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March 2020

Disambiguation link notification for February 22

Resolved

– With thanks to DPL bot for the ~~botslapping of~~ reminder to SMcCandlish, the dablink has been fixed to the likely intended target. Doug Mehus T·C 15:01, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Cão da Serra de Aires, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Monforte (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

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FAC you may be interested in

Done

Hi Stanton. There's an FAC at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2019 Champion of Champions/archive1‎ that needs additional comments, if you get some time. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:25, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Will do, but I'm out the gap in 2 minutes, and a quick scan shows a firehose of comments already. My "pre-review" comment would be to ensure that {{cuegloss}} is used at first occurrence of any jargon term; this is a high-profile enough event that it's apt to draw in some non-snooker-expert readers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:28, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Not a problem. My experience at FAC has been that 3 supports is not enough. I'll check through for cuegloss, but I'm usually pretty on it with that one. Thanks for taking a look. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:32, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

I think I got to it too late for much beyond nit-picky copyediting. It's quite good, especially compared to so many articles on similar events across sports generally, which tend to either be dry recitations of stats (leaning toward WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE problems, and at least failing to be interesting), or the other extreme, a WP:NOT#NEWS problem of overblown news journalism blather masquerading as encyclopedia material. You walked a good balance. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:18, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies! I wasn't expecting a 30 point note, but I'll try and look through it all. A few things look like grammar issues that go over my head, and some are holdovers from WP:SNOOKER. It was a great event, with a very interesting final so it's good to see it get some eyes. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:03, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't consider any of the grammar/style twiddles particularly important. It's just what came to mind. I pretended I was editing it, and just jotted down the tweaks I would make and why. The piece is so good I didn't find anything to do with/to it beyond such little tweaks. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:16, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Your opinion on a matter

What would you make of this? The edit in question removed the tags that were present in the original "version C" diff, and no one apparently ever considered the content to be a significant portion of version C until after the RFC closed (it was actually part of version A, and the linked version C diff just didn't remove the content as it was already tagged).

I actually wouldn't mind hashing it out on the talk page now that I have an RFC close watching my back, but this is clearly not a content dispute so much as a troll editing in bad faith, and by sheer coincidence the admin who refused to block him back in December has since been desysopped for unrelated-but-similar behaviour...

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:30, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Not a faith-related assumption I would leap to, but the edit does seem problematic. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:58, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Scottish Clan

Thanks for sorting out - I was just concerned that all those reference page numbers might be lost - hence my "attention getting" revert.

On the matter of identifying different editions versus reprints, I note what you say. However, for the casual reader this nuance of Wikipedia usage may not be obvious. There is a particular example of the importance of identifying the edition in Scottish history: The Making of the Crofting Community is a highly influential work by James Hunter. There are critical differences between the two editions (and there are reprints of this book as well) - university reading lists are very precise over which one they want their students to read. I tend to be someone who just goes along with Wikipedia practices. I am more interested in Wikipedia article content than exactly how it is presented. However, this is me just raising a point about maximising the value that the reader would get out of a Wikipedia article. If you are someone who fights all those battles about style guides, etc., you might want to bear this point in mind.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:40, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@ThoughtIdRetired: It's good that I have revert notices turned on and was awake. :-) I am sorry about that error; that was a total bone-head move (I'll have to see what regular expression I wrecked, so I don't do that again. I was pretty sure I was looking for "p." followed by any digit, and inserting a space while preserving the digit; but I seem to have overwritten the digit instead, somehow. Argh.) On the book versions thing: I used to have most of these books (before I got tired of lugging 3000+ books around when I moved! Now I fit in a small apartment again for the first time since about 1989), so I know what you mean. It would probably be entirely reasonable to remove the |orig-year=yyyy entirely, if you fear someone might seek out the old edition. I thought you were considering it important to keep the original year of publication, but it sounds like it's more important to not highlight that. (Honestly, I don't use |orig-year= most of the time, except to indicate that a book is a modern reprint of something very old, like a Victorian work, as a warning to the reader that the material is potentially obsolete). In almost 15 years here, though, I don't think I've ever seen anyone use the |edition= parameter to try to indicate the publication year, except in the odd case of a serial release that is literally subtitled something like "2020 Edition", as with things like AP Stylebook and other annual releases. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:51, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Update: I pulled out those |orig-year= instances, so we're clearly and only referring to specific editions by year. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:07, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

