User talk:DavidBrooks/Archive 4

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Precious

welcoming choral compositions

Thank you for quality articles such as The Dream of Gerontius and Belshazzar's Feast, for creating categories such as Category:Choral compositions, for patrolling new pages and welcoming new users, for takeover and translation from other encyclopedias, for service from 2004, - percussionist David, you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:19, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Two years ago, you were recipient no. 1724 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:35, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

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Astrakhan: How's this wording?

That is fine too. However, The version before mine was not very clear. Murchison-Eye (talk) 19:56, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

No argument there. David Brooks (talk) 22:05, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Pomp and Circumstance

Your name is in the Talk page in 2005. I was hoping for an explanation of the phrase “Pomp and Circumstance“. I thought it referred to bright red British coats, and lots of medals, and marching. But Othello? What’s it mean in Shakespeare, and again for Elgar?120.16.111.61 (talk) 08:37, 2 May 2018 (UTC)MBGoold

@120.16.111.61: I don't know much more than you do, but I think the extended description in the title suggests how Elgar conceived the phrase: the contrast between the public show (no red coats in Shakespeare's day though) and the unromantic reality of war. I'm sure you could find plenty of Shakespeare scholars taking Othello's words apart, and may interpret "circumstance" to also mean something positive like pageantry: see here and here. Neither of these are particularly scholarly. So, as elsewhere in Shakespeare, you read your own interpretation into it.

I'm sure Michael Kennedy's Portrait of Elgar has something to say on the topic, but I just moved house and can't lay my hands on my copy :( David Brooks (talk) 20:48, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject status

Greetings! I see that you are one of only two members of WikiProject Encyclopaedia Britannica. I was wondering if you would agree with my assessment that the project is now defunct. (I have contacted the other to ask him the same question.) —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:22, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

@Compassionate727:On the contrary, I am still plugging away at the EB1911 lists, updating citation tags, and inserting additional source material when needed. You might want to check my alternate account: DavidBrooks-AWB. As far as I am concerned, the work in the project still needs to be done (because most of the existing citations don't meet current WP standards) and if I don't live to be 250 I hope someone will follow the detailed instructions that PBS and I have created. So, it's not defunct, just being addressed slowly.

What's your motivation for asking? David Brooks (talk) 02:59, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Just been flagging inactive WikiProjects as such for the past couple of hours. One of those WikiGnomish tasks I occasionally jump on to for a few days that probably doesn't actually help all that much, but does kind of need to be done. If you're using the project, that's fine (although if you're the only one, it would probably still be prudent to flag it as inactive, just not defunct). —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 03:02, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem

Despite the archaic style, that's not lifted directly from EB 1911 (I recognize my own pomposity), but I'm not entirely sure what else I was drawing on. I flipped through Setton a bit, without immediately being able to source that. My copy of Riley-Smith is boxed up right now and will take searching for. @Adam Bishop: might be able to help (the issue at hand being the precise relationship between the states of Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem). Choess (talk) 13:19, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

@Choess: @Adam Bishop: Thanks. I added EB1911 and CE1913 to Further Reading because they deal thoroughly with the politics of the period, albeit with their archaic worldview. David Brooks (talk) 13:28, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

I think I wrote some (most?) of that originally (so it is my own pomposity as well). I wasn't using the EB, I was using Les familles d'outre-mer (E.G. Rey's 1869 edition of Du Cange's work). The other sources I used are listed in the articles about the individual lordships:

• John L. La Monte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1100-1291. The Medieval Academy of America, 1932.
• Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174-1277. The Macmillan Press, 1973.
• Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Vol. II: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187. Cambridge University Press, 1952.
• Steven Tibble, Monarchy and Lordships in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099-1291. Clarendon Press, 1989.
• Alan Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History, 1099-1125. Unit for Prosopographical Research, Linacre College, Oxford, 2000.

I'm not sure about Edessa but there has been some work done on Tripoli and Antioch over the past few years that may be helpful. I will see if I can track down those titles as well. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:23, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Simonetta Puccini

Hello, DavidBrooks. I wanted to let you know that I’m proposing an article that you started, Simonetta Puccini, for deletion because I don't think it meets our criteria for inclusion. If you don't want the article deleted:

1. edit the page
2. remove the text that looks like this: {{proposed deletion/dated...}}
3. save the page

Also, be sure to explain why you think the article should be kept in your edit summary or on the article's talk page. If you don't do so, it may be deleted later anyway.

You can leave a note on my talk page if you have questions.

Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:02, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

@Onel5969: Michael Bednarek has already updated the article. In addition, I'd note that her court case attracted notice internationally; her legacy through the foundations and festival will outlive her (certainly her impact is a lot less ephemeral than many performers and athletes who grace these pages (eta: yes, I'm aware this is WP:OSE)); her presence at performances (according to a private communication: "La Simonetta é ci!", although I can't cite that publicly) was regarded as an imprimatur, as also hinted at in Hirofumi Yoshida; co-authorship with William Weaver is another. David Brooks (talk) 12:11, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

EB1911

Hi. Thanks for sorting out my errors on Battle of Sluys. Unfortunately your edit has left a Harv error message on the cites in question which is beyond my meagre skill to resolve. Any help or advice would be appreciated. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild: My bad (very bad: trusting my editing skills without running the preview to look for dumb errors). It was a simple missing } character. Thanks for being so polite! David Brooks (talk) 21:06, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

No worries. I've done worse. Actually that wasn't the issue - I had spotted that, cured it, failed to sort the main issue, and decided to leave everything as was. When I click on "Hannay", in blue, in the "Citations" section it doesn't send me to the reference. I also get a big Harv error: link from CITEREFHannay1911 doesn't point to any citation. because I run an app, or some such, which flags these things up.

It may be that this is nothing to worry about and EB1911 cites don't link to their reference, but it seems odd to me.

I always try to be polite, and it was obvious that you were being gratuitously helpful, so why would I trout you? Gog the Mild (talk) 21:17, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Cracked it. I needed to add ref=harv. D'oh! Yes, you may trout me. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:34, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild: :-). Anyway, you're right, ref=harv does seem to be needed (as you added here). @PBS: I thought this was supposed to work (an inline sfn using the name of the author, not Chisholm) without a ref=harv parameter. Have I been wrong in omitting it all this time? David Brooks (talk) 21:41, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I have a horrible suspicion that the answer may be "yes". It certainly made the difference in my case. Experiment a bit. It may be trouts all round. More seriously, thanks for the demonstration of how to cite EB1911 correctly. Another lesson learned. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:51, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

@Gog the Mild: It occurred to me to check the template code. {{EB1911}} has a default "harv" for the value of ref in its call to the lower-levels, so the link will work. But {{Cite EB1911}} has no default. PBS knows most about these templates. @PBS: is there a rationale for the difference? David Brooks (talk) 02:12, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

@User:Gog the Mild and David. It is intentional. Unlike {{citation}} by default {{cite encyclopedia}}, {{cite book}} etc do not set ref=harv, so {{Cite EB1911}} does not (expected default behaviour). This is also because {{Cite EB1911}} may be used in ==Further reading== or (commonly) in ==External links== (usually with short=x set). However {{EB1911}} is by definition being used in the references section (either as a bullet point or as an inline citation), so it makes sense to default set ref=harv. -- PBS (talk) 16:50, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

