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Sidenote regarding communication

Hello,

Just a possibly important sidenote about your otherwise helpful comment at User_talk:Cullen328#Contesting_the_speedy.

You wrote: given that the article was pure spam.

Did you realise that you were accusing me or spamming? Apart from who I am (as a pretty long-time contributor, apart from founding a Wikipedia) I am your fellow average editor, too, and you definitely should consider my feelings and intentions before you start using highly degradatory offensive language against me. "Spam" implies malevolence, intentional harrassment and negligence of the guidelines, all of them highly insulting to me. I believe there is no need to get into a debate how an "advertisement" can be differentiated from "informative article" (in which we seem to strongly disagree) but you definitely should consider that independent parties (usually) cannot spam since they have no reason to, and that spam implies repetition, too. As I have mentioned I have no relation whatsoever to the brand or company, and the article was written to take note the various informations I have been gathering about the brand since lots of people believe it's an american brand, and the company behind tries to keep it hidden well that they are indeed chinese, and lots of online vendors sell their stuff without mentioning that it's all chinese. I believe this is an useful information, therefore I have created the article. You are free to disagree with its significance, with its notability, and lots of criteria defining an article to be kept or up for deletion but using offensive terms on the intentions of a contributor is really ugly. It doesn't help if it happened to be unintentional, since it's been an offense. You should phrase your opinion more carefully, I am not that easily driven away, but as Wikimedia stats show: most of the people are. Respect your fellow editors, there are less and less of them.

Thanks. --grin ✎ 08:54, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

  • (talk page stalker) It is to be noted that on Wikipedia, WP:SPAM has a different and distinct definition, elaborated up on in that link. In my opinion, rather than accusing administrators of bad faith or wrongdoing, your time would be better spent creating content that is notable and reliably independently sourced via third-party citations, or making corrections on Wikipedia articles, or otherwise contributing to the project. Softlavender (talk) 09:10, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) This was the article in question; I'll leave it for any other passing admin to decide whether "pure spam" was an appropriate descriptor or not. When an article doesn't include a single source and consists of a total of seven sentences, four of which are They advertise environment awareness regarding their use of recycled and environment friendly packaging and ink use, as well as the importance of quality assurance and continuous development. [Company] mainly known for its chargers, charger cables, power banks and other related mobile accessories. They specialise in chargers and cables for high power rated mobile phones. Following the success of the initial offerings they started to offer products of home robotics and computing., it's unlikely to be appropriate for Wikipedia, and someone who's "a pretty long-time contributor, apart from founding a Wikipedia" has no excuse for either not being aware of or ignoring core Wikipedia policies like Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion. ‑ Iridescent 09:11, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
sing it loud, sing it strong. for pete's sake. or should i say, for the old lady who doesn't like spam's sake.Jytdog (talk) 00:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
I didn't know you could make sake from spam. I thought it was always made from rice. EEng 11:21, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
Late to the party, I have seen the deleted article and "pure unadulterated spam" sounds like a perfectly apt description to me. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:37, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

File:Metropolitan Railway northwest extremeties, 1903.jpg listed for discussion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Metropolitan Railway northwest extremeties, 1903.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination.

ATTENTION: This is an automated, bot-generated message. This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 23:55, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Why thank you, bot, for providing the notification your operator couldn't be arsed to provide when he nominated this for deletion. Seriously, someone needs to do something about these self-appointed Cleanser of the Wiki deletionists (although I did like the accusation that I was violating WP:NOTWEBHOST—my dastardly plan to use Wikipedia to store my stash of maps of the railway network of the Aylesbury Vale in 1903 is uncovered). ‑ Iridescent 00:04, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
Although this has drawn my attention to the typo in the file name, so thanks for that at least… ‑ Iridescent 11:36, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

User:ChetEmerson spam CSD

This is another in a recent series of spambots that have been posting with a two-step spam link method (link on user page to a blog or some such, then blog is nothing more than a link to a São Paulo fuel company. It looks like in this case the blog host has already deleted the secondary link. Please see User:GeraldoWilfred3 and User:AnastasiaNeuman which were similarly created and then deleted by Dlohcierekim (talk · contribs). There were others but they've fallen off my watchlist. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 12:23, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah, right, deleted in that case. If you spot them in future, you need to put an explanation either in the edit summary or as a hidden-text comment in the page; "Hi, my name is foo, here are my hobbies and here's a link to my blog" is a very typical first edit by a legitimate new editor, so tagging them without explanation is just going to annoy whoever happens to be patrolling the CSD queue. ‑ Iridescent 12:29, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
Will do. Thanks. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 12:31, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
It looks like they all include the unusual string DE GÁS Em São Paulo so we could probably set up an edit filter to catch that. (MusikAnimal, how difficult would it be to set up a filter to discreetly flag every page creation or edit adding that string? We probably don't want a filter to actually prevent creation, as that would tip the spammer off and they'd just make a change to the wording.) ‑ Iridescent 12:34, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

your feedback on maps

Hi. I was surprised to see that reason you gave for not wanting wikimedia maps. It goes against many principles traditionally shared by the community. In that light, i'd like to get your personal opinion on MP4 video and audio usage, as that has been blocked for a long time by the community for ideological reasons, even though there were multiple gray area practical solutions proposed there. Do you think that that could be revisited and have a potential different outcome ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:04, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I think the ban on uploading mp3/mp4 files is and always has been utterly ridiculous, and agree 100% with the decade-old definitions of Ogg Vorbia and Ogg Theora given here. The insistence on using .ogg media files and open-source maps isn't principles traditionally shared by the community, it's principles shared by a tiny but extremely vocal clique at de-wiki who turn up en masse at Commons and en-wiki to hijack any discussion on the topic—I'd be willing to bet that if you held a neutral survey of readers on whether they'd prefer files be in mp4 or .ogg format there would be close to 100% support.

When it comes to mapping, per my comment at VPT, Wikimedia Maps isn't a viable alternative to Google and is unlikely ever to be. Apple has billion-dollar budgets, some of the finest programmers in the world, and approximately 700 million iphone users acting as their de facto error-checkers and beta testers, and Apple Maps is still a piece of shit; we have a handful of devs working on mapping as a hobby, and also lack the datasets of landmarks and businesses, the links to transportation APIs, the bulk databases of photographic imagery and the route-planning algorithms, all of which are necessary for an online mapping service to be useful to readers. Defaulting to Wikimedia Maps is a case of deliberately directing readers to a ropey beta of what's undisputedly a less informative service purely because a few hardline Free Culture extremists insist that we can't possibly be seen to be directing traffic to Evil Capitalists. This goes against the basic principle that Wikipedia's purpose is to serve its readers, not to serve its writers. (The WMF could test this one very easily without having to mess about with surveys or A/B tests—just give the links to Google Maps, Bing Maps, Wikimedia Maps and OpenStreetMap equal prominence and see which one the readers click on.) ‑ Iridescent 09:12, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Care to place any bets on which would get less, Bing or Wikimedia? Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:17, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Wikimedia would get more initially precisely because it's unfamiliar to readers so people would take a look, but I'd be willing to bet few if any would ever use it a second time. Bing has a small but loyal pool of regulars—while they don't have as much detail of businesses etc as Google, their maps themselves are probably easier to read than Google's, and they don't use Google's (and Wikimedia maps's!) weird and non-standard "50 shades of yellow" colour scheme for roads. ‑ Iridescent 09:26, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
I‘d concur with the sentiment that Wikimedia Maps needs serious work done before it‘s as useful as Google or Bing maps. I am just one reader among many, but the topographical background puts Google and Bing above OpenStreetMap and Wikimedia Maps.JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 09:42, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for sharing your opinion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:19, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Some baklava for you!

thanks :) Randomlike (talk) 07:33, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Deletion of TickX

Hi there Iridescent! I just wanted to ask about the deletion of TickX - would it be possible to rewrite the problem areas from a neutral point of view? I tried not to come across as biased but evidently failed. I wanted to create the article so that it could be differentiated from Tickex, a similar but since closed ticketing search engine. Thanks for all your help! Kalmgirl (talk) 08:36, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

As this was quite a marginal call, I've restored the page in question. Basically, you need to demonstrate why independent third parties consider it significant, not just say what the company does and who is involved in it. A Wikipedia page on a company should really cover criticism of the company, if any exists, as well (if nobody's ever been critical, this is generally—although not always—a warning flag that the company hasn't received enough significant coverage to be considered notable by Wikipedia's particular definition of the term). I can tell you straight away that as it stands the article contains an obvious piece of PR lying in claiming that this app identifies the cheapest place to buy tickets; what this app does is compare online ticketing companies, and (except in a few very limited instances when an event has proven less popular than projected and the touts are unloading surplus tickets at below cost) buying tickets from online agencies is always going to be more expensive than buying direct from the venue. The implication (although it's not explicitly stated) in Steve Pearce noticed that the events market was fragmented and needed a single destination for event goers to discover what events are happening, where tickets are being sold and where is the cheapest that this is a unique service and the first of its kind also needs to go; SeatChoice has been doing this for pretty much as long as I can remember. Also paging User:DGG, who generally has a better sense than me of whether articles on companies will be appropriate for Wikipedia. ‑ Iridescent 09:01, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your prompt response! I see what you mean, and I've removed/ reworded the items you have pinpointed. I believe it's significance stems from their appearance on Dragon's Den and that it provides a wider range of events than places like SeatChoice - as well as the similarly named company Tickex. If anything still seems unfit for Wikipedia, please let me know so we can work through it. I'm still new to writing for Wikipedia and trying to learn the ropes! Thanks, Kalmgirl (talk) 09:29, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
Kalmgirl I do not consider that there was a similarly named company to be a reason for notability. It may be a reason why the firm would like to have an article, of course.
and, fwiw, I don't see the references for Tickex as showing notability even while it existed. But it is very easy to add a line to differentiate it, assuming we keep that article.
Iridescent, if SeatChoice is the leading company in the field, perhaps it's the one on which we should have an article. DGG ( talk ) 19:14, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
@DGG: on a bit of Google searching, I can find a reliable source for | (who's a reasonably big deal in the tech industry) describing TickX as "the Uber of events", so it's possible that this company has received enough coverage to patch together an article—however, it's not a field in which I have any particular knowledge or interest so I'm not the best placed to do it. Certainly, a skim over Category:Comparison shopping websites suggests we're hosting plenty of articles on companies with less of an impact than this. ‑ Iridescent 19:23, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
yes, it's the sort of business field where we are likely to have articles attempted on every company that exists. There is no good way to apply the GNG -- usually sources will be of borderline independence and borderline significant coverage and could be argued either way. I tend therefore to think at least informally about which ones are dominant in a field,. As for the article you mention, all it says is that PJ thought they might have a viable business plan to be important some day. DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

It's only the truth that stinks

The Original Barnstar
For your absolutely hilarious — and probably frighteningly true — term for WP volunteers running for committee election, only to "win" subjection to the Arbcom mailing list: the Shit Bucket Challenge. Bravo! Carrite (talk) 20:44, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
I aim to please ‑ Iridescent 20:57, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Happy Turkey Day! (if you celebrate the event, if not Happy Any Day!)

Me:I was going to serve yams with Thanksgiving dinner, but I sat on them. Mom: What are you serving now?
Me: Squash.
Wishing You A Happy Turkey Day!
A Thanksgiving tale...

Two pilgrims go out hunting. One has two blunderbusses (guns).
The second pilgrim queries, “Why two blunderbusses?”
The first pilgrim responds, “I usually miss on the first shot; with two I can shoot again”.
The second pilgrim pauses, then asks, “Why not just take the second one, and only shoot once?”

Atsme📞📧 00:35, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Getting important information

Hi, I feel that people are often putting deletion tags on my articles for no good reason. I also feel that the people who are doing this are just simply wrong about what they are claiming. For example If you look at my Tiffany Sessions article you will see that one user said there was nothing notable about this case, which is just flat out wrong. If you check out one of the YouTube videos linked to her article it says that her disappearance led to the the largest search in Florida's history, I also have a mini pocketbook called Ten unsolved mysteries in which Sessions disappearance is mentioned among the articles which includes how did the dinosaurs die out? There are also tons of YouTube videos and internet articles about her as well. So this person who claimed this was just flat out wrong. Also an article I created called Disappearance of Carla Losey you will see that it is up for deletion, If you see that the argument I made against it being deleted I claimed that sources don't have to be national to be notable or creditable do they? (it does has one source that is not just local) Or it doesn't have to make world news to be notable does it? (most people missing cases don't make world news). Please check out my rebuttal I made to the people who want my Disappearance of Carla Losey deleted and let know what you think. Also do people comments to if the article should be kept or not ultimately decide the articles fate? Davidgoodheart (talk) 21:48, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I think you may have confused me with someone else? This is not a subject in which I have either any interest, or any particular knowledge. My sole involvement with this article was a procedural decline of a speedy deletion request on it (at a time when the article looked like this) on the grounds that I didn't feel the article met the strict criteria under which articles can be deleted from Wikipedia without discussion.
Chicxulub
I would note in passing that any book claiming "how did the dinosaurs die out?" is an "unsolved mystery" is not going to be worth the paper on which it's printed when it comes to being a reliable source. The K-T event is probably the single most heavily researched incident in the whole of prehistory, and the only disputes are whether there was a single impact event at Chicxulub or whether there were multiple impacts, and whether the plume(s) and flash directly wiped out the tetrapods almost instantly, whether the plume(s) triggered an impact winter that caused mass extinction over the relatively short term, or whether the shock of the impact opened volcanic vents around the world causing a slower extinction as ash clouds and increased SO2 levels caused plant life to die back. Nobody other than a few creationist cranks seriously disputes the Chicxulub impact nowadays (hell, once you know what you're looking for if you get up high enough you can see the Chicxulub crater).
If you genuinely feel that the same people are repeatedly tagging material you've written for deletion without good reason, you may have a case for a complaint of harassment. The important thing to take into account is whether their taggings are actually inappropriate; if most of the nominations are resulting in deletion, then that's probably a sign that you're creating inappropriate articles and that these people have notice a problem and are (correctly) checking your other contributions to see if they're also problematic.
Looking at the notifications on your talkpage, it appears that the two people responsible for the recent deletion discussions regarding you are Sitush and TheGracefulSlick, who are two of Wikipedia's most experienced editors, and I think it's unlikely that they both have nothing better to do than harass you for the sake of it. From Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of Eldor Alfred Pearson and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of Carla Losey there seems to be unanimous consensus thus far that you're creating inappropriate content. Despite the fact that its size and breadth of topics can make it feel like Wikipedia is an indiscriminate collection of information, we actually have fairly strict rules on what should and shouldn't be included. Missing person cases are much more common than most people realise (about 250,000 missing person reports are made each year in the UK alone). In most cases, unless there was something unusual about them that led to particularly widespread publicity or a change in the law, missing person cases are rarely going to be notable by Wikipedia's particular definition of the term even if they do receive publicity in the local press, any more than we'd host articles on individual road accidents or grocery-store robberies even if they made the news at the time unless there was something particular to separate them from the norm. Creating articles from scratch is probably the single hardest thing to do on Wikipedia and something with which even many professional academics struggle—don't take it personally if people are finding fault with material you've written. ‑ Iridescent 17:46, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Anything that has to do with persons is difficult to create good articles for. Inanimate natural objects such as hurricanes, species, volcanoes or the like are usually easier to make articles with that don't get proposed for deletion. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:16, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I'd concur with that. When it comes to biographies, unless they meet one of the specific criteria that confers automatic notability in Wikipedia terms (such as competing in the Olympics), then as a rough rule of thumb unless there's at least one chapter specifically about that person in an academically respectable book, you'll struggle to write a Wikipedia article on that person, since you won't be able to refute the "if this person is notable, why has nobody else written about them?" argument (and of course, you'll struggle to write a biography of someone if there isn't an existing biography you can use as a source). For missing persons it will be doubly problematic, as even though not all of them will actually be victims of crime, it's close enough that one could reasonably argue that Wikipedia's specific guidelines for the notability of victims of crime come into play (The victim, consistent with WP:BLP1E had a large role within a well-documented historic event. The historic significance is indicated by persistent coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources that devote significant attention to the individual's role.) which means you need to demonstrate continued coverage of the event. ‑ Iridescent 18:31, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Far from hounding or whatever other term is currently in vogue, both myself and TSG have been conscious of potential fallout from our nominations and comments. What was said there on my talk page has also been said in at least one of the AfDs where Davidgoodheart actually commented. - Sitush (talk) 19:18, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Assuming this is an accurate peek into the WMF's hivemind (a reasonable assumption, given its official source), "Wikihounding" is the current buzzword de nos jours. I have no doubt whatsoever that the reason "sockpuppeting", "vandalism" and "harassment" score so much more highly than "wikihounding" on all the "the WMF is doing enough" metrics is not in fact that there's a huge surge in it, but that the first three are recognizable and well-defined concepts while "Wikihounding" is a non-word which Durova made up a few years ago to describe a phenomenon whose existence doesn't have consensus, let alone that it's actually a serious problem as opposed to a catch-all term for "someone, somewhere did something I didn't like on more than one occasion". ‑ Iridescent 19:47, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Personally I think that "wikihounding" is redundant to "being a jerk", myself. What is and what is not "being a jerk" needs to be hammered out on a case by case basis - not all concepts can be neatly distilled into a mathematical formula. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:19, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Remain neutralDon't be a dickIgnore all rules
When I first joined Wikipedia, WP:Five pillars was an obscure personal essay, most of the WP:TLA alphabet soup didn't exist or was only used by a couple of insiders, and Wikipedia's most important policy page was the one being held up by Wikipe-tan to the right. Yes, it wasn't a golden age—there were some horrendous systemic problems back then and serious issues with bullying, POV-pushing, and Jimmy Wales and his cronies periodically turning up unbidden to pull their Enemy of the People shit against anyone they deemed not a True Believer—but I can't help but think that with the growth of the bureaucracy some part of Wikipedia's soul has been lost. ‑ Iridescent 20:43, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
No comment on this -- I already offered David advice. But, I'm wondering, does this look suspicious to anyone?TheGracefulSlick (talk) 21:19, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Bureaucracy grows as populations grow because too many people cannot directly communicate with each other. Also, to quote one of my colleagues on TV Tropes who follows the rules is right and who doesn't is wrong. And honestly, we all usually want to be right. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 21:57, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
TV Tropes has a different culture, in which people who don't follow the rules tend to be shown the door. The reality of Wikipedia isn't so much "who follows the rules is right and who doesn't is wrong", but "the way the insiders conduct themselves defines the rules for others to follow". If you want a forced but not inaccurate analogy, TV Tropes is an autocracy governed by statute law, but Wikipedia is a feudal society governed by common law. (That people from countries with no common-law tradition or culture of precedents—waves at Germany—tend to find en-wiki's culture very confusing is no coincidence.) ‑ Iridescent 22:03, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
I didn't know that about Germany - it is something that might explain a lot of things I've wondered about over the years. - Sitush (talk) 22:25, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Civil law traditions in Europe as of 2013.
  Napoleonic Code
  Austro-German law
  Mixed (local + Napoleonic/Austro-German)
  Scandinavian law
  Common law
  Mixed (common law + Roman law)
There's a nice little map at Civil law (legal system) indicating the boundaries in Europe (for the rest of the world, in general if it was ever under British administration it uses common law, otherwise it uses some variation of the Napoleonic Code). Basically, British and Scandinavian law is based on "this is how we've always done it", everything west of the Rhine is based on "this is how we did in in 1810", and everything east of the Rhine (except Romania and Albania) is based on "this is what the government of the day tells you you're allowed to do". ‑ Iridescent 22:39, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Articles are rapidly being deleted, so I must act now before most are gone, so information is needed

Hi, first I would like to say thanks for responding to my message, which is something you always do when other administrators often don't (at least not right away) and that the info that you provided was both funny and helpful, and when I wrote that Sessions' disappearance was mentioned in the same book as the dinosaurs extinction that you drew that picture and added all that extra info, which is something I don't think administrators would do, which I think is very impressive and also humorous. The fact that my articles and others are rapidly being deleted is causing me much grief and frustration and I don't see at all how this could be beneficial to anyone as Wikipedia's purpose is to provide people with information. EVERYONE I have asked who I know personally doesn't think that there was anything wrong with the sources (whether local or not) or articles which I wrote, and that I used and that (with the exception of three articles which I wrote that were terribly sourced, even I can admit that) my articles shouldn't have been deleted. I do know that if my articles keep getting deleted that I may not want to write anymore, which I believe would be a shame as I am a frequent and valuable contributor, and I am sure many editors may feel that same. The information I need from you is under what Wikipedia category do I file a complaint? Davidgoodheart 07:11, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

From your deleted contribution list (admin only) the only articles you've ever edited in any capacity which have subsequently been deleted were:
These aren't a case of one rogue admin unilaterally deciding they don't like your contributions; they're each the result of multiple people concluding that they don't comply with Wikipedia policies. If you really feel that the deletions were inappropriate, go to Wikipedia:Deletion review and follow the instructions there, but in my judgement the only one that would have any chance of being restored is David Guerrero.
As I've told you before, although Wikipedia's size can sometimes make it feel that it's a directory of everything, its scope is actually fairly tightly focussed; for something to be included the article needs to demonstrate that the topic in question is considered noteworthy. Missing person cases are very, very common—far more common than most people realise (in the US alone there are 2300 people reported missing each day)—and it's not practical nor desirable for us to list all of them, but only those that were particularly high-profile or had a lasting impact such as a change to the law. To take an analogy, we have articles on individual hurricanes, but we don't have an individual article on every storm or tornado that caused damage, even though such storms would almost always have received significant coverage in the local newspapers.
Wikipedia does welcome you, and I hope you do stay, but if there's a consensus that a particular type of article is inappropriate you need to consider that all the people saying it's inappropriate are likely doing so for a reason, and see if there's something else you could be writing about. ‑ Iridescent 07:39, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
For what it's worth I suspect they may also be worried about the other articles here. As I type this, only one of them is up for deletion. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:54, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
Ouch. Yes, I see the problem; I'll ask at WP:CRIMEPROJ to see if anyone there has any thoughts, since although these aren't technically crime articles it's probably where people with access to sources can be found. ‑ Iridescent 19:33, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the info, and I will see what I can do

Hi, what about this article Anna Christian Waters, why was this deleted? I will file a complaint and hopefully it will go good from there. Davidgoodheart (talk) 20:48, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Same problem as the previous articles - too routine both in terms of coverage and significance. Sources which aren‘t independent from the topic don‘t usually establish notability, plus. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 20:58, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Getting information about a Wikipedia fork or a private wiki

Hi, I need to get some information about making some Wikipedia forks or private wikis. I have read that they can they look very much like a Wikipedia article and I am considering making some as an alternative to the deletion of my articles. I need to know who can edit them and which one would I use if I wanted to make one like the List of people who disappeared mysteriously and would that be possible to do? Davidgoodheart (talk) 04:44, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

If you're talking about a true Wikipedia fork—that is, a snapshot of the entire content of Wikipedia which will then diverge from that point onwards—the instructions are at Wikipedia:FAQ/Forking. If you want a full Wikipedia copy (all revisions to all pages) it will take multiple terabytes of data so don't try it unless you have a professional RAID server and an internet connection that can handle it; if you just want the current version of all the articles and don't need any other namespace (talkpages, user pages etc) go to meta:Data dump torrents#English Wikipedia and select the current pages‑articles‑multistream.xml.bz2 file (usually the third one down); the compressed file takes up about 14gb and expands to about 60gb. The instructions to install and run MediaWiki (the software on which Wikipedia runs) are at mw:Manual:Installation guide.
I strongly advise against setting up a Wikipedia fork; unless you know what you're doing it's a very time consuming process since you'll also have to register your own website and arrange for servers (hosting a site with 6,930,947 subpages isn't something you can do with a computer in your basement and a phone line). If you just want to create a set of articles that wouldn't be considered appropriate on Wikipedia and want to retain the "anyone can edit" and wikitext formatting aspects of Wikipedia, there are numerous other non-WMF wiki hosting sites. Fandom (better known by its old name of Wikia) is probably the best known, and your best bet if you're unfamiliar with or unconfident about the technical aspects of wiki design as it's aimed at amateurs—their step-by-step instructions for creating a new wiki are here. If you don't like the look of Fandom/Wikia—or don't like the lack of control ("anyone can edit" applies there as well), there are numerous other wiki hosting services available.
If you're intending to do what I think you're planning to do, which is set up a national missing-persons database for the US, then you may want to question whether running it on MediaWiki is actually the best option. There are many advantages to the wiki model when there are large numbers of people involved, but if the articles are unlikely to change once written, then a more traditional website in which people submit the articles to you and you post them would almost certainly be easier to maintain, as there won't be a need to monitor existing pages for vandalism or inaccurate changes.
I'll also add one additional thought that occurs to me if you're planning on going it alone: you're writing about potentially extremely sensitive legal cases, and if you're operating the site yourself you will be personally liable for any potential libel or contempt of court if any actionable allegations are made or repeated on your site. Theoretically you're responsible for material you add to Wikipedia as well, but on Wikipedia it's less likely to be an issue, as there are other people reading your contributions who will hopefully repair or remove anything problematic, and if worst come to worst then provided you were acting in good faith WMF Legal will try to help you out regarding any legal actions. If you're both hosting the site and exercising significant editorial control over the content yourself, then §230 (the quirk of US law that prevents Wikipedia being sued for potentially libelous material it hosts) isn't going to help you. ‑ Iridescent 08:50, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi, is there a way I could let others edit my site, but I would be the main person in charge, so if there are people who are deleting my content because they don't find it notable I could block them? I would make sure not to write any liable, but is there some kind of protection which I could get just in case something did happen? Thank you for your info as well. Davidgoodheart (talk) 05:02, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