An editor I was working with literally yesterday was using |volume= to indicate the date of a magazine e.g. |volume=May–June 1995. You just never know... --Izno (talk) 13:01, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. That's weird. Even if it said something like "Our May–June 1995 Issue" on the cover, that might suggest |issue=, not |volume=. What really gets me is people who can't (or won't) understand the difference between |work= and |publisher=. It's like being unable to tell the difference between The Magical Mystery Tour and Apple Records, or to maintain the distinction between Game of Thrones and HBO. Even in a case like The New York Times and The New York Times Company, how hard is it to comprehend that a newspaper full of words you can read on paper or on the Web is not the same as a corporation full of employees and office furniture? (And not list both when the names are this redundant; same goes for |location=New York City, New York|work=The New York Times.) There seems to be some kind of general semantics fault happening, like confusing the map for the territory, the menu for the meal.

That said, a few people intentionally abuse the |publisher= parameter for what belongs in |work= to try to forcibly un-italicize names of online publications. They really need to just give it a rest. We keep RfCing and proposal-izing the question (most recently at WT:CS1, as I recall), and the answer is always the same: there's no magical difference between how to cite a publication on dead trees versus in a digital format, and when we're citing something we're citing it as a publication, by definition, whether or not the site or other digital object would normally be addressed as a publication (versus a service, application, etc.) in another context. Programmatically polluting the citation metadata just to get a personally preferred typographic look is disruptive, since it wastes other editors' time cleaning up after it and thwarts proper WP:REUSE of WP's material. We've gone to a lot of effort to make our citations work with various bibliography software packages and stuff, and it's not okay for someone to intentionally wreck this for their personal font-appearance preferences. They need to make use of WP:USERCSS instead. That's enough of a morning mini-rant. I guess I had me some good coffee!
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:07, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Global variation of IQ scores

Hello SMcCandlish, would you be willing to make a revised proposal about the contents of this section of the race and intelligence article, that fixes whatever NPOV problems you think exist in my own proposal? At this stage it's clear that my own proposal isn't going to gain consensus, and I'm also feeling mystified about how it is possible to satisfy all the objections to it (aside from by excluding the section from the article entirely, but consensus in past discussions seemed to oppose that option).

If you want to be bold and try adding a revised version of the section back to the article, I would be fine with that also. I'll probably support whatever you write in that section. As I previously said to Sirfurboy, I think that even a poorly-written or poorly-sourced section about international IQ comparisons would be an improvement over the article not covering this topic at all. 2600:1004:B14E:63FD:A8E7:E862:289A:18DD (talk) 02:58, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm inclined to leave it alone for a while. Too much attention has been drawn there, with too much heat, and in too short a space. As you suggest yourself, it has attracted filibusterers with conflicting viewpoints, so I don't think a consensus will emerge on it any time soon. Better to let the ranters lose interest and go be busybodies somewhere else, then reapproach the matter later after things have calmed down. I'm strongly reminded of the e-cigs article debates, which entrenched and got a bunch of people on both sides of it topic-banned or blocked. Don't need that kind of drama. I've also just devoted literally all day to cleanup of the main article on the coronavirus outbreak, and so I'm a bit worn out for WP stuff right now. I intended to give it about an hour but it took much longer. I won't forget about the R&I article, but it really does need to be approached with a great deal of sensitivity, and that's best done in an absence of grandstanding and finger-pointing. :-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:09, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

How long do you think it's necessary to wait? This group of editors has been dominating the article for two or three months at this point, so I don't foresee the situation changing soon.

As I previously pointed out at AE, there have also been repeated attempts at blanking other sections of the article, although Dlthewave has stopped doing that for the time being while the discussion about his latest removal is still underway. If we let this issue drop for the time being, I think the most likely result will be that the section blanking of other parts of the article resumes, and then we'll have a much more difficult situation than the current one. 2600:1004:B14E:63FD:A8E7:E862:289A:18DD (talk) 05:13, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, it's unnecessary for you to wait, if you want to continue apace. It's necessary for me to wait, because I've become near-fatally allergic to WP:DRAMA. I've become a firm believer in the WP:NODEADLINE principle. Some of our articles are crap for years, and only improve after certain editors go away. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:50, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm finding the current situation kind of exhausting, but the reason I haven't walked away from this article is that I'm predicting if I do, the section blanking will continue until the article is reduced to a 1KB stub. Perhaps that won't actually happen, though.