@PBS: That actually makes sense to me. Thanks for the explanation. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:58, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

@PBS and Gog the Mild: replied on Template talk:Cite EB1911. David Brooks (talk) 18:26, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Charles-Gaspard

The standard (uniquely) French way to sort people with surnames starting with prepositions and/or particles is to ignore the first and keep the latter (see WP:MCSTJR for refs and details). Capitalization follows accordingly. Charles-Gaspard de la Rive is such an odd duck that it may warrant a footnote, as they've done in French wikipedia, so that someone else like me doesn't run into it again. Indeed, most references (e.g. the Dictionary of Scientific Biography quoted properly under "Further reading") and all but one authority appear to have both wrong. The National Library of France record is the exception, but even the equally authoritative and equally French Système universitaire de documentation has La Rive, Charles-Gaspard de,‏ ‎‡d 1770-1834‏ Personally, I would give up if I were a "de la Rive" descendant;-) Afasmit (talk) 16:34, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

@Afasmit: Ah, thanks for someone with actual knowledge; feel free to de-revert Charles-Gaspard and fix his family. I put out a related plea (re capitalization) at Talk:Auguste Arthur de la Rive nearly 3 years ago. But that and the question now at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 20#Surnames beginning with non-capitalized letters went unanswered (which is why I kept the articles on my watchlist). Hence, referring to WP:MCSTJR, the unclear rule on sorting reverts to the unclear rule on capitalization. Any thoughts on those? David Brooks (talk) 16:46, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

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DNB

I think you question would be better answered by posting it to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography, because over the last couple of years I have not done much on that project and I know that there are some very good people still active on it.

I could not see a suitable template in Category:Dictionary of National Biography templates, however the DNB is different to Britannica because of the policy of the ODNB of including all of the DNB biographies in the ODNB and updating facts when they are wrong. Also very often the details provided by the DNB include information for all known primary sources so unless the author of the ODNB article has knowledge of more sources discovered in the last 100 years there is often nothing but opinions to add, although the style can change.

The templates {{ODNB}} and {{DNBfirst}} may give some pointers. You should also be aware of

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/DNB Epitome

Apart from the ODNB another modern source that is often helpful and can fill in details and verify facts are still correct is https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/ When I cite the history of parliament I include the author (or the authors initials), the hardcopy editor and hard copy publisher and date of that publication (info found on the webpage bio article), but link to the online article.

See also

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Archive 2#A salutary lesson this led to Apocryphal biographies in the Dictionary of National Biography

-- PBS (talk) 22:47, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Manchester University (Indiana) page

Hello! I noticed that you had corrected some recent edits on the above page, and wanted to see if mine passed muster. The previous information was incorrect, even from the source, and so I updated it based on more recent data. I do not know much about programming, but I did my best to do things correctly. Thank you. --Panem and Circenses (talk) 02:19, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page. David Brooks (talk) 03:51, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Dick Dale, XLinkBot

Greetings. You're a venerable editor who's contributed to Dick Dale, hence this missive. The XLinkBot recently made what looks to me link a haywire edit to Dick Dale: [1]. If you agree, could you please contact some admin about squelching the bot? I do limited editing these days, and havent' had contact with Admins in a long time. Thanks and regards. Tapered (talk) 01:05, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

@Tapered: I edited the page back in late March because I came across a suspicious edit in New Pages Patrol. No other interest in the topic. The bot's intention is to remove links to "undesired" sites and it can only do this by reverting the whole edit that included that link. You should probably consider why the URL triggered the attention of the bot (have you read its user page?). Asking for the bot to be squelched is overkill, as it generally does good work, but you seem to have reverted its revert so its rule is now to give you the benefit of the doubt. David Brooks (talk) 03:03, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I did nothing to the article, that was someone else. The bot's talk page discussed problems with it. I may just ask some random Admin to keep on eye of the Dale article. Thanks for the reply & regards. Tapered (talk) 06:05, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 references

Dear David Thank you very much for the carefully worded and well thought-through comment that you left on my talk page. Thank you for all the effort you made and your decision to finally tolerate my approach. I understand your hesitation. As I understand I do not need to change my approach (please tell me if this is not so).

As you seem to have already understood, I feel that EB1911 and DNB should be cited just like any other source. I believe sources should preferably be cited with the sfn and Citation templates with a line number and a quote whenever that helps the reader to find the relevant information in the source (which is most of the cases). It has happened to me that I tried to read up in the cited references and could not find the expected information on the page (perhaps because the cited text exists in several differently page-numbered editions and I read the wrong one, or because there was an error regarding the page number in Wikipedia, or because I had a wrong idea of what part of the Wikipedia text the citation was supposed to support. Sometimes also I just get discouraged by the effort needed to find 'something' on a large multi-column small-print page without knowing precisely what I was looking for. Quite often finally because I never could get my hands (or eyes) on the source as it is a recent book that cannot be previewed in Google Books or is a journal article. I often prefer older sources that can be read immediately for free online for this reason. I think there is a drive in recent Wikipedia editing towards more careful and precise and transparent sourcing and I wanted to be part of that drive. I am aware that perhaps not everybody agrees and I am a bit afraid that somebody would find fault with my approach and find some instruction somewhere in the MoS in that regard (I am still somewhat of a newby).

I also feel that Wikisource is not really needed any more and that storing the sources should not be Wikipedia's concern. Internet Archive, Hathi, Gutenberg and others do this now well enough. I certainly had problems with the required n-dash in date ranges in the past but I have since learned better. I find that the use of the nbsp item or the snd template make the text more difficult to read when in the editor (I always use Source Editor, perhaps I should use Visual Editor). Kind regards Johannes — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johannes Schade (talk • contribs) 20:50, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

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EB1911 citation in Claude de Mesmes

Dear Dave. I see you edited yesterday, 14 November 2019, the EB1911 reference in the article Claude de Mesmes by adding the "|ref=harv" parameter to the "Cite EB1911 template" used. I suppose the intention was to display in Citation Style 2 (comma-separators) as all the other references in the article use the "Citation" template, which displays the references in CS2. However, this does not seem to work. Even after the addition of "|ref=harv", the EB1922 reference appears in CS1, with its point-separators. I have the impression that the "Cite EB1911" template does not support the "harv" for the "ref" parameter. The documentation for the "Cite EB1911" template does not mention this value. Johannes Schade (talk) 13:02, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

@Johannes Schade: {{Cite EB1911}} does support ref=. The only purpose of ref=harv is to emit the default anchor, in this case CITEREFBain1911, not to change the visual style. Without it, the bluelink at footnote 19 doesn't jump to the full citation. Mode cs1 does not supply any anchor by default, while mode cs2 (used by {{EB1911}}) does. The doc does mention "ref=", but you have to "know" that harv is a shortcut for the standard concatenation of elements. Same comments apply to {{Cite EB1922}}, although the documentation isn't explicit.