If you want personal control, then you don't want to be on Fandom/Wikia, as they operate on a similar "anyone can edit and all content is irrevocably released under a free license" principle to Wikipedia. Assuming you don't intend to run the servers yourself and set up your own MediaWiki installation, I already linked above to the WMF's central directory of MediaWiki hosting services, and you may want to see if any of them would suit your needs. One that isn't on that list but which you might also want to consider is MyWikiBiz (http://mywikibiz.com), which is largely moribund but might be interested in hosting something like this. (28bytes, can you poke Greg and ask if this is something MWB would be willing to host? Admins, if an IPv6 or obvious sock pops up to reply to this please turn a blind eye to it.)
I'll repeat the warning I gave above regarding potential legal consequences. If you're writing about live missing person investigations, you're writing about potentially extremely legally sensitive incidents, and it will be very easy for you to inadvertently either write about something that's sub judice, or make a libellous statement. To take an example from your recent edits—which normally I'd immediately redact and revdel, but will leave in situ for a few days as an illustration On reflection, I've removed the material making allegations against named individuals which doesn't have a reliable source, to get it out of Google—this recent creation of yours insinuates that named people were accessories to murder (sourced solely to a few questionable-looking personal websites—the two purported "prime suspects" aren't mentioned in the only two actual reliable sources in the sources section[2][3]), and also mentions without explanation someone's arrest on an unrelated matter over a decade after the event in question—in the two weeks since the page was created, over 1400 people have read these claims. On Wikipedia you're sheltered to some extent by the fact that the WMF is a wealthy global organization with a generally efficient legal department and a strong track record when it comes to refusing to disclose the personal information of its users to the authorities without good reason. If you're being hosted by a smaller provider, they're far more likely to throw you to the wolves if a subpoena arrives, since they won't have either the resources and contacts to face down a law enforcement agency in court, or the WMF's willingness to do so. ‑ Iridescent 09:14, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I see that you removed contentious material from the Kelly Dae Wilson article, which shows you are a good and smart administrator, which is exactly what you have warned me about being careful not to do twice before. I am thinking one way I could get around this is just not to mention people's names. It will be a while before I even attempt to do this, but rest assured if I do do this I will make sure I do this right. If I don't mention any names, would this mostly protect me? Davidgoodheart (talk) 02:39, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Davidgoodheart, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you need to consult legal counsel in your jurisdiction on these types of questions if you are serious about going forward with this, and with that, I disappear into the realm of being an Iri-talk-page-lukrer (which there should be a template for). TonyBallioni (talk) 02:43, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your information, I will do just that when I can. Davidgoodheart (talk) 02:51, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

I am thinking one way I could get around this is just not to mention people's names isn't going to work, since unless a missing person has been declared presumed dead by the appropriate authorities (a process that at minimum takes years, and often takes decades*) then as far as Wikipedia is concerned, every one of these articles is a biography of a living person and has to comply with Wikipedia's rules for writing about BLPs. Basically, everything you write needs to be sourced to a reliable source by Wikipedia's definition of the term, which does not include blogs and personal websites except in very limited circumstances. This rule applies everywhere on Wikipedia, but for biographies of living people it's rigorously enforced when it comes to anything potentially contentious, and when you're talking about potential abductions, murders, suicides or just adults who are exercising their legal right to move away and change their identity without disclosing their current whereabouts or status, every statement you make is going to be potentially contentious.
*The only exceptions are those cases where even though no body has been found, it's beyond reasonable doubt that the subject is deceased, such as somebody who was known to be on an aircraft that crashed at sea; otherwise unless you can find a source for the subject being declared dead in absentia or they were born more than 120 years ago, you need to work on the assumption that you're writing about a living person.
I concur with the advice you've been given by TonyBallioni above. While you're on Wikipedia and acting in good faith, you're sheltered to some degree from legal issues, as even though it's you and not the WMF who is responsible in law for anything you write on Wikipedia, people will be reluctant to challenge you while you're under the umbrella of a multinational organization with a professional legal department staffed by specialists in internet law. If you're planning on going it alone, you really need to consult legal counsel in your own jurisdiction about what you can and can't do. Different countries (and different jurisdictions within those countries) have different laws; Wikipedia itself is (intentionally) located in California which probably has the loosest laws on libel, privacy and free speech in the world, but you'd be subject to the laws of where you live (or potentially where the server is located, if you choose to have it hosted by someone else). If you publish something that isn't true, then in some jurisdictions you're looking at being wiped out financially by libel damages; if you publish something that the subject doesn't want published and that it's not in the public interest to publish, then in some jurisdictions you're looking at a civil or even criminal prosecution for breach of privacy; if you publish something that is deemed to have the potential to prejudice an ongoing criminal investigation (which in many countries can be as little as discussing an open case in a publicly visible forum) then in some jurisdictions you can wind up in prison. This isn't to say you shouldn't do it, but you really need professional legal advice before you set anything up; nothing you read on Wikipedia—including what I'm saying here—should be taken as necessarily accurate or as a substitute for consultation with a competent authority with specialised knowledge who can apply it to the particular circumstances of your case. ‑ Iridescent 08:57, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I think there is a place that I can go to close by to where I live to get some info, and I won't be doing this right away if I even do this. I would like to thank you and TonyBallioni for showing your concern and trying to protect me from potential danger, which shows that you both care about other people's well being. Since my last messages to you even more of my articles have been deleted, which I find upsetting. I have always just made my own articles, and improved other people's articles, and never tried to delete someone else's article, as what good would that do me? I just don't see why other editors can't just do the same. I don't see why they can't just worry about their own articles, and leave other people's articles alone, but not trying to delete them. Davidgoodheart (talk) 05:41, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Complain about rules by all means, try to get rules changed if you feel the current rules are inappropriate by all means, but don't complain about other people for making a good faith effort to ensure that the rules as they currently stand are followed, and don't engage in "if you don't stop enforcing the rules I'm leaving!" attempts at emotional blackmail. Those people who nominate articles for deletion are doing exactly what Wikipedia editors are supposed to do when they come across something that they feel may not comply with Wikipedia policy, but aren't totally sure; they're starting discussions so independent third parties can offer their opinions on whether an article ought to remain on Wikipedia; each of those debates is then closed in turn by an admin who reviews the discussion and the article in question before deciding whether there's consensus for deletion. No article on which you've made any contribution has ever been deleted by any means other than a full deletion debate (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Death of Aisling Symes, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of Carla Losey, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of Carlease Simms, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of David Guerrero, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of Eldor Alfred Pearson, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of Linne Dominelli, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vernon Jones (actor), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of Marlene Abigosis are the debates in question) and of the eight AFD debates in question, they have been closed as delete by six separate administrators (Ritchie333, Sandstein, Jo-Jo Eumerus, Randykitty, TonyBallioni, The Bushranger respectively) so it's not as if you've just got on the wrong side of a particular bad-apple admin—there's a broad consensus from virtually everyone who's commented on the matter except for yourself that unless a particular case is notable by Wikipedia's definition of the word, a missing person case falls under Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Subjects notable only for one event which is a core Wikipedia policy with both ethical and legal considerations, not something which can just be disregarded if you don't agree with it.

Don't try to shoot the messengers like you have at TheGracefulSlick and User:Dane's talkpages today; looking over the deletion debates, there's a clear consensus that what you're doing doesn't comply with Wikipedia policy (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disappearance of David Guerrero is the only one of the debates where there anyone other than you seriously disputing that the articles violate policy). In a case like this, the only thing you could do is convince the community to amend the wording of the policy (the place to do that would be Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons but please don't try since there will be no support for it), or convincing sufficient people that the coverage of the disappearance has sufficient significant, non-routine coverage that persists over a period of time that it satisfies Wikipedia:Notability (events)#Criminal acts; in this case the onus is on those wanting the article kept to demonstrate that there's significant ongoing coverage to the extent that the topic is notable in Wikipedia terms. By "significant, ongoing coverage" we mean such things as books published by academic publishers about the case, lengthy features in newspapers, television programmes dedicated to the topic, and so on; coverage in blogs and personal websites is not appropriate either as a source for Wikipedia articles, or for demonstrating notability.

We're not ganging up on you or singling you out; it seems that early in your Wikipedia career you were either given wrong advice or got the wrong impression when it comes to what's appropriate for Wikipedia, when we actually have quite strict rules about which topics get covered. To take an example, here are multiple non-trivial sources for an incident in which a police officer was bitten by a dog [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]; although it's undoubtedly sourceable, undoubtedly there has been sufficient written about it to create a Wikipedia article, and it undoubtedly satisfies the significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject test, any 2010 Wood Green dog attack article would be certain to be deleted as there's nothing to indicate that it had ongoing coverage. When it comes to missing person articles, where you're writing about very sensitive cases (if you were in an abusive relationship, fled your home and changed your identity to avoid the abuser tracking you down, would you want a complete stranger writing a biography of you on the fifth most viewed website in the world?) and potentially making criminal allegations against living people (which could potentially make us liable as well as yourself, if we were aware that you'd posted something potentially libellous and we didn't take action to remove it), other Wikipedia editors and admins are going to be particularly sure to try to ensure that whatever content is hosted here complies with Wikipedia policy, US law and basic ethics. ‑ Iridescent 13:09, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

  • Since I've been pinged: if you look at Iri's list of closers something that should be noted is that of the 6 admins noted, you basically have 6 different personalities and individuals with different backgrounds and views on the project, which should be taken as a sign that there's not any supervoting going on and that there really is a general consensus against keeping these articles.
    I have no real opinion here other than thinking you need to seek professional legal counsel where you live (and possibly admitted to the bar of California) if you want to make discussing missing persons cases online your hobby. While what you've been told about the umbrella of the WMF providing some protection is true (in that it's likely to scare some people off from a law suit), if you basically make it the main thing you do on Wikipedia or another site without seeking advice, sooner or later you will make a mistake and someone IRL will notice.
    In terms of notability: you need to present sourcing in the AfD and be able to explain why it meets our requirements for inclusion. Simply saying it does and not responding to a rebuttal of that by another participant isn't going to keep the article. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:01, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
To add to Tony's (correct) comments, you've unintentionally picked what's one of the most difficult topics that it's possible to write about. Biographies of living people are almost certainly the single most difficult topic area on which to write, owing to the legal and ethical considerations, but at least in the case of most biographies the bulk of the article will be easily-sourced and relatively uncontroversial material about the subject's career and achievements. It's the "personal life" section that causes issues, since it's inherently subjective and you need to strike a balance between how the subject chooses to present themselves, how those associated with the subject present their relationship with them, and how third parties view the subject. (Taylor Swift is my current go-to example of a well-structured biography of a controversial public figure—note that every sentence in the Public image section is attributed to its source to make it clear that Wikipedia is repeating other peoples' comments rather than speaking in its own voice, and to allow readers to instantly check whose opinions are being repeated and the context in which those statements were made.)

When it comes to missing persons and victims of crime, in almost all cases their lives up to that point weren't in the public eye, so what you're effectively doing is writing a "personal life" section based solely on the opinions of third parties without any input from the article subject when it comes to fact-checking or correcting bias, which is very, very difficult to do and is something with which even professional writers struggle. Take the case of Madeleine McCann as an example; despite probably being the most deeply researched missing person case since the Lindbergh baby, numerous professional journalists have got into serious trouble over misreporting of the facts. Had you repeated, even in the best of faith, some of the comments made in the Express or on Sky News, then you would not only be liable for significant damages, but would potentially be liable for punitive damages given how widely you'd be rebroadcasting libelous material (Wikipedia reaches a larger and broader audience than the Daily Express or Sky, and you don't have the professional libel attorneys a multinational media company retains) as well as potentially putting your job at risk if you're editing from a work computer or deemed to be acting in such a way as to bring your employer into disrepute. ‑ Iridescent 09:49, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi, you have now shed new light on the situation, which I did not see before, plus I have now met one person who seems to share you view about missing people and why some cases are not notable since missing persons cases are very common. I have now looked at internet articles and YouTube videos about how to protect myself from libel, and did call a lawyer about getting info, but the lawyer told me that would be pricey, so I am not going to see him for now. But there is still a fair amount of people who agree with me about how I feel, who also state the they would be very frustrated if their articles were deleted (when I photocopied and showed one of my closest friends the deletion notice which the editor who had put over the Tiffany Sessions article which I created she was appalled and said "Why does this person feel the need to delete your article, this is a person's life were talking about and what's the harm about writing about a missing person?! And boy it's great when people agree with you!) And when you said "Were not ganging up on you" you took the words right out of my mouth, since that is EXACTLY how I felt. If I do make private wiki articles about missing people one way I think I could get around this at least for now, is to keep it private and not post it on internet, and only grant people access to it, those who I want to let have access to it. I now see that the Shadows article which I made is up for deletion, and another article called "the great dinosaur mystery and the bible" (a book proven to contain false information, as the author truly had false information) has been deleted. I personally believe people are often too quick to judge what they want to have deleted.

I would like to ask you three things?

One: Can yo please supply me with the lists of deleted and merged articles (I have tried to find these lists, but couldn't)

Two: How who do I talk to about trying to change the rules about what is kept and deleted?

Three, what is IRL, which TonyBallioni said would notice if I made a mistake about writing false information about missing people?

Since these are issues, which I feel very strongly about, I will do whatever I can to alter the situation. Davidgoodheart (talk) 02:26, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

"IRL" means real life. Wikipedia is read by a lot of people, and if you e.g incorrectly say that someone is suspect of being the perpetrator of a crime they may sue you for defamation. Or if you incorrectly say that someone who disappeared has returned, the family will be distraught. What you write here can have consequences for other people, including bad ones.
I wouldn't bother trying to change the rules. The place would be WT:BLP and WT:BIO but as said earlier you almost certainly won't succeed.
This list shows the articles you have made, including later deleted ones.
Most people don't like having their articles deleted. That's why I did suggest that you write about Inanimate natural objects such as hurricanes, species, volcanoes or the like seeing as these get seldom deleted, I certainly can't recall any instance off the top of my head. Biographies and human stuff on the other hand is easy to get it wrong. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:34, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
I agree with everything Jo-Jo Eumerus said above.
  1. JJE has already answered with this tool.
  2. In addition to WT:BLP (to change the policy on biographies of living people) and WT:BIO (to change the rules on biographies in general), there's also Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) for more general proposed changes to policy. I strongly advise against trying to change policy. The policies on biographies of living people, notability and reliable independent sourcing are core Wikipedia policies which are the result of 15 years of discussion, and even a small change to any of them would have a significant impact to the whole of Wikipedia. (If Wikipedia's rules were relaxed to allow lower levels of sourcing on one topic, it would also mean relaxing those rules on every topic, resulting in a flood of articles from people writing about high-school athletes, prize-winning livestock at the county fair, minor local businesses, and all the other things which receive regular coverage in the news media but which aren't currently considered appropriate topics for Wikipedia.)
  3. IRL means "in real life"; a lot of people get so caught up in online life that they forget that websites in general, and Wikipedia in particular, have a direct impact on the real lives of real people. Remember that not only is Wikipedia either the fifth or sixth most popular website in the world (it ties for fifth place with Baido), but there are huge numbers of Wikipedia mirrors which scrape the content directly from this site and repackage it, and that other websites (most notably Google) rely on Wikipedia (and its sister project Wikidata) as the source of the information they provide. Thus, anything you say about a living person on this website will determine what anyone else looking up that person in the future will see, so mistakes are very sensitive legally. There's also an ethical consideration, particularly if you're writing about missing person cases. Many of these cases are people who've intentionally changed their identities to escape abusive relationships, and by publicising them on a high-profile website, you're both potentially distressing them and potentially putting them at risk; many more are unsolved criminal cases, and if you allege—or even suggest—that someone was involved in a crime when you don't have any evidence (as with the material I removed from Disappearance of Kelly Dae Wilson) you're potentially either in prison or wiped out financially by lawsuits, depending on which jurisdiction you live in. (I'm going to ping SMcCandlish to this conversation now, as he's better placed than me to advise on the legality of writing about sensitive topics online.)
I do agree entirely with JJE regarding choosing topics. Living people are the single most difficult topic to write about, and sensitive legal cases involving living people are the most complicated subset within that group. Plus, unless they fall into one of the few groups where notability is automatically assumed (politicians at the national level, top-level athletes, winners of certain world-famous awards, and so on) it's far harder to prove notability (in Wikipedia's terms) for living people, as one can rarely assess whether someone has had a lasting impact in their field until their career is over. Find a topic which doesn't currently have very good coverage on Wikipedia, but on which you can find at least two books in your local library, check out those two books, and rewrite them in your own words. (People assume that writing featured articles involves some kind of special skill, but all we're doing is rewriting existing books in our own words, and then fixing the formatting to ensure that what we've written complies with Wikipedia's style guidelines as much as is appropriate.) You'll find it much more satisfying than either constantly wondering if your contributions are going to be deleted (if you continue writing about missing persons cases on Wikipedia), or constantly worrying every time the doorbell rings as to whether this time it's a process server with a subpoena (if you set up your own website to write about missing persons cases). ‑ Iridescent 18:38, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
@Davidgoodheart: I have to agree with pretty much everything you've been advised above, by multiple long-standing Wikipedians. You're basically at the wrong site for this sort of material, and if you try to start one yourself without serious legal advice, you're very likely to end up in legal trouble almost immediately if you don't have a good attorney (and take that person's advice). I worked for about a decade with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading online privacy and free speech organization. We were inundated all the time with requests for legal help in libel (defamation) cases, and generally could do little to help anyone (and often had no incentive to do so – there is no free speech right to violate other people's privacy and spread false information about them online). The one thing I don't agree with in the advice you've bene given is "don't try to change policy". I would give the opposite advice: Do go try to change it (once – see WP:FORUMSHOP, and don't keep bringing it up again and again). The WP:SNOWBALL response you get, from Wikipedians of all sorts, with multiple rationales against what you want to do, will make it very clear to you that it's a misguided idea and why. To go full circle to your original post on this mega-thread, "I feel that people are often putting deletion tags on my articles for no good reason" is basically a conspiracy theory. It is not plausible that some evil cabal of a couple of people is completely undoing your missing-persons and related material here, for no good reason, just to stick it to you personally. The entire editorial community is objecting to this material, or it would not be deleted at WP:AFD, which is an open venue and not controlled by anyone in particular. By now, you've received more explanation on this page and in those deletion discussions than probably anyone in WP history about why something like this isn't appropriate here; please just accept this advice. If you're lying awake at night about missing persons, maybe volunteer to help, and/or donate to, a missing persons organization that already exists and has professional staff (including legal counsel). You aren't an organization and WP isn't that kind of organization.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  20:04, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Devon or Cornwall?

I invite all TPS on this one, apparently at Cream tea there is a bit of an issue over what is more popular. Devonshire or Cornish. As someone who google-fus with the best of them what do you think? I'm pretty sure that internationally Devonshire is used more, but within the UK there is not a big difference. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:21, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

I find it hard to (a) give a shit or (b) believe that anyone else gives a shit. Certainly in the US, I've never seen a "traditional English cream tea" served in any other way than "half-scone, layer of thick cream, dollop of jam or jelly on top", and plain common sense would appear to say likewise given that when eating anything else served on bread you put the fat (butter, oil, or in this case clotted cream) on the bread first and then the flavour on top of that. (Plus, as I understand it the dish has its origins in the fact that in the West Country cream was generally far cheaper than jam so people would "fatten up" their bread with cream rather than use pure jam as would be the case elsewhere in England and Wales, in which case "jam on top" would be obvious as the point is to mask the amount of cream and draw attention to the jam.) I must confess that in my personal opinion clotted cream comes a close third behind chicken tikka masala and parma violets when it comes to "traditional foods the English eat out a sense of patriotism despite being absolutely disgusting" (even Marmite isn't as bad, and at least jellied eels has had the decency to die out), so I'm probably not the best placed person to comment on this. ‑ Iridescent 16:45, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
I has a sad. Being a SE London (originally) cockney Jellied eels are a staple :( If you visit Greenwich there is a really good pie shop there that does them. Or used to. What is it about clotted cream you don't like though? Its just, really really thick cream? And chicken tikka masala! As long as you accept its not really very Indian, its a perfectly acceptable dish! -edit- Although I think you misunderstood my question, the argument this time is not over the difference between them (is cream or jam on top more popular) but over which term is more prominent and so should be listed first (Devonshire or Cornish tea). I am willing to bet that the majority of US don't understand the difference, but still use one or other of the terms for it. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:03, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
No, that's what I'm saying; IMO jam-on-top (e.g. Devon) is overwhelmingly the common form, and cream-on-top (Cornwall) is an arcane regional variant.
The claim that [the cream-on-top-of-jam] method is also commonly used elsewhere, notably in London raised a red flag with me, as I'm not sure I've ever seen a cream tea served cream-on-top in London; you'll no doubt be as shocked as I am to discover that the cited source says nothing of the kind. The idea that the term originated in 1964 does nothing but provide yet another reason we shouldn't consider the OED and ODNB reliable sources, since it took about three seconds for me to find earlier usages (For one half of the year Dartmoor lies wrapped in frost and mist in the solitude its aloof granite bulk deserves, during the other its tumbling river valleys are filled with cream-tea seekers and a solid mass on hot metal cars. in the Times in 1962 is my personal favourite piece of florid British overwriting), although the earliest appearance of the phrase in its current sense that I can find is from September 1956 so it does appear to be a piece of relatively recent marketing. ("Strawberry and cream tea" is a phrase used by Enid Blyton in the first Malory Towers book in 1946, but that's ambiguous whether it means "strawberryes and cream for tea" or "cream tea" in its modern sense.)
Chicken tikka masala
Clotted cream isn't just thick cream—it's a foul halfway-house between butter and yogurt. As for chicken tikka masala, do the English never realize that there's a reason their food is the laughing-stock of the world? (For the benefit of TPWs, CTM is the de facto national dish of England. If you imagine marinating lumps of chicken in a can of Campbells Cream of Tomato Soup overnight, pouring the whole mess onto a plate, and heating it, you'd fairly closely approximate both the taste and the texture. I have literally never seen it served in any other country, even in places that purport to serve authentic English cuisine, nor do I feel that the rest of the world is missing out on anything. ‑ Iridescent 17:37, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
I think you need to go for a compromise with the cream tea. But, yes, CTM can be quite hazardous. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:43, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
CTM is quite popular in the States currently. It's the Indian dish of choice for people who don't like Indian food/have never tried it before. For what it is worth, paneer masala is much better, IMO, though I would go with palak paneer any day. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:31, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Well since I am responsible for removing the claim that whipped cream is sometimes used (which ran a red flag right up my pole) I am shocked, shocked that the content does not reflect the source. Also after living in a shared house with 5 guys (3 had wives) from the Punjab region, I assure you it is possible to make a tasty chicken masala. It just takes effort. And no tomato soup. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:28, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Well, it's possible to make a tasty chicken curry, it's possible to make a tasty curry using masala sauce, and it's possible to combine the two. Whether the resulting product would have any resemblance to the "Chicken McNuggets floating in a mix of milk and tomato purée" which constitutes a British CTM—let alone to anything an actual Indian or Bengali would recognise as human food rather than cat food—not so much. (Many fine examples, few bad apples, ancient tradition, cultural fusion, not all flock wallpaper, etc etc etc, but IMO most British curry houses squarely fail the Kebab Shop Test—or for Americans, the Taco Bell Test—of "if you were sober, would you consider eating here?".) I'm no expert, but AFAIK the "pick your chosen protein from a list, pick your chosen spice from another list, and the cook just adds the two into a bowl of the base house sauce" approach, as well as the tikka masala–korma–balti–bhuna–rogan josh–madras–jalfrezi–vindaloo sliding scale, are both British inventions and unheard of outside the Anglosphere. I'd be willing to bet that for an actual Indian, visiting a British curry house would provoke much the same reaction with which Italians and Americans greet British pizzas. ‑ Iridescent 11:21, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
CTM has become a staple of supermarket ready meals which (most) folks tend to buy when they are not drunk. In fact, they sometimes come in "hot" versions and can often be less bland than the curry house versions. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:31, 21 November 2017 (UTC) Please note: that should be "unbattered Chicken McNuggets floating in a bright orange mix of milk and tomato purée"
Why the hell is Ready meal redirecting to TV dinner? Not only have I never heard the term "TV dinner" outside the US, but the traditional American TV dinner has multiple dishes in separate compartments in a single piece of packaging, while a European ready meal is a single pre-prepared dish and at most you might have a separate compartment for rice or beans, or a small sachet of sauce. This is like redirecting Stew to Soup. If there's going to be a single article, it should be at a neutral title like Pre-prepared food. (As someone who still remembers the aeroplane→​airplane→​aeroplane→​airplane→​aeroplane→​airplane→​aeroplane→​airplane→​aeroplane→​airplane→​aeroplane→​airplane→​aeroplane→​airplane→​Powered fixed-wing aircraft rename war, I decidedly do not volunteer to be the one to propose this particular Requested Move, which will be a surefire candidate for WP:LAME.) ‑ Iridescent 11:51, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
  • I was horrified to discover, on my return to the land of my ancestors, that Chicken Tikka Massala from Liverpool Indian takeaways consists of chunks of chicken drowning in bright pink sweet coconut mush. Not even anything vaguely tomato or orange near it - just chicken, and pink sweet coconut mush. And their version of Korma is exactly the same but without the pink. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:52, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Not as bad as it is in Palmers Green. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:00, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
  • When I first came to this country, one of the first foodstuffs I ever encountered was deep-fried battered frozen mini-pizzas. I also vividly remember the first time I was served sampha. ‑ Iridescent 12:54, 21 November 2017 (UTC) In keeping with Wikipedia's proud tradition, Sampha goes to the musician without so much as a hatnote, and our actual article on what's been a traditional food in eastern England for the last few millennia is at the far more memorable Salicornia europaea. ‑ Iridescent 13:00, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Lowest life expectancy in the UK?[1] Can't think why.
You're probably too busy (or whatever) to watch I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (UK series 17), but Ant or Dec has been reduced by the rain to watching Australian daytime tv, and claims Ready Steady Cook (Australian TV series) featured barbequed cheesecake. Johnbod (talk) 14:44, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
I'm sure the standard of cuisine on IAC...GMOOH will be much improved with the arrival of some juicey Scottish muffin. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:38, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
That Kezia Dugdale lead image surely is a contender for the coveted Sam Donaldson Award for "attractive person whose Wikipedia page makes them look like an experiment in human-ape hybridization gone wrong". (Honorable mentions must go to Clint Eastwood, Heather Hunter and The Raincoats, too.) ‑ Iridescent 00:19, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
Rather sadly, Greg Dyke, having easily led the field for several years, has now given up the contest. Johnbod (talk) 01:41, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
If we're going old versions of pages, I'll see your Greg Dyke and raise you Denis Irwin. ‑ Iridescent 07:48, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
How thoroughly depressing. It's like a one man advert for Failed Britain. The wheelie bins look more attractive. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:26, 22 November 2017 (UTC) p.s. is that a ginger Jock wig or a partial halo?
At least with some of the terrible photos on BLPs, there's the excuse that the ban on fair use means we need to go with what we can get, and a lot of these people don't like having their photos taken or don't like releasing their image into the public domain. The really odd thing about that Dugdale photo is that it's her official portrait. This implies that at some point, there was a conversation along the lines of "Kezia, which of these photos do you want to use?" "Do we have one where I look simultaneously hungover and constipated, preferably out of focus, and ideally one where it looks like one of my ears is three times the size of the other? Great, we'll go with that". (Maybe the Scottish Labour canteen only serves bananas, boiled eggs and cheese washed down with neat spirits—her successor also looks like he's straining to pass a Type 1.) ‑ Iridescent 09:34, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
  • That Sharpie (marker) article has included the (unsurprisingly, unsourced) claim that the way to remove Sharpie ink from the skin is with Tabasco sauce for over ten years. You know when people argue that WP:MEDRS should be extended to non-medical articles? This is what they mean; how many teenage girls experimenting with makeup have rubbed chili sauce into their own eyes because "the internet told me to" over that decade? ‑ Iridescent 10:03, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
  • "Please help, how do i get sharpie marker off skin!" "Tabasco sauce or any vinegar based product are also particularly effective at removing the ink from skin." (Mumsnet, quoting Wp, 2011) Fortunately the boy had just marked his legs with red and green marker. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 16:36, 23 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Hairspray, chili sauce and vinegar—did anyone at any point suggest "dab of either meths or acetone then scrub" or is my faith in basic common sense too high? ‑ Iridescent 09:52, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
  • I have neither meths nor acetone (wife doesn't use it) in the house. I do have 15 different hot sauces and at least 5 different vinegars however. Also a fair bit of stong alcohol but my vintage rum store is not being used to remove marker... Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:58, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
  • In my experience meths or white spirit (denatured alcohol and mineral spirit respectively, for American TPWs) is one of the most useful things to have around the house. They serve as everything from impromptu toilet cleaners to insecticide (a splash of meths on an insect colony will kill all the eggs, without the staining or the stink of bleach). ‑ Iridescent 18:19, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Meths also softens dried emulsion paint. I use lighter fuel (petrol or naptha) to remove price stickers from books. Available from your local "smoking requisites" emporium- probably sold for pipe washing. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 22:00, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Wife is an ecologist sadly. Insects are not to be killed, they are to be caught in tiny plastic jars and stored in the fridge until later dissection. Many a morning I have come down to make myself a cup of tea, and the fridge is half full of various insects. Only in death does duty end (talk) 01:22, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Conso International Corporation