In any case, I'd like the next proposed revision to the "global variation" section to be made by someone other than me, so that's the other reason I was asking how long to wait. How about I ask you sometime next month if you could propose another revision? Waiting a month would also give you some time to look into whether there are any reliable sources that offer a general criticism of international IQ comparisons, rather than just sources that specifically critique Lynn and Vanhanen's work. 2600:1004:B146:AAA9:A40B:7BC6:E1EC:FA1A (talk) 11:26, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

That sounds fine, though I'm unlikely to have the the necessary access to do such research in the interim (I have a lot of unrelated project "irons in the fire", and already spend more time at this site than I should). Next month I might have time for some of this and more inclination. But I posted to the article talk page suggesting someone with full-text journal-search access should get on this. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:56, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

St. Patrick's Day

decoration + music with thanks from QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:00, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Captions necessary for every table?

Hey SMcCandlish. I was recently taking a look at MOS:ACCESS, and more specifically MOS:DTT. As an extensive contributor to (at least) the latter, do you feel that every table on Wikipedia necessitates a caption? For example, I was editing Seasons (Waiting on You) earlier, and a user added captions to each table used on the article, including to denote a table under a heading marked "Accolades" that those are indeed the accolades for the song, a table under the heading "Charts" that the table denotes chart performance for the song, and that a table under the heading "Release history" that it is indeed showing a release history for the song. This is not explicitly about this user's conduct, but rather if you think this practice is always necessary, and if there are any instances where the captions are redundant. To me, it doesn't really seem like the captions are adding anything in these instances that screen readers are not already telling visually impaired readers or that they cannot already glean from the heading and the subsequent information. Thanks. Ss112 08:31, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ss112: I would tend to agree; if something else in the immediate vicinity is serving the same function as the caption, the caption is superfluous and probably annoying. But, I'm not blind, and am not regularly using a screen reader (I've used a couple for testing purposes, but it's been a long time, and that was on a laptop I don't even own any longer, so I would need to start with fresh installs, etc.). It's probably better to bring this up at WT:MOSACCESS. If there's not some good reason that comes up to keep adding seemingly redundant captions, I might be in support of a clarification about this, or just tweaking the wording so no one gets the impression that it is impermissible to have a table without a caption when the table's purpose and content are already clear. Having written it, I'm mindful of WP:AJR; we need not add a bunch of blather about this just to deal with one person, especially if just tweaking the sentence a little is good enough. Terms like "usually" and "when helpful" often go a long way, though I would need to go over the line item in question to see what would work well there. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:03, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Also, I've sent you an email about a related matter. While I ordinarily would bring this up at somewhere like WT:MOSACCESS, I don't feel like having a back-and-forth argument over it or getting into a mud-slinging match with other users, which I know given whom has commented there that it would devolve into. Even though it's not something you came up with, would you maybe propose a change/clarification to the wording on the talk page, giving my example of the above (that we don't need redundant captions that repeat what screen readers probably already know)? If you feel it's best I do it as it's my idea, it's fine. Ss112 12:23, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Most recently there was a thread at WP:WP ACCESS that strayed into this discussion which you might find enlightening. --Izno (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ss112 and Izno: Could also bring it up as WT:MOS for a broader set of eyes and minds; it is much more watchlisted than the talk pages of either MOS:ACCESS or WP:WPACCESS. I agree with the intent/meaning of the block of material [incorrectly marked up as a block quotation] laying out draft guideline wording at the WT:WPACCESS thread, though as I'm trying to say above, it's not a good idea ("WP:MOSBLOAT", as EEng says) to inject that much verbiage into an MoS page itself, just to get at some technicality like this. It needs to be way shorter, or shoved into a footnote. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:18, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

"Forelithe" listed at Redirects for discussion

Moot

– Speedily kept before I even got there.

A discussion is taking place as to whether the redirect Forelithe should be deleted, kept, or retargeted. It will be discussed at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 March 23#Forelithe until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines. Hog Farm (talk) 02:47, 23 March 2020 (UTC)