I import the script User:Ucucha/HarvErrors.js to help highlight these things. David Brooks (talk) 18:14, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Dear David. Sorry for the late reply, I was busy in the real world. I understand now that the Sfn template when used with one of the Cite Book series templates needs the ref=harv parameter set on the Cite Book templates. I had not known. There are probably other articles on my watchlist that have the same problem. I remember that I sometimes used Sfn on articles that had lists of references using Cite Book. Thanks you very much for explaining this to me. Johannes Schade (talk) 12:18, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Dear David. I finally understood how this script works. You install it by hitting the Install button on top of the script page. So I did. Then, whenever I load a page, it will silently check it for "harv errors". I looked at a couple of pages from my watchlist and found plenty of them. I was first confused because I expected to see a new button that would run the script. But it makes sense to do it onload as it only shows error messages and does not edit the page. Thanks a lot for pointing me to "HarvErrors.js". Johannes Schade (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

@Johannes Schade: Thanks for confirming. As I said, without the script, the only sign of an missing-reference error is that clicking on the bluelink in the footnotes does not jump to the "general reference", which is pretty subtle, while the error message is the opposite of subtle. But it does, to my mind, generate several false positives. It's often not an error when there is a general reference in a "Further reading" or "External references" section, but it attracts no footnotes. Also, note the messages don't appear in the AWB preview.

I believe script installation just adds a line to your common.js file. You can delete or comment out that line to "uninstall". David Brooks (talk) 18:02, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I just looked at my common.js: it is as you said. I also saw that it displays errors for uncited sources under Further reading: It should not. There should not be error messages under the heading "External references" (I have not yet seen any) because references under that heading should be to web sites and therefore not have source descriptions link "Cite Book", as I understand it. Thanks again. Johannes Schade (talk) 19:52, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

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Happy New Year DavidBrooks!

Happy New Year!

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Genetics vandal

Hi DavidBrooks, I just saw that you reverted some IPs from Florence, changing numbers in genetics articles. That's a known vandal who is back after a three-month block, see this ANI report: [2]. I left a message a few minutes ago with the admin who blocked them the last time: User talk:Berean Hunter#Florence genetics vandal is back, about three IPs. If you see any others, you could leave a note there. Thanks for doing the reverts and getting page protection. --IamNotU (talk) 03:52, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@IamNotU: Thanks for the validation. The vandalism was clever, making sure the percentages still add up. I started to AGF and actually dove into the cited research papers: it's hard to find all the numbers in the table but one changed number did stand out, so I was satisfied. David Brooks (talk) 15:06, 15 March 2020 (UTC) ETA: it makes me feel like adding all 133 pages under Category:Human Y-DNA haplogroups to my watchlist... David Brooks (talk) 15:25, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@IamNotU: I can't believe I talked myself into doing this (in self-imposed lockdown, which helps). Since Jan 1, 53 anons have made 92 edits to 29 of those 133 pages, of which 9 are the current versions. I don't know how to code the geolocation. No reason to suspect any of them ipso facto, but investigation beats viewing cable news right now. David Brooks (talk) 20:57, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I also checked the sources when I reported it in November. One thing that gives it away is that they often change only the integer parts of the numbers but leave the decimal parts. The one IP 79.8.104.141 has been blocked again for six months, but the others not. Probably good to keep an eye on edits from 62.19.*. They hop around a lot in IPs 79.* and 87.*, so it's a bit hard to check all of those. I have a few of their favorite articles on my watchlist. They tend to target the same few repeatedly, though they have at times done others. What do you mean by "code the geolocation"? If you mean doing a search based on geolocation, as far as I know it's not possible. --IamNotU (talk) 23:17, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@IamNotU: I meant an API that can geolocate a given IP. I'm deep in C# code at that point. Current "head" revisions don't come from any of the ranges you list, but I just looked at the first one on my list, from Texas, and it changes from a value that doesn't match the citation to an even wronger value. TBF the source may have been changed due to newer science since Jan 4. yfull.com for your Y-chromosome one-stop shopping, who knew? I'll probably go back and change it to 41,700 when I've done some more digging. David Brooks (talk) 23:30, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

That diff looks like it could be a good-faith revert of this unexplained edit: [3]. I don't know if 41,400 was correct at the time or a typo of the current 41,700 - there's no archive from September. 42,300 was correct when it was added: [4], [5].

I didn't realize you were working on coding something. I think using an IP location API is actually fairly simple, it's more that it costs money for a decent one. Maybe this helps: [6]? There are some code examples there. They'll give you 1500 lookups a day for free, for non-commercial projects. There are others: [7]. --IamNotU (talk) 02:23, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I got your email - I wouldn't worry about it. They don't strike me as being particularly smart... --IamNotU (talk) 02:03, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Cite book

@Jonesey95: After almost 2 days, and even with the min-5 test, I decided to give up and forced it to truncate. I realized I don't actually know if my current ISP has a GB-per-month limit, although I actually used less than 9GB :-( It was in the middle of analyzing Cite Book itself, on #375,937 of 1.19M referencing articles (the code reads the wikitext of every article to analyze it). But as this template doesn't have a default year or author I guess any sfn/harv error message will be valid. It's all the rest that might be vulnerable. So I realize I should have special-case skipped that one. Let me know if you'd like that or if this is getting to be TMI; my computer is tired right now. David Brooks (talk) 16:27, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Oh, your poor computer. Sorry to make it work so hard. I see that you have updated the output report. Is it your impression that Cite book was the last template to be analyzed, making this report essentially complete? If so, that is good enough.

The CS1 templates are being updated in the next week to have |ref=harv by default, which will eliminate false positives from the error category and also from Ucucha's script. I think that incorporating the output of this Cite book report into the whitelist is the last step before we make the error messages visible. At that point, based on my walk through the category, I think that less than 5% of the "no target" articles will be false positives. We can get people working on the errors and ask them to point out potential whitelist additions along the way. All of that is a long way of saying: if the current report is complete, I'll work from it and post on the module talk page when I feel like I've whitelisted the big ones. If it is incomplete, one more run without Cite book would be helpful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:17, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Afraid not; my memory is that we were only about one-half through the list. I guess I could have thought that through and skipped Cite book itself, but this is how we gain experience. Another note about the table: the indent/italicize on the redirects don't necessarily refer to the base templates immediately above, as I made a quick fix just to suppress each successive line. I'll try a run with Cite book skipped, but probably not soon. We have a windstorm brewing and I expect to lose power - this PC has no battery.

When all is said and done, I expect I'll still vote against the change. Even if every false positive is suppressed, I don't endorse showing a technical error message about a very obscure failure to the readers who have no clue what it's about, which I expect is a large majority. And the failure is minor; if interested it should be very easy to find the general reference by eye. And, finally, we have two accurate diagnostics in the js files. David Brooks (talk) 18:23, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: In the end, it was too expensive to "read" all of the impacted articles, so (for what it's worth) I did a run just of article counts. See User:DavidBrooks/CiteBookStats. Take special note of the caveats in the intro. Also, in case you want to do some math or pivot tables, the same information is at User:DavidBrooks/CiteBookStats.csv (use the source). I left {{Cite book}} itself blank in both tables; even enumerating all of its referents is just too exhausting. I think I'll sign off now and get back to other projects. Whack-a-mole on RCP is more rewarding than this! David Brooks (talk) 19:55, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Fantastic, all of it. I'll take it from here. Thanks so much! – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:22, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

I have sent you a note about a page you started

Hello, DavidBrooks

Thank you for creating Peter Wentworth (Parliamentarian).

User:QueerEcofeminist, while examining this page as a part of our page curation process, had the following comments:

If you are going to copypaste from PD source like this, then please add link to Public domain texts from next time onwards, that helps to keep our projects clean of copyvios. thanks

To reply, leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|QueerEcofeminist}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ .

(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

QueerEcofeminist ^{"cite! even if you fight"!!!} [they/them/their] 14:28, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

@QueerEcofeminist: In the References section, each footnote links to its origin in the EB1911 and DNB sources, using the same mechanisms as in many other articles derived from these two texts: a Harvard reference with a CITEREF-style anchor (although many more articles have inline references, both styles are acceptable). And the citation itself links to the PD source on Wikisource. As you may know, a mass injection from EB1911 provided a solid backbone for Wikipedia in its earliest days and the {{EB1911}} (which is used in over 11,000 articles) prescript was developed over the years to make the sourcing clear. The footnotes here follow the current standards. David Brooks (talk) 15:46, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Catholic Encyclopedia citations to fix

Here are the Catholic Encyclopedia citations with actual errors that I have found, if you want to fix them. Usually the problem is a year mismatch between the short and full citations. Carlo Ottavio, Count Castiglione, Benvenuto Tisi, Canopus, Egypt, Friedrich Halm, Antonio de Trueba, Joseph Athias, Abjuration, Pope Theodore I, Diogo de Paiva de Andrade, Ortwin, Henry James Coleridge, Emmanuel Domenech, Antoine Arnauld (lawyer), Aloysius Gentili. This is from an initial list of 220+ articles, reduced via the Module:Footnotes whitelist. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:15, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Thanks for that list. I'm more concerned with my own projects and shoveling data to Trappist right now, but I may wander over that list if I feel the need to keep my mind off other things. I only know about Catholic because it keeps coming up as a second source in EB1911-derived articles.

I wonder if it would be useful to find other templates built on {{cite encyclopedia}} that themselves have multiple uses. Should be easy to code actually. David Brooks (talk) 20:47, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

It would be useful only if those templates could be narrowed to those that are also trancluded in articles in the sfn/harv error category. If you have a way of figuring that out, let me know. I've basically been trolling through the category and finding templates in articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:01, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Well, if one has written a C#/LINQ streaming interface around the MW API (even if it's far from suitable for publishing yet) all things are possible. I can scan for articles with general refs that have a sfn/harv elsewhere in the text, but I don't know what the defaults would be in each sub-template. David Brooks (talk) 22:29, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Well, out of 118 templates that use {{Cite encyclopedia}} directly (I don't even want to think about redirects), exactly 100 have at least one article with (a) that template as a general reference and (b) an sfn* or harv* somewhere in the text. I can't match them up without knowing the default author and year, if any, in each of those templates' coding. (I threw a dart: Falstaff cites Grove, and the page numbers are some variant of "n.d"). I could match the sfn's that have explicit parameters, but that doesn't tell us much. And the encyclopedia family is probably only part of the universe of citation-generating templates. David Brooks (talk) 00:55, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Nice detective work. Are you able to tell which of the articles are in Category:Harv and Sfn template errors? If so, I'll be happy to take a look at the list. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:59, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes. It may take a fair amount of resources. Tomorrow... David Brooks (talk) 01:01, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Check User:DavidBrooks/EncycStats. This took several hours to run, partly because I throttled the API calls to one per second. Hope it explains itself. And this is probably just part of the universe of templates that generate a CITEREF using their own secret sauce. David Brooks (talk) 14:30, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Super. I'll dig into that list. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:05, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I did refresh the list yesterday; I found a potential bug that in the end had little impact on the numbers. But every time I look at the list I'm convinced that any solution in the direction we're going is unsustainable. On the other hand, few people argue that it is wrong at some level to have the link in a footnote not go anywhere, but on the other other hand some editors aren't too worked up about it, and I suspect a large (I won't pull a % out of thin air) fraction of casual readers are never aware of it. Short: I'd rather spend my energy on actual missing or malformed attributions and the like.

Having said all that - is anyone else aware of the list's existence? David Brooks (talk) 04:38, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

I think a whitelist may be sustainable once it is set up, but am still unsure about whether actually making the whitelist in the way we are doing it is the best way to eliminate false positives. I'm chipping away at it and continuing to think about a better way. As for awareness of this thread, I don't know. You could post a link to it on the Module talk page.

I think that the error category, once it is free of false positives, will help improve the verifiability of articles within Wikipedia. One of the problems I am seeing frequently is short references that have no matching full citation at all, linked or not; this is a real problem that should be fixed. I believe that it often results from editors copying and pasting blocks of referenced text from one article to another without copying the full citations. Having a red error show up right away when editors do this will be helpful.

On a related note, would it be possible for you to create a separate list for {{cite book}} citations? It's OK if it takes a while to process. I think that you can safely exclude templates for which the "In error cat" is zero. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:46, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Probably, but tomorrow. I see {{Cite book}} has many redirects (I checked one at random {{C book}}, and no mainspace articles use it...). And like Cite Encyclopedia, a very large number of other templates transclude it, so it may take a while. David Brooks (talk) 23:58, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I can be patient. I have plenty to work on for a while. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:31, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Cite book ain't gonna happen. It was running for many hours overnight when it crashed due to a batch of 10 articles exceeding the HTTP buffer size. I could reconfigure that size, but I can see that it was on {{Cite act}}, which is the 604th of 2158 templates that directly transclude Cite book. And even from the debugger I don't have a count of the other templates that redirect to those 2158 (I should have instrumented the code better) but as you can see the final table would have been enormous. It did flush out the first few though, so you'll get an idea from User:DavidBrooks/CiteBookStats of the magnitude of the job (and perhaps give you some idea of the message to feed back to Trappist). David Brooks (talk) 15:27, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for giving it a go. The table that you got is very useful. I wonder if it would be possible to limit the scope of your query in order to limit the running time and output size. Would it be possible to limit the list of templates that it analyzes to templates that have more than a certain number of transclusions? For example, the table you generated had 893 templates listed, but only 191 had 5 or more transclusions, and only 74 had 10 or more transclusions. If it is possible to limit the templates to those with 5 or 10 transclusions or higher, it might be able to run all the way through. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonesey95 (talk • contribs) 17:47, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: OK, I'll make it 5 (grumble, I'll have to break up the concatenated streaming tactic to be able to count that set). I'll also have to increase the HTTP buffer size. Will see what happens overnight. David Brooks (talk) 20:30, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

You've got this! P.S. "break up the concatenated streaming tactic" brings back bad memories of the horrible awk/sed/grep text processing shell scripts that I used to write because I was too impatient to sit down and learn perl. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:30, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 and David I have a slightly chaotic list of these templates at User:PBS/Notes#List of PD Templates -- PBS (talk) 16:14, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

@PBS and Jonesey95: Oh, yes, I had forgotten that list, and it could be useful to restart an analysis using it. What I've found after starting to run through the whitelisted templates is that the precise details of harvid construction on major citation (PD and other) templates follow a bewildering variety of rules, so the "dynamic whitelist" suggestion turns out more complex than I had thought. But Trappist did implement it for the EB1911 class. David Brooks (talk) 16:52, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Battle of Wörth

You will see I mentioned you on a talk page. I arrived there via Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica without Wikisource reference. Many of these articles are either already on EB1911 in Wikisource, or they are ready to translude. -- PBS (talk) 16:11, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

@PBS: Good to see you're still in harness! Yes, I saw your Wkloot message. I had frankly pushed the issue to the back of my mind, and I approve your proposal. David Brooks (talk) 16:45, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

RT (TV network)

June 2020

Information icon Hello, I'm DavidBrooks. I noticed that you added or changed content in an article, RT (TV network), but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so. You can have a look at the tutorial on citing sources. If you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. David Brooks (talk) 21:52, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

REPLY:

Talking about sources, your current "credible sources" are a 2013 article (things do change over time, you know)and a known fake "fact checker" funded by billionaires. It's actually YOU who should cite some CREDIBLE and CURRENT sources for your false claim that RT is not now an editorially independent organisation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.112.28.28 (talk) 22:09, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@174.112.28.28: I could cite newer sources, such as The Independent in 2017 and 2018, but I'm sure that won't move you. In any case, this discussion belongs on the article's talk page. David Brooks (talk) 01:39, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

ndash in book titles

In response to this comment, the problem you have is that there are several very strong advocates some of whom pop up in this conversation, where it was conceded that "The requirements of MOS:DATERANGE do not apply to quotes or titles (no one will yell at you for not bothering), but making the changes is firmly within MOS:CONFORM (the changes are permissible)". However outside fixing things for technical reasons, I suspect that arguing over this against the Gnomes – who like to make everything fit the MOS – is a self imposed Sisyphus task. -- PBS (talk) 09:20, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@PBS: Blurgh. Keeping my head down feels right. Worrrying about these changes is too much squirrel! anyway. Beams, not motes. David Brooks (talk) 20:55, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Short Description and AWB

I have not been paying attention to that. I assumed AWB was coded correctly for such modifications. My time here is limited at the moment but I may go through the logs at some point. Thanks for the heads up thought I will look out for that when I make changes with AWB in future. -- PBS (talk) 15:58, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Just an addendum: received this notice on my talkpage last night and wanted to let you know. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:08, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Three years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:15, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

AWB

Thanks I am taking you up on your offer. I have copied from one cloud to another (Dropbox). I am not doing much right now on Wikipedia (this is the first time I have logged-in in about two weeks). However next time I run AWB I'll have a go with you version. -- PBS (talk) 10:06, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

@PBS: You're welcome. Happy editing! David Brooks (talk) 17:22, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

find and replace random piped wikilinks

Hello. I am having a little trouble with AWB find and replace. I want to find and replace unexpected piped wikilinks. For example, for target [[Wyn Jones (rugby union)]]; I want to convert [[Wyn Jones|a random rugby player]] to [[Wyn Jones (rugby union)]] or [[Wyn Jones (rugby union)|Wyn Jones]]. Basically, we have to find [[Wyn Jones| and replace it till the next ]] with [[Wyn Jones (rugby union)]]. I tried a few different regular expressions, but some of them couldn't be compiled (error: "[CS1009] Unrecognized escape sequence" among few others). And some got compiled, but didnt do anything at all. Do you know how to do this? Thanks a lot in advance. Regards, —usernamekiran (talk) 07:02, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: There are two common trip-ups in regular expressions, especially in the .NET library (a) knowing where to insert a "\" and (b) handling the greedy nature of ".*". I think for your specific problem, this will work:

• Under "Find": \[\[Wyn Jones *\|[^\]]*
• Under "Replace": [[Wyn Jones (rugby union)|Wyn Jones
• And, of course, check "Regex" and "Enabled"

By ending the RE with "any character except ]", I assume that the first "]" is followed by another "]", and not need to specify it in the replacement. As I said, this should work with your specific example. BUT: if what you were describing was just a paradigm for any pattern in which the piped text is different from the beginning of the anchor text, then that is do-able, and a very bad idea. Hope this helps. If you want a deeper explanation, ping me again. David Brooks (talk) 20:23, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks a lot for your help. It perfectly solved the problem. First I used it in the AWB's find and replace option, and later I created a module based on it. I had to work on it a lot though. In the end, I came up with @"(\[\[Wyn Jones *\|[^\]\]*?([\|}{<\n]*)" for the module. This is the edit performed with using the module. I am not sure if I had saved the edit using your settings, but it had the same result. I further added regex for finding base [[Wyn Jones]] and replacing it with [[Wyn Jones (rugby union)]]. This is the edit performed with the combined module. Would you please let me know what you think about the regex that I created. I mean, I am not sure what it does exactly (or in its entirety). I modified a regex that I had seen at User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects; to be specific, I observed the code of line containing wikiproject Accessibility on Magioladitis/WikiProjects. Also, I am not sure what you mean about this being a bad idea. I was thinking about fixing links to disamb pages on (semi) regular basis. Do you think this will be a bad idea? I apologise for annoying you so much. —usernamekiran (talk) 07:48, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

PS: I was getting Unrecognized escape sequence error because I hadn't added @ before string. —usernamekiran (talk) 07:51, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: Ah, well, whatever works! I'm glad I was able to set you on the right track. I had given you the RE for the Find/Replace dialog, of course, but I'm glad you found the need for a preliminary @ in C#. I also later realized I had mentioned the "greedy" behavior of .* but not illustrated it, but you seem to have figured that out too.

Still, I have one question. This doesn't feel right: [^\]\]*?. I'm surprised the RE parser can make sense of the second closing bracket, because at first read that says "any character not ] or ] or *", etc. In other words, I'm looking for an unescaped close bracket, and instead you have a duplicated \] in the list of "not" characters. I know, it's hard to talk about REs in words. Also, I don't think you need to escape the vertical bar because in a [] pair it has no special meaning, but it doesn't hurt and helps you feel sure it's doing the expected thing. David Brooks (talk) 15:13, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

If its not trouble, can you make an RE or C# program for that need? I can send you my entire code if you'd like. —usernamekiran (talk) 15:43, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: Oh, I thought you had it all working. Probably best to use "email this user" for that. I wouldn't call myself a top-ranked RE expert, but I guess better than most. I'm about finished for the day so it may take a while.

My "bad idea" comment was meant to highlight this: there are many cases where the piped text is nothing like the title of the linked page for very good textual reasons, and any automated system that tries to fix a major difference will be wrong. For example, if you're talking about events in 1815 a link to George IV of the United Kingdom would correctly use the piped text "the Prince Regent". David Brooks (talk) 17:39, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Apologies for the delay in reply to your mail. I will respond in 36 hours. —usernamekiran (talk) 19:27, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Logo of Sky News Arabia

Can you change the logo of the page ?. i know the new logo but i don't know how to publish it on wikicommons without any problems you can check the new logo on the official page of Sky News Arabia on Facebook.--AndrewIb (talk) 16:34, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

@AndrewIb: As I said, it's probably best to take the question to the talk page. I was just editing in a "flagged recent changes" pass (it wasn't the appropriate place for the text). I can't even remember if the restriction on copyrighted images extends to logos, or if they are regarded as fair use. Sorry. David Brooks (talk) 16:48, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

DavidBrooks, AndrewIb, I've updated the logo as per the Sky News Arabia website. As it's a simple logo (as per Template:PD-textlogo) it's fine to appear on Wikipedia. Tvcameraop (talk) 17:36, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Tvcameraop but it didn't show yet on the page.--AndrewIb (talk) 19:02, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

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AWB (modules and other stuff)

Hi, I recall some months ago we chatted briefly. I think it was probably about the short description location in articles and your custom version and/or modules. I only run one at the moment and was wondering what other types of modules you work with. Dawnseeker2000 23:45, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Dawnseeker2000: Two different things, I think. The fix to the short description bug was in code; I published a change but the maintainers followed up with the continuous change in an unofficial snapshot here. So their latest snapshot should work. As to modules: I have a C# plug-in that I use for some standard find/replace operations that are too tricky to do with the standard dialog. The operations in question are specific to what I'm working on, and amount to some edits too complex to do with the find/replace dialog (mostly avoiding accidentally editing image file names, things like that). I don't think they are generally applicable. David Brooks (talk) 00:22, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Changing image titles is where I get into trouble. Not too often, but that really shouldn't be a problem area that experienced editors contribute to. Mind sharing? Dawnseeker2000 23:59, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I found it just got too complicated, and was taking up too much of my time to maintain, and was a tangent from my main concerns. So I gave up, and will let other gnomes fix up date ranges. I really don't want to share ugly code, but I can send you the module's final version as-is if you really want. The basic plan was to go through all the contexts that look like file names (and there are a lot of such contexts; think of galleries, flag icons, infobox parameters), replace a hyphen character with something distinctive like "_HYPH3N_", replace all hyphens in what look like date ranges with n-dashes, and then revert the _HYPH3N_. I also tried changing "b." to "born" and so on. I originally did these tasks with a succession of edits in the Find and Replace dialog (they are executed in sequence) before moving to C#. In both cases I stole the idea from others. There ended up too many exceptions and, as I said, I used up too much valuable time maintaining the code and fixing the occasional cases where it still went wrong. David Brooks (talk) 03:44, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Thomas Dillon, 4th Viscount Dillon

Dear DavidBrooks. Thanks for your intervention in the discussion that I had with User:ArbieP about the way forward: how to replace citations to EB 11th Edition based on Internet Archive with equivalent citations based on Wikisource in a short-long citation style. I want to make sure I will not have to patch my edits later because of errors and objections from your side.

I have replaced the URL in the {{Sfn}} with the ":s:"-link as you proposed. Please have a look at the effect, which is that the clickable arrow sign that appears in the other citations is replaced by the simple blue underlining of the the page number indicating a wikilink. I fear the reader will not understand. Want do you think?

You say the date=1911 is needless, but were not the first couple of volumes of the 11th edition edition published in 1910? The Title page of Volume 1 in the facsimile in Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/encyclopdiabri01chisrich/) says "New York / The Encyclopædia Britannica Company / 1910".

I wondered whether you think I should limit myself to EB 11th edition of also make similar changes to citations to other sources that exist in Wikisource. It seems that Wikisource has the Dictionary of National Biography and the Diary of Samuel Pepys) and probably other sources that I cite in Internet Archive. I need to learn more about Wikisource. With many thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 17:24, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

@Johannes Schade: Page number link: the underlined blue text is enough of a hint to any Wikipedia reader that it is clickable; I wouldn't worry about the arrow. After all, other links to Wikisource are simple blue underlines. 1911 is superfluous simply because it is the default for these two templates. As to DNB and Samuel Pepys; you should decide. I think your discussions with the experts suggest you should use Wikisource, but you may decide there are other tasks with priority.

Stepping back, all of these references to authoritative sources (as I said, sometimes requiring three clicks to access) are in the service of Verifiability, but to be honest, how often do readers actually go and verify? My impression is that the simple mention of a source is enough to make the reader feel comfortable. For some, it could be the simple existence of a superscript number. I do sometimes drill down to a source, especially if the citation is clearly several years old, to make sure that the current text is still supported, but only if something feels wrong.

Keep up the quality editing! David Brooks (talk) 19:20, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Dear DavidBrooks. You are right to say that few readers care about references (admitting that I know of no statistics to support this claim), but I hope you agree that this is not a reason for taking WP:V lightly. The good quality editing you want me to do will surely include adding many citations. I believe editors should make the consultation of the source as easy as possible for the reader (or reviewer!) of the article: ideally, a link to click to the page, a short quotation showing what to look for, a column and line on a densely packed page. Such citations are not so difficult to provide when done immediately when adding the content. Thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 08:51, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

@Johannes Schade: I thoroughly agree, and didn't intend to suggest otherwise. Those who are interested in actually verifying will, I'm sure, be able to follow a set of clicks. After all, even an online academic preprint (such as those I recently read about COVID research) requires considerable effort to read the many citations; their existence does give some confidence though. David Brooks (talk) 16:48, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Four years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:02, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Robert Dillon, 2nd Earl of Roscommon

Dear DavidBrooks

An alternative to this (my edit at 15.49 yesterday) would be helpful

Robert Dillon, 2nd Earl of Roscommon (this version)clear|

ArbieP (talk) 11:23, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@ArbieP: Since you asked, I boldly edited it: I don't think the cite belongs in the list of sources because it is a completely different topic and only an incidental verification. That's how we've treated similar circumstances. So I modified it to the usual convention for such verifications but left the equivalent of |ps= (i.e. |quote=) embedded. David Brooks (talk) 14:37, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

best wishes

Hi. I just saw this. I hope it's nothing serious, and that you get well soon. Regards, —usernamekiran (talk) (guestbook) 15:08, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

[DavidBrooks/EBCites/bad-wstitle]

David. I continue to make fair progress on the three lists of [EBCites]. I expect they'll all be done before Xmas. Recently I needed to look at the lists again and took the liberty of looking in your [Userspace]. I found them, plus another called [DavidBrooks/EBCites/bad-wstitle] which I'm now working on. It provides a welcome break from the other lists because its fairly quick and fairly simple. I trust your content with this. ArbieP (talk) 17:33, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this while I'm distracted by other things. Great progress. I've re-run the query that produces the 3 other lists; I can upload them if you don't mind losing your strike-throughs, or I can put them in the cloud for you to look at the diffs first. Ditto with the wstitle list; I can't find the code I used to generate it but can easily reproduce it. David Brooks (talk) 22:18, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

David. Let me finish the three other lists first before you replace them; at the pace I'm going, I guess it'll only be a few weeks. I'll update you. Best wishes.ArbieP (talk) 08:48, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

David. I've now completed work on [DavidBrooks/EBCites/bad-wstitle] and of 129+54=183 items only one remains undone. It will be interesting to see the results of a re-run. Of the three main lists, the position is this: I continue to work on [1911-cites] & [1910-cites] and I'm about half way through both of them. As previously reported elswhere, I've completed work on [1911-archive] and a little over 30 of them are not struck-through, but marked (*) or (?) or (n) indicating the reason why. The main reason (n) is because the articles include an attribution to a quotation from EB and spell out its name in full. This seems to have caught your search terms. I've made a list of the items in all three lists which I've looked at but not struck through, so I'm happy for you now to re-run all three lists. I assume the revised [1911-cites] & [1910-cites] lists will still include the un-struck-through items in my notes, so I can update the new lists to avoid re-doing old work.ArbieP (talk) 09:30, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

I created new logic for the wstitle list because I couldn't find the old one. I also looked at redirects and underscores in the string. I haven't done more than a very brief spot-test. Check out the note above the redirect list; it may be best to leave them alone for now because there is no actual visible error and I may realize that there are other good reasons for it to exist (although I bet some of them are due to EB1911 page moves). I'll upload the other 3 tomorrow I hope and will look at the false positives you mentioned. David Brooks (talk) 21:47, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

David. Interesting wstitle lists. I've dealt with the 18 in the first list; yhe issues was often a misspelling of the name in the EB article or format of the name in EB, like lower case/upper case differences or a foreign accent included. Looking at the second list I don't see a real issue with the underline symbol replacing a space, it doesn't seem to affect the "click" link. The third list is a mix of (1) redirects somewhere within EB - which are being made good use of and (2) authors using [|display=], for example several about places in or aspects of Switzerland. From what I've seen they generally help the reader to get to a particular page in a long EB article. So I see no need for further amendments. That all said, I now look forward the the revised version of the three "main" lists, which are probably of more significance. ArbieP (talk) 20:43, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

@ArbieP: thanks. Agreed on the underscore, because it is exactly hidden under the hyperlink underline (at least on Edge and Chrome). I'm re-doing the other lists, and I've solved the exception pattern simply by specifically whitelisting the articles you already tagged with *, ?, or n. But I also included those that use {{citation}} directly, which finds a lot more: 200 total in the EB1911 list now. I'm checking them out before uploading. Take the rest of the weekend off! David Brooks (talk) 22:55, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

The Blue Bird (Stanford) moved to draftspace

An article you recently created, The Blue Bird (Stanford), is not suitable as written to remain published. It needs more citations from reliable, independent sources. (?) Information that can't be referenced should be removed (verifiability is of central importance on Wikipedia). I've moved your draft to draftspace (with a prefix of "Draft:" before the article title) where you can incubate the article with minimal disruption. When you feel the article meets Wikipedia's general notability guideline and thus is ready for mainspace, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 11:37, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Onel5969: I really must dispute this move. With one exception, the article is fully sourced, and I'm OK to remove that claim rather than just warning with the {{cn}}. The claim "it has been recorded several times" should be acceptable given the expand-section on the discography (I just heard a fabulous rendition by the Cardinal Vaughan School, so I'm willing to look that up and make it two). With respect to the Structure section, Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/Guidelines#Descriptions based on the score provides that claims based on the score are permitted, and that's commonly taken to mean that they don't need footnotes so long as the score itself is linked: see Symphony No. 1 (Beethoven)#Description and analysis for a well-established example. And I uploaded the score to IMSLP before undrafting the article. Was there some other basis for the objection? David Brooks (talk) 15:57, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Onel5969: OK, now I've read it more carefully I'll (a) remove the frequent performance claim (b) re-word the S-SATB claim, and (b) look up a few more recordings. Then I'll submit the draft. Will that work? David Brooks (talk) 17:20, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi. The issue is one as per WP:VERIFY. While the article does have some sources, most of the article remains unsourced, For example, the entire Structure section is unsourced, and there is sourcing needed in the lead and assessment sections as well. And since you make an assertion in the Discography section, that would also need to be sourced. I can move it back to mainspace, but then those would be removed. I moved it to draftspace because I do think it's notable, but it simply doesn't pass VERIFY at the moment, and thought you could put a little bit of work into it and correct the issues. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 18:54, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Onel5969: I understand and will try to address, although all I need for the Grove citation is to find someone who actually has the physical volumes. But did you read what I said above about the Structure (or in some cases Form) convention for classical music articles, presuming access to the score? Also, WP classical music discographies rarely contain footnotes if the publisher/catalog number is specified. For illustration, see Turangalîla-Symphonie#Recordings, which has {{fcn}} only where the catalog number is absent. There are a lot of bad examples out there, which I am not proposing as an excuse (Symphony No. 4 (Tchaikovsky)#Recordings is particularly poor). I'll ping you again when I've made the changes that I proposed above. David Brooks (talk) 20:32, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi. Actually I misunderstood your bringing up the the Structure section. However, now that I've read through it more carefully, I think that some of what is in your article would fall under "Statements that are clearly interpretations, not observations". For example, ", is scored for an unusual combination of five voices..." who considers it unusual? Other than that, I agree it falls within the classic music guideline constraints. And regarding the discography, while many don't have refs, they all should (as per WP:VERIFY, else it really is WP:OR). In addition, it was the assertion at the beginning of the discography section which really needs sourcing, imho. Hope this helps. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 20:50, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Onel5969: I suppose part of my rebellion is that there are some truly poor examples out there even for canonical works (discogs that list just orchestra and conductor, subjective comments in structural descriptions etc) but I know that is no excuse for being slipshod. As to the SAATB thing, it would help if SATB weren't so poorly sourced, but realizing that there are 586 entries in the SAATB category on ChoralWiki (frequently found in early music partsong) stops me short anyway, so thanks for pulling me up on that. I'll go through the pain of constructing Cite Webs for the various CD catalogs. David Brooks (talk) 22:06, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree that there are some very crap articles out there. But that's an WP:OSE argument, and as I like to think of myself as an encyclopedist, I try to make the project more encyclopedic as much as I can. I enjoy working with folks like you who do good work and understand what we're trying to do here. Keep it up. When you feel the article is ready, simply move it back into mainspace and ping me. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 02:10, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

@Onel5969: I appreciate the nice comments, and I was just whining, after all. I'll leave it in draft in case you see something you still don't like. I think ping-ponging between spaces might encounter redirect blocks. David Brooks (talk) 20:35, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

@Onel5969: I've re-published. Hope this is acceptable now. David Brooks (talk) 17:25, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Precognition

I did not make any statement that was not true do your research I'm here In Leeds if you need to talk and I can then again provide proof i haven't lied or placed any false data. Riosaint (talk) 10:59, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I have replied to this at User talk:Riosaint#Edit warring. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:39, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

EB1911 wikilink ref with https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911

Dear David

See the article 1771 in music, and see reference five. It has come up in a the standard wikilinks search for items containing https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911. It's an unusual link (to a footnote in an EB1911 article) and I see it was made by [Trappist the monk] who is an expert technician. It's beyond my technical capabilities to do any thing, how about you, or do we just leave it? Best wishes.

ArbieP (talk) 11:28, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

@ArbieP: Actually footnote 6, but who's counting. This is such an unusual, maybe unique, class of footnote, and as you say Trappist has the most detailed insight into footnote formatting of anyone breathing, that I wouldn't break a sweat. Better things to worry about! David Brooks (talk) 16:10, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Plagiarism

As a Wikipedia editor, you have access to the various academic treatments regarding the meaning of plagiarism. In its essence, it is taking credit for composition which is not of one's own creation. (See, for instance, the UChicago Press volume, "Doing Honest Work in College", ISBN 0226484777 by Charles Lipson.) That is, unlike coding, where the code of others is routinely put to work anonymously in later developed tools, a language or related composition is considered a unique attribution of the original author, even after it is out of copyright. After, it is inappropriate, academically and ethically, to print verbatim excerpts of the original author's composition not appearing in quotation marks, apart from what can be clearly identified as a reprint edition.

Hence, with due respect to the efforts being given to add page numbers from the 1911 EB source, articles where this is done following cut-and-paste of the source's content from that source — this remains plagiarism start to finish. One cannot simply reuse another author's words simply because a work is out of copyright. Such content was written by another or others, and not by a Wikipedia editor internalising and processing the content intellectually, after which a paraphrase or other unique presentation follows. Very often, the articles to which you are adding age numbers is material of that sort — cribbed verbatim or essentially verbatim (essentially, as stray edits begin to slowly move the plagiarism insubstantially further from the original).

If you do not believe this, contact a sampling of upper form instructors and university lecturers and professors, and ask them their response in the case that a student submitted 1911 material (perhaps slightly edited to make the language appear modern) as their own composition, in an academic submission. In short, if material from the 1911 EB is used, if one wants to operate in accord with academic principles of honesty, it must be substantially rewritten, after internalisation and thought, still thereafter citing the source. Cut-and-paste cribs are intellectually dishonest, and set the wrong example for attentive academic readers. The page number additions are, at best, adding a veneer of academic respectability to effort that is at its heart, dissembling (misrepresentation), and so, dishonest. At worst, they are glossing over the real problem, making it less discernible to others, and in that sense adding to the problem rather than solving it. 2601:246:C700:558:C0D4:F012:402C:429 (talk) 16:48, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@2601:246:C700:558:C0D4:F012:402C:429: Sorry, but the ship sailed long ago, and you are apparently just looking at the tip of a huge iceberg. Wikipedia policies have never banned verbatim copying from a public domain source, especially another encyclopedia, so long as the attribution is clear. The mass importation of much of EB1911's content (about 18,000 articles, if I remember right), in 2004 (again, if I remember right) was Wikipedia's "inflationary epoch" and the source of much of the work's initial bulk. Some dedicated early editors worked hard to gather the source into a decent shape, identify which articles had no equivalent entry in WP, and create the new articles. Trying to expunge or rewrite all of that text would be impractical; good luck finding a volunteer.

Back in those days, it was considered adequate attribution to put the now obsolete {{1911}} at the bottom of such articles. Even that turned out to be a problem as editors expanded such articles, although a surprising number of them have remained essentially unchanged (that category is only a subset; I created it less than 7 years ago). But as we got a more sophisticated attitude to the need for attribution, and the relevant plagiarism guideline was updated, it became necessary to identify the source articles' titles and add inline attributions, with enough detail for a verification-minded reader to find the source text without too much work. To do that requires careful (often partly automated) comparison between the source and target articles to detect added material: a mammoth task that started in earnest, I guess, about ten years ago. Very occasionally it seemed useful to add text that had been omitted originally, or to add it to articles that were started independently of the project but still seem incomplete. A few editors started collaborating on the task of modernizing the attributions, but I now seem to be laboring alone in the vineyard. And, as you can see, it's less than half done. Feel free to join in.

It would have been helpful if you had cited the edit that prompted your essay, because I only occasionally make such updates using a browser under my main login. Most of my work is under my alternate account: see its contributions. David Brooks (talk) 18:01, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Please understand that my criticism of this status quo regarding the encyclopedia is not a personal criticism of your work, manual or automated. Your decade of work in support of the newer position on plagiarised content is admirable, insofar as it is making clear, in each case, from where content was copied.

And of course you are correct, the "ship" of plagiarising work here has indeed "sailed" long ago at Wikipedia. And having sailed, it is recalled, as many events of personal and institutional history are, as being honourable, and right. (Is it not a curiosity, that despite the fact that the definition is near to uniformly agreed upon in academe, that there is no simple set of inline, section, and article plagiarism tags here? Open, e.g., ten maths articles here, count the number of non-"sky is blue" equations and statements, compare that to the number of inline citations appearing, and you will understand why I think the lack of such tools is likewise a WP issue.) But just as the fact that most construction work in New York City and Chicago at one time, and at that time, for some duration, required bribery to proceed — a thing can be true, and still unethical and in need of change.

There is no question that wholesale cut and paste of content absent the indicating quotation marks to make clear that another author's words are in use remains plagiarism by formal academic standards. The fact that the plagiarism is well ingrained, and 18,000-times larger than the single case that prompted me to stop by, these two observations make mine all the sadder, and the need for change all the more. Should you not believe my assessment, I again encourage the experiment of consulting a decade of those you respect in teaching, to see if the large majority does not agree that more than page number additions are indeed needed. Cheers. 2601:246:C700:558:34EC:1C9C:D792:B879 (talk) 19:26, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@2601:246:C700:558:C0D4:F012:402C:429: Thanks for the respectful response. As you can see, I'm dedicated to addressing the worst "damage" I also want to point out that the prescript of {{EB1911}} is pretty explicit (in its two versions, depending on the |inline= setting) and I have tried to decide between that and {{Cite EB1911}} in the right circumstances. Oh, and a recent (imperfect) analysis I did found another 1,188 articles that use one of the EB1911 citation templates but don't appear in the "verification" lists. David Brooks (talk) 19:41, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I have sent you a note about a page you started

Hello, DavidBrooks

Thank you for creating Coinage Offences Act 1861.

User:SunDawn, while examining this page as a part of our page curation process, had the following comments:

Thanks for the article!

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|SunDawn}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~ .

(Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 01:16, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Using wikilinks

Dear David

Please see the results from your search device [insource:/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/1911/]

A new one has recently appeared concerning [Seven Wise Masters]

It baffles me how to fix it. Any ideas? Best wishes ArbieP (talk) 20:57, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

@ArbieP: Fixed, assuming the citation is indeed valid: it was simple enough to drop the right replacement in. The |ref=none is necessary to avoid an ambiguous target for {{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}. Now, we still have the sfn with two possible targets in the text, which is slightly ugly, and perhaps the correct fix is to use |date=1911a (and b) but I honestly didn't see the point. Also, the search still picks up 1771 in music for that curious reference to "Horn"; did we already look at that one? David Brooks (talk) 21:24, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

David. Thankyou; I've made a note of [ref=none] in case it's needed again.

We looked at [1771 in music] some months ago and (I think) we concluded that the respectability of the author was such that we wouldn't change it. There are words and phrases in there (to point to Note 68) that I don't follow, but I don't know if they can stay with an EB wikilink. If the complexity tempts you, you might still give it a go!

Best wishes ArbieP (talk) 08:52, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

@ArbieP: You're welcome. I decided to disambig the two targets in the Masters in the proper way (having just refreshed my memory of how to do in another article). David Brooks (talk) 16:56, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:05, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

F off

Dummy! Stop marking things as derogatory if you dont even know the loser your defending! 96.77.55.201 (talk) 21:51, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm guessing you are referring to this diff. David Brooks (talk) 22:03, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

En passant

Dear David.

En passant, when you have five minutes spare have a look see at the conversation on my talk page which originated with John Keats. Regards User:ArbieP ArbieP (talk) 20:56, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

@ArbieP: I'm firmly on your side. In any case, why is Swinburne (1911) not OK while Rossetti (1887) is? I'd understand if Swinburne 1911 were, like so many articles, a tertiary source, but this is an original essay by a noted 19th century critic. Perhaps you can add words to that effect to encourage the reader to understand an historical response to the poet. I think you can forget about EB9 though. Incidentally, this is different from other criticisms we've heard of 1911 citations -- plagiarism! -- but I think although Keats has many sources the reference is valid on its own terms. David Brooks (talk) 23:09, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Dear David.

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. We need some advocacy for EB1911 that's not me. One has emerged already, do you feel able to assist? ArbieP (talk) 08:56, 20 October 2022 (UTC)