Please, no... Did you really examine the sources I had given there? One of them was a whole section of a magazine piece on the company. And no, I had not been paid to write any of it. One of my personal hobbies is making tassels as gifts, and I kept coming across "Conso" as a kind of decorative trim. There was no Wikipedia article, so I looked into whether or not there should be one. It looked to me like there should be, and so I wrote it. And I referenced the piece. And then it was deleted under G11, "Promotional", following your lead.

Iridescent, I wrote it because the company appeared notable, and I included references that I thought demonstrated this. I have disclosed my paid edits, and this was not one of them. I have been told by other editors that they are looking forward to me being banned for paid editing. I am having some difficulty controlling my emotions over such things. I've been having more and more difficulty ever since my first fully-disclosed paid edit was deleted a few months ago. I have been editing for eight years, and have disclosed my very few paid edits, and the aftermath of that is spilling far beyond anything related to those edits. I wish... Oh, it doesn't matter what I wish for anymore. But I wish you could see me for what I am here. This was not a paid piece, and it had the right kinds of sources in it, it really did. I can't demonstrate that now because it has been deleted as promotional. Which it wasn't. But it was actually deleted because it was a paid edit. Which it wasn't. But you thought it should be deleted because it was not notable. Which I thought I had demonstrated it was. I am having a hard time keeping up with the all of it. It feels like I am being shunted down a series of corridors that are increasingly narrow and that end in a wall which I had taken specific steps to never encounter. Actually, it feels more like an increasingly narrow path with a steep drop on both sides that ends in a wall— and like there are crowds cheering to see if I trip. Like some kind of modern coliseum. In the end, my username gets killed/ banned for things I did not do. And it feels like there is nothing I can do to stop it anymore... I feel physically sick to my stomach, even. But even admitting that to you means someone else will claim I am behaving like a martyr. What if I really am feeling sick? (...If what I have said here is true, wouldn't you?). KDS4444 (talk) 00:45, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)--See this DRV thread.And, in the meanwhile KDS has been site-banned.Winged Blades Godric 16:25, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
Well, that went downhill fast… For the record, I personally don't feel it qualified for WP:G11 as it wasn't unambiguous spam, but given that it had zero chance of surviving an AfD debate, it would be bureaucracy-for-bureaucracy's sake to undelete it purely for the sake of immediately deleting it again with a different rationale. Per my comment in my {{prod}} nomination, the only thing stopping it being deleted under WP:A7 was my extending AGF to the limit when it comes to what constitutes a "credible claim of significance"—the notability argument rested on such things as As of 2012 they are the leading textile manufacturer of Union County, South Carolina (Union County has a population of less than 30,000) and they claimed to be the world leader in this area [decorative trimmings]. None of the alleged reliable sources—the company's self-penned entry in a business directory, a piece of PR fluff in a 1997 stock directory, a routine business announcement, a book on the murderer Susan Smith(!) and a single sentence in the appendix to an old Kogan Page self-help book come remotely close to being appropriate for Wikipedia. (For the benefit of curious TPWs, the article in question—in full—read Conso International Corporation, often referred to as simply Conso, is an international company specializing in the manufacture and distribution of decorative trims, tassels, and other soft furnishings. They began as a manufacturer of trimmings for hats, and acquired the Simplicity Pattern Company in 1998. As of 2012 they are the leading textile manufacturer of Union County, South Carolina; as of 2011, they claimed to be the world leader in this area.) ‑ Iridescent 19:59, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
I'd agree that that text would not qualify as G11 the way I used to apply it, but I am sure that I was much stricter than anyone else on G11. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:23, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
Agreed on not meeting G11 (and despite my probably being one of the more prone-to-delete-spam-regardless-of-notability AfD regulars, I actually have a very strict view on G11, probably to check the aforementioned tendency at AfD.) That being said, I've already IAR endorsed it at the DRV. Process for process' sake is not worth the effort in this case (if it ever is). TonyBallioni (talk) 20:26, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
  • There's theoretically an article to be written on the topic, but the article I prodded—see above for the full text and the full list of purported sources it used—was certainly not it. I'm aware of the "everything should be kept if there's the slightest chance it could ever be a viable article" school of thought (see this thread for a current rather unedifying debate regarding this point), but it doesn't mean I agree with it. In my opinion, if Wikipedia isn't going to degenerate into the Directory Of Everything Anyone Anywhere Heard Of there needs to be a line beneath which the WP:TNT treatment is applied, and we've long accepted "are there any actual reliable sources discussing this topic in detail?" as a de facto cutoff. ‑ Iridescent 13:28, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Yes, this was a confirmation of that position via the tendency of companies to eat each other. Turns out that the Wrights article was iffy on grounds of notability as well as referencing. If we wait long enough, they make it all moot—Conso changed its name to that of a familiar company it had engulfed, and by the time that article was written, had itself been engulfed at least once. Luckily I knew to check Bloomberg, having tried to rescue a few company articles. And I was using what you provided above, in truly stalkerish fashion, since of course I can no longer see deleted articles. But I'd give you a slight objection regarding the Simplicity name; that's an illustration of the extent to which I do agree that Wikipedia has bias against women. When I clicked on that source link my jaw dropped, and I was happy to see we had a Simplicity Pattern article, bad though it was. I can't save every article that gets AfD'd, and have nominated quite a few myself, but I'm glad I was snooping and saw that so we can cover teh later history of the pattern company. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:18, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure "bias against women" is really fair—it's not as if we don't delete thousands of biographies of men and articles on companies run by or serving primarily men every day. (Looking at the deletion logs, if anything Wikipedia is deleting a hugely disproportionate number of men compared to women, far more than the 20% female proportion you'd expect—an artefact of men being disproportionately likely to play lower-league sports, to form shitty bands in their parents' basement, and to be CEOs of self-promoting online startups.) The stronger systemic bias at play here, if there is one, is the tendency of the media to under-report the textile industry in comparison to other industries of comparable importance. (Sharecropping, sweatshops, dark satanic mills and starvation-wage piecework don't fit neatly into the traditional American Dream, New Jerusalem or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité narratives, except as something which the deserving poor escape from, the wealthy liberals reform, and the top-hatted villains exploit.) When it comes to sewing patterns, if you want to do anything in that area Butterick is probably a better one to work on as it looks like there's a genuinely interesting back-story there (and a nice shiny redlink at Butterick Building which could be turned blue very quickly). ‑ Iridescent 16:27, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Yes, I'm normally more concerned with other aspects of unconscious bias, but dressmaking and dolls are two areas regarding which I find myself in the camp regretting gender bias. I had a look at the Butterick Building and to do it will have to make a trip to the library to get the AIA Guide and the relevant volume of that massive decade by decade guide to New York buildings, assuming they haven't deaccessioned it yet. It has apparently now become half of One SoHo Square, which I am glad to see no one has written up yet. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:28, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
File:Екатеринбург Арена.jpg
Yekaterinburg Stadium

Deletion review for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tesla Semi

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tesla Semi. Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:34, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 November 25#Tesla Semi, for the benefit of curious TPWs. Since I can't recall ever having seen an AfD discussion where there was a clearer consensus to keep (by my count 18 keeps, 3 deletes and 1 redirect if you want the raw headcount), and the sole attempt at a policy-based argument from the delete supporters was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of policy (WP:CRYSTAL doesn't mean we can't host articles on notable proposals, even if they never actually take place, provided the proposal itself receives significant independent coverage in reliable sources), I think I can safely say which way this DRV is going to go. ‑ Iridescent 20:41, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
(adding) I have absolutely no idea what User:Iridescent was aware of one bad NAC on this discussion, and that disputed cases should be handled by an admin, rather than edit warring over non-admin closure is supposed to mean either, and nor am I "aware of one bad NAC on this discussion". ‑ Iridescent 20:48, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
So many people feel safe making predictions about the future lately. I should be asking for stock tips. Your spanking porn is creepy, by the way. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:49, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
That's nice. Go annoy someone else. ‑ Iridescent 20:52, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I commented on that at the DRV: I wasn’t aware you had been desysoped recently. Remind me to vote against whomever voted for that motion. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:52, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
Ya, not even a notification here? How unpromising. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 21:08, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
I'm sort of semi-desysopped. I try to work on the principle that admins should only do adminny things for a couple of years at a time and then go back to working on content and routine maintenance for a year, to avoid becoming too sucked into the talking-shop side of things and detached from the real concerns of normal editors. Consequently, I haven't been doing very much admin stuff recently (I've only performed about 1000 admin actions this year). I'll occasionally clear out the backlogs if CAT:EX, CAT:CSD, WP:AIV or WP:PERM is getting overwhelmed, but other than that the only time I generally fish my admin hat out is to close discussions where the parties are digging in their heels and it needs a closer who's willing and able to face down WP:BLUDGEON attempts and "do you know who I am?" posturing from whoever doesn't like the result.

Incidentally (and despite what Dennis appears to think) I'd never heard of the Tesla Semi before, given that I (a) have no interest in cars and (b) live in a country where Tesla has no presence at all (there are about 2000 in the entire country, and I'd be willing to bet they're almost all owned by collectors who never take them on the road, since leaving any car that poncey parked in public would have unfortunate consequences). If they do plan to export these things overseas they'll probably need to change the name; the Semi will be right up there with the Deliboy, the Laputa, the Light Dump, the MR2 and the Rural Nanny when it comes to "the marketing department really should have thought that through". ‑ Iridescent 10:07, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

  • Pending end of year sale info (probably most indepth in the Feb18 quarterly notes), UK registrations was up to 4k in the beginning of this year. As for how many are actually on the road, I have no clue, but I know for a fact [original research?] one is being as a taxi in London, that Robert Llewellyn drives one, and you can see 2 parked in the Exeter charger via Google's streetspy service. Seeing as the UK has 43 chargers built, I shan't be checking them all remotely for occupancy. L3X1 (distænt write) 15:49, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Pedantic comment: there's certainly not going to be any Teslas operating as London taxis. There are fairly famously only three vehicles on the road that meet the very specific requirements a vehicle needs to meet to be licenced as a London cab (the TX4 and its predecessors which are the stereotypical tourist image of a London cab, the less photogenic but more comfortable Vito London Taxi, and the rarely-seen hearse-like Metrocab), and nothing Tesla makes is going to meet some of the requirements like the ability to turn on the spot, the ability for a third party to immediately disable the engine from outside the vehicle, a minimum 130cm between floor and ceiling in the passenger cabin. On a quick Google search, the closest thing I can see in London are a couple of private chauffeurs services which offer Tesla cars as an option. ‑ Iridescent 15:34, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Is "cheated" really fair? I'd say the opposable rear wheels to allow it to spin on the spot is more a case of being inventive. Applying a bit of Original Research, tourists* will consistently choose TX4 cabs over others when there's a choice available, presumably because they look more like the popular idea of what a London taxi is supposed to look like. Likewise, they'll consistently choose cabs painted black rather than any other colour, presumably for the same reason. ‑ Iridescent 20:09, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
    *Tourists and people on expense accounts are the primary markets for London taxis—no sane local other than the super-rich would use their own money for London's extortionate taxis when there are so many cheaper and generally quicker alternatives available. Many visitors discover this fact too late, when they discover that their cab from the airport into town has cost them more than their flight itself thanks to the fact that cab meters charge by the minute and it can easily take two or three hours to fight through London traffic.

Maybe not?

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#General background suggests that your attribution of the 1.0 project to the WMF is wrong. I believe that the WMF barely existed at that point. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:46, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

No, assuming this post was Year Zero for the notion, the split from Bomis, collapse of Nupedia and creation of the WMF were already complete. (Technically Nupedia still existed but Jimmy just hadn't got around to flipping the off switch—it was completely moribund by then.) It would make sense that "print version of Wikipedia" only became a goal after the creation of the WMF, since back in the days when we were a bonus feature on a porn site the purpose of Wikipedia was to act as an incubator for Nupedia so the concept of "finished version of Wikipedia" didn't exist. If you really care about who said what and when Magnus Manske or Larry Sanger might remember (Jimmy tends to have a somewhat selective memory when it comes to history). ‑ Iridescent 08:41, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
At that point, the Foundation had technically existed for all of two months, and AFAICT the only thing it was actually doing was Ops work. A post by Jimmy doesn't constitute action by an organization.
I've found press releases from the Foundation that talk about separate organizations distributing CDs based on this work (example), but nothing else: no grants, no support, no substantive involvement. Wikimedia France was involved in one of the CD rounds, and several other organizations over time, but AFAICT not the Wikimedia Foundation itself. User:Walkerma doubtless knows more than I do, but I'm not seeing any direct involvement (and since the VPPR discussion has turned towards wholesale re-vamping of the 1.0 quality scale, he'll want to know about that discussion anyway). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Mister wiki case has been accepted

You were recently listed as a party to or recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct of Mister Wiki editors. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct of Mister Wiki editors/Evidence. Please add your evidence by December 15, 2017, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct of Mister Wiki editors/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Kostas20142 (talk) 21:34, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Quainton Road railway station

I think I can understand what happened with the formatting but how to avoid this happening again? I am not doing things too quickly with AWB, everything is being done at a steady pace but still these mistakes are happening. Pkbwcgs (talk) 21:45, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Is this one of these "General Fixes" that AWB automatically applies unless you shut it off? In that case, you may want to disable them. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:50, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You don't understand (a) why 1-mile 57 chain is incorrectly hyphenated, and (b) why inserting an obvious error with an edit summary of "typo fixed" is disruptive? I don't really know what to say here. If these mistakes are happening when you're using AWB, you're probably not reviewing your edits well enough before you click "save"; at a rough estimate around 2⁄3 of the "typo fixes" the default WP:AWB/T regex suggests are false positives or inappropriately trivial, so if your edits made/edits skipped is significantly higher than that you're almost certainly not using it correctly. @JJE no, this isn't a general fix; this is regex-assisted typo fixing, which is a very powerful tool when used correctly (check my recent contribution history…) but is very easy to screw up with if you're not 100% sure what you're doing as the false positive rate is so high. ‑ Iridescent 21:53, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Most edits are reviewed carefully and lots of them I skipped instead of letting them go through. Pkbwcgs (talk) 21:58, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
This is my first day of using AWB but slowly, I will learn things and there will be less mistakes than usual. Pkbwcgs (talk) 22:01, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Can you please check if this edit is fine. Pkbwcgs (talk) 22:09, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
I'd call it marginal at best; it may be correct to capitalise "Celsius", but the lower-case version is so commonplace it can't be considered a typo. Seriously, be careful—I get that you're new but you're making huge numbers of mistakes, and per the warning everyone ignores in the AWB instructions you'll be held responsible for edits you make with AWB just as if you made them manually. From your most recent 50 edits alone, I see [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [43] and [44], all of which are changing formatting to reflect personal and arbitrary style preferences and labelling it "typo fixing", as well as this one which actively introduced a typo and called it "typo fixing". ‑ Iridescent 22:11, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Those 20 edits that you shown are not typo fixes but it is automatically giving 'typo fixes ' as the edit summary. I hope they are OK as they don't look problematic at all. They are just correcting mistakes but in this one, I didn't know it had to be called metropolitain instead of metropolitan? Why is the case in that article? Pkbwcgs (talk) 22:19, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
(bangs head against wall) Not a single one of the links I give above is "correcting a mistake"—what mistake do you think you're "correcting" in (for instance) removing the hyphen in "management of the nationally-owned track and signals passed in 1994 to Railtrack"? And it is not "automatically giving 'typo fixes ' as the edit summary", it's giving "typo fixes" because that's the edit summary you've chosen to use. As for I didn't know it had to be called metropolitain instead of metropolitan? Why is the case in that article?, I don't know what to say if you really can't see the problem here. ‑ Iridescent 22:24, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
I have disabled regex editing and I am keeping an eye out for edits more this time. Secondly, in that phrase, there is not supposed to be a hyphen. Hyphens are used to join words up that combine with each other. Pkbwcgs (talk) 22:29, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Dear god, I give up; does someone else want to have a go at explaining that "management of the nationally-owned track and signals passed in 1994 to Railtrack" is grammatically correct? Pkbwcgs, I'm not going to remove the permission myself, but I will warn you yet again that what you're doing is putting yourself on the fast track not only to having the permission revoked, but potentially being blocked for disruption. You may want to familiarise yourself with what happened to the developer of AWB just a few weeks ago; AWB is not well-loved at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. ‑ Iridescent 22:36, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
@Pkbwcgs: You should have a read of Compound modifier - "nationally-owned" is one of those. (Maybe that will help) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 22:42, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
What Boing said. "Join words that combine with each other" is partially correct at best but woefully unhelpful. Pkbwcgs, from what I read here I don't think you shouldn't be correcting folks' grammar--never mind, Iridescent! that hyphenation isn't a matter of grammar but of style. Hey, I teach that class again in the fall. Wanna sign up? I'll give you an easy A! As long as you do the homework! Drmies (talk) 03:32, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
Er, that would be why I described it as changing formatting to reflect personal and arbitrary style preferences above? @Pkbwcgs, as a rough rule of thumb you should never be doing WP:CHECKWIKI fixes unless you can satisfy both of "the edit which introduces the checkwiki fix also includes a substantive edit" and "the Checkwiki fix is unambiguously an improvement". As these conditions are rarely met when it comes to the proposed changes AWB suggests, it's almost always good practice to keep genfixes turned off completely when using AWB; I know I've said it already but it bears repeating that many of the entries in the Genfixes list do not have community consensus and many more violate WP:COSMETICBOT if not done in conjunction with a substantive change. Likewise, you need to actually read the proposed "typo fixes" AWB is suggesting and not blindly assume that they're right, since you're clearly not actually previewing—edits like this, this, this and this—all from a dip-sample of your edits in the last day—are actively introducing errors (in the case of changing Paul Ganster's name to "Paul Gangster", people have been indefblocked for less). ‑ Iridescent 08:15, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
@Drmies: @Boing! said Zebedee: Thank you for all your help! From now onwards, I will skip the edits which don't look very constructive or useful (e.g. Removing an hyphen when it is not required or changing a person's name as a typo). Pkbwcgs (talk) 09:12, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
As a general rule when using AWB, unless you're 100% certain that whatever edit you're making is an undoubted improvement and would be willing and able to justify that edit were it challenged (e.g., "if I were reading this page, is this a change I'd choose to make manually?"), you shouldn't be making it. On looking more closely into this you've already previously received an unambiguous warning about misusing scripts to impose your personal style preferences, so you're coming close to the limit of exhausting AGF here. I reiterate my comment above that you should almost certainly switch general fixes off in AWB if you're going to continue to use it, since unless you're familiar enough both with the quirks of wikitext and with en-wiki custom and practice regarding formatting, cosmetic edits and when you should and shouldn't apply the Manual of Style, they almost certainly do more harm than good; AWB is a tool intended for very specific purposes such as mass replacement and selective reformatting, not for general sweeps. ‑ Iridescent 09:22, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
Every edit is being checked very carefully and I am skipping any edit which doesn't help Wikipedia at all. Only a very few edits are being accepted and I am being especially careful with articles about a person and articles related to languages because this is where mistakes can happen. Pkbwcgs (talk) 09:37, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
Quick query... I made this edit but then I reverted it myself because I didn't think it was helpful. Do you think I did the right thing by reverting it or not? Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:05, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
If you don't know whether "a approximately" or "an approximately" is correct, then your English is too poor for you to be doing any changes of this kind. So please stop your AWB spelling/grammar/style changes altogether. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:46, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
@Boing! said Zebedee: I do know the difference and I know that an approximately is correct but I am a little bit scared of making these edits and in the sentence, I don't think it makes sense. My grammar is almost perfect but I don't want to make such mistakes again which is why I am checking with other editors. I have corrected a lot of spelling mistakes if you look at my AWB contributions today. Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:50, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
No, your grammar is nowhere near "almost perfect", as the above examples demonstrate clearly. I'll repeat what Iridescent said above, that you should only make changes where you are 100% certain that you are right. And beware that you are getting close to your last chance here and are likely to lose AWB access if you do not follow that simple instruction. I also strongly support the suggestion that you switch off AWB general fixes. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:56, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
@Boing! said Zebedee: I am 100% certain that the changes I made today are absolutely right. If they don't look right, I will skip and I only made the changes which are right. Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:59, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Revisions to Cape Spear

I'm concerned by your repeated revisions that seem to be based on erroneous and uninformed personal beliefs rather than on facts. One such example is this revision of an edit I made on an admittedly contested portion of Cape Spear:

(cur | prev) 18:08, 7 September 2016‎ Iridescent (talk | contribs)‎ . . (6,265 bytes) (-605)‎ . . (Undid revision 738227804 by Jghampton (talk) Enough.) (undo | thank)
(cur | prev) 18:00, 7 September 2016‎ Jghampton (talk | contribs)‎ . . (6,870 bytes) (+605)‎ . . (Undid revision 734652444 editor claimed it was not notable because the artist is "self-proclaimed" when they are actually one of Canada's most notable contemporary artists) (undo)
(cur | prev) 20:15, 15 August 2016‎ Iridescent (talk | contribs)‎ . . (6,265 bytes) (-605)‎ . . (→‎In popular culture: How is this notable? If we documented every self-proclaimed performance artist vandalizing Wikipedia, the project would triple in size) (undo | thank)


You claim that Duane Linklater lakes notability (calling him a "self-proclaimed performance artist") when he is one of the most well known contemporary artists in Canada. A simple Google search will demonstrate this with tens of thousands of pages referencing him and his art. As I have earned a Masters in Visual Studies specializing in Contemporary Canadian Art, you may appreciate that I am skeptical when someone who seems completely and willfully ignorant about contemporary artists, takes it upon themselves to overrule me and submit me to the administrators notice board. (I should say, however, that in the time that has passed since this edit, I've gotten too close to the subject matter so I won't be making any future edits to Cape Spear).


Next: Your most recent reversion of my edit on Talk:Cape Spear falsely claims that I edited another person's comment, when I simply changed a heading.


(cur | prev) 19:48, 6 November 2017‎ Iridescent (talk | contribs)‎ . . (25,323 bytes) (+13)‎ . . (Undid revision 809039561 by Jghampton (talk) Don't edit other peoples' comments) (undo | thank)


If you did in fact believe a heading is attributable to one editor I refer you to Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Editing_others.27_comments which states the following:

Section headings: Because threads are shared by multiple editors (regardless how many have posted so far), no one, including the original poster, "owns" a talk page discussion or its heading. It is generally acceptable to change headings when a better heading is appropriate, e.g., one more descriptive of the content of the discussion or the issue discussed, less one-sided, more appropriate for accessibility reasons, etc. To avoid disputes, it is best to discuss a heading change with the editor who started the thread, if possible, when a change is likely to be controversial. It can also sometimes be appropriate to merge entire sections under one heading (often preserving the later one as a subheading) if their discussions are redundant. In order to ensure links to the previous section heading (including automatically generated links in watchlists and histories) continue to work, one should use one of the following templates to anchor the old title:
Thread retitled from "{{{1}}}"., {{{1}}}, . Link (or template) markup may be removed from section headings, but the link should be recreated at the first use of the term, or in a hatnote.

If you believe that the previous heading was more appropriate I refer you to: New topics and headings on talk pages to see that section headings should be neutral and should reflect the discussion included.

Jghampton (talk) 03:43, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Begging pardon, but general geographical articles do not by default include any passing trip by any notable person unless independent sources of some prominence feel the need to point it out. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:47, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Explanation to TPWs of what this wall of text is about

For bemused TPWs, the OP is John Hampton, who along with Linklater has been engaged in a long-term "art project" to vandalize the Cape Spear article and document all the editors who revert the changes and all the complaints received. (Check the history; prior to Floquenbeam bringing their game to a halt by protecting the article, there were literally years of disruption. Those with admin buttons may also find User:Jghampton/Books/CapeSpear of interest.) Needless to say, I'm fairly confident that none of the actual most well known contemporary artists in Canada feel the need to constantly spam Wikipedia to promote themselves.

Since Linklater and Hampton are explicitly trying to provoke reactions which they can then document in their project, this is trolling in the purest sense of the word, and I have no intention of engaging with them; if they want to complain about the admin conspiracy to stop their self-promotion, I'm sure they're both capable of locating whichever of ANI or Wikipediocracy they prefer. I will note in passing that the Persistent article vandalism heading which is being objected to is completely neutral and accurate, given that the section in question relates to persistent vandalism to an article. ‑ Iridescent 17:06, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Magna Carta (An Embroidery), Cornelia Parker, 2015
  • I'd put the person who took it on themselves to recreate Wikipedia's entire Magna Carta article in needlework form as the most impressive waste of time by an artist on Wikipedia, although she at least had the decency to waste her own time rather than ours. ‑ Iridescent 18:13, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
    In fact, according to this she just planned it, and the words were stitched by convicts. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when the Governor broke that piece of news to the inmates. ‑ Iridescent 19:52, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Surely we should have an article on this. EEng 02:26, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
That is one of the most awesome things I've ever seen. Call me a ******* *** (or *****), but I'm tearing up. Drmies (talk) 04:35, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Leave it to someone like you to tear up a copy of the Magna Carta. I'm just glad they didn't grab a version of the article with dispute templates at the top. Imagine a needlepoint project headed This article may require cleanup... EEng 04:56, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
@EEng, we do have an article on this. Linked in the navbox on that article I see The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs, which surely holds the current "biggest waste of time" record. If Print Wikipedia ever get the funding to complete their printout, they'll soar into the lead. ‑ Iridescent 09:00, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Actually, there's indeed something cool about being able to see and touch and flip through a body of changes like that and so on and so forth. But all that talk about meditations on historiography and stuff is just bullshit. EEng 09:04, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
A print book is a singularly poor way to go about things if the purpose is to allow viewers to visualize the nature of change over time. If one really wants to represent change in visual form, the way to go about it would either be to print every revision on clear acetate and stack the printouts in a solid block, or photograph each revision and string them together into a film loop. ‑ Iridescent 09:14, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Note the article seems to have been unprotected for a month now. I wonder why he complains now about year-old edits. Johnbod (talk) 18:19, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
I have no idea—he's been active (intermittently) ever since, so it's not like he's just come back to Wikipedia after a long absence and discovered the year-old "knock this shit off or get blocked" warning on his talkpage. ‑ Iridescent 18:22, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

To correct the facts here: Despite Iridescent's claims, I've only made a couple of edit's to Cape Spear, one of which was attempting to make Duane Linklater's edits assimilate to Wikipedia standards. I had never met Duane at that point, but was just going about my work as a regular editor. Both of the links User:Iridescent provided are from the same piece I made by printing out every iteration of the Wikipedia entry for Cape Spear, which I exhibited alongside other methods for documenting the site. The conspiracy theories that Duane isn't a real person, or that I'm Duane, or that I've been involved in year long project's to deface this page, or that Floquenbeam put an end to the edits: Duane's edits stopped after I made the intervention on the page to try to find space for it. I tried to find a middle ground for Duane's critique on colonial forms of knowledge by making it conform to the standards set by the community, but instead I have just played an appeasing role that ended up erasing his voice.

The reason I posted on your page User:Iridescent, wasn't to bring up all those issues that you are addressing here, but it was because of your November 6th claim that editing the heading on a talk page is editing "other peoples' comments." I came because I was concerned about a prominent editor who seems to have a pattern of contravening wiki etiquette. Jghampton (talk) 22:59, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

ANI Experiences survey

The Wikimedia Foundation Community health initiative (led by the Safety and Support and Anti-Harassment Tools team) is conducting a survey for en.wikipedia contributors on their experience and satisfaction level with the Administrator’s Noticeboard/Incidents. This survey will be integral to gathering information about how this noticeboard works - which problems it deals with well, and which problems it struggles with.

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Thank you on behalf of the Support & Safety and Anti-Harassment Tools Teams, Patrick Earley (WMF) talk 18:24, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Good god, you need to run a survey to come up with "ANI is dysfunctional and unpleasant but nobody's come up with a workable alternative"? My amazing psychic powers predict that the result will be "whatever the Safety and Support and Anti-Harassment Tools team happens to be working on is by happy coincidence exactly what the public want", in exactly the same way that in the past the community have wanted Flow, VisualEditor, Liquid Threads, MediaViewer, Vector and Winter. I get why you're doing this and kudos to the WMF for at least asking rather than imposing, but "the people who regularly comment at ANI" are pretty much the last people whose opinions you should be asking. ‑ Iridescent 19:35, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Not sure that most people who have signed up so far are ANI regulars. I'll see... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:39, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
OK. Seems like a fair amount (most?) aren't high up here. Rank 310 with 31 edits for me, is that high or low... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:46, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
XTools can't parse ANI because the million-or-so revisions in the history overwhelms it—you have 61 edits not 31 for instance, I have 832 edits not 172, and note that Baseball Bugs (who has a staggering 12,808 edits to ANI) is shown as only having 254, while other regulars like Eric Corbett (257 edits as Eric, 855 edits as Malleus) aren't listed at all. Looking at the signup sheet it appears to be fairly overwhelmingly the drama-board hardcore—which is entirely unsurprising, since they're the people most likely to have an opinion on the matter. (If I were running this, I'd get on to some of the less crazy members of Wikipediocracy and ask them to suggest people who've left Wikipedia claiming harassment. Yes, some of the resulting replies will be from semi-coherent lunatics, but some of them will have legitimate complaints or at least what they perceive as legitimate complaints, from the other side of the fence. Just surveying the admins and the people who hang out on the drama boards about whether Wikipedia has a problem and if so how to solve it, is like concluding that a city has no problem with police brutality or discrimination and the way to solve rising crime rates is to give the cops machine-guns, based on a survey of the local cops and the neighbourhood watch.) ‑ Iridescent 20:07, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
I probably got banned from posting at ANI. Don't remember, it's difficult to keep track of all the authoritarian bullshit around here, usually dressed up as "preventing disruption". Eric Corbett 18:08, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Assuming this page is up to date—and I can't imagine Sandstein et al wouldn't be keen to add to your public list of sins—the only pages you're specifically banned from are the Gender Gap pages, Lightbreather's talk page, and "any threaded discussions relating to RFA". (I imagine it would be hard to post there without shouting at, swearing at, insulting and/or belittling other editors given the nature of some of its denizens, so you're probably better off out of it.) ‑ Iridescent 18:15, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
(adding) Plus, they specifically say at the top of that signup sheet that they're only notifying people with recent posts to ANI, so by definition they're canvassing the drama-board in-crowd. ‑ Iridescent 20:20, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
  • i signed up just to see what they are asking. I have become almost completely distrustful of the WMF and their "interventions". The survey was created to generate data and has many "on a scale of one to five" questions, and asks idiotic questions like -- how effective is ANI for addressing sockpuppeting. Jytdog (talk) 04:20, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm certain the WMF mean well, but in recent years they've developed an institutional culture of assuming that "what the readers want", "what the editors want" and "what the tiny group of people who dominate Phabricator want" are all the same thing, and thus as a consequence the devs are freshly astonished each time when they're not greeted with bouquets for solving what the Phabricator and WP:VPT echo-chambers assured them was an issue. They also—for understandable reasons, given that we're talking about a bunch of programmers—have historically had a tendency to seek technological fixes for social problems. If they're going to start canvassing reader and editor opinion more widely before they do things, I have no issue at all with that—my problem here is that by targeting the admins for the survey rather than either the victims of perceived harassment or the alleged harassers, they're effectively pre-selecting for an answer of "there's no smoke without fire, and admins need more powers". ‑ Iridescent 08:55, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
    I did notice the sockpuppetry question as well. I think the issue might be that not all WMF employees are deeply familiar with every aspect of every Wikimedia project.~FWIW, I did say on the survey that simple conflicts (which are most of the things that are brought to the noticeboard) are well handled at ANI; it's the complex stuff when it fails. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:22, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
    "Not all WMF employees are deeply familiar…" doesn't apply in this case; this survey's being run by SPoore (WMF), aka former arbitrator and FDC member FloNight who is probably second behind NYB when it comes to institutional memory of en-wikipedia's dispute resolution processes and how they've evolved over time. IMO the main issue—which the WMF isn't really addressing—isn't whether Wikipedia deals well with legitimate harassment cases, but that the "everyone say their piece" model doesn't handle edge-cases where it's not clear where "editor A is monitoring editor B's actions", "editor A thinks they're just making robust-but-fair commentary but editor B sees it as inappropriate" and "standard vernacular English in culture A is considered inappropriate in culture B but complaining about it could also be seen as inappropriate as it's implying that culture B is more important than culture A" blurs over the line into perceived harassment. ‑ Iridescent 10:41, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
    Ya know, I was trying to find out how the questions were put together and I can't find it. Is it on some mailing list or other... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:53, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
    I can't see it listed anywhere (it's probably buried on Meta somewhere), but Wikipedia talk:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia would be the place to ask. It looks like it's ultimately being driven from this page on Meta. ‑ Iridescent 10:59, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
  • The "anti-harassment" team is doing things that go well beyond addressing harassment and feel perfectly fine doing so. See here where i raised this and was told The short answer is that the Anti-Harassment Tools team is part of a broad initiative to create a more welcoming environment on Wikimedia Foundation wikis.. I guess it is called the "Community health initiative." To put that "health" in a medical framework, the technological solutions they are working toward are wellness-oriented as opposed to targeted at preventing or treating a disease. "Wellness" is of course mostly alt-med la la land. When Silicon Valley meets health, the outcome is often bad. Jytdog (talk) 16:26, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
    Right, so the solution to "we can't agree on a definition of 'harassment'" is to redefine 'harassment' as "any time someone, somewhere, is doing something that someone else doesn't like". I know it's pissing into the wind to complain about it, but at some point the WMF penchant for closing their collective eyes and pretending the train is moving rather than making any effort to fix the engine will come back to bite them—I certainly haven't forgotten Short Descriptions. (For those following along who aren't aware, the WMF response to the consensus to remove the often-misleading Wikidata-generated "short descriptions" shown to readers in mobile view was to leave the descriptions in place, and to redefine "mobile" to exclude iOS and Android.) ‑ Iridescent 16:41, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

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Open the door

... is more or less the translation of Macht hoch die Tür. Thank you. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:46, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Sorry if I'm being dense, but am I missing something obvious here? To the best of my knowledge I haven't recently had any involvement with Macht hoch die Tür, Bach, doors or yourself. ‑ Iridescent 16:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC) Although I imagine Martinevans123 will be along shortly to add a link to Open the Door, Richard.
I wouldn't count on it. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:08, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
I didn't want to get too specific about an instance where you tried to open a door, the first edit-war over a "help, not-that-word-again" that I encountered in 2017. I thought that your approach was reasonable and promising, and simply felt like saying "thank you" by more than two thank-you clicks. Now we better really forget it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:04, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
"One door closes, and another door opens. I had a Vauxhall Astra that did that.." - Alexei Sayle. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:09, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Ah yes, I know the incident you mean. I agree that particular door is very much best left closed. ‑ Iridescent 20:09, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Charles Hay Cameron

Would you or any of your TPWs be able to help with the year of death for Charles Hay Cameron? The article currently says 1880. Some sources say 1880 (e.g. both the original DNB and the current ODNB articles), some say 1881. I found this source that gives 1881 and says the tombstone says 1880. It also says both he and his wife (Julia Margaret Cameron) had "lengthy obituaries published in The Times", but have only been able to find the obituary for Julia Margaret Cameron (which was about 5 weeks after her death in Ceylon). He died in May 1880 or 1881, but I have drawn a complete blank on finding the obituary that this source says was published in The Times. I have no reason to doubt it exists, but would you have any ideas how to track it down? (I am guessing the keyword searching relies heavily on the article title being OCR'd correctly, and if this fails and the title was 'Ceylon jurist dies' or something, and his name only appears in the main text of the obituary, then the OCR keyword may be mis-spelled - it doesn't help that there was a medical doctor called Charles Cameron writing frequently for The Times in the same period). Carcharoth (talk) 23:15, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I won't be able to for a week or so as I'll be travelling for the next few days and the British Library Newspaper archive is hard enough to navigate on a full-size screen, let alone a laptop, but if nobody else has piped up by the time I get back I'll take a look. It occurs to me that if he died in Ceylon and was so closely associated with India, the reference to Times obituaries may have meant the Times of India so you might want to search around there. (Even if that's not what's meant, it would probably be worth checking as they'd presumably have felt him worth documenting.)
If you don't mind consorting with the enemy, you might want to fish Poetlister out of wherever he's currently skulking. While there were certain unpleasantnesses in his history, he was usually very good at winkling out information about obscure 19th-century figures, and if he's telling you where to find information rather than editing Wikipedia directly than you're not breaching anything. ‑ Iridescent 20:19, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
(adding) His gravestone says he died in 1880, for what that's worth. ‑ Iridescent 20:24, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I would have posted earlier but for being caught by an excessively long and unnecessary broad range block (but hey, what is the problem in blocking thousands of potential editors for six months, due to the actions of probably one person on a couple of articles a week or two ago. They have probably gone away, or switched to an alternative IP like me. Any protest is dismissed on bureaucratic procedural grounds, or with the suggestion of registering for an account. Suspect I will be blocked for evasion now. Ha!)

Anyway, I've not found an obituary, but there is a death notice for Charles Hay Cameron in The Times on 16 June 1880, Issue 29909, page 1, bottom of column 1. Located through him being a former member of the Supreme Council in Calcutta, and the narrow date range. But in any event, the approach surely is to report what the sources say, with attribution, noting where they disagree unless it is clear that something is wrong (and even it may be worth noting the "alternative fact" to avoid someone "correcting" it later). I wonder why some sources insist he died in 1881. Are the death notice and gravestone and DNB and other sources all in error...? But where is the evidence for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.75.148.139 (talk • contribs)

Heh. Thanks. Searching within the years 1880 and 1880 for 'supreme council calcutta' brings up one hit: that page you referred me to. That death notice seems to settle it. 1880 it is. No idea why other sources seemed to think it was 1881. Carcharoth (talk) 14:20, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks - if he was that much of a big shot and fired in Ceylon, the India Office should have definitive records of his death if you can be bothered to wade through documents. At a wild guess the 1881 date probably stems from reports of his death taking a while to get back home if he died in rural Ceylon, but it's be inclined to assume that whoever carved his tombstone knew what year it was. (Did someone really rangeblock EE? Name and shame; someone probably needs a reminder of the "you're an admin, not a god" Quiet Words of Advice.) ‑ Iridescent 14:24, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes, but a death notice was published in The Times in London in June 1880, within a few weeks of his death!
Far be it from me to cast aspersions on the fine work the members of our diligent admininstrative corps undertake all day for no reward, but as you asked, clearly strong measures were needed to deal with the vicious mass assault on encyclopaedic integrity at articles like Cryolite and Haltwhistle. (Some admins spend so long in the trenches, dealing with the firehose of crud, that they seem to lose perspective. Yes, other bits of EE blocked for 6 months.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.75.148.139 (talk) 14:54, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Without knowing the full context I'm not going to condemn whoever it was - if there was a flood of disruption coming from an IP-hopper there may have been no alternative but to rangeblock, and if the admin wasn't familiar with British ISPs they likely didn't realise just how huge EE is and that a rangeblock on it is akin to blocking a medium-sized country. (WP:BEANS and all that but all one would need to do is keep flipping your phone in and out of flight mode until it connects via whichever of former Orange, former T-Mobile or dedicated EE network isn't blocked, since the three are on completely different IP ranges and even the most zealous Defender of the Wiki might baulk at rangeblocking Western Europe.)
I don't know the full context either, but it is f*ing annoying. Here is a link to the block. [45] (But I see sense has finally prevailed in the last few minutes.)
Looking at the admin in question's talk page, they're in Cincinnati; I suspect they just don't realise how huge the EE empire is and how much collateral damage a block on it would cause. Not wanting to state the obvious, but there are those who would say that if it's inconveniencing you from editing from an IP, that's an indication that the system is working. ‑ Iridescent 17:43, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
Notable people are less susceptible to errors, but errors in death certificates and tombstones are surprisingly common: see here. Carcharoth (talk) 14:34, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

One final point, before moving on (too much time spent on this already!): I thought the earliest published reference to the 1881 death year was in 2003, with the publication of the Getty Museum work Julia Margaret Cameron: A Critical Biography (2003) by a Colin Ford (apparently the 'founding head of the National Museum of Photography'), but there is a publication from 2000 that may be the origin of this claim: "8 May 1881 Charles Hay Cameron dies at Nuwara Eliya. He is buried beside his wife at Bogawanthalawa. The tombstone is incorrectly engraved as 1880." This was presumably in the era before people could locate death notices in The Times digital archives. That quote is from Images of British Ceylon: nineteenth century photography of Sri Lanka (2000), authored by Ismeth Raheem (see here) and Percy Colin-Thomé (see here). The latter died in 2001, but it would be possible to enquire of Ismeth Raheem and Colin Ford where they got the 1881 year from. Carcharoth (talk) 14:57, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Actually, it is blindingly obvious that the death year was 1880. There are obituaries in other publications (should have searched there earlier) that confirm this. One appeared in The Academy on 26 June 1880. Carcharoth (talk) 15:07, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
The National Media Museum (which is the institution in question) is IMO an embarrassment of an institution which exists purely because successive governments use it as a conduit for pork-barrel subsidies to Yorkshire, and all the real action when it comes to the history of photography is at the V&A and UAL PARC. However, it is an institution of international significance, Colin Ford was its curator, and given that he's also vice-president of the Julia Margaret Cameron Trust he's such a reliable source, under normal circumstances I'd consider him so impeccable that if he disagrees with the gravestone, I'd say that the gravestone was wrong. This is not normal circumstances though, since the existence of 1880 obituaries proves that he's wrong. Let's be charitable and assume there was a sloppy sub somewhere along the line. ‑ Iridescent 18:43, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
(add) I don't know what it says about me, but I'm consistently misreading "Bogawanthalawa" in the above as "Boggley Wollah". ‑ Iridescent 18:58, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
My presumption would be that later publications relied on the earlier publications without doing their own checking. It only takes one reliable source to get something relatively obscure wrong for that incorrect fact to start spreading if there are not enough eyes watching and/or doing checks. Carcharoth (talk) 23:56, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

"metaphorical loaded revolver"

Outta sheer curiosity. I've seen you using this term a few times in the past, but I can't find out what it means. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:57, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Aren't you an admin on TV Tropes? You have a lengthy article on the concept, which is considerably more informative than Wikipedia's shitty Honor suicide article. AFAIK it originated in the Prussian army, in which officers facing court-martial would (apocryphally, anyway) return to their quarters to find their orderly had thoughtfully left a sheet of paper and bottle of ink, a bottle of alcohol and a revolver loaded with a single round on their desk. ‑ Iridescent 22:11, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
Well, moderator, but mostly the same thing. I did not think of that trope though; the way you sed the term sounded more like „unpersoning“. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 23:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
If our search function is to be believed, the only time I've ever used the term "loaded revolver" prior to this thread was Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others, and in that case ([to save a formal case there should be] some strong hints given via backchannels to Gamaliel that he may wish to consider some time alone in the Floquenbeam & 28bytes Memorial Smoke Filled Room with the metaphorical loaded revolver, Floquenbeam and 28bytes at the time being the most recent and high-profile "I don't think it's appropriate that I remain on Arbcom and consequently am jumping to save the community the potentially divisive case that would arise from pushing me" incidents) so the implication is surely clear from the context. ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
Oh, and there was me thinking of the Romans.... Johnbod (talk) 00:59, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
There are plenty of Greek/Roman (and Biblical) self-sacrificing suicides (e.g. Samson) or suicides to cheat the hangman (e.g. Nero), but I can't think of any in the West that follow the specific "Sir, I suggest you kill yourself to avoid the stain upon your honour of your being condemned and executed" formula unless you count Seneca and Lucan being condemned to carry out their own death sentences. (There are no doubt plenty in Japan and China.) It's not a field on which I claim any particular expertise, but as best I can tell all the earliest variants in which the officer is encouraged to commit suicide to preserve the family name (as opposed to making the decision on their own, or using the mess Webley to 'go to your gawd like a soldier' to avoid capture) originate in Germany and its predecessor states. (Rommel is probably the best-documented case.) ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
I wouldn't begin to know where to search for an article on it, but there are (I believe over a dozen examples of this in the novels of Agatha Christie alone. I think of it as being quintessentially English ruling-class. --Orange Mike | Talk 22:54, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
Hmm. I knew there would be a reason I would regret disposing nearly all of my (nearly complete) collection of Agatha Christie novels. The good thing is that I was right to think that I didn't really need them. Conan Doyle's stories as well, according to that, er, novel. At least I kept the Poirot stories. (Spoiler alert) Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. Hmm. I just learnt from reading that article that there have been new novels commissioned by the Christie estate. Disgraceful! (I half-mean that, though so many literary estates have done this now.) Carcharoth (talk) 02:08, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Wait, what? I quit to avoid people kicking me off? I don't know where you get your gossip, but either someone fed you incorrect information, or you're misremembering. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:25, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
    • And while I'm being cranky, that's not a terribly accurate description of 28bytes' motives either. He quit because he felt it was the right thing to do, not because of any concern he'd get kicked off. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:32, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
I was about to send you (Iridescent) an e-mail saying I don't remember Floquenbeam's departure that way either. I could, but won't, speculate on whom you might have inadvertently confused him with. On a different topic, for examples of the "suggested suicide" motif in detective fiction, take a look at the Nero Wolfe stories. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:37, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
And again my curiosity is stoked... JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 21:33, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes, my apologies to Floquenbeam; I've made the mistake of believing the conspiracy theorists in that particular case, and that's a mistake I shouldn't have made a very close variation of the same story has also been told about me. (About 28bytes, not so much. Only he knows exactly what was said and by whom, but I'd be outright shocked if there wasn't some variant of "please resign to avoid the embarrassment either of Jimbo having to remove you, or the rest of the committee having to vote you out". His continued membership without fresh elections would have caused a full-scale crisis, since any party to any case could legitimately have said that they refused to participate in proceedings as they didn't recognize the committee's legitimacy; the community is historically very tolerant of people who have their feet in both camps, but on condition they know who they're voting for. If there's one thing the community historically don't take kindly to, it's anyone who's seen to have bullshitted or lied their way to advanced permissions.) ‑ Iridescent 20:09, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
...it's not precisely the same thing (indeed it can hardly be called a suicide) but didn't Guido Fawkes, as he was about to hang, and prior to etc. etc., jump off the scaffold, break his neck, and ths avoid all the further delights Jacobin England had in store for him...? By some accounts, those horrors may have nothing compared to the arb mailing list :D >SerialNumber54129...speculates 20:37, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
No—Fawkes was a straightforward cheating-the-hangman (the modern equivalent would be all the stories that end with "before turning the gun on himself"). The Jacobean equivalent to the death of Rommel et al would if been if Popham and Coke had visited Fawkes in his cell, pointed out that a public trial and execution would create a climate of hostility between Protestant England and Catholic Europe that would take four centuries to resolve and thus was in neither side's interest but that the public appetite demanded it, and left a bottle of belladonna and a silk rope in his cell. (The closest modern political equivalent would have been the incident documented here.) ‑ Iridescent 21:22, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

All People's Party (UK)

I have restarted All People's Party (UK) as the party arose from concerns about problems experienced as regards minority representation in the main parties. It should be noted that Prem Goyal is standing in the Portsoken Ward bye election. I feel that having this more general page is more desirable than having a page on Goyal.Leutha (talk) 23:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm skeptical. I don't think there even is such a place as "Porkistan". EEng 23:19, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It's no skin off my nose—I deleted it as an uncontested WP:PROD, not because it's a subject in which I have any interest—although if you can't find any sources more significant than an article written by the party leader, two posts in a blog called Inside Croydon, and the bare fact that someone is standing as a candidate from an official register, I can't imagine the new iteration of the article will last very long. Standing in an aldermanic election is virtually meaningless in terms of notability; the Court of Common Council is a fairly meaningless rubber-stamp of a body (the actual work is all done by the Corporation of London's committees), and I'll be surprised if even a thousand voters turn out (and even more surprised if Goyal gets more than 10% of the vote, since the CoL still has business voting so by-elections are almost invariably won by whoever the banks want to win). ‑ Iridescent 23:26, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

TFA mainly

Hi, I'm scheduling TFA for January, and I was thinking of scheduling one of your not-run painting FAs. Do you have any preference (or objection)? On a completely unrelated point, I just stumbled across Iridescence. Do you have any views on that choice of name? Probably just coincidence, looks like one of the good guys. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:55, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I have legions of imitators but if you check the timings, Iridescence predates me, so in this particular case I can't really complain... AFAIK there's never been any confusion.
If you're going to run a painting, it probably ought to be one of the William Etty series, as there are currently 10 stacked up at WP:FANMP which is more than all other paintings combined. (Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret, Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed, The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished, The Dawn of Love, The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate, Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed', The Sirens and Ulysses, The Triumph of Cleopatra, The World Before the Flood and William Etty itself.) If you're going for pageviews, Destroying Angel and Candaules would likely go viral because of the title, although in both cases the article itself is quite boring. Other than the bio itself, Musidora is probably the most interesting, although it would need to be watchlisted and possibly semied on the day as in the current climate it would attract the Ban This Evil Filth brigade (if you've watched this talkpage in the past, you may be aware that I've already been accused of being an agent of Satan because of it). If you're going to run one of them let me know in advance and I'll try to crop an appropriate detail for the TFA image, since at 100px showing the entire painting will just look like a smudge in the case of most of them. (Because most Etty canvases are enormous, they don't work well at small sizes as there's so much detail going on. In most cases, we already have an appropriate crop from when the articles ran at DYK.) Be aware that most of them are verging on pornographic—what makes Etty interesting is the way his genuinely devout belief that he was highlighting the genius of God in creating the human form blinded him to the fact that society thought he was a sex-mad pervert—so any of them other than Destroying Angel might draw complaints. (WP:NOTCENSORED and that, but I would advise not using Sirens and Ulysses—its combination of gratuitous nudity and photorealistic rotting corpses is genuinely disturbing out of context.) ‑ Iridescent 22:05, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
I'm envious that you have so many imitators, and one of the few things I've yet to be called is an agent of Satan! The above is very helpful. I always notify TFA editors as I schedule the date, usually a couple of weeks in advance, so you will have plenty of time to change the TFA image. And I'll do my best not to re-ignite a September Morn firestorm... Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:38, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Don't be rude, please

This is quite a rude and irrespectful interaction, Iridescent. 1) My grand number of edits are completely irrelevant; seems like you are just trying to attack me. Please discuss content, not editors. 2) I started the discussion a week ago, and the edit summary explicitly invites everyone who disagrees to revert and discuss. Given that, to say that my intention is to edit unilaterally and without discussion is an extremely uncharitable interpretation. Please read carefully the fourth pillar. Atón (talk) 11:12, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Jeez Louise, Atón, what were you thinking? What kind of reaction did you think you were going to get? I'd say Iridescent's reaction was pretty mild, considering. Don't do things you aren't qualified to do. Stay away from policy editing. Softlavender (talk) 11:25, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Don't unilaterally rewrite one of Wikipedia's most important pages without discussion, please. Your number of edits is entirely relevant; for someone whose entire contribution history looks like this to decide that their version of the page is so much better than the version that's the product of a decade of discussion among editors who are actually familiar with English Wikipedia and the issues affecting it that it should be overwritten despite you not managing to find a single editor to agree with your proposed wording thus far, is the height of arrogance. ‑ Iridescent 11:30, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) I'll have you know it takes years of practice to be this rude. But "Irrespectful Iridescent" does have a certain ring to it. At least Iridescent didn't call you "Louise." Martinevans123 (talk) 11:38, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
"Señalar que Sgomag (ahora Atón) ha mostrado en su recorrido en Wikipedia un interés editorial muy limitado (solo un ridículo 10,8% de ediciones en artículos), y que bajo un perfil que nos ha vendido como de novato se ha dedicado a plantear cambios de todo tipo (eso al menos podía tener cierta vertiente positiva aunque debe ser el primero usuario que con menos de 70 ediciones en artículos se atreve a cambiar los 5 pilares o a plantear elaborados sistemas de resolución de conflictos) y a generar hilos en el café que solo buscaban el conflicto, el mal ambiente, la acusación sesgada y la puesta en duda de compañeros que han hecho bastante más que él por este proyecto." and "bloqueó a Atón durante un plazo de para siempre". Shocked, shocked, I tell you. ‑ Iridescent 11:48, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
They don't call you The Dirty Digger for nothing, do they? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:53, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
Oops. Softlavender (talk) 11:55, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
That in es.wiki an involved administrator can block someone he doesn't like without providing any diff or proof whatsoever is indeed very shocking. Atón (talk) 12:13, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User talk:SJM Math, Chiradurga

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A tag has been placed on User talk:SJM Math, Chiradurga requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G12 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to be an unambiguous copyright infringement. This page appears to be a direct copy from http://sjmschools.in/about.php. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images taken from other web sites or printed material, and as a consequence, your addition will most likely be deleted. You may use external websites or other printed material as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. This part is crucial: say it in your own words. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If the external website or image belongs to you, and you want to allow Wikipedia to use the text or image — which means allowing other people to use it for any reason — then you must verify that externally by one of the processes explained at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. The same holds if you are not the owner but have their permission. If you are not the owner and do not have permission, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for how you may obtain it. You might want to look at Wikipedia's copyright policy for more details, or ask a question here.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.  Velella  Velella Talk   10:39, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

WTF? We don't delete user talk pages unless there's an astonishingly good reason to do so; even if specific edits need to be removed we revdel and (if necessary) oversight selectively, we don't delete the whole thing along with its history. ‑ Iridescent 10:48, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Happy Saturnalia!

Happy Saturnalia
Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and troll-free and you not often get distracted by dice-playing. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:56, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
And the same to you—you do know that "Happy Saturnalia" is just going to set off that guy who thinks you're a secret neo-pagan off again? ‑ Iridescent 15:24, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
LOL.. since I'm a not-so-secret Roman reconstructionist .. yeah, probably. Just don't expect me to start celebrating the Wheel of the Year...Ealdgyth - Talk 15:26, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
So Roman Polytheistic Reconstructionism is a thing. The Sum Of All Human Knowledge living up to her name... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:07, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
A very small (and fractured) thing, yes. In the neo-pagan world, we rank right there above the people trying to reconstruct Caananite religion (talk about your religious traditions that lacks source material!), but below Kemetism. We don't even begin to approach the numbers involved in Heathenry (new religious movement).... but there is some brave soul out there trying to revive Indo-European polytheism. I wish them all the luck, they'll need it. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:11, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
This reminded me of this (copyright compliant) YouTube video we were forced to listen to in high school Latin class. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:17, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
I have deeply unfond memories of high school Latin, a language I never understood why we were being taught since everything ever written in it is already available in translation and unless you're planning on becoming a Catholic official or a biological taxonomist you'll never have cause to use it. I'm sure there was a reason we got taught Latin rather than the language of the country that was a straight drive up I-87, but I've yet to work out what it was. (All due respect to other peoples' faiths and creeds and all that, but this picture really raises more questions than it answers; are they dressed in armor just because it's the only distinctly Roman item of clothing they could think of? If future generations were to recreate the Church of England, I'd hope they wouldn't wear custodian helmets or busbys.) ‑ Iridescent 16:29, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
Well you have really only two choices: Toga or Legionnaire. "Hey its dress-up, do you want to wear a bedsheet or a suit of armour. Bad news, armour involves a skirt, but you do get a weapon". Not a difficult question to answer really... RE CoE, judging by my childhood, I believe the clothing of choice would be a shell-suit. -edit- Shame that's a redirect to tracksuit. Shell-suits are so much worse. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:14, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
I know I'm going to regret this .. but what's a shell suit? (I'm female, I get to wear a tunica, stola, and palla...unless I wanna dress up as a prostitute...) Ealdgyth - Talk 12:36, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Astonishingly, given that they find space for Category:Nude women with bottles, this appears to be the only photo of a shell-suit on the whole of Commons.
A matching top-and-bottom outfit made of very thin shiny polyester or nylon. Intended for distance-runners in the snow, they're the clothing of choice for low-lifes as they hold in your sweat so you dont get too stinky, it's not apparent to others when you've soiled yourself, and the puke and spilled drunks just wipe off. ‑ Iridescent 13:28, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Also known as Scouse evening wear. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:41, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
On the plus side, this piece of vandalism went unreverted since July, giving Wikipedia's fine mirrors and forks time to pick up on it and consequently teh interwebs now confidently assert that Bruce Lee was the inventor of the shell-suit. ‑ Iridescent 20:43, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Oh, how quickly the intertubes pick up on Wikipedia material (I was shocked by how many forums were citing 1257 Samalas eruption when I google-searched its URL). And I've seen this long-uncaught vandalism on other occasions as well, but always on low traffic pages such as disambigs. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:54, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
There are quite a few that have propagated so far they get into the mainstream. Our claim that Lord Byron had a pet crocodile made it into the Sunday Times, Roger Moore was listed as a graduate of the University of Durham for over a decade until a journalist asked him about his time there, googling "Hairy bush fruit" brings up numerous people who've fallen for this particular piece of vandalism, while (appropriately) there are still numerous people out there who've fallen for the "Operation Pax Romana" hoax despite the fact that Nazi Germany is probably the single best-documented period of history of all time. The Akkadian death-god Bine, at a little over 12 years before being spotted, is the current record-holder for longest-lasting substantive Wikipedia hoax. ‑ Iridescent 21:10, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
The above two have also shamefully neglected their greatest feature, they are highly flammable. A Google Image Search for 'shellsuit' (or shell-suit) will give you plenty of fine examples. Trigger warning: You may find pictures of Jimmy Saville in there. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:43, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
I was more taken by this fine fashion statement. It's possible to take the "man of the people" thing too far. ‑ Iridescent 16:20, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Continuing the classical theme, next time I nominate an Etty painting for TFA, perhaps you should bear in mind timeo Danaos et dona ferentes Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
"Beware of geeks posting gifs"? ‑ Iridescent 16:42, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays
Wishing you a happy holiday season! Time flies and 2018 is around the corner. Thank you for your contributions. ~ K.e.coffman (talk) 00:58, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, and the same to you ‑ Iridescent 16:55, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Best wishes for the holidays...

Season's Greetings
Wishing everybody a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Nativity scenes attributed to Zanobi Strozzi is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 20:32, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
And the same to you… (That is the grumpiest-looking Baby Jesus I've ever seen. They might want to put some straw in that manger, too.) ‑ Iridescent 18:50, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Iridescent!!


Hi Iridescent, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year,
Thanks for all your help and contributions on the 'pedia! ,
   –Davey2010 Merry Xmas / Happy New Year 13:39, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! And the same to you ‑ Iridescent 18:51, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Seasons' Greetings

...to you and yours, from the Great White North! FWiW Bzuk (talk) 22:51, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, and the same to you and yours… ‑ Iridescent 18:52, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays
From Stave one of Dickens A Christmas Carol

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

So you see even Charles was looking for a reliable source :-) Thank you for your contributions to the 'pedia. ~ MarnetteD|Talk 02:43, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks… (Seeing that makes me realise just how long it's been since I actually read anything by Dickens, aside from a few of his factual articles when researching various 19th-century topics. I really need to go back to him some time—maybe this time I'll manage to get to the end of Bleak House.) ‑ Iridescent 18:53, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and All That

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and best wishes in all things.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:04, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

And the same to you, and good to see you back(ish). Hope all goes well for you. ‑ Iridescent 18:54, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
I hope we all had happy holidays as well. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:42, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Empty categories

Regarding your edit summary in Category:Television series created by J. G. Quintel, I'm not sure why you are suggesting I take a category this isn't empty to CfD when the only reason I requested C1 speedy deletion is because it was an empty category at that time I tagged it. Thanks. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 21:31, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes people want stuff deleted for a valid reason but pick an inappropriate process. In such cases, they are often pointed to the correct venue. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:34, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
That is one of the big failings of the WP category system: whereas you can watchlist or view the history of changes to articles, you can't watchlist/view history for changes (ie: additions/deletions) to categories. I've fallen foul of the same issue you mention - it's no-one's fault in particular, merely a matter of timing. - Sitush (talk) 21:36, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
What they said; the WMF are taking baby steps towards allowing watchlisting a category to see when items are added or removed from it, but given the usual pace of change expect it to be working properly circa 2030. All I was doing there was explaining why I'd declined the deletion and pointing you towards where to go if you still felt it should be deleted; it's nothing personal. (Because of how Wikipedia works, each day Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion dumps a shedload of categories into CAT:CSD, and much as we'd like to give an in-depth explanation of why every deletion is either accepted or declined, we'd never have the time.) ‑ Iridescent 21:53, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
Yannow, I do have some categories watchlisted and they do display changes to their content just fine. I am not sure if it's a 100% complete record however. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:57, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
OK, thanks. So it was just a blanket notification when removing C1 tags then. I appreciate the explanation. The category watchlisting sounds like a great idea, too. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 22:01, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
@JJE, you can watch a category and additions will (most of the time) show in your watchlist—the main problems are (a) this isn't 100% accurate, particularly when it comes to templates which auto-add articles to categories (e.g. adding {{pakistan-railstation-stub}} will automatically add the page to Category:Pakistani railway station stubs but you won't always see the pages pop up if you have the category watchlisted), and (b) unlike everything else on MediaWiki there's no changelog, so if for whatever reason you miss the watchlist notification, there's no way to see what's been added or removed from a category. (One of the more effective ways to vandalize Wikipedia is to remove the category tag from every member of a category, then nominate the category for deletion; short of actually consulting the archived version of the database it's virtually impossible to repair.) ‑ Iridescent 22:09, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion of TrakInvest

Hi, I understand that the contents I had collected from online searches about the Company were not good enough and content seemed promotional, I do not contest its deletion and fully agree to your action. Can I rewrite the page completely under the same title and post again, trying my best to adhere this time? Anilp78 (talk) 08:01, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but see my comment in the thread immediately above. We have no interest in what the company says about itself (and that includes reprinted press releases); we're only interested in what independent reliable sources by Wikipedia's definition of the term have to say about the topic. ‑ Iridescent 19:46, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

Martinevans123 (Santa's Drop-in Centre) ... sends you ...


... warmest seasonal wishes for ...... Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

Oi, Iri .. Hoping that Christmas may bless you with peace, love and understanding... and wishing that you have a good run in 2018!!

Ac yr un peth i chi… Ar ryw adeg, mae'n rhaid i mi orffen y gyfres honno am droseddwyr benywaidd o Abertawe, dwi byth yn dod i ben i orffen. ‑ Iridescent 18:58, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
A dwi bob amser yn meddwl bod Abertawe yn lle braf. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:06, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
Mewn gwirionedd, mae'n debyg y byddaf yn ei roi ar ddal i ben nes bod hwn wedi dod i ben, gan nad wyf wir eisiau i bobl gymryd yn ganiataol fy mod yn rhan ohono. ‑ Iridescent 20:38, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Request

Merry christmas. Would you mind salvaging and userfying or emailing a copy of this or these. Band is notable for the guitarist's Tracy Pew tash. Skip to 7:30. Ceoil (talk) 16:30, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

You've got mail. Neither was anything to write home about; the deletions were unquestionably in-process, since the 2009 version was sourced entirely to Myspace and the 2017 version sourced entirely to the band's own website. ‑ Iridescent 16:43, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks. I was worried about what bar of sourcing had failed notability; that's now very clear. Ceoil (talk) 16:50, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
Let me know if you got my reply-to-your-reply email, as I just got a "SMTP error from remote server for GREETING command, Cloudmark Gateway ESMTP server not available" bounce message the first time I tried to send it (the second attempt seems to have gone through). ‑ Iridescent 17:31, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
All good and received Iridescent, tks. Ceoil (talk) 17:52, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

2017

If you're going to protect it until all the Europeans have gone to bed, at least fix the en-dash and the dab problem with the Trump inauguration entry please. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:15, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

And perhaps could you also correct Republican to Republican? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:21, 28 December 2017 (UTC) now done, you needn't rush to Donald's defence.
(2017 and in particular Talk:2017#Inaugurations, for the benefit of bemused TPWs.) I'm more than happy to unprotect it right away (and give my explicit consent for anyone else to unprotect it without consulting me) if the four of you (paging Cassianto, Arthur Rubin, McSly) will agree to wait until the discussion has reached a conclusion one way or the other rather than edit-warring over it. You know that after the Arbcom case the vultures are circling for at least three of the four of you, and "should Trump's inauguration be listed as a notable event" is a ridiculous thing for any of you to end up blocked over if you slip over the 3RR line. "Protected until after the Europeans have gone to bed" doesn't wash; even in the unlikely event that we can't find Americans who have an opinion on Donald Trump, he won't have been forgotten by the morning. ‑ Iridescent 22:28, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
I don't care about the argument, I care about the shit quality you've protected. Either do something about it or allow someone capable to do something about it please. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:32, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
(ec × 3)
  1. It probably should be reverted to the last stable version, which is without the inauguration.
  2. There is clearly no consensus for inclusion at the last discussion at Talk:2017
  3. I'll agree not to significantly edit the section if
    1. A {{importance-inline}} tag is restored, and
    2. The attendance figures are sourced or tagged with a {{cn}} or {{disputed-inline}} tag. They are disputed.
— Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:45, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
If only. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:35, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
The article should be returned to the last stable version while a discussion takes place, Iridescent. It is those reverting from the stable version who are at fault. CassiantoTalk 22:36, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
I really don't give two fucks whether I've protected The Wrong Version or not, but since all of you seem to want the protection lifted, I've undone it; edit-war away. ‑ Iridescent 22:41, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
Well, you should. As that just pisses people off more and does little to diffuse the situation, which is, in part, what protection is supposed to do. CassiantoTalk 23:22, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Aha, I see you're allowing this kind of shit to continue. Well played. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:56, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Brain Computer Interface Society

Hello, I respectfully ask you to temporarily restore the BCI Society page that I created for a few days (invisible to the public) so I can add more information, links, and references to peer-reviewed papers. I will explain the significance of the society, including links to the BCI page on Wikipedia that I helped develop. I will also include more information about the series of International BCI Meetings that the Society organizes, which are the most prominent conferences devoted to the rapidly growing field of BCIs. The page would only become public with your permission afterward. Thank you, Dr. Brendan Allison. **Disclaimer: I was not paid for any work on the BCI Society page. I am an elected board member of the BCI Society, which is a non-profit organization. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bzallison (talk • contribs) 00:03, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Courtesy link. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 00:08, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Temporarily restored at Brain Computer Interface Society (and a courtesy ping to Robert McClenon that I've done so). I'll warn you that the deletion tagging was correct—this was an absolutely clear-cut deletion, since there was no indication as to why this organization is significant, no independent commentary on the positives and negatives of the subject, and no sources other than the subject's own website; Wikipedia has no interest in what the subject of any article says about themselves, we only care about what independent, non-trivial mentions, in reliable sources have to say about the topic. ‑ Iridescent 19:44, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
User:Bzallison - Please do not create articles that do not make it clear why the organization is notable. Please do not assume that stating that an organization is notable or that you will later add the necessary information is sufficient. Also, it isn't clear what you mean about "invisible to the public". The article that was deleted was in article space and was visible to the public. You can use draft space to create drafts that are not visible to the public. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:22, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
I've no issue with Google indexing anything that's not actually libellous or utterly blatant spam; the public is well aware that Wikipedia articles are of varying standards. The idea that we need to protect their delicate eyes from seeing the article development process at work is one I consider actively damaging; most potential new editors would baulk at the technical ability required to do a substantial rewrite of this (and would be worried about causing damage), but would be more than happy taking a stab at improving this. (When a child is contemplating learning to ride a bike and is a bit nervous, we point them to the little-used dirt path, we don't direct them to the freeway.) If people do search on a topic and discover that the article in question is subject of an AfD debate, as far as I'm concerned that's also a plus; it potentially brings outside views into AfD, which is a horribly dysfunctional process in which a small team of regulars belittles anyone who happens to actually have knowledge of whatever the topic in question is and an equally small team of people with a "keep everything" mentality belittles the first team, until eventually one team bullies the other off to the point where the closing admin decides the largest group left standing represents "consensus", after which the decision is effectively set in stone, making it virtually impossible to recreate anything that's been deleted, and equally difficult to delete anything once it's survived.
While I despair at the shittiness of some of Wikipedia's stubs—and have sent quite literally thousands of them off to redlink heaven over the years—I also recognize that the shit is what fertilizes Wikipedia. Although lots of people like to sneer at the lack of quality of much of Wikipedia, in many ways the volume of garbage is a feature, not a bug; things like this illustrate to potential new editors that you don't need to be either an expert on the subject nor an expert in wikitext markup to contribute. It's not a coincidence that projects like Citizendium and Veropedia which tried to hide the works-in-progress withered and died; Wikipedia's flowers-grow-in-the-sewage model is one of the reasons why the "Wikipedia works in practice but not in theory" aphorism has so much truth to it.
In general, I dislike the concept of "draft space". It was intended as a streamlining of the Article Incubator and Articles for Creation processes into a single process, as well as for those rare situations in which multiple editors are working on a new article which wouldn't be appropriate for the article space until it's near completion (a situation which occurs most often on political or biographical articles, where article writers want to ensure that all views are given due consideration before sending it live so as to avoid making potentially biased or inaccurate material publicly visible), and bludgeoned through despite strong opposition with the promise that it would stick to this remit and that it wouldn't end up creating a layer of wiki-bureaucracy. Instead, it's being misused both as a general dumping ground for "things with which we're unsure what to do", and as a giant unpatrolled sandbox. I would never under any circumstances forcibly draftify an article without an explicit request from its editors to do so (and if they did request it, I'd want justification from them why they actually want it moved to a draft rather than to a userspace sandbox), and as far as I'm concerned any admin doing so ought to be desysopped and any non-admin doing so is guaranteeing my opposition in any future RFA. (I have very little time for Andrew Davidson and his clique's quixotic stand against any attempts to winnow the really problematic stubs from Wikipedia—if you have a very long memory, it was myself who originally coined the term ARShole to describe the "keep, it exists" brigade—but on the issue of forced draftification as a mechanism for de facto stealth deletion he's 100% correct.) ‑ Iridescent 16:27, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • By coincidence, I made a small start on a similar topic many years ago – the Human Brain Project – by just creating it as a redirect. That seed has grown into a 15K article which now seems reasonably respectable. Our editing policy makes it fairly clear that such incremental growth is accepted. I don't know if there's any connection between the BCI Society and that project but, as we have other pages like brain–computer interface, there seem to be plenty of sensible alternatives to deletion. Andrew D. (talk) 16:47, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Interesting point of view and worth considering as always. I'm obviously an advocate of sending some to draft space (it was why Andrew opposed my RfA, after all), but despite what some might think, I actually do view it as a way to save new articles from being PROD'd. I'm sure I've made mistakes in the past in this regard, but articles like Draft:Ministry of School and Mass Education (Odisha), Draft:Alaeddine Marzouki, and Draft:2018 Kids' Choice Awards are all articles I sent to draft recently because otherwise I suspect they would have been sent to redlink heaven without so much as a second thought, even when they are surely notable. Things that I am not familiar enough with to actually salvage, but where deletion by an overzealous patroller and an admin who doesn't actually check PRODs before deleting them were real concerns. Sending to draft gives the creators time to actually fix the problems. On the flip side, I understand the issues with the AfC process and have criticized it before for coddling spammers while turning away good faith contributors who don't know how to format an article on a notable subject. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:03, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
My feeling towards drafts is that draftifying (as opposed to userifying) is almost always detrimental except in those rare cases for which it was intended. Article creation is one place where WP:OWN really shouldn't apply; if you're the one who wants Wikipedia to host an article on your pet band/company/charity/local councillor, the onus is on you to demonstrate that it's a topic Wikipedia should be covering. Moving the article into a userspace draft sends the clear signal "your car isn't roadworthy, put it back in your garage and work on it until at minimum all four wheels roll"; moving it into a communal draft space sends the signal "you've done your bit, The Wikipedia Community will handle it from here on in". (What percentage of drafts languish forever in draft space and then get quietly deleted?) ‑ Iridescent 17:29, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
Pretty much same views as Tony.I think that restoring CSD-able material to draftspace is not some kind of backhand deletion.And, I have seen fair many sysops and non-sysops in long standing to use that.But, your arguments in favor of moving to User-space is a very-good idea except that the AFC can't be utilised well enough in user-space.
As to this article, I don't see how this passes our notability guidelines.I would say too soon.And, my problems with Google Indexing is that the article looked and still looks like:--About us page on a website.People know WP isn't reliable but at least they expect something better from us than a reptoduction of self-promo stuff. On a sidenote, it could have been definitely redirected to BCI.I thought of that but I'm pretty sure Andrew would have still said that by redirection, I robbed WP's oppurtunity of a full-fledged article et al:)
As to your last question of silent deletion, that's a genuine problem and after recent exploits of some sysops in the area (which was technically correct but rationally stupid), me thinks that G13 ought to mention that drafts which seem to be notable enough, may not be deleted and some sort of subjective advice need to be inserted.(For the issue, see DGG's and my views on this thread at Primefac's t/p.)
As to Tony's feelings on AfC, it's one of the most-valid criticisms of AFC, I have come across.But, again, it's sort of a common human tendency to be able to freely participate with and help those people who are willing to steadily cooperate and/or show a steady dedication --a thing spammers are usually much proficient at!Winged BladesGodric 05:39, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice

Hello, and thanks for creating the page. What do you think about renaming it 'Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice', which already redirects there? The page has more information than "just" a list, and seems to be the primary topic on Wikipedia for the name. Thanks, and happiest of New Years. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:04, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

I'd oppose it. The list of tablets is very much a stand-alone list and the page doesn't have more information than "just" a list, it has what should be the case with every FL, a brief synopsis summarised from the parent article so that readers landing on the page from elsewhere understand the context (plus one line from a spammer to which I've turned a blind eye since the product being spammed is actually potentially useful to readers). ‑ Iridescent 15:56, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

HNY

Happy New Year!

Best wishes for 2018, —PaleoNeonate – 02:07, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
And the same to you… ‑ Iridescent 18:09, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Content forks

A prior museum, not fork. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:51, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

How common do you think content forks like this are?

The latter has the longer edit history and was created first. Both article creators are still active, though Haros more on other wikis and in other languages. Not sure whether to boldly merge myself (no time really), or hope that someone else will do something (that might work!). Carcharoth (talk) 11:46, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Reason for 2 pages: I edited both articles in November 2006. The Imperial museum was of the empire Austria-Hungary, but consumed after 40 years, into the current, larger Natural History Museum, Vienna. Compare with Liberty Island (NYC), which is now part of Manhattan borough, but separate from Manhattan Island, the subject of Manhattan karst, and so the Imperial collection was tiny compared to 30 million artefacts in the modern larger museum. Beware of content funnels (versus forks) which can strangle coverage of major subjects such as Manhattan Island, which has its own geology and eco-system, separate from Roosevelt Island or Governors Island as also parts of 20th century Manhattan. -Wikid77 (talk) 11:51, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
That's a clear content fork, since they're the same institution under two different names. I can certainly see grounds for having the history on a separate page to that on the building and the collections, to prevent a lengthy history overwhelming the main article (such as the situation we have at Holkham Hall/Art collections of Holkham Hall where we have separate articles on history of the building and on its contents), but that's not the situation we have here. Given the near-total lack of sourcing on Imperial Natural History Museum (not a criticism of you; Wikipedia had a very different attitude to sourcing in 2005–06), if we were to keep a separate article on the early history of the museum it would need to be rewritten from scratch. ‑ Iridescent 11:59, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
Probably fairly common in the early days when an article was being translated and there's not a single obvious English title. I imagine it's a lot less common since the new search function was introduced as someone typing in a title for which we don't have an article will now see a list of suggestions and realise the page already exists. We do have a fancy new function at Special:MergeHistory which is supposed to automate cleaning up situations like this, but I've never used it so have no idea how well it works. Personally I'd be inclined to keep Natural History Museum, Vienna and just turn Imperial Natural History Museum into a redirect without salvaging any of the content—by the time all the commentary, unsourced waffle and inappropriate tone is removed from the latter, there'd be nothing left. ‑ Iridescent 11:54, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
(adding) Or, find someone who speaks German and pester them into translating de:Naturhistorisches Museum Wien and overwrite the both of them. ‑ Iridescent 12:03, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
The Special:MergeHistory thing just barfs when there are overlaps. It's handy when one article was created entirely after the last edit on an earlier article (like in a copy/paste move followed by further editing), but I've found it pretty much useless for anything else. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:56, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
A history merge is rarely ever needed, and will often just confuse things. In the above cases, pick a preferred title and copy the text while making edit summary attribution, and redirect the extra article. If in doubt, the answer is almost always “edit summary attribution”. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:09, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
Yes, history merging is not appropriate here. Someone with the time to work on the content (whether merged, translated from de-wiki, or added from scratch) is what is needed. The history of the reorganisation of the Vienna museums looks interesting, similar to the way museums have been reorganised elsewhere (e.g. in London the Natural History Museum started off as collections in the British Museum). Carcharoth (talk) 13:28, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
The NHM was just a dedicated building housing the British Museum's natural history collections for much longer than people realise—they only got their own management in the 1960s, and only stopped using the British Museum name after their anschluss of the Geological Museum in the late 80s. I know it's heresy to say it, but IMO the NHM is one of the ropiest major museums in the world—the entire place is arranged around making things look cool so they can then sell things in the gift shop. Yes, museums gotta eat but their next-door neighbours at the V&A and Science Museum—and the BM itself come to that—manage to square the "come to be entertained, stay to learn" and "remain solvent while remaining free" circles without any difficulty.</rant> ‑ Iridescent 11:09, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
Completely agrees with Iridescent's rant, having recently visited several of the named institutions. NHM was not on the same plane as the others. Risker (talk) 05:22, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
The Burned Child (L'enfant brûlé), Antoine Wiertz, 1865–68, Wiertz Museum
Somewhere you'll find me recently making much the same point about the Louvre, which IMO is bigged-up by the Paris tourist board to divert the tourists away from the Musée d'Orsay where the actual significant French national art collection is held to prevent the latter getting overcrowded. My all time winners for "most underwhelming museum with claims to be a major international institution" would be the International Slavery Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, and the absolutely wretched money-pit of MuCEM, with an honorable mention for Kelvingrove (the Wiertz Museum is disqualified since by now even its curators must have figured out that the place is a laughing-stock—if you ever have cause to visit the European Parliament it's worth popping next door to see it as the collection is so bad it's hypnotic). The museums which punch most above their weight when it comes to the quality of collection/international reputation ratio would IMO be the National Gallery of Canada, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Manchester Art Gallery and MALBA. ‑ Iridescent 10:40, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
(Adding) Back to the original point, Wikipedia:WikiProject Museums is somewhat moribund but some of its members may still watch the talkpage, so it may be worth seeing if anyone there wants to take a stab at cleaning it up. (Per my earlier comment, I don't think there's anything of value at Imperial Natural History Museum so would be inclined to just quietly disappear it.) ‑ Iridescent 11:54, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
Oh, I have books on the history of several museums, and have a soft spot for that sort of topic, so might do something at some point. The history of museums is quite a quirky subject, with many, er, interesting characters. The history of the NHM has some, some of whom are described in our article. My personal favourite is Charles Davies Sherborn, the last three paragraphs there are classic descriptions of the sort of thing I mean. Carcharoth (talk) 13:18, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
If you feel like doing something with the NHM, what it could desperately do with is something about the architecture of Waterhouse's building, which was (explicitly) intended to symbolise Richard Owen's catastrophism (the west, Gloucester Road end representing extinction, the east, Knightsbridge end representing survival, and the main entrance representing an extinction event). One could probably write a separate article on each of the 150+ ceiling tiles in the main hall, which nobody notices unless they're specifically looking for them but each of which is a unique work of art in its own right. Even the glaring eyesore of the Darwin Centre is architecturally significant enough to warrant its own article. I might take a stab at doing something about it at some point if I can find the time, but don't hold your breath. ‑ Iridescent 00:38, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
Forgot to thank you for your thoughts on this. I might get to something on this topic at some point, but still have far too much else going on to do more than pop in every now and again. I have (somewhat guiltily, having not created an article for over a year) tidied up a draft from my userspace and pushed it out at John Goligher. A lot more could be done there (in the same vein as I did at Victor Negus and Charles Illingworth), but I haven't had the time really. I must remember to ping User:Stephencdickson (yeah, I know I just pinged him!) and see if he is able to do another sketch to illustrate that medical biography. One reason I pushed that article out from userspace draft to article space is that it was the last red-link left at Lister Medal. It took long enough to get to them all (see Lister medallist redlinks), and I left it so long that one of the redlinks got done before I got to it. It was the BLP Patrick Forrest (see the deletion logs for some moderately interesting history there). I was actually avoiding creating an article on a living person on principle - though I have no idea if he is still alive or not (hopefully he is and in good health!). I presume some obituary would have been published if he had died. There are quite a number of articles over the years that I've made notes on, thought about creating, left it, and seen it eventually created by someone else. That probably means something (other than me being slow), though I'm not sure what! :-) Feel free to split this off or put in the talk page section lower down about article drafts, and archive the rest. Carcharoth (talk) 13:19, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
​I've found a book about the NHM ceiling paintings (they're so distinctive and unusual, I thought there must be one), so when I get round to it I'll try to do at least a brief piece on them. I'm in the same boat as you—while I've done a fair bit of fiddling round the edges, I've only written two actual substantive articles in 2017, and neither of those (Selina Rushbrook and the gloriously-titled Anti urination devices in Norwich) is exactly what you'd call high-profile. Rather than fiddling around with sketches, it might be worth poking the WP:MED people to see if anyone has a free-use photo of him—he died before the age of selfies, but it's certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone took a photo of him at a conference. ‑ Iridescent 18:17, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Happy holidays and new year

Happy holidays and new year and all the best in 2018, and thanks for all your help as of late! Davidgoodheart (talk) 22:21, 31 December 2017 (UTC) (talk) 22:20, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, and the same to you ‑ Iridescent 18:29, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Belated seasons cheer & some humbag

Was travelling last week, is my excuse, here is a belated anti x-mass tune. Grumble. Ceoil (talk) 21:33, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Does it totally destroy my cred with the kids to say that I immediately thought 'this sounds just like "Not So Manic Now"'? (To link in to an earlier conversation, try this if you want a Christmas song with impeccable "nobody's heard of it" indie credentials. The personnel aren't listed, but they're Helen Love, Tim Wheeler from Ash, Andrea Lewis Jarvis from the Darling Buds, Liz Hunt from The School and Ricardo "Hampster Dance" Autobahn.) ‑ Iridescent 21:45, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
Your starting to sell me on Helen Love. She's a grower. Ceoil (talk) 00:08, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
​I'm a great admirer of hers, although I'll concede she's a slow burner—initially you just think "this sounds like a third-rate Poly Styrene tribute band", but then you run into something like "Calm Down Dad" or "Does Your Heart Go Boom" and it all clicks into place. (For something completely different, you might want to check out Reefus Moons as well.) ‑ Iridescent 18:21, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
.... as featured on A Psychedelic Psauna! Always reminds me of this psychedelical hero. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:31, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
God, that takes me back—I used to love Bevis Frond, even though when I listen back to him now I can't quite work out why. If we're on the subject of 1990s compilations, I'll make a plug for Dial M for Merthyr and Succour, both of which are so obscure they don't even get a Wikipedia page. ‑ Iridescent 18:37, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, a classic rarity that I've looked out for for many a year. I see you can currently get one, on eBay, for US $42.50 from Dallas, Texas. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:52, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
It's currently listed on everyone's second-favourite tax-dodging money-laundering operation with a technology firm attached for a more reasonable £9.99 vinyl, £14.98 new CD and 90p+p&p used CD. ‑ Iridescent 19:03, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

To me, this new-fangled modern vinyl just doesn't smell right. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:22, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Tony1

I'm late to the drama as usual, but I think "distraught" is the right word I'd use over Tony's block and subsequent retirement. When I was looking at upping my editing skills and doing some proper work some years back, Tony's writing exercises were one of the things I looked at, and I've used them elsewhere in life just to become better at writing.

I'd like to go to AN and propose a redaction of Tony's block log per WP:IAR for this one instance, simply to allow him to return to productive editing and put the issue to bed. However, from your comments you suggest this would be a waste of time as the community can't override WMF consensus, so I'm not going to waste my time trying to get something that's impossible. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 14:00, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Personal perception only, but I don't think there is such a "WMF consensus" at all. Yes, there was a statement by a developer that block logs aren't expunged and you'd probably get the same answer if you asked on Phabricator - or you get just pointed at mw:Principles - but I doubt that it covers revision deletion. After all, a rev-deleted entry is still there, just hidden from non-admins. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:15, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Leaving the WMF issue aside, If you take this to AN/I I don't think you would get the result you want. You would need to persuade a majority of people that the block itself was completely unjustified in order to merit its complete removal from the log. Do you honestly feel that is going to happen given the circumstances? At that noticeboard? As soon as an editor (while in an adversarial discussion) states there is going to be legal issues if they don't get their way, its going to get a legal threat block at least 50% of the time depending on which admin answers the request. Even if its not an outright legal threat, it certainly falls under the chilling the discussion wording. IAR requires a justification that an action improves the encyclopedia. If the only thing preventing Tony from returning to editing is his block log, that is the natural consequence of his own actions. It could easily be argued the block (albeit very short) has served its purpose in preventing future disruption and chilling threats in talk page discussion. Even if some admins might think it was hasty given who it was, they would still support the right of the block being made based on possibly needing to take similar action in the future with someone else. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:24, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
I think this happens at Commons (one of the extremely odd things about their culture being that they are for transparency to the point of lunacy sometimes but they are fine with hiding block logs...? Reasons I will never even attempt to understand their inner workings...). There was controversy there after the INC fiasco as to whether block logs involving issues with INC could be oversighted (answer: no). For what it is worth, the relevant en.wiki policy classifies it as tool misuse: Especially, RevisionDelete does not exist to remove "ordinary" offensive comments and incivility, or unwise choices of wording between users, nor to redact block log entries. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:39, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, however Oshwah seems to have disappeared from a few days; presumably the remorse has just got too much for him. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:24, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Or perhaps Tony1 could you know, just get over it. 'I'm taking my ball and going home' doesn't engender sympathy in adults any more than it does in children. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:38, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Well, maybe. But his ball was rather abruptly punctured by one of the "grown-ups", wasn't it? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:52, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Hockey fan here. 2 minutes in the bin for instigation at best. If every player retired after getting a penalty against them, games would be over before the end of the first 20. One of the problem areas with admin enforcement is that it relies a bit too much on both who is doing the enforcing and who it is being enforced against. If an IP or a less regarded editor had made the same remarks, no one would be batting an eye and would laugh off suggestions the block log should be redacted. But because its 'Tony' they get special consideration? Its a common trend (in my opinion) that experienced editors and admins get more leeway when breaking the rules, rather than as it should be, they should get less because they should know better. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:05, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
I can see the sense in all your comments there. I think this whole episode reflects rather more unfavourably on the admin than on the editor. In my book, Tony1 is very welcome to have a holiday. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:20, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Long reply

OK, this reply is going to be both quite lengthy (because the situation seems complicated enough that it can't be summed up neatly, and slightly disjointed (as it's partially cobbled together from my replies to assorted private emails I've received on the matter). Yes, I'm aware that I'm the person who only a few days ago was complaining about other people posting walls-of-text; sue me.
Firstly, this is by no means the clear-cut bad block Tony's admirers are painting it as. I'd urge everyone commenting who hasn't already done so not to just take Tony's version of what happened and actually read the thread which triggered this incident. Even if one completely disregards the offending I will revert again if you revert. Then it becomes a legal issue. line which led to this, Tony's conduct was still so thoroughly obnoxious as to be verging on warranting a WP:TE block.
However they do things on Commons, revdeleting would unquestionably be a violation of policy here, even if Oshwah and Tony were both to agree with it. Back in 2011 I did propose a change to the software to allow asymmetric log editing when blocks are reversed (e.g. the action would stay on Oshwah's record in case in future someone wanted evidence that he was block-happy, but would be invisible on Tony's), which would address this particular situation nicely, but to the best of my knowledge it never went anywhere, and since it would need a change to the MediaWiki software isn't something that could be rushed in as a quick-fix.
The only circumstances I can think of in which it wouldn't lead to the admin in question immediately being hauled off to Arbcom for desysopping are:
  1. A well-publicised RFC leads to a consensus of uninvolved community members (e.g., not a consensus of whichever of Tony's friends have his talk page watchlisted, or are members of the sooper-sekrit off-wiki mailing list which I assume he still operates) that not only should the policy be changed, it should be changed retroactively to cover Tony's block. It's unlikely that you'd get consensus for policy to be changed, for all the reasons this change has been rejected whenever it's been proposed before. It's asymptotically unlikely that you'd get consensus to make the change retroactive, since (as Callanecc alludes to on Tony's talk page) if this was such an egregiously bad block that it warrants rewriting history, so are about 95% of the blocks on Wikipedia, and every editor who's been blocked because an admin thought the word "sycophant" was a swear-word, blocked for "repeatedly adjusting the white balance of an article's lead image", or blocked because the admin was reading the wrong page when they clicked the "block" button* would quite rightly complain if we didn't extend the same treatment to them.
    *All of these have really happened, and all three blocks are still visible in the logs.
  2. Someone manages to persuade the WMF that this situation has the potential to cause so many problems if left unchecked, they should revdelete the log as a WP:OFFICE action. This is not going to happen; SF will sometimes wade in to banning cases because they're the only ones with the authority to place or lift a ban globally, but the last thing they want is the controversy that would arise from them being seen to try to micromanage Wikipedia, or being seen to rule that some editors are more important than others.
  3. Someone files an arbitration case and manages to convince Arbcom to rule by motion that the set of circumstances here was unique and unlikely ever to happen again, and that in this particular case the logs can be redacted without creating a precedent (since the record of the circumstances will in that case be recorded in the Arbcom logs, so the "we need to preserve the record of the admin action in case anyone wants to build a case about the admin's pattern of errors in future" argument doesn't apply. This is the only option I can envisage having any chance of working, although I think a newly-elected arbcom, many of whom woke up three days ago with the tsunami of the arbcom-l archive crashing their browser and are diligently trying to wade through it, won't be grateful to whoever dumps on them a case with the potential to rival Infoboxes II for bad-faith accusations, self-important posturing and tiresome walls of text.
Anyone rewriting the logs under any circumstances other than one of the above (and possibly a few other very unlikely possibilities such as Jimmy Wales unilaterally intervening) would not only be a clear breach of policy, but because of the discussions surrounding it would be something where the admin couldn't claim they weren't aware it was a breach of policy. Consequently, any admin doing so might make it stick—since nobody would want the hassle of undoing the action once it was a done deed—but would be doing so as an Yngvadottir-style kamikaze mission, and would immediately be shown the door themselves. (Maybe one of the old stagers like NYB, Slimvirgin or myself, or one of the current arbcom members, could do it and retain the admin bit, but even in those cases I'd imagine it would serve as a pretext for everyone holding a grudge against whoever it was to pile on and demand their head; it wouldn't be a done deal that even NYB would survive it.)
There are some principles for which this kind of self-sacrifice would be worthwhile. However, in this case we're talking about an editor who for the past decade has engaged in what could charitably be described as "extreme inflexibility" and could uncharitably be described as "systematic harassment and disruption" when it comes to enforcing his own strict prescriptivist "every guideline must be obeyed" approach to Wikipedia (the Wikipedia equivalent of playing Buckaroo! is reverting all of Tony's disruptive "script assisted fixes" to any given article discreetly enough that he doesn't notice and throw a tantrum). You can find your own examples just by reading his talk archives, searching for his name in the AN/ANI archives or searching for his name at FAC—the Request for topic ban for Tony1 from all FA-related pages and Gross incivility, threats of off-wiki harassment, and personal attacks by Tony1 threads from 2011 are probably as good a place as any to start if you're unfamiliar with the back-story here. If his battlefield conversion to the merits of WP:IAR is genuine, then obviously it's to be welcomed; however, I do not intend to wade into battle to protect the right to invoke IAR for someone who's spent quite literally years harassing anyone else who doesn't follow his particular interpretation of every rule, no matter how arcane, to the letter.
Tony has done much valuable work on Wikipedia and I'd be sorry to see him go; however, he's also regularly been one of the most arrogant and aggressive people I've ever encountered. I pretty much second everything Only in death says above (particularly experienced editors and admins get more leeway when breaking the rules, rather than as it should be, they should get less because they should know better), and I'm not going to join the pile-on of people at his talkpage hailing him as some sort of holy martyr just because someone has for once given him a very minor taste of his own medicine. There are people who are the victims of genuine injustices at the hands of Wikipedia admins (waves to Eric, Greg, et al), but Tony's right to insult and belittle people without consequence because he's somehow too valuable to lose is not a cause for which I'd encourage anyone to fight. ‑ Iridescent 16:21, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Replies to reply

I realize now you have quoted me I have used too many shoulds in there and it makes me sound like a muppet. Of course I cannot correct that now you have quoted me... Bounder. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:47, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Shoulda, woulda, coulda. - Sitush (talk) 16:51, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
I do have to agree with most of your points, Iri. I think Tony's done great work, but there are also occasional issues with inflexibility. I hope he doesn't leave, but in the end, it's his choice. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:11, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Just butting in cause I saw this go by, and since I have weighed in (and was read the riot act for it by Tony, whom I don't really know...)--I've not edited a block log before; I'm not even sure if I know how to do it. Until recently I didn't think it could be done. However, it is done sometimes, and while Iridescent knows the rules much better than me, I wouldn't oppose an IAR redaction, though it seems from Iridescent's account that this is a really big R. But in such a case I'd like to see an "it wasn't meant like that, sorry" rather than a "fuck you ignoramuses". I get the feeling we're not going to see that, though I haven't looked at his talk page since he commented on me. Wave to Eric, Drmies (talk) 17:19, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
​Editing block logs isn't hard; just check the box next to the log entry, click the "change visibility of selected log entries" button, and select every check-box on the screen that pops up. View this section of block log with and without your magic oversighter goggles on if you want to see what the act of history being rewritten looks like. (If you search the arbcom-l archive circa April-ish 2011 you'll find my original thoughts on asymmetric revision deletion. AFAIK the proposal fell by the wayside after my ejection from the Big Brother house. Feel free to repost any of it in the unlikely event that I actually said anything pertinent.) ‑ Iridescent 17:23, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
While I don't disagree with anything you've said about Tony1, having had some experience of being on the receiving end of 14 blocks and counting (how the hell am I still here?) I do have some sympathy with him. God knows, I've ranted and raved enough about them when I've been blocked, largely because it felt like I was being treated like a child who's been told to sit on the naughty step. And of the maybe four or so reasonable blocks I can quite honestly say that once I'd calmed down they had no lasting effect whatsoever, other than to cement my distaste for certain jobsworth administrators. So I'd say the real problem here isn't Tony1's block - which really doesn't amount to a hill of beans despite his apparent concern for the effect it may have on his standing somewhere or other - but the system of blocking itself, which makes situations like this one inevitable. Eric Corbett 18:04, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
No disagreement from me. Because blocking and protecting are the only real weapons in the arsenal, and protection has the potential to mess up a lot of people whereas blocking only messes up one (and when an admin does try to put a stop to a dispute by protecting the article that's causing problems rather than blocking the protagonists, they tend to get crap like this in response) there's always been a tendency to block first just because it's the only practical thing to do. IIRC there's talk of changing the mechanism to make it possible to block a given editor from a given page or group of pages, which hopefully will for the first time make it possible to push people out of areas where they're causing problems rather than kicking them out altogether.
While you're here, do you think Ernst Rothauser is salvageable? I just declined a deletion request on it, as there's obviously a claim of significance there, but presumably every source is going to be in 1950s/60s German-language journals and I've no idea how one would go about rescuing it. ‑ Iridescent 18:17, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
  • The current draft seems to have been translated from the German Wikipedia without proper attribution. Anyway, there are English languages sources such as The Economist (vol 223, p 557) – "Dr. Rothauser gave computers a voice. He and his group, working in Vienna, programmed speech elements into an IBM system : the syllables, phonetic sounds, pitch variations, amplitude, and speed rates that make up a true voice." Andrew D. (talk) 18:48, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
    @Andrew Davidson: I've imported the German Wikipedia history to Talk:Ernst Rothauser/attribution so that we can merge the history over. Not after accidentally overwriting the talk page, I've rectified that now I think but I am not going to merge the history myself right now. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:09, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Bitching about Meta
For what it's worth the request in the Community Tech survey for selective blocking were meta:2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Admins and stewards/Allow further user block options ("can edit XY" etc.) and meta:2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Anti-harassment/Per-page user blocking but they unfortunately did not get enough support. The ongoing discussion is on meta:Talk:Community health initiative/Blocking tools and improvements. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:44, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Edited my post as it linked the wrong thing. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:46, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Oh, good grief; this is why no sane person should ever have anything to do with Meta. What could possibly go wrong here? ‑ Iridescent 18:48, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
No clue. Why didn't anyone oppose it. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:55, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Does no sane person should ever have anything to do with Meta ring a bell? "Protest votes" and "abstention" are no more a good idea here than in politics. Also, as I found out the survey is not like RfA; "oppose" votes don't count towards the tally, they can only convince others not to support or the team to alter or reject the proposal. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:00, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
The cynic in me says that supports are going to be meaningless there as well, and that the devs will work on whatever they like the look of regardless of whether there's clear support or overwhelming opposition. These are the good people who brought us Winter despite precisely nobody wanting it, along with MediaViewer, Vector, LiquidThreads, Superprotect, the Typography Refresh, Flow… ‑ Iridescent 19:02, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, but how the hell is "ping users from the edit summary" more important than better blocking tools? I can't recall an ANI thread started over that (although I can think of about one per month that will happen if the infobox wizard gains traction). Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 22:53, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
It's not, but the general community doesn't see that. A couple years ago I participated in a similar survey and a similar thing happened. The devs were aware that providing better tools to admins would help everyone but as long as we have all-encompassing community surveys the same thing is going to happen over and over again. --NeilN talk to me 23:05, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
I did take a stab on meta:Talk:Community health initiative/User Mute features to get the idea across that anti-harassment features that work on a social media project may carry risks when applied to an encyclopedia project. We shall see how that works. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:59, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

