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January 2012

Dispute with LauraHale over non-notable stubs in Category:Women's sport in Australia

Resolved
 – I've simply walked away, and will let others merge, delete, whatever, that mess, since LauraHale is treating me like an enemy and canvassing other editors to harass me in support of her bogus "artiles". I did my best to see them merged, but refuse to get dragged into a tar pit where I'm going to get called a "sexist" just for trying to police content in accordance with WP policies like WP:N, WP:V and WP:NPOV. No thanks.

DB-Context

Stale
 – Discussion never went anywhere. Which is a shame; the issued raised, of defending context-free bogus articles just for political correctness, is a real one.

Please read again WP:CSD since your second CSD was declined (Women's_horse_racing_in_Australia and Women's_billiards_in_Australia) since both have a context. Please if you want to delete them go through AFD/PROD since bot (rather short) articles have a context talking about a topic - moreover they even included references! Only because something might not be notable in your eyes - it might be notable - and if not that is still no CSD reason under context since the article describe simply explains well why it is there (as you could understand all). mabdul 04:08, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

They don't have a context. "A survey said X, and that is all" is not a context or a topic, it's a random statement of trivia. These are not articles. If those statements were part of articles that said something else relevant (one said something else, but it was not relevant), then CSD A1 would not apply, since that would be a context for those statements, but that's not the case here. The "articles" are exactly the same thing as CSD's canonical example. I'm sorry you don't agree with my take on A1, but I've read CSD many, many times. Including a reference for "He is a funny man with a red car. He makes people laugh." would not save that non-article either. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 04:15, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

(Outdent) This is all moot, now, since someone has added questionably helpful sources and some more, mostly pointless material to them. They are thus no longer context-free, but all of them I tagged, with the possible horse racing exception (if it is reworked into Women and horse racing in Australia more generally; the bulk of the material about being part of the spectator/gambler subculture, which has nothing to do with being a jockey) are likely non-notable. Adding sources from the 1930s that remark in passing on, wow, women actually doing some sports, gee whiz, does nothing to establish notability. The press of the time remarked in this way on everything that women did other than wash dishes and make babies, because it was a very sexist time. The main source that started this rampage of pointless wannabe-article creation is a 70-year-old survey, and I targeted this handful of particular activities because the source itself said that less that ONE PERCENT of Australian women were participating in them, and (unlike some others, that have better developed articles now) there's no evidence that's ever changed. Citing the fact that this place or that place had a women-only competition in something or other does not help establish notability, because almost all competitive activities still have women's divisions, even at the local level (largely at the request of women, too); they are not independently notable.

We cannot have a "women's X" article for every single activity in the known universe. About 99.9% of such topics are non-notable because there is nothing at all different about women's orienteering or women's dart throwing or women's juggling or women's investing or women's Shakespearian acting or women's underwater photography or women's university mathematics instruction or women's dentistry, from the men's versions. There has to be some unusual socio-political context there in order for the juxtaposition of "women" and [insert activity here] to be a meaningful intersection. Same goes for "gay" + [activity], "blind" + [activity], "French" + [activity], "dark-haired" + [activity], or any other subset you like. As an actually notable example, Category:Female racing drivers and its articles make sense as such a gendered topic, because the racing industry was not just extremely male dominated since its inception, it was run by misogynistic neanderthals, and most of the fans were against women racers, too. Through perseverance much of that has changed and female drivers are not only more accepted, a number of them are famous and have large fan followings of both genders. That is notable. The fact that 1% or so of women play pool or get on a surfboard in Australia is not notable at all, absent some kind of political, cultural, social background that makes it encyclopedic. Adding what amounts to junk content isn't going to save them from AfD, which is where I'll take them if these articles don't make lot more sense within a month or so. PS: Another hint that these are bad article ideas is the lack of Chess in Australia, Women's billiards, Category:Female sport fishers, and other evidence that even the parent topics (either gender-wise or nationality-wise) have established notability? In a few cases what we'd like to see is there, like Category:Female surfers, but where is Women's surfing in the United States or any other country? There's no evidence that a triple intersection of women + [country] + [activity] makes any sense for any of these cases (triple intersections rarely do, per WP:OVERCAT, unless the parent topics are so full of content they have to be subdivided). These "runt" articles I tagged are a sharp contrast to, say, Women's soccer in Australia, since .au women players are involved in international-level women's competition, i.e. it's notable, not trivia. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 05:05, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Resolved
 – I decline to be involved with this editor or these articles any further.

Where is the merge proposal? Why are you merging notable articles? --LauraHale (talk) 01:21, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

The ones I'm merging wouldn't survive WP:AFD (other than being forced to merge). If you're disputing the merge, go ahead and revert me and we can discuss it. I have seen zero people other than you and me who care about these would-be articles at all, so I'm not sure who else you think would participate. I'm trying to do you a favor. The tiny, trivial stubs can together make a worthwhile article, especially if the non-stubby ones like Women's golf in Australia are also summarized at and linked to with {{Main}} from Women's sport in Australia. Basically, I'm trying to save your work. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC) PS: I have to leave now; won't be replying until 6+hours from now probably. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I'll expand them. The sources exist to prove notability and it would be unlikely to be deleted at AfD based on WP:GNG. You can WP:BEBOLD but we're going to run into problems. If you want to be kind and "save" my work, then you can improve the articles by adding notable sources to them. Trove and the Sydney Morning Herald are two good places to start. --LauraHale (talk) 01:35, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Half the problem with these would-be articles is that you (and from what I have seen, only you) have been using ancient newspapers to add trivia, paragraphs of unparseable gibberish, subtly off-topic information (e.g. material about women as spectators at horse races when the article is supposed to be about women's horse racing, i.e. active participation), clearly unrelated information (e.g. about sport in England, not Australia), and at least twice blatantly falsified source citations for facts you alleged in the article that are not supported by your "sources". The last thing I'm going to do is add even more such extremely dated information for you to manipulate wrongly and use to support content forks on a pointless gender basis, against years of merger precedent. WP:AGF presumes you have well-meaning intent, but it is still not helping the utility and the reliability of the encyclopedia. I'm happy to try to help salvage some of this content, in a way that makes sense in a Wikipedian context, by merging it into an encyclopedic article. I'm not at all willing to help you content-fork and skew the facts. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC) PS: Digging up trivial coverage, e.g. local newspaper mentions of regional amateur events, does not satisfy the GNG. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 02:00, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I've undone the mergers. Knock yourself out. If you can't see that creating pseudo-articles of baldfaced trivia, irrelevancies and even made-up information is worse than useless, and is unencyclopedic, not to mention abusive, I'll let the rest of the editorship clean up after you. If I see you falsify a source again, as you've done twice already at what is now Women's cue sports in Australia, I will report you to WP:AN/I for blocking, because that's worse that vandalism. It's the cardinal Wikipedia sin, and doing it to push your personal political agenda is not easily forgivable. "We're going to run into problems" is an understatement. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 08:22, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Welcome on WikiProject Women's sport

Resolved
 – No issue here any longer.
Thank ya verra much. I will feed it well! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 18:26, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Good Morning SMcCandlish, I received Laura's note on my talk page yesterday evening (you can read Women's sport in Australia [1]. I want to have your collaboration and the constructive criticisms. Also I read your last notes on Women sport's articles [2], [3], [4] and I find that your critics don't help to improve pages wikipedia on the women's sports. This is my first impression maybe I make a big mistake. I presume your good faith and your desire of good collaboration for the Women's sports in Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's sport. I hope that your behavior will be constructive in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's sport. If I can always help you in whatever it is on English wikipedia, do not hesitate to contact me. My friendly hand, je vous tend une main amicale, עם ידידות --Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 12:38, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I am uncertain how you feel that my suggestions that our fellow editor stop falsifying information and sources, stop adding irrelevant information (e.g. sport info from a completely different country to .au articles), stop adding blatant trivia to make the stub look like it is more developed than it is, stop being obstructionist toward routine merge operations, stop intentionally using the most redundant possible citation verbiage in an effort to make the stubs look like they are better sourced than they are, stop adding national team sport templates to sports with no national team just to make the stubs seem more notable than they really are, etc., etc., etc., is somehow not helping to improve Wikipedia encyclopedic coverage on women's sport. Perhaps you can explain? What justification do you see for even one of these consistent patterns of disruptive editing behavior? Please keep in mind that simply for falsification of facts and sources, many content patrolling editors like me would have already reported LauraHale to ANI for blocking.
I'm sure that Hale feels a bit put-upon at this point; almost anyone would if the less-than-useful nature of some of their more disruptive and tendentious editing is criticized, especially when they dig in their heels and refuse to consider changing what they are doing. It is not my or any other editor's "job" here to ignore Hale doing unhelpful things in the encyclopedia simply because it is politically incorrect to criticize edits by a female editor on a female-centered topic. It is to make a better encyclopedia. Hale should rethink her campaign to create utterly trivial non-articles like Women's fishing in Australia, which is about as pointless as "Hispanic snowboarding in Oregon" or "Homosexual karaoke in Sweden" and other triple intersections of random categories that do not report on a notable phenomenon (contrast Women's association football in Australia, which does make sense), and instead direct her efforts toward real articles that we actually need, like "Discrimination against women's sport" and "Women's sport in Australia", the latter of which I tried to create from her stubs, but which simply triggered more objections from her. And, above all else, stop the falsification. There's no excuse for it. Please note that other editors besides me have also been suggesting that some of these would-be articles like Women's archery in Australia should be deleted. It's nothing personal. They're just not encyclopedic. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 20:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
In reality, I don't know Australia (je ne sais même pas le nom du premier ministre ou du président de l'Australie), nor even sports which are practised there. Thus I am going to avoid revising the contents of Laura's articles. But I spoke about human attitudes. Your comments on the work of Laura are hard ... very hard emotionally. Be possible for you to be pleasant and kind with Laura. We can criticize the work of a person without hurting her as human being. I know that you are capable of a good collaboration. You are a good person, why not to hold out the hand to Laura. Help him in his work. Unless you wanted to work on the Women's sports in Canada ( my country) and in United States with me. If that was the case come help me here Major women's sport leagues in North America. Merci beaucoup de votre aide gentille. --Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 20:36, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough, though this for me has nothing to do with what sports are popular in Australia; the debate could have been about handicapped/disabled restauranteuring in Botswana. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 20:45, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
in Botswana ??? no in Women's sport in Australia [5], [6] and [7]. I admit to have a difficulty with your humor. You avoid questioning on your attitude. With such a humor, you go you take away from me. Too bad. I shall have opened at least my heart towards you. --Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 21:22, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm not being humorous, I'm making a real point. A triple intersection of topics, be it "women's archery in Australia" or "disabled restauranteuring in Botswana" or "gay karaoke in Sweden" or "Hispanic snowboarding in Oregon", is almost never notable unless a) it describes a phenomenon of demographics, activity and location (1, 2, 3: women, archery, Australia; handicapped people, restaurant industry, Botswana; gay people, karaoke singing, Sweden; Hispanics, snowboarding, Oregon) that garners [[WP:GNG|frequent, non-trivial coverage in reliable sources, or b) is a subset of a broader intersection of only two topics (women's archery, or women's sport in Australia, or archery in Australia, for example), that has an article so large it has to be split into narrower subtopics. If neither of these conditions apply (which is the problem with many of Hale's stubs), the inappropriate article is merged, or it just gets deleted. They get merged and deleted all the time; it's routine, and no one needs to make a big deal out of it. We don't even create categories like this (see WP:OVERCAT and WP:CATGRS). I did get your point about attitude, and I have offered a more friendly and good-faith-assuming message to LauraHale. But you don't seem willing to examine her editing behavior critically, only mine. That's an impasse, and I don't think you're in a good neutral position to moderate a dispute like this (to the extent it exists; I consider it ended). Your apparent perception that I have something personal against Hale or am making an anti-feminist argument is incorrect. I'm making an anti-trivia argument that has nothing to do with gender or personality. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 19:06, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Peace love and Happyness Award for you

Peace love and Happyness Award for you
Bonsoir SMcCandlish, My attitude is human and I consider imperfect. I have my prejudices of course for every human being. But I don't doubt your good faith and your desire to improve Wikipedia. You tell me to have made the efforts to be more friendly with Laura. Then I congratulate you with this laurel. You say that I am not neutral. Well I did not still have the opportunity to work with Laura. My critics will come because no human being is completed. I also criticize there deprived (by Émail) because sometimes persons ( male or female) are fragile in criticize and can feel wounded, then better needs to make my comments deprived. I hope not to have you to hurt. You can write me in private my address is misssouris@live.ca My wish is to improve the women's sports pages in the Encyclopedia.
200px|right I work on it with passion but also with my poor means. I write new articles and I also correct old articles (by update). Furthermore I like photographing and giving my photos [8]. I am neither patroller nor an administrator, nor director, not manager here on wikipedia. I am only writing articles. I would like the good agreement in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's sport . I believe that the men as the women without discrimination, can bring in Ice Hockey articles a lot. I count on your help and your assistant to use in my work. Formerly I played hockey with the young boys (In Quebec after 14 years old, a girl has to play necessarily only with the girls - regulation of Hockey Canada and local competition) I kept her male great friends even when I played at the women junior's League. Now I always have male friends who support Montreal Stars, I work every week with her men. Yes I am feminist but I lived with men, work with them. I shall like having the even good relation equal to equal with you. Thanks --Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 23:41, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
Stale
 – It was de-prodded and should go to WP:AFD; I tried to improve it a bit but simply got attacked again by members of WP:WikiProject Women's sport whom LauraHale (talk · contribs) has been canvassing against me.

The article Women's archery in Australia has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

I dont think it deserves its own article. Maybe it should me merged into another?

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JetBlast (talk) 04:41, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The topics lists mess

Stale
 – Basically this has become a waiting game to see what happens with these lists and categories.

I've been working on cleaning up this mess for years. It is nice to meet somebody else who is interested in doing so as well. Hopefully we can effectively pool our efforts.

Let me share some background with you. There were two types of pages competing for the same "List of x topics" name. Some were alphabetical, and the others were hierarchical. So if you wanted to create a hierarchical "List of architecture topics" and there was already an alphabetical list by that name, you'd be out of luck. To make the matter more complex, a new set of "basic topics lists" emerged that were also hierarchical.

Then something strange happened. Perhaps because the basic topics lists had a WikiProject devoted to them, those pages grew to be more comprehensive than the lists with more general titles – editors just kept adding to them. The lists were no longer basic. And there came to be more of them. The set just grew and grew.

While researching a solution, we came across the naming schism mentioned above.

So, we renamed the basic topics lists to "Outlines" (because that's the name for hierarchically-structured lists), and we started pulling the hierarchical topics lists into that set (because they fit the definition). Meanwhile, the alphabetical topics lists were renamed to Indexes of articles.

Outlines and indexes. Now there was clear differentiation between the two formats.

There was no opposition to the index renames, as editors were very familiar with the term "index" and so the move was highly intuitive. Also there was no direct or immediate opposition when the basic topic lists were renamed to outlines, since the former name was so awkward.

As the outline project continued to absorb the remaining topics lists, there was some opposition from editors who had been maintaining specific lists for years. They were used to the old "List of topics" titles and were resistant to change. So the consolidation effort slowed down. The effort hasn't stopped though, because the set of outlines continues to grow and improve in quality and coverage over time, and social momentum simply follows...

From time to time an editor will come across a topics list and see that it belongs to the set of outlines and renames it. Or they will come across a list that overlaps with the outline set (there are about 70 overlapping lists remaining), and merge them into the corresponding outlines.

So, how big is the "List of topics" mess these days? Pretty small compared to what it was. There used to be over 1200 topics lists. Now it is down to about 170, and that number will no doubt shrink over time. New topics lists are usually named Outline or Index, because those are the obvious standards.

Now what?

Merging topics lists into outlines has seen no opposition. The outline set just keeps growing, even when there is already a topics list on a particular subject. Eventually, each corresponding topics list gets merged into its outline counterpart. Nobody complains, because it makes no sense to merge the other way around. The set of outlines is much more comprehensive (about 540 titles these days), and the set of outlines has active developers/maintainers.

One caveat, though. Mass renaming of the remaining topics lists is not advisable. Someone tried that last October, including some math lists, and it caused a backlash from the Math Department and public discussion that lasted a month. The poor guy was so discouraged that he disappeared from Wikipedia.

I look forward to working with you on cleaning up the rest of the mess, including discussion about the index names. The Transhumanist 21:52, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I'll defer to your judgement on this; I didn't have any of this background. Just wandered into that category and found a bit of a mess. I too noticed that some were clearly topical outlines and some were instead alpha-ordered lists of topics. I did most or all of the "A"s, renaming them and moving them to Outline of foo in the outlines category when they were topical, and renaming them List of foo topics if alpha ordered. Have not checked to see if anyone reverted any of them. Haven't even checked on the CfR, actually. Busy with holidays. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 23:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Happy New Year! The Transhumanist 00:57, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
You too! I see that the CfR went the way I suggested. I didn't realize there were as many "Index of foo articles" pages as there are. I guess the rename will have a broader effect than initially expected. Shouldn't be "fatal", though. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:25, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
That was odd. Like a vote, but implemented as the close. Doesn't seem appropriate. Should have followed consensus, rather than try to establish it. Oh well. That will probably exacerbate the mess. But you are right, not fatal. The Transhumanist 01:42, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Hopefully it won't cause any real problems. I think that more and more of these would have been named "Index of foo topics" anyway, due to the lists having broader content than articles over time. Maybe the cat. rename is just a bit premature. I guess we'll see! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:46, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
The main access page for these is Portal:Contents/Indexes (7000+ hits per month) rather than Indexes of topics (about 600 hits per month). So it is unlikely that the topics name will propagate. Only a handful these lists have broader content than articles, so there's no compelling reason to rename the set. After all, the vast majority of the titles are accurate the way they are. Eventually the subject will need to be revisited. The Transhumanist 03:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

GOCE 2011 Year-End Report

 – Just projectspam.
Extended content
Guild of Copy Editors 2011 Year-End Report

We have reached the end of the year, and what a year it has been! The Guild of Copy Editors was full of activity, and we achieved numerous important milestones in 2011. Read all about these in the Guild's 2011 Year-End Report.

Highlights
  • Membership grows to 764 editors, an increase of 261
  • Report on coordinators' elections
  • Around 1,000 articles removed through six Backlog elimination drives
  • Guild Plans for 2012
  • Requests page report
  • Sign up for the January 2012 Backlog elimination drive!


Get your copy of the Guild's 2011 Year-End Report here
On behalf of the Guild, we take this opportunity to wish you Season's Greetings and Happy New Year. We look forward to your support in 2012!
– Your 2011 Coordinators: Diannaa (lead), The Utahraptor, and Slon02 and SMasters (emeritus).

Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 06:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Resolved
 – Fixed.

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México City México Temple

Resolved
 – Replied at the linked-to page.
Hello, SMcCandlish. You have new messages at Talk:Mexico_City_Mexico_Temple.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

--ARTEST4ECHO (talk/contribs) 19:23, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Template documentation

Resolved
 – Fixed.

Please see my comments at Wikipedia talk:Template documentation#Why does the preload text differ from that suggested in WP:DOC? about the problem I experienced with your recent edit. Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:38, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I fixed it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:32, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

SoE

Resolved
 – Answered.

Hello. Very nice user page you've got going. My compliments.

BUT where did you get the Southern English Babelbox from? I can't find it anywhere, and when I enter SoE into my template, it displays my level of knowledge of Songomeno.

Merci d'avance, --Seduisant (talk) 01:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. It's {{User SoE}}, {{User SoE-4}}, etc. Not sure how you're getting Songomeno; there is no {{SoE}}. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:31, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
Oh, I see it wasn't working with {{Babel}}. Try adding |:UBX/SoE (or |:UBX/SoE-3 or whatever) to your babelbox. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:48, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
Grrr... that didn't work either. The implementation of the babelbox you are calling can't handle this. What you need to do is use this:
{{babel|en-N|:UBX/SoE-3|fr-2|es-2|it-1|la-2}}
instead of this:
{{#babel:en|fr-2|es-2|it-1|la-2}}
(using SoE-3 as an example fluency level). Hope that helps. And yes, I tested it this time. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:56, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
A custom fix! Many thanks. I owe you one. Cheers. --Seduisant (talk) 02:49, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Hot article subscriptions

Resolved
 – Thanks to Kaldari, the features are now installed in the projects.

Your hot article subscriptions have been created:

Kaldari (talk) 08:24, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Schweet! Thanks! I was just by at your talk page and wasn't sure whether to "bug" you about it. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 08:27, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
It looks like they still aren't being used anywhere. Usually I leave it up to the Projects to add the templates into their project pages. Would you prefer that I add them myself? Kaldari (talk) 22:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
Sure! I have just been swamped with other stuff. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 00:41, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Italics for plant common names

Resolved
 – Replied at the mentioned talk page.

I notice you italicized some plant common names in a language other than English. This is a somewhat more complