind of interesting. I think that at least some of SMc's passion comes from the nuttiness seen in a lot of the dog and cat breeders these days, am I right? I mean, Chiweenies? Montanabw(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The first use of the word that I saw referred to different landraces of corn growing in different elevations and exposures in indigenous Maya areas of modern Mexico. I haven't tracked down the references for the use of the word, but the concept seems extremely useful. My sense is that landraces form as much through natural selective processes of cultivation or captivity as through human selection, so that if the "garbage wolf" hypothesis for dog domestication is true, garbage wolves would have been a landrace (or more likely several, in different areas). One could even push the definition and say that MRSA is a landrace. But I don't have enough knowledge of the reliable sources to know how all this would fit into Wikipedia.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Landraces form, primarily and quickly, through mostly natural selection, long after domestication. E.g. the St Johns water dog and Maine Coon cat are both North American landraces that postdate European arrival on the continent. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see some potential for some great research on this and a real improvement to the articles in question. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redundant sentence?

[edit]
Unresolved
 – Work to integrate WP:NCFLORA and WP:NCFAUNA stuff into MOS:ORGANISMS not completed yet? Seems to be mostly done, other than fixing up the breeds section, after that capitalization RfC a while back.
Extended content

The sentence at MOS:LIFE "General names for groups or types of organisms are not capitalized except where they contain a proper name (oak, Bryde's whales, rove beetle, Van cat)" is a bit odd, since the capitalization would (now) be exactly the same if they were the names of individual species. Can it simply be removed?

There is an issue, covered at Wikipedia:PLANTS#The use of botanical names as common names for plants, which may or may not be worth putting in the main MOS, namely cases where the same word is used as the scientific genus name and as the English name, when it should be de-capitalized. I think this is rare for animals, but more common for plants and fungi (although I have seen "tyrannosauruses" and similar uses of dinosaur names). Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  1. I would leave it a alone for now; let people get used to the changes. I think it's reasonable to include the "general names" thing, because it's a catch-all that includes several different kinds of examples, that various largely different groups of people are apt to capitalize. Various know-nothings want to capitalize things like "the Cats", the "Great Apes", etc., because they think "it's a Bigger Group and I like to Capitalize Big Important Stuff". There are millions more people who just like to capitalize nouns and stuff. "Orange's, $1 a Pound". Next we have people who insist on capitalizing general "types" and landraces of domestic animals ("Mountain Dogs", "Van Cat") because they're used to formal breed names being capitalized (whether to do that with breeds here is an open question, but it should not be done with types/classes of domestics, nor with landraces. Maybe the examples can be sculpted better: "the roses", "herpesviruses", "great apes", "Bryde's whale", "mountain dogs", "Van cat", "passerine birds". I'm not sure that "rove beetle" and "oak" are good examples of anything. Anyway, it's more that the species no-capitalization is a special case of the more general rule, not that the general rule is a redundant or vague version of the former. If they're merged, it should keep the general examples, and maybe specifically spell out and illustrate that it also means species and subspecies, landraces and domestic "types", as well as larger and more general groupings.
  2. I had noticed that point and was going to add it, along with some other points from both NCFLORA and NCFAUNA, soon to MOS:ORGANISMS, which I feel is nearing "go live" completion. Does that issue come up often enough to make it a MOS mainpage point? I wouldn't really object to it, and it could be had by adding an "(even if it coincides with a capitalized Genus name)" parenthetical to the "general names" bit. The pattern is just common enough in animals to have been problematic if it were liable to be problematic, as it were. I.e., I don't see a history of squabbling about it at Lynx or its talk page, and remember looking into this earlier with some other mammal, about two weeks ago, and not seeing evidence of confusion or editwarring. The WP:BIRDS people were actually studiously avoiding that problem; I remember seeing a talk page discussion at the project that agreed that such usage shouldn't be capitalized ever. PS: With Lynx, I had to go back to 2006, in the thick of the "Mad Capitalization Epidemic" to find capitalization there[8], and it wasn't even consistent, just in the lead.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:11, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Well, certainly "rove beetle" and "oak" are poor examples here, so I would support changing to some of the others you suggested above.
  2. I think the main problem we found with plants was it being unclear as to whether inexperienced editors meant the scientific name or the English name. So you would see a sentence with e.g. "Canna" in the middle and not know whether this should be corrected to "Canna" or to "canna". The plural is clear; "cannas" is always lower-case non-italicized. The singular is potentially ambiguous. Whether it's worth putting this point in the main MOS I just don't know since I don't much edit animal articles and never breed articles, which is why I asked you. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:55, 3 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Will take a look at that later, if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
  2. Beats me. Doesn't seem too frequent an issue, but lot of MOS stuff isn't. Definitely should be in MOS:ORGANISMS, regardless.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Worked on both of those a bit at MOS. We'll see if it sticks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note to self on WP:WikiProject English language

[edit]
Unresolved
 – I think I did MOST of this already ...
Extended content

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

Excellent mini-tutorial

[edit]
Unresolved
Extended content

Somehow, I forget quite how, I came across this - that is an excellent summary of the distinctions. I often get confused over those, and your examples were very clear. Is something like that in the general MoS/citation documentation? Oh, and while I am here, what is the best way to format a citation to a page of a document where the pages are not numbered? All the guidance I have found says not to invent your own numbering by counting the pages (which makes sense), but I am wondering if I can use the 'numbering' used by the digitised form of the book. I'll point you to an example of what I mean: the 'book' in question is catalogued here (note that is volume 2) and the digitised version is accessed through a viewer, with an example of a 'page' being here, which the viewer calls page 116, but there are no numbers on the actual book pages (to confuse things further, if you switch between single-page and double-page view, funny things happen to the URLs, and if you create and click on a single-page URL the viewer seems to relocate you one page back for some reason). Carcharoth (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Carcharoth: Thanks. I need to copy that into an essay page. As far as I know, the concepts are not clearly covered in any of those places, nor clearly enough even at Help:CS1 (which is dense and overlong as it is). The e-book matters bear some researching. I'm very curious whether particular formats (Nook, etc.) paginate consistently between viewers. For Web-accessible ones, I would think that the page numbering that appears in the Web app is good enough if it's consistent (e.g., between a PC and a smart phone) when the reader clicks the URL in the citation. I suppose one could also use |at= to provide details if the "page" has to be explained in some way. I try to rely on better-than-page-number locations when possible, e.g. specific entries in dictionaries and other works with multiple entries per page (numbered sections in manuals, etc.), but for some e-books this isn't possible – some are just continuous texts. One could probably use something like |at=in the paragraph beginning "The supersegemental chalcolithic metastasis is ..." about 40% into the document, in a pinch. I guess we do need to figure this stuff out since such sources are increasingly common.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:29, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes (about figuring out how to reference e-books), though I suspect existing (non-WP) citation styles have addressed this already (no need to re-invent the wheel). This is a slightly different case, though. It is a digitisation of an existing (physical) book that has no page numbers. If I had the book in front of me (actually, it was only published as a single copy, so it is not a 'publication' in that traditional sense of many copies being produced), the problem with page numbers would still exist. I wonder if the 'digital viewer' should be thought of as a 'via' thingy? In the same way that (technically) Google Books and archive.org digital copies of old books are just re-transmitting, and re-distributing the material (is wikisource also a 'via' sort of thing?). Carcharoth (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Carcharoth: Ah, I see. I guess I would treat it as a |via=, and same with WikiSource, which in this respect is essentially like Google Books or Project Gutenberg. I think your conundrum has come up various times with arXiv papers, that have not been paginated visibly except in later publication (behind a journal paywall and not examined). Back to the broader matter: Some want to treat WikiSource and even Gutenberg as republishers, but I think that's giving them undue editorial credit and splitting too fine a hair. Was thinking on the general unpaginated and mis-paginated e-sources matter while on the train, and came to the conclusion that for a short, unpaginated work with no subsections, one might give something like |at=in paragraph 23, and for a much longer one use the |at=in the paragraph beginning "..." trick. A straight up |pages=82–83 would work for an e-book with hard-coded meta-data pagination that is consistent between apps/platforms and no visual pagination. On the other hand, use the visual pagination in an e-book that has it, even if it doesn't match the e-book format's digital pagination, since the pagination in the visual content would match that of a paper copy; one might include a note that the pagination is that visible in the content if it conflicts with what the e-book reader says (this comes up a lot with PDFs, for one thing - I have many that include cover scans, and the PDF viewers treat that as p. 1, then other front matter as p. 2, etc., with the content's p. 1 being something like PDF p. 7).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:MEDMOS

[edit]
Unresolved
 – Go fix the WP:FOO shortcuts to MOS:FOO ones, to match practice at other MoS pages. This only applies to the MoS section there; like WP:SAL, part of that page is also a content guideline that should not have MOS: shortcuts.
Extended content

You had previously asked that protection be lowered on WP:MEDMOS which was not done at that time. I have just unprotected the page and so if you have routine update edits to make you should now be able to do so. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 06:42, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I don't remember what it was, but maybe it'll come back to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:17, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Now I remember.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:53, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh...potential WikiGnoming activity...

[edit]
Unresolved
 – Do some of this when I'm bored?
Extended content

@SMcCandlish:

I stumbled upon Category:Editnotices whose targets are redirects and there are ~100 pages whose pages have been moved, but the editnotices are still targeted to the redirect page. Seems like a great, and sort of fun, WikiGnoming activity for a template editor such as yourself. I'd do it, but I'm not a template editor. Not sure if that's really your thing, though. ;-)

Cheers,
--Doug Mehus T·C 22:30, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Argh. I would've hoped some bot fixed that kind of stuff. I'll consider it, but it's a lot of work for low benefit (the page names may be wrong, but the redirs still get there), and it's been my experience that a lot of editnotices (especially in mainspace) are PoV-pushing crap that needs to be deleted anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:20, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to pass for the nonce, Dmehus. Working on some other project (more fun than WP is sometimes). I'll let it sit here with {{Unresolved}} on it, in case I get inspired to work on it some, but it might be a long time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:46, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note to self

[edit]
Unresolved
 – Cquote stuff ...

Now this

[edit]
Unresolved
 – Breed disambiguation again ...
Extended content

Not sure the ping went through, so noting here. Just spotted where a now-blocked user moved a bunch of animal breed articles back to parenthetical disambiguation from natural disambiguation. As they did it in October and I'm only catching it now, I only moved back two just in case there was some kind of consensus change. The equine ones are definitely against project consensus, the rest are not my wheelhouse but I'm glad to comment. Talk:Campine_chicken#Here_we_go_again. Montanabw(talk) 20:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Montanabw: Argh. Well, this is easy to fix with a request to mass-revert undiscussed moves, at the subsection for that at WP:RMTR. Some admin will just fix it all in one swoop. While I have the PageMover bit, and could do it myself as a technical possibility, I would run afoul of WP:INVOLVED in doing so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:30, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Montanabw: Did this get fixed yet? If not, I can look into it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PGP

[edit]
Unresolved
 – Gotta put my geek hat on and fix this.

FYI, it looks like your key has expired. 1234qwer1234qwer4 21:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Aiee! Thanks, I'll have to generate a new one when I have time to mess around with it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

German article on houndstooth, Border tartan, and related patterns

[edit]
Unresolved
 – Considering ...

de:Rapport (Textil) is an interesting approach, and we don't seem to have a corresponding sort of article. Something I might approach at some point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:11, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Post-holidays note to self

[edit]
Unresolved
 – I need to come up with a better to-do list kind of thing on here, and actually use it instead of letting it turn moribund.
Extended content

Something to deal with quickly:

Need to stop putting this off; will probably only take 10 minutes.

Ongoing:

Several things appear to have stalled out over the holidays:

Some of these may need to be restarted as RfCs.

See also:

Forgot about this one for a long time (need to merge the NC material out of MOS:COMICS into WP:NCCOMICS):

An article still using deprecated WP:PARENTHETICAL referencing of the {{harv}} style to use as a cleanup testbed:

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC); updated: 02:52, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]





Current threads

[edit]

Notice of a discussion I think you'd be interested in knowing about

[edit]

Hey Mac, I thought you might want to be aware of this discussion (which includes not just the linked to thread, but a much larger one further above on VP/WMF). In summary, it appears that the WMF is prepared to imminently disclose personally identifying information about volunteers in a controversial Indian court case, where a news agency is attempting to suppress Wikipedia's tertiary coverage of the content of secondary sources (which it considers unflattering) by going after a number of individual editors as defendants. In order to comply with court orders in the case, it seems the WMF is prepared to share this information in what a number of us consider a pretty seismically bad idea and a betrayal of community priorities and values (the WMF has also already used an office action to remove an article reporting on the case, at the direction of the court for what said court regards as legitimate sub judice reasons).

While the deletion of the article has been framed by the WMF as temporary step to preserve appeal on the overall case, and there are mixed feelings in the community response as to that so far, there is a much more uniform opposition to throwing the individual editors (at least one of whom is located in India and has profound apprehension about what this could mean for his life with regard to litigation and beyond) under the bus. And yet the WMF appears to be prepared to share the information in question, as soon as Nov. 8. Can I impose upon you to take a look at the matter and share your perspective? SnowRise let's rap 00:46, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeesh. That sounds really dreadful. This seems really problematic on multiple levels. I hope the disappeared article is available through some archival service (what with Wayback being under concerted attack for so long now). But the privacy matter seems more important here. I've been quietly arguing for some time that WMF has to stop blockading VPNs, for reasons like this. If you don't have PII to divulge, then governments don't try to twist your arm in the first place. I have the US election shitshow in my face at the moment, but maybe can look into this tomorrow. I don't have a lot of reach any longer, but my FB and LinkedIn pages probably hit the eyes of some who do on such matters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:13, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've been coming to similar conclusions about the VPN issue of late, although I confess that the potential for abuse by vandals is a difficult concern to ignore at the same time. In any event, I agree that the PII issues is the much more serious and pressing of the issues, even if neither is exactly a trivial matter. And yes, I appreciate the timing could not be worse, but do consider looking into the matter further if time allows--few people here are more articulate than you, once you've made your mind up on how you feel about an issue. SnowRise let's rap 04:41, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Life got away from me, and I'll try to look into this shortly, though maybe some deadline has been passed already. PS: On VPNs, I don't mean we should permit them across-the-board, but just for logged-in users with accounts past some threshold (of the sort we impose for various other things; maybe autoconfirmed, though something more stringent could also be used). It just makes zero sense that I can be logged in as me, a user with 19 years experience here, and cannot edit beyond my userspace if using a VPN (which is more and more an automatic thing one has to affirmatively turn off in various browsers these days).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your comments at the AT discussion

[edit]

I can assure you I have no emotional attachment to the AT policy and I'd ask that you strike your comments suggesting that I'm engaging in bent-out-of-shape ranting, etc. Clearly I misunderstood what you were saying regarding the "over-ride" issue; you could have just clarified your point instead of calling me hysterical. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:07, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Voorts: Done, in the interests of peace. Though I just did a direct revision instead of a strike-through.

It would be nice if, for your part, you actually addressed the substance of the argument I made instead of repeatedly just criticizing perceived tone and imaginary implications (of my wording or Cinderella's), since the actually operable implications in the context are quite limited, as has been explained in some detail.

That said, the discussion/proposal is a dead stick. Cinderella's wording choices set off so many people that the snowball is probably irreversible. This should be re-addressed some other time (perhaps after a customary 6-18 months) with more careful wording and a more clearly articulated argument, because the problem identified is a real one and it is not going to magically go away. My sectional merge proposal would obviate it, but no one's going to notice and support it because they're running around alarmed by "supersede" and "override". It might not be "hysterical" but it's not responsive to the issue in any way.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:36, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your revision is hardly better. You've still left in the stuff about argument to emotion and called me blustery. And, now you're assuming that I'm angry at you as well. I can once again assure you that I'm not angry. Stop speculating on my emotional state or my motivations. It's not productive. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:48, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I revised for tone because the tone was not constructive. As for the rest: no one likes being criticized, but something that basically boils down to "stop criticizing" isn't a request I'm going to obey. I stand by my criticisms. Your and other "no" !votes in that proceeding are not in any way responsive to the substance of the proposal but only emotively over-reacting to wording used by the proponent and to imaginary not plausible repercussions. As my old friend John Perry Barlow put it in regard to such "terriblizing" (to paraphrase here; I don't have the article he wrote about this right in front of me): Objecting to something on the basis of the possible outcomes instead of the probable one is fallacious. In the imagination, there are no limits to the possible, but the outcome is extremely unlikely to be in the extreme range of it. As for "angry", your tone toward me there and here is clearly angry (displeased, antagonistic, combative, complaining, unhappy, dwelling on your hurt feelings instead of on the substance, however one wants to put it). It requires no mind-reading to observe this. You don't get to duck and dodge the implications of what you write by disclaiming that they convey what they clearly convey, any more than I do. I've gone the extra mile to edit my tone in response to you, but you have not met me half way.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:08, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your user scripts

[edit]

might benefit more users if they were also listed at Wikipedia:User scripts/List. That's the go-to place where I get all my scripts from... Huggums537voted! (sign🖋️|📞talk) 05:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, though I think they still need a bit more tweaking (even aside from one lacking the vertical formatting feature entirely). It's stuff I worked on obsessively for about a month straight, but have been doing other stuff since then. Takes a while to get back into such things.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:05, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment

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Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Io Saturnalia!

[edit]
Io, Saturnalia!
Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and distraction-free. Ealdgyth (talk) 15:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New pages patrol January 2025 Backlog drive

[edit]
January 2025 Backlog Drive | New pages patrol
  • On 1 January 2025, a one-month backlog drive for new pages patrol will begin in hopes of addressing the growing backlog.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:53, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

December thanks

[edit]
story · music · places

Thank you today for improving article quality in December! - Today is a woman poet's centenary. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:47, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas!

[edit]
A very happy Christmas and New Year to you!


Have a great Christmas, and may 2025 bring you joy, happiness – and no trolls or vandals!

Cheers

SchroCat (talk) 08:30, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

[edit]
Disregard
 – Non-neutral pseudo-RfC; advice given to poster of it on how to do it properly
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Redirect listed at Redirects for discussion

[edit]
 Endorsed

A redirect or redirects you have created has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Anyone, including you, is welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 December 27 § "Musican" Redirects until a consensus is reached. User:Someone-123-321 (I contribute, Talk page so SineBot will shut up) 12:36, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're my MOS maven...

[edit]

I cannot believe that we seriously intend for this style of number separation to be used - here. Am I utterly off base? Ealdgyth (talk) 00:03, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ealdgyth: [9].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:57, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gram capitalisation (eponym exceptionalism)

[edit]

You've probably had your fill of this, so forgive me if so.

My background
I'm a long-time IP editor of WP with an interest in style, grammar & punctuation, who has regularly been unfairly thwacked with actions from admins or logged in editors — usually as collateral damage in an IP-range block, but occasionally through some other tiresome thing, such as edit reversion.... Some of those admins have seemed pretty trigger-happy to implement blocks, without feeling any compunction when I've occasionally pointed out that some of those specific instances were contrary to the official WP guidelines (and, furthermore, no penalty to such admins...). Anyway, enough of my ranting... Just that the contrast in treatment is 'interesting'.

I was wondering why the styling at Gram-positive bacteria and Gram-negative bacteria never got resolved. If indeed (as I think you made a fair case) one or a handful of editors were standing against the MOS, then why was there no admin action against those editors for blocking/reverting changes consistent with the MOS to retain a version at odds with the MOS?

I notice that the explicit guidance on eponyms in the MOS has stood for the past several years, but those two articles remain as inconsistent as ever.

I don't think this necessarily has to be your burden to carry, but why are some admins not resolving this?

—DIV (202.7.208.27 (talk) 13:35, 29 December 2024 (UTC))[reply]

As a sometimes McCandlish lurker, per your concerns about IP editing, may I point out that User:DIV is open if you want it. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:02, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would be a pretty cool username, too. Not many three-letter ones available that are pronounceable. As an HTML-element reference, it would imply that you're full of content. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:15, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It never got resolved because most of us have lives and run out of time and patience to deal with it when there is a camp of editors who will fight ceaselessly to keep some WP:SSF-based weird stylistic divergence from our style manual, because the variant suits their off-site writing habits that pertain to some other domain. One of these cases is the preference on the part of the American Medical Association's style guide to lowercase a proper-name-bearing term any time it is used as (or as part of) a modifier instead of as a noun phrase. This is weird, intentionally inconsistent, and downright confusing. It doesn't match the writing style of any other group of English-language users in the entire world. But if editors who are fans of this practice are a thick majority of the editors who will respond to any attempt to normalize the style to reader expectations at a particular subject, then progress will tend to stonewall. Often the only way to break through such a deadlock is an RfC at some venue like WT:MOS or even WP:VPPOL. Personally, I have little patience for this stuff any longer, because there are more important things to do. They always turn into WP:DRAMA festivals.

That said, fixing "gram-negative" to "Gram-negative" throughout all of our material would be good to do, because almost everyone who encounters this term and is not already a medicine or biology professional is going believe that it has something to do with the gram[e] unit, when it is really an eponym based on the surname Gram. Other terms lowercased for the same dubious reason, e.g. "parkinsonian", are less problematic than this case because they lack such obvious and confusing ambiguity. To put it another way, if the AMA's next style book edition demands to start spelling "CAT scan" and "PET scan" as "cat scan" and "pet scan", WP would ignore them as ridiculous and "reader-hateful". We should already have come to that same conclusion with regard to "gram-positive/negative" (and having come to that conclusion, then step-wise also concluded to avoid "parkinsonian" and the like as a consistency matter).

On your admins side question: it's virtually unheard of for admins to get involved in MoS-related disputes in a block-wielding manner, because they are guidelines not policies, and they have a lot of "real work" to do, e.g. against vandalism and spam and so on.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:15, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Style

[edit]

@SMcCandlish, hello … this is Augnablik, a Wikipedia editor for the past 2.5 years. I'm writing because you were recommended as someone I might turn to for answers to questions about the more convoluted elements of MOS. Example: right now I'm in somewhat of a fog trying to decide the best way to disambiguate the subject of an article.

I wish Wikipedia still offered a similar one-on-one feature called Editor Assistance that used to be available, as I recently discovered, only to find it was discontinued. In its absence, would you be willing to pick up on this and occasional other such questions for me?

Augnablik (talk) 02:12, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Augnablik: Sure, happy to help. I probably have one of the better mental-map understandings of most of MoS and how it interrelates in various sections, and interacts with other guidelines and policies. If I don't get back to you speedily, it's not because I'm ignoring you, just off doing something else for a while. Anyway, keep in mind that I'm just one editor; while I've been one of MoS's shepherds for 15+ years, there can be interpretational disagreements about it. If something I say seems wrongheaded, it might actually be wrongheaded, with the question better asked at WT:MOS or on the talk-page of one of the more specific MoS sub-guidelines (e.g. WT:MOSCAPS for case questions, WT:MOSNUM for number and date ones, WT:DAB for disambiguation ones, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:22, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for such a quick reply, @SMcCandlish. I look forward to discussions with not just a highly recommended MOS expert but also someone whose User page indicates a shared love and ownership of cats (but don't they own us?) as well as ability in versions of the English language for which I didn't even know User boxes were available. And since you're "one of MOS's shepherds"— forgive me for this — I won't need to be sheepish about asking you some of the intricate questions I may come up with.
Here is my most immediate need. I'm working on the existing article for Ramendra Kumar, a noted Indian children's author — that is, what's left of it after having been pretty much blown to bits. I recently discovered another Indian by the same name, who also turned out to have a Wiki article: Ramendra Kumar (politician). Today I found two more Indian politicians by the name of Ramendra Kumar but an additional surname, all with at least something in a Wiki article (Ramendra Kumar Yadav and Ramendra Kumar Podder).
— I know that disambiguation should be created for not just the Ramendra Kumar whose article I'm working on but also the other three.
— I think it would also might be helpful to point out that the first name "Ramendra" should not be confused with Rajendra or Ravendra, as there are other notable Indians who also have those first names along with Kumar as a surname.
When I thought there was only one other person by the same name, I was going to attempt a disambiguation and ask the yet-unidentified MOS expert if what I'd come up with seemed okay. But now that I know there are so many others with the same or similar names, I think I'd better just throw up my hands and turn to the expert. Augnablik (talk) 10:47, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Augnablik IIRC, Editor Assistance was closed since there was no difference in how it worked in practice compared to Help desk/Teahouse. But, it was where I had one of my funniest WP-discussions ever, Wikipedia:Editor_assistance/Requests/Archive_129#Saint_Jean-Baptiste_(Léonard_de_Vinci)_--wikipédia_française. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:26, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Editor Assistance might not have worked differently in practice compared to the Help Desk or the Teahouse, but the value I see in an EA-focused place is that it would have been extremely helpful to focus just on MOS-related issues rather than a whole smorgasbord. And the archives for those issues could, over time, have become of special interest to editors wanting to pore over past MOS advice.
As for your interchange with Monsieur Léonard, ooh-la-la! Augnablik (talk) 10:05, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't recall EA being MoS-focused. To the extent an individual "advisor" like me isn't helpful to you or responsive quickly enough, MoS's own talk pages are generally helpful (except the more obscure drill-down ones, which may have few watcherlisters). So anyway, what's this burning disambiguation-related style question?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:34, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just posted, SMcC.
I thought I'd reply to GGS first, a much easier message ... and I also miscalculated your California time, thinking you'd be asleep and wouldn't see what I'd write for quite a few more hours. Augnablik (talk) 10:52, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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