On following further links from those Meta pages Jo-Jo Eumerus links above, I came across this utterly fuckwitted proposal, which looks set to rival Infobox Wizard when it comes to needless disruption caused in the name of highly questionable benefit and which appears to have been slipped through by the WMF as a fait accompli. Sometimes I think Somey was right when he used to go on his "maintenance phase" rants, and that the amount of needless makework rises and falls to match whatever sum the WMF is willing to pay on hiring programmers. At least this one doesn't seem to actually be being used by anyone, so hopefully will eventually go the way of LiquidThreads. ‑ Iridescent 23:50, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Selective blocking

Please feel free to move to different section if desired. With regard to "selective blocking," it's always struck me that we don't need a software solution. If the default reaction to (say) an isolated 3RR violation on X were not "you're blocked for 24 hours" but "you're prohibited from editing X for 24 hours," I think 90% of editors would comply. If they didn't, they'd get reported back to AN3 and then the full block would be imposed. Yes, there might be marginally less deterrent effect, but on balance I think this would be a better solution say, 80% of the time. But I must be missing something, because I've proposed it about four times over the past ten years with no traction at all. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:11, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

For 24 hours sure, but the ability to enforce topic bans mechanically without having to go through the unpleasant-for-all-involved process of WP:AE would benefit everyone. How many now-lost editors would still be with us if (to take a couple of not-at-all-hypothetical examples) it had been possible to hard-code "banned from editing anything in Category:Members of the United States Congress or its subcategories", "not permitted to edit any articles other than those in Category:English literature" or "User:X is not permitted to make any edit mentioning User:Y anywhere on Wikipedia", and consequently had avoided those editors either intentionally or unintentionally slipping over the line, being hauled off to WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement to be submitted to ritualized shaming and then blocked by Sandstein with a pompous and dismissive notification, and as a consequence walking off in disgust? If "selective blocking" sounds too formal, try thinking of it as "personalized edit filter". Christ, how much time from how many people engaging in angels-on-pinheads metadebates on linguistic relativism would have been saved if we'd had the facility to prevent individual editors from using the words "fuck" and "cunt"? ‑ Iridescent 00:24, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
A lot / some of ours block logs would be smaller for a start :D >SerialNumber54129...speculates 17:18, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
Except that these topic specific blocks would also be logged...somewhere.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:34, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
It would depend on how it were implemented. The fact that someone's listed at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions doesn't carry anywhere near the same stigma as a block log; the fact that someone is logged as having triggered an edit filter carries no stigma at all. ‑ Iridescent 00:09, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, that solution won't work. The 10% are usually the really problematic cases. Incidentally, that hashtag proposal (I see no discussion on any social aspects anywhere in that task) has been uncommented on for over a year, so perhaps it is dying. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:53, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
The thread has been uncommented on because the WMF unilaterally made the feature live. Looking through their "Trending tags" section, it appears that aside from Catalan Wikipedia nobody's taking it very seriously. Not that I would suggest such a thing, but I suspect few enough people are using this feature that anyone using a hashtag in their edit summaries for a couple of weeks could get it to the top of the list fairly easily, with potentially amusing consequences when a journalist spots that page. ‑ Iridescent 10:56, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
English Wikipedia being unmanageably large
​​​Remember, Meta reflects all the projects, not just the big ones like English and German Wikipedia. I imagine that from the viewpoint of the long tail where almost everyone knows everyone else (of the 300 Wikipedias, only 25 have had over 1000 editors make even a single edit in the past month), "nuanced blocking tools" really aren't much of a priority, since either somebody's causing a problem or they aren't and it's genuinely possible (and socially acceptable) to monitor any given editor's entire output. As I've long said, there's a strong case to be made for English Wikipedia (and possibly Spanish, French and German) to have their own custom version of the software to deal with the unique issues caused by enwiki's role as the de facto first point of reference on most topics and the internal and external pressures that creates, and with enwiki's unmanageable size in which it's literally impossible to monitor changes to even a limited subset of articles but good luck getting that approved.
"It's literally impossible to monitor changes to even a limited subset of articles" isn't an exaggeration. Paste this list of every article about a British railway station—a topic with a strictly limited scope on which it's perfectly reasonable to believe someone might want to watch the entire thing for changes—into your watchlist (making sure you're either using a second account, or have saved a copy of your actual watchlist first!) and watch your watchlist light up like a Christmas tree. Just monitoring that one list of under 10,000 pages for vandalism and good-faith mistakes would be a full-time job. ‑ Iridescent 21:39, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
Re: the "paste into watchlist using a second account" comment: if anyone wants to see the changes to articles on that list, it is possible to use Special:RecentChangesLinked, as seen at this link. Carcharoth (talk) 11:15, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Regarding RecentChangedLinked, this link showing all articles on that list which have been changed in the past seven days (rather than just the most recent 50) illustrates considerably more spectacularly just what I mean by literally impossible to monitor changes to even a limited subset of articles. ‑ Iridescent 23:13, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Ernst Rothauser
  • So far as Ernst Rothauser's article is concerned, as it's pretty short and not well written, I'd just ditch the whole thing and start again from scratch. I don't see much that's worth saving to warrant the faff of attributing anything. I always laugh when I see these lists of patents held by IBM employees. I know from personal experience that if they thought they could get away with it IBM would patent the use of keyboards to communicate with computers, or left-to-right text displays, or ... There's also at least one factual error in the article anyway; Rothauser's Mailüfterl was not Europe's first transistorised computer, not if you consider the UK to be in Europe. That honour goes to the Transistorised Computer built at Mancheser University. Eric Corbett 20:37, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Gosh that article is a petit dejunner du chien, and "Europe's first transistor computer" should be "Austria's". Anyway, I'm doing a bit of cleaning up on it. And yes, somewhere there is a review of the blocking tools available on WP. For several years I have proposed we have a "block from page" which would be used far more often, as the options we currently have of shutting everyone out, or stopping somebody from editing completely for one minor infraction, are like cracking nuts with sledgehammers. I've been on the receiving end of a block (collateral damage on the IP) and I got mad as hell over it, particularly as the block was for 2 years and would have stopped everyone in my local library editing for that time. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 22:41, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Once something like this exists, it's virtually impossible to get rid of it unless it's so seriously inaccurate as to be unsalvageable, since there's a reasonable "it's better than nothing" argument to be made (although if someone with access to the German sources wants to have a go it could probably be completely overwritten and nothing of value would be lost). I'm fairly sure I've seen a large metal box in the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin which also claimed to be Europe's first transistorised computer, but I may be misremembering. ‑ Iridescent 23:13, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
(adding) I think it's Z22 (computer) I'm thinking of. First magnetic-storage computer, not first transistorised; as you were. ‑ Iridescent 23:18, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Concurring with Eric Corbett, as it stands this article barely, if at all, meets en.Wiki standards for notability. The sources are short death notices, patent approvals, academic disertations, and listings. The one thing which might make him notable is the famous Vocoder, but IMO more sources would still be required. I have personally felt that "it's better than nothing" is not a rationale for 'keep' (at least not at AfD). At least the article is not a BLP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:42, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
The Vocoder was invented by Bell Labs in the 1930s (Rothauser's connection to it is that his thesis was on its applications). His claim to fame is as a pioneer of programmable computers. He almost certainly did enough significant work to pass WP:PROF, but even for a fluent German speaker it would be an absolute bastard to source, since almost none of the sources will be online and quite a bit of the work will likely have been either a military or commercial secret at the time (it's very, very well documented that a lot of 20th-century inventions from Germany and to a lesser extent Britain and the USSR are misattributed as there existed such a culture of secrecy and paranoia between 1914 and 1990 that developments weren't publicised). Even Konrad Zuse and F. C. Williams, who were genuinely giants in the field, are barely known since they don't fit the popular "Alan Turing invented everything in his garden shed and IBM popularised it" narrative. ‑ Iridescent 00:59, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Fair enough. If you think it would warrant my time, by all means give me the German sources. I'm bilingual. But I'll trust your judgement - I'm certainly not implying you're wrong. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:06, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Go with Eric's judgement on this one. As the virtually-sole author of Manchester Mark 1 and SSEM (and as a not-insignificant contributor to Alan Turing) his judgement is going to be better than mine when it comes to early computing. ‑ Iridescent 10:44, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Re: this revert

This edit was reverting an automated edit to remove a link to an article deleted at AfD. You can restore the redlink if you like but given the AfD result there's unlikely to turn blue anytime soon. A Traintalk 13:29, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

And this is why it's rarely a good idea to remove the backlinks when deleting a page… That this particular link had been hijacked and mistargeted doesn't mean it isn't a valid redlink; if you seriously think an organisation which has been in continuous operation for 170 years and whose predecessor body goes back to the Gordon Riots isn't a viable topic, I respectfully suggest your personal notability criteria are out of line with Wikipedia consensis. ‑ Iridescent 13:38, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm not saying anything of the sort, I just closed the AfD. Easy, tiger. A Traintalk 14:08, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Copyeditor's Barnstar
This barnstar is being awarded to you for your efforts and contributions in copyediting many Wikipedia articles using AWB. Keep up the good work! Pkbwcgs (talk) 16:57, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation

In [46], I have fixed a disambiguation link to Mansfield railway station (which is a disambiguation page). Here, I observed that it was reverted. I don't understand what have I failed in this edit. It wasn't breaking any formatting, all it was doing was fixing a link to a disambiguation page. I don't see anything that is wrong in this specific edit. Pkbwcgs (talk) 16:37, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Also, it is nice that you have a full list of UK train stations. It looks very nice but wouldn't it be better if links to disambiguation pages were fixed? Pkbwcgs (talk) 16:47, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
That page was created to enable tracking of changes to all those articles. It seems that Mansfield railway station (England) is not on that list, and should be added. The disambiguation page (though not about a station) is also one that could have changes to it tracked, either with the station articles or as part of a page listing disambiguation pages. The rabbit hole doesn't stop there. You can have pages tracking changes to the redirects. Changes to a topic area's talk pages. Changes to a topic areas's templates. Changes to a topic area's images. Changes to a topic area's WikiProject pages (including the pages being used to track changes). And so on (though I may have covered everything there). example Carcharoth (talk) 18:17, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
@Carcharoth: Thank you for your reply but it is strange that there is only one disambiguation link on this page so I still wonder why this user has reverted my edit. I also wonder how has this user found all the UK railway stations, London Underground stations, Croydon Tramlink stops and stations that have permanently closed. If this user was going to track all the pages related to train stations in the UK, there would be many disambiguation pages in this list. There wouldn't be only one disambiguation page. I also have a tool enabled that highlights links to disambiguation pages and only one link has been highlighted as a disambiguation link. Pkbwcgs (talk) 19:17, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Weird log entry

Hi Iridescent, can you or any of your many watchers explain this log entry? I received a thanks notification from the account a short while ago. No contribution history etc, although I think thanks are themselves logged somewhere. It's obviously going to be a disruptive account should it ever make an article edit etc, given the long-term accounts operated by @Vanamonde93 and RegentsPark:. Ta. - Sitush (talk) 19:00, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

That "created automatically" means the parent account is on a different WMF project; when you visit another language wiki the software autocreates the account (go to List of Wikipedias and pick something weird, and you'll see an account autocreated for you at the moment you first visit). In this case, the account was created at Norman Wikipedia, presumably because the IAC IP addresses are hardblocked on all the main languages. ‑ Iridescent 19:08, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Ah, I understand that bit now re: registered elsewhere. They appear to have made no substantive contributions anywhere yet. I'm not up to speed regarding the IAC LTA and certainly wasn't aware that they'd been hardblocked, although I am aware of some legal stuff regarding them and the WMF. - Sitush (talk) 19:13, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I'm not aware if they've been hardblocked either—that decision would be taken well above my pay grade, given the implications—I'm just assuming, as otherwise why go to the trouble of creating an account on Norman Wikipedia rather than either direct on en-wiki or in whatever Indian language they speak? If you cut-and-paste [[User:Whatamidoing (WMF)]] to generate a ping she can tell you what the WMF's current position is. ‑ Iridescent 19:19, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Most of the IAC stuff seemed to emanate from Germany, or at least from various domains etc registered there. But, as I say, I'm out of touch with it: they made my life hell for a while, the WMF kindly helped me out and to the best of my knowledge this would be their first contact with me since that time. I'll ping User:Whatamidoing (WMF) anyway, thanks, because if something is kicking off there may be a way to nip it in the bud. - Sitush (talk) 19:27, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Of course, this may not be IAC but just a generic caste warrior who's taken exception at you removing some "long line of saints and warriors" waffle at some point. It's not like Wikipedia has any shortage of those. Even though they haven't edited here, by logging on the account has triggered the "touched" flag so the technical (if not the policy) means exists to run a checkuser and work out who it is if you can convince someone to do it. ‑ Iridescent 19:33, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Or do some pre-emptive block on the basis that it is a disruptive username, even though it hasn't actually contributed? That could probably be done under en-WP policy but perhaps not elsewhere. - Sitush (talk) 19:35, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't like doing that unless it's unavoidable, as it just means they create a fresh account and we then have to work out what it is—unless an account is actually being disruptive IMO it's generally a better idea to leave it unblocked and keep an eye on it. ‑ Iridescent 19:37, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
(e/c)Here are all the people he thanked. In case that's a useful pattern. Also, is there any reason to keep them unblocked I haven't thought of? Ok, I see Iri's point, but if they start harassment-by-thanking again, let an admin know. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:39, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
It has to do with Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Arbitration_enforcement_action_appeal_by_Raymond3023 --NeilN talk to me 19:43, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Seems to be randomly thanking some people who contributed to a thread at AE. - Sitush (talk) 19:45, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
(tps) Now blocked by Oshwah [47]--Pawnkingthree (talk) 20:04, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
You would think that in light of recent events Oshwah would be the last admin you'd expect to be running around in full "hey, I just got a new block button mode, let's try it out" mode, but nothing surprises me any more when it comes to admins thinking a few extra permissions turns them into superheroes. Oshwah, I take it you're volunteering to be the one monitoring Special:RecentChanges to spot the new account now you've blown this one, or is this another of your eat-shoot-and-leave specials? ‑ Iridescent 20:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Jesus, Iridescent... I wasn't trying to test the block button nor "eat shoot and leave" anything. And no, I'm definitely no superhero. I saw the account after being alerted of the username, and I've seen LTA accounts that create accounts like these before. So I blocked on this premise. I'm going through this thread now; did I miss something? Help and feedback would be appreciated. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 16:41, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, sorry for being snappy—I was in the middle of dealing with this fuckwit and in a considerably fouler temper than is normal. ‑ Iridescent 17:18, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
I understand, and all is forgiven and forgotten Iridescent :-). If there's anything else that I can do or need to do regarding this situation, please let me know and I'll be happy to do so. Thank you for the follow-up, Iridescent. I appreciate it very much :-D. Best -- ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 17:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:bcc

I noticed you used it the other day, and just again to ping me. Quite possibly the most useful template I've seen on Wikipedia. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:10, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm a great fan of it, when you want to notify people but don't want to include a link to them in the discussion and give their name undue prominence. Before it was created, I used to wikilink punctuation marks to peoples' names to create the same effect, but this is far neater. (The one issue I have with it is that AFAIK it doesn't work if it's subst'ed, so if it becomes popular it will push high-volume pages like WP:ANI, WP:FAC and WP:DYKN over the template limit and end up crashing things altogether.) ‑ Iridescent 17:15, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Ah bcc, the nuclear bomb of office politics.... Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:22, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Using {{hp}} has the same effect, if you don't want to use {{bcc}}; the main issue in my experience is remembering that the template doesn't have any effect on the rendered output and consequently not to put spaces around it out of habit and thus goofing up the indenting. The most useful template on Wikipedia is {{sfn}} by a mile; Jack Merridew may not have been the easiest person in the world to get on with, but as far as I'm concerned the time saved by that template alone more than makes up for whatever disruption he caused. ‑ Iridescent 17:25, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Now if only RefToolbar worked with that format... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:57, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, {{sfn}} is a lifesaver. This also has reminded me that I *really* need to get back into mainspace and finish off the 17th century conclaves... TonyBallioni (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
RefToolbar works fine with sfn; you just need to remember to put "ref=harv" in the "other fields" box (or manually add it to the bibliography entries) when you create the bibliography, so the sfn links have corresponding anchors. ‑ Iridescent 18:01, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
Except that the citation is still printed out in <ref> format and without creating a page number less sfn tag for copypasting. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 18:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
In other news, related to the Neelix discussion that started this, Commons has actually deleted Tracy. A true loss for c:Category:Nude or partially nude women with purple hair (NSFW). TonyBallioni (talk) 18:27, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
And the takeaway from that discussion is that despite all their talk about "ethics", Commons will still keep a completely unencyclopedic image even when the subject complains, but the deletion machine leaps into action like a student spotting a two-for-one at Greggs when they realise that it's making other people laugh at them. (All is not lost; thanks to the mirrors, she's now going to be at the top of a Google search for tracy fruit loops for the rest of her life.) ‑ Iridescent 18:32, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
​Ha! Anyone who still doubts my characterization of Neelix's sanity, have a look at what he's done with Category:The Sirens and Ulysses by William Etty, 1837 (a category which by definition is only ever going to contain one image plus a couple of zoomed details, to boot). ‑ Iridescent 17:11, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

New disambiguation page that I created

Hi, how are you and how was your holidays? Please check out this new Saraya (disambiguation) page that I created. My editing has been very minimal lately as I am not creating articles (only disambiguation and category pages I still make), I'm just doing add-ons now. I have some questions regarding other disambiguation pages, but that can wait until next time. Please tell me what you think of my page. Davidgoodheart (talk) 00:35, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

A few quick-skim thoughts:
  • It should start with Seraiah, as the name is clearly the primary use of the term. It should also probably mention the Turkish "Saray" (palace) as otherwise readers will be confused as to why there are buildings in the list (it will also make it more obvious that this is cognate with Sarajevo, which is likely to be the only instance with which most English-speaking readers are familiar);
  • Check your links, as Saraya doesn't point where you think it does;
  • (this goes for every page, not just this one) Preview and proofread anything you write before you click "publish"; an Arab desert and an Arab dessert are two very different things;
  • There are some fairly obvious omissions from the list (El Saraya (neighborhood), Saraya Ahl al-Sham and above all Saraya Aqaba.
Disambiguation isn't something with which I have much involvement; the best place to ask about whether you're following their assorted arcane rules correctly is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. ‑ Iridescent 09:31, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for you input. I have now upgraded it, please tell me what you think. Davidgoodheart (talk) 01:24, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
​Again, I'm really not the best person to ask. My contributions to Wikipedia are centred around 19th-century arts, architecture and engineering, and while I'll occasionally chip in to help if there's an administrative backlog somewhere or if I spot something that obviously needs fixing, I have little interest in and little regard for the Manual of Style in general so don't keep up with the ever-changing mix of dos and don'ts that constitute purported "best practice". I have very little involvement with disambiguation and aren't up to speed with all their rules; I've already pointed you to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation, which is pretty much by definition the best place to ask if you want input from people who actually have opinions on the format of dab pages. (On the subject both of formatting and of talk pages, please start formatting your talkpage posts correctly; when you're replying to someone's comments, indent your reply with one more colon than the post to which you're replying. You're not a new user—you have over 20,000 edits over a five-year period—and your continued refusal to follow one of Wikipedia's basic conventions, which has a specific and necessary purpose in delineating which comment is being replied to by whom in threads involving multiple posters, is starting to verge on disruption. If you're genuinely unaware of how indentation works, I've reformatted this thread into correctly formatted indentation as a demonstration.) ‑ Iridescent 11:56, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

ANI

With this edit [48] you removed a post of mine, I assume this was an edit conflict, it might be a good idea to undo it.Slatersteven (talk) 18:41, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I thought Zzuuzz and I had got all of them; is there one I haven't restored? Basically, someone unintentionally cut-and-pasted the entire page, so from that point onwards some people were replying to one version of a thread and some were replying to others, so it took a few edits to get the threads reintegrated. ‑ Iridescent 18:46, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
you also seem to have removed the title (And thus merged it with another ANI) of this thread[[49]].Slatersteven (talk) 18:47, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Cheers.Slatersteven (talk) 18:52, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Yup, missed that one—you'll appreciate that repairing a cut-and-paste error on this scale, with people commenting on the threads in the meantime, isn't something that can just be fixed with a quick undo but needs to be repaired bit-by-bit. I think that all threads are now back to the status quo ante and all comments made while we were in the process of repairing it have now been reintegrated. ‑ Iridescent 18:54, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks

For the close; you'll appreciate the irony of their having "I've been using Wikipedia as an unregistered user since 2008" on their userpage :) >SerialNumber54129...speculates 18:47, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Not sure the close is the main thing for which you should be thanking me… ‑ Iridescent 18:57, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes... didn't want to draw Zzuuzz' attention to me though  :) Sorry about that: I've got no idea at all how I managed to both write a coment and then (presumably?) ctrl+A, +V... thanks for sorting it. >SerialNumber54129...speculates 19:03, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
At a guess, you got the edit conflict window and did a ctrl-a on it rather than just selecting your comment from the window. (That EC screen is a contender for the least-usable parts of MediaWiki, but I can't think of a way to improve it.) ‑ Iridescent 19:05, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
It was an e/c wasn't it; must be it, although I wish it wasn't quite so easy to (almost) blow up the bloody page without even noticing!—even if it is the best thing for ANI—Thanks agin though, >SerialNumber54129...speculates 19:09, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Have you tried the new beta Two-column edit conflict feature? One of the few beta features I’ve actually found semi-useful. You can test it at meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Edit Conflicts/Feedback Round Test Page if you haven’t. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:49, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
That's what I for one am already talking about... I somehow managed to 'select all+paste' in the course of an edit-conflict without even trying (and, I assure you, also without going near ctrl or right-clicking!). Hence my notion of bizarrity.... >SerialNumber54129...speculates 20:53, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

In an attempt to avoid creepiness...

... and yet not let an incorrect image of a person on an article, which you'll hopefully admit is a rather important case of WP:IAR ... I'm going to ask if you could do the honours with this one. File:Eliza Acton 1799-1859.png is probably not Eliza Acton given that http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/Northeys3.html has a larger version of the image, labeled "Julia Eliza Northey Hopkins/Shum. Image courtesy of Gavin Shume © 2012". (Also https://www.geni.com/people/Julia-Shum/6000000002810243478.) --GRuban (talk) 21:52, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

If you think the creepiness is more important, you may, of course, take no action. Though hopefully not shoot the messenger; though that is a risk... --GRuban (talk) 21:54, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
So, having been warned to stop conducting opposition research by following around the edits made by your enemies, you response is to start going through SchroCat's sandbox? If you can invoke IAR so can I, in this case by breaching WP:CIV—what the fuck is wrong with you? Knock this shit off now. For the benefit of baffled TPWs wondering what the hell this is, it relates to this thread. ‑ Iridescent 22:02, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
OK. Duly shot. Carry on. --GRuban (talk) 22:10, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Thx

That is all. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 18:40, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

No problem. CP appears to be a very new user, who likely doesn't really understand how Wikipedia talk pages differ from internet fora; hopefully this will prompt them to spend some time looking at how Wikipedia operates and what is and isn't considered acceptable and appropriate. I've no real doubt that they're acting in good faith, they just seem to be a little overenthusiastic. ‑ Iridescent 18:44, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah,

BTW, I sneaked this in after you closed it - I posted it as you were closing, then saw it'd been hatted, so I then moved it inside the hat.

Hope that's OK; I'm fairly sure it is, but felt like I should tell ya.

Keep up the good stuff, 86.20.193.222 (talk) 18:53, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

...and I totally agree that CP looks like a good-intentioned but somewhat misguided new user, and hope they'll get the hang of things. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 18:54, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

No problem; it's always been generally accepted that comments which edit-conflict with the close of the thread stay unless there's a particular reason to remove them. ‑ Iridescent 18:55, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Sure, but, "generally accepted" is the death-knoll of Wikipedia...
Just sayin'; WP:IAR. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 20:26, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Another way of putting "generally accepted" is... WP:RS, which, after all, are by their nature almost never radical (at least, not the working majority): visualise Socialist Worker in place of The Guardian, and imagine the results... >SerialNumber54129...speculates 20:38, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Ah, it's not like the old days when it was possible to assume that everyone knew and was either complying with all the policies or had a good reason not to. Wikipedia now has so many sprawling and mutually contradictory policies and guidelines–
Wikipedia's current official list of policies and guidelines. Really.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  1. User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles
  2. Wikipedia:8 simple rules for editing our encyclopedia
  3. Wikipedia:ADMINP
  4. Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute
  5. Wikipedia:Administrators
  6. Wikipedia:Anarchism referencing guidelines
  7. Wikipedia:Appealing a block
  8. Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight
  9. Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions
  10. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy
  11. Wikipedia:Article Feedback/Feedback response guidelines
  12. Wikipedia:Article size
  13. Wikipedia:Article titles
  14. Wikipedia:As of
  15. Wikipedia:Assume good faith
  16. Wikipedia:Attack page
  17. Wikipedia:Autobiography
  18. Wikipedia:Banning policy
  19. Wikipedia:Be bold
  20. Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons
  21. Wikipedia:Blazon
  22. Wikipedia:Blocking policy
  23. Wikipedia:Bot policy
  24. Wikipedia:Broad-concept article
  25. Wikipedia:Broad-concept articles
  26. Wikipedia:Bureaucrats
  27. Wikipedia:Canvassing
  28. Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates
  29. Wikipedia:Categorization
  30. Wikipedia:Categorization of people
  31. Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality
  32. Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects
  33. Wikipedia:Category names
  34. Wikipedia:Changing username/Guidelines
  35. Wikipedia:CheckUser
  36. Wikipedia:Child protection
  37. Wikipedia:Citing sources
  38. Wikipedia:Civility
  39. Wikipedia:Clean start
  40. Wikipedia:Community portal
  41. Wikipedia:Conduct policies
  42. Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
  43. Wikipedia:Consensus
  44. Wikipedia:Content forking
  45. Wikipedia:Content policies
  46. Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia
  47. Wikipedia:Copyright violations
  48. Wikipedia:Copyrights
  49. Wikipedia:Core content policies
  50. Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing
  51. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion
  52. Wikipedia:Dashboard
  53. Wikipedia:Days of the year
  54. Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/Guidelines
  55. Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators
  56. Wikipedia:Deletion policy
  57. Wikipedia:Deletion process
  58. Wikipedia:Department directory
  59. Wikipedia:Directories and indexes
  60. Wikipedia:Disambiguation
  61. Wikipedia:Disambiguation/PrimaryTopicDefinition
  62. Wikipedia:Dispute resolution
  63. Wikipedia:Disruptive editing
  64. Wikipedia:Do not create hoaxes
  65. Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point
  66. Wikipedia:Do not include the full text of lengthy primary sources
  67. Wikipedia:Edit summary legend
  68. Wikipedia:Edit warring
  69. Wikipedia:Editing policy
  70. Wikipedia:Editor's index to Wikipedia
  71. Wikipedia:Essay directory
  72. Wikipedia:Etiquette
  73. Wikipedia:Extended image syntax
  74. Wikipedia:External links
  75. Wikipedia:FAQ/Index
  76. Wikipedia:Featured articles
  77. Wikipedia:Featured lists
  78. Wikipedia:Featured pictures
  79. Wikipedia:Featured topics
  80. Wikipedia:File names
  81. Wikipedia:Five pillars
  82. Wikipedia:Fringe theories
  83. Wikipedia:Gaming the system
  84. Wikipedia:Global rights policy
  85. Wikipedia:Glossary
  86. Wikipedia:Good articles
  87. Wikipedia:Good articles/all
  88. Wikipedia:Good topics
  89. Wikipedia:Harassment
  90. Wikipedia:Hatnote
  91. Wikipedia:High-risk templates
  92. Wikipedia:IP block exemption
  93. Wikipedia:IRC
  94. Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources
  95. Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)
  96. Wikipedia:Ignore all rules
  97. Wikipedia:Image use policy
  98. Wikipedia:In the news/Recurring items
  99. Wikipedia:Indic transliteration
  100. Wikipedia:Libel
  101. Wikipedia:Linking to external harassment
  102. Wikipedia:List of guidelines
  103. Wikipedia:List of policies
  104. Wikipedia:Logos
  105. Wikipedia:Maintenance
  106. Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable
  107. Wikipedia:Manual of Style
  108. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Abbreviations
  109. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility
  110. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Anime- and manga-related articles
  111. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies
  112. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Canada-related articles
  113. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters
  114. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Captions
  115. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Chemistry
  116. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/China-related articles
  117. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Comics
  118. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computing
  119. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Contents
  120. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Cue sports
  121. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers
  122. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages
  123. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Embedded lists
  124. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Film
  125. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/France and French-related
  126. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Hawaii-related articles
  127. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Icons
  128. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images
  129. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/India-related articles
  130. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes
  131. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles
  132. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles
  133. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles
  134. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles
  135. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Latter Day Saints
  136. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout
  137. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section
  138. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Legal
  139. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking
  140. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists
  141. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists of works
  142. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics
  143. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles
  144. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Military history
  145. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music
  146. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music samples
  147. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Novels
  148. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Philippine-related articles
  149. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Poland-related articles
  150. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation
  151. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Proper names
  152. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Record charts
  153. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Road junction lists
  154. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid
  155. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Singapore-related articles
  156. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Snooker
  157. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Spelling
  158. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Stand-alone lists
  159. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Stringed instrument tunings
  160. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Tables
  161. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Television
  162. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting
  163. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles
  164. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trademarks
  165. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Trivia sections
  166. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Visual arts
  167. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch
  168. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction
  169. Wikipedia:Mediation
  170. Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy
  171. Wikipedia:Meetup
  172. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Armenian)
  173. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Australian roads)
  174. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Burmese)
  175. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese)
  176. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Greek)
  177. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew)
  178. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic)
  179. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean)
  180. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Latter Day Saints)
  181. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Macedonia)
  182. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mongolian)
  183. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (New Zealand)
  184. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Norse mythology)
  185. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan)
  186. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (U.S. state and territory highways)
  187. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies)
  188. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK stations)
  189. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (West Bank)
  190. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms)
  191. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft)
  192. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ancient Romans)
  193. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (astronomical objects)
  194. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (baseball players)
  195. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)
  196. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (broadcasting)
  197. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)
  198. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry)
  199. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (clergy)
  200. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (comics)
  201. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies)
  202. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics)
  203. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)
  204. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes)
  205. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events)
  206. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)
  207. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (films)
  208. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)
  209. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)
  210. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (government and legislation)
  211. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ice hockey)
  212. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages)
  213. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (law enforcement agency categories)
  214. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (long lists)
  215. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (manuscripts)
  216. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (music)
  217. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)
  218. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (operas)
  219. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)
  220. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals)
  221. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (political parties)
  222. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)
  223. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)
  224. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sports teams)
  225. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople)
  226. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (stations in Poland)
  227. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)
  228. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)
  229. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)
  230. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (video games)
  231. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (writing systems)
  232. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
  233. Wikipedia:No 3D illustrations
  234. Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles
  235. Wikipedia:No legal threats
  236. Wikipedia:No original research
  237. Wikipedia:No personal attacks
  238. Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights
  239. Wikipedia:Non-discrimination policy
  240. Wikipedia:Non-free content
  241. Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria
  242. Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline
  243. Wikipedia:Notability
  244. Wikipedia:Notability (academics)
  245. Wikipedia:Notability (astronomical objects)
  246. Wikipedia:Notability (books)
  247. Wikipedia:Notability (events)
  248. Wikipedia:Notability (films)
  249. Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features)
  250. Wikipedia:Notability (music)
  251. Wikipedia:Notability (numbers)
  252. Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)
  253. Wikipedia:Notability (people)
  254. Wikipedia:Notability (sports)
  255. Wikipedia:Notability (web)
  256. Wikipedia:Noticeboards
  257. Wikipedia:Offensive material
  258. Wikipedia:Office actions
  259. Wikipedia:Open proxies
  260. Wikipedia:Outline of Roget's Thesaurus
  261. Wikipedia:Overcategorization
  262. Wikipedia:Overcategorization/User categories
  263. Wikipedia:Oversight
  264. Wikipedia:Ownership of articles
  265. Wikipedia:Ownership of content
  266. Wikipedia:PGLIST
  267. Wikipedia:POLICYLIST
  268. Wikipedia:Page blanking
  269. Wikipedia:Page mover
  270. Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure
  271. Wikipedia:Patent nonsense
  272. Wikipedia:People by year
  273. Wikipedia:Plagiarism
  274. Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers
  275. Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines
  276. Wikipedia:Portal guidelines
  277. Wikipedia:Preparing images for upload
  278. Wikipedia:Principles
  279. Wikipedia:Project namespace
  280. Wikipedia:Proposed deletion
  281. Wikipedia:Proposed deletion (books)
  282. Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people
  283. Wikipedia:Protection policy
  284. Wikipedia:Public domain
  285. Wikipedia:Reader's index to Wikipedia
  286. Wikipedia:Recent years
  287. Wikipedia:Record charts
  288. Wikipedia:Red link
  289. Wikipedia:Redirect
  290. Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines
  291. Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice
  292. Wikipedia:Request directory
  293. Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content
  294. Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles
  295. Wikipedia:Reviewing pending changes
  296. Wikipedia:Revision deletion
  297. Wikipedia:Rollback
  298. Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines
  299. Wikipedia:Set index articles
  300. Wikipedia:Shortcut
  301. Wikipedia:Shortcut directory
  302. Wikipedia:Signatures
  303. Wikipedia:Simplified ruleset
  304. Wikipedia:Sock puppetry
  305. Wikipedia:Soft redirect
  306. Wikipedia:Spam
  307. Wikipedia:Spam blacklist
  308. Wikipedia:Speedy keep
  309. Wikipedia:Spellchecking
  310. Wikipedia:Spoiler
  311. Wikipedia:Spoken articles
  312. Wikipedia:Stub
  313. Wikipedia:Styletips
  314. Wikipedia:Subpages
  315. Wikipedia:Substitution
  316. Wikipedia:Summary style
  317. Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines
  318. Wikipedia:Talk page templates
  319. Wikipedia:Television episodes
  320. Wikipedia:Template messages
  321. Wikipedia:Template namespace
  322. Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
  323. Wikipedia:Terms of use
  324. Wikipedia:The rules are principles
  325. Wikipedia:Tips
  326. Wikipedia:Tools
  327. Wikipedia:Trifecta
  328. Wikipedia:Trinidad and Tobago Wikipedians' notice board/Style guide
  329. Wikipedia:Tutorial/Keep in mind
  330. Wikipedia:Updating information
  331. Wikipedia:User categories
  332. Wikipedia:User pages
  333. Wikipedia:Userboxes
  334. Wikipedia:Username policy
  335. Wikipedia:Vandalism
  336. Wikipedia:Verifiability
  337. Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment
  338. Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team
  339. Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not
  340. Wikipedia:WikiProject Belgium/Alternate language names
  341. Wikipedia:WikiProject Belgium/Brussels naming conventions
  342. Wikipedia:WikiProject Belgium/Castle, country house, château and kasteel naming conventions
  343. Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Naming conventions
  344. Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory
  345. Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide
  346. Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland/Ireland Category Norms
  347. Wikipedia:WikiProject Mining/Style guide
  348. Wikipedia:WikiProject Swiss municipalities/Article title conventions
  349. Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines
  350. Wikipedia:Wikimedia policy
  351. Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects
  352. Wikipedia:Wikipedia abbreviations
  353. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary
  354. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day
–that it's impossible and unreasonable to assume that any editor is aware of them, so Wikipedia now runs as much on custom-and-practice as on formal policy. We try to ensure everyone at least pays lip service to WP:5P, but the rest of them are effectively now weapons people pull out in arguments. I'd challenge even the most devout True Believer to actually know what (for instance) Wikipedia:WikiProject Belgium/Castle, country house, château and kasteel naming conventions says; where experienced editors differ from newcomers nowadays is that the experienced editors know where to look these things up when they need to win arguments. ‑ Iridescent 20:39, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
I haven't even heard of most of these pages, much less read them. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:49, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Those are only the written en-wiki policies and guidelines. Remember you also have everything on Meta and the WMF website to consider, 14 years of Arbcom cases, and whatever parts of Commons and Wikidata policy apply to whatever you're doing. Welcome to bureaucracy. ‑ Iridescent 20:53, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, Prime Minister... Humphrey Appleby

WP:IAR is still core. 86.20.193.222 (talk) 21:01, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes but. IAR is still core, but it's If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it (my emphasis). When people interpret "ignore all rules" as "do whatever the hell you feel like" they tend to just annoy people until eventually they get blocked. ‑ Iridescent 21:05, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, similar to how WP:SOFIXIT gets used as "if it's borked it's your responsibility to fix it (not mine)" rather than the actual "if you see something wrong, don't ask, just fix it!" Primefac (talk) 14:39, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
​If I ruled the world, about 95% of Wikipedia:Shortcut directory would be sent off to RFD as utterly pointless—nobody ever uses most of them, and a lot of them are outright confusing. (Without looking, do you want to guess what WP:LOO points to?) This is never going to happen. ‑ Iridescent 18:16, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Brilliant. How does that work out? WP:List of overviews, or something? Certainly seems mildly unrelated to "Portal:Contents/Overviews" :D Bit gutted to find no-one's had the imagination to bluelink WP:BOG, for tht matter! >SerialNumber54129...speculates 18:23, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't ******* believe it! It is! Unbelievable. >SerialNumber54129...speculates 18:24, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
You could probably make a legitimate case for redirecting WP:BOG→Wikipedia:WikiProject Sanitation, although looking at the talkpage that project appears near-dead. ‑ Iridescent 18:29, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
What is needed is a bot to automatically expand the shortcuts. I mean internal discussions are filled with word salad like INDISCRIMINATE, COI, POV, OR and nobody who isn't an expert has an idea what language we are speaking. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:49, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I have no idea how outsiders parse some of our conversations without having popups enabled. --NeilN talk to me 18:57, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
👍 Like JJE's suggestion in theory. Jargon is fine when used solely between people who can be expected to know what it means (e.g. a real workplace), but in an environment like Wikipedia where one needs to assume everything is potentially going to be read by a newcomer it just gives the impression that the place is run by a bunch of elitists speaking an impenetrable private code. The obvious drawback is that some of the expanded titles are very long; a sentence like "take them to ANI if there's any more STUPID or WEBHOST behavior; I won't go any further per BEANS but there's a clear CIR and IDHT issue"—which is perfectly plausible—would render as "take them to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents if there's any more Wikipedia:List of really, really, really stupid article ideas that you really, really, really should not create or Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a blog, web hosting service, social networking service, or memorial site; I won't go any further per Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose but there's a clear Wikipedia:Competence is required and Wikipedia:Disruptive editing#Failure or refusal to "get the point" issue", which is not exactly what we want if we're trying to make the place look less confusing. ‑ Iridescent 19:06, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
Ha. Maybe people will stop using the more useless shortcuts then. Or even more hopefully stop speaking in wrapped-around-Wikipedia-jargon-ese when plain language works as well. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:58, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I see the same in Deletion discussions a lot. "Fails NBIO, GNG, and V" vs "Fails notability guidlines for people and is unverified." I've seen some people trying to stamp out TLAing but I viewed it as fairly hypocritical and a useless solution to the problem. Whenever I am at a AFD with newer users, I always try to write the links out in some sort of long hand. L3X1 Become a New Page Patroller! (distænt write) 21:39, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 2) Yeah, I agree, but it's easier to write [[WP:CIR|]] or [[WP:AFCP|]] than it is to write out the above. Don't all registered users have it automatically enabled (re: unless you disable it) to have popups show the "final destination" of a redirect? Whenever I hover over something like WP:AFCP it shows "Wikipedia:Articles for Creation/Participants". Primefac (talk) 21:41, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't think we can assume that new users (including those which are considering to make an account) will understand that. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:00, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
There is also a separate issue of people citing a page by its name when the page does not say what its title says. WP:STUPID is not about "stupidity" in general, for example. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:00, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
It would be funny if, contrariwise, we had new users who were only registering accounts so that they too could write Newspeak with the best of them  ;) >SerialNumber54129...speculates 22:04, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Hogwarts Express FAC

Hi Iridescent,

I nominated Hogwarts Express (Universal Orlando Resort) just over two years ago and you had left some comments. I haven't been on Wikipedia since (I only signed back in last week!) but I made some adjustments to the article and I think it could become a FA. I would greatly appreciate it if you could review it again! Thanks!--Dom497 (talk) 18:46, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I only made a quick driveby comment about describing it as a replica of Kings Cross station—I'll have a look at the FAC when I get the chance and try to comment, but I'm probably not the best person to ask. You want to consider asking at places like WP:TRAINS, as you're quite likely to find a fair few people with a general interest in "things that run on rails" there who'll approach it with a fresher perspective than the people who usually write on amusement parks and roller coasters (who tend to be enthusiasts who sometimes have difficulty appreciating what third parties will find interesting about the topic). ‑ Iridescent 18:58, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Collecting references to news pictures for articles

Tiptoeing away from the above (sorry), the example I was referring to is now at this userspace subpage. I got a bit distracted by WWI memorials that were destroyed in WWII ([50] and [51]) and then the state of the memorials in Iraq ([52] [53] and [54] [55]). But hopefully that subpage makes things a bit clearer. Carcharoth (talk) 03:34, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd be wary of using anything from the Illustrated London News unless it's very obviously out of copyright. While the print edition is defunct, the company is still very much alive and their lawyers have near-TfL levels of tenacity when it comes to defending their copyrights (understandably, as their entire business is based on their having unique access to historic imagery). Pre-1923 and uploaded to en-wiki not Commons, fine, as enough copies of any given issue would have made it across the Atlantic to constitute publication in the US, but anything after that you're looking at low-res fair-use images, and at potentially getting nasty takedown letters.
Incidentally, perhaps someone can explain why www.iln.co.uk is on the global spam blacklist? I'm sure there's a good reason, but I'm failing to think of one; it's hardly as if a business as niche as the ILN is going to be sending out spam. ("We have engravings of Crimean War battlefields, blurry photos of under-construction railway bridges and hand-drawn reconstructions of crime scenes EXCLUSIVE FOR YOU NOW just send us bitcoin!!!")
The ILN would actually make a very good partner if they could be persuaded to accept a deal along the lines of "you release free-use low-resolution versions of your images to us, which in return will increase awareness and mean that people looking to licence high-resolution historical imagery will be more likely to come to you instead of your rivals", but that's a deal that would need to be negotiated at a level well above my pay grade. For something in the UK and this potentially high-profile, presumably Daria would be the person to talk to. ‑ Iridescent 08:56, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Disregard the above, It looks like Mary Evans and Cengage now control licencing rights for the ILN archive and trying to persuade either of them to relinquish total control would be a waste of time for all concerned. ‑ Iridescent 10:02, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Re spam blacklist, it was added here over six years ago because IRC request: «site that has taken over the name of a 19thC newspaper and changing the links from the old paper to their website». Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:12, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Oh for fuck's sake; why doesn't "IRC request" surprise me? As I've long said, we should treat anyone who performs an admin action "because someone asked me to on IRC" no differently than we'd treat an admin who did something "because a guy I met in a bar asked me to". I take it MarcoAurelio just took the random IRC request on trust without actually doing anything so prosaic as checking the link, since even back in 2011 their website made it abundantly clear that this was the ILN and not a site that has taken over the name of a 19thC newspaper. (The Wayback Machine link is blacklisted as well; cut-n-paste http://web.archive.org/web/20111123001752/http://www.iln.co.uk/heritage/ to see what it looked like then.) (The mind boggles as to what "the website of a 19th-century newspaper" would look like, anyway. I'm picturing some steampunk fantasy out of The Difference Engine, with telegraph operators faithfully relaying the on-off state of each mechanically-operated pixel.) Is there any TPW with admin rights on Meta who feels like unblacklisting it? At the moment we have the ridiculous situation where our The Illustrated London News article doesn't actually include a link to their own website. ‑ Iridescent 16:11, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
m:Talk:Spam_blacklist#iln.co.uk filed to request unblacklisting. It was on 2011 and I don't remember the details. Sorry if I was wrong back then but I can assure I check every link before blacklisting and that I don't take IRC requests from random people but from users who I work with regularly on the wikis so it's not like I recklessly blacklist links for fun. Actually I hardly ever take any IRC request. There's also MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist where you can locally override the global and local blacklist for specific links or domains should you need them. Thanks. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 20:37, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I have removed the regex, so it can be used freely now. Re: "We have engravings of Crimean War battlefields, blurry photos of under-construction railway bridges and hand-drawn reconstructions of crime scenes EXCLUSIVE FOR YOU NOW just send us bitcoin!!!" - that is a very narrow way of looking at spam, Iridescent. This is now an internet-only company, and the only way to make revenue is that they are known and that their information can be found. Companies pay a lot of money for SEO or engage in SEO themselves, including very respectable ones (I would expect that CNN does it), and I am sure that ILN does perform those practices as well (but likely in a very respectable manner). Nonetheless, sometimes companies do hire SEOs which do go over the top (sometimes without the company knowing), or they have an intern who is a bit too enthousiastic, and they start using Wikipedia for that (though I do not think that that is the case here seen recorded reason for blacklisting). --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:28, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks—links now added to the article. The present-day ILN is only an internet company in the sense that News Corp or Penguin is an internet company; while they've stopped publishing their namesake newspaper, they still publish plenty of other material (if you ever spend any time in first-class lounges you'll be hard pressed to avoid the revived Sphere, which has been rebranded from an early 20th century penny dreadful into a glossy free magazine targeted at people with more money than sense). Remember that as well as the ILN they also own the archives of other seminal Victorian and Edwardian publications like Tatler, The Sketch, Bystander and The Graphic—I'd be willing to bet a large sum that they make considerably more from licencing their image archives than they do from their online marketing services. (I'd be willing to place a reasonable outside bet that they make more from licencing Bruce Bairnsfather alone than they do from their online marketing services.) ‑ Iridescent 11:11, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Your signature

Please be aware that your signature uses deprecated <font> tags, which are causing Obsolete HTML tags lint errors.

You are encouraged to change

&nbsp;–&nbsp;[[User talk:Iridescent 2|<font color="#006633">iridescent 2</font>]] :  – iridescent 2

to

&nbsp;–&nbsp;[[User talk:Iridescent 2|<span style="color: #006633">iridescent 2</span>]] :  – iridescent 2

—Anomalocaris (talk) 07:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

[56] >SerialNumber54129...speculates 07:58, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Anomalocaris, given that that account has made a grand total of 21 edits in the past year and hasn't edited at all in two months, how are you selecting who gets these notifications? Looking at your recent contribs, you're notifying editors who haven't signed anything for months (e.g. this one whose last signed post was in February 2016 so there's no way you could know what they have set as their current signature), so you're clearly not doing it from recent changes. Are you working from the preferences database, and if so who at the WMF gave you consent to access it, given that when an editor died and his widow requested we disable his email to prevent her getting notifications the request to access even that one field in preferences needed to be bounced all the way up the chain of command to Jimmy Wales? FWIW, while the <font> attribute may be declared "obsolete" the word doesn't mean the same thing to W3C as it does in real life, and the rules for parsing a legacy color value remain compulsory for browsers to support in HTML5, so if <font color="#006633"> is throwing errors then the problem is at your end, not mine. ‑ Iridescent 15:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Based on this discussion I think they're using an SQL query. Primefac (talk) 15:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC) (talk page stalker)
Primefac is correct; most of my recent notifications are from an SQL query, which looked back 30 days; that query was done 7 December 2017, and I'm nearly finished working that list. Shouta is on the 7 December list; I do not know why and I am puzzled too, because I thought the list looked back only 30 days. I do not have access to the preferences database.
The <tt> tag is also non-HTML5 compliant; please use <code> for source code, <kbd> for user input, <var> for variable names, or <samp> for output, function and tag names, etc.  :-)
I haven't been able to access the w3.org website in over a week; if you are able to access it, please let me know, so I can complain to my ISP.
<font color="#006633"> works now, but at some point in the future, it won't, and that's why Wikipedia is working on moving to HTML5-compliant markup. My focus has been to reduce the creation of new non-HTML5-compliant markup by notifying users with non-HTML5-compliant signatures. I have notified over 600 users; about two-thirds of them have used their signature since I notified them, and of those, the overwhelming majority have updated their signatures to HTML5-compliant. Cheers! —Anomalocaris (talk) 17:49, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Follow-up: I now understand these issues more completely. The SQL query was done at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/ — which uses a database of public information that includes user signatures. This particular query was restricted to users who made at least one "talk" (Talk, User talk, Wikipedia talk, Template talk, etc.) edit within the past 30 days. Shouta edited their own user talk page without leaving a signature; editing the page was sufficient to be included in the report. You can do your own Quarry queries; this isn't a secret. Are you able to access w3.org? I still can't. —Anomalocaris (talk) 09:34, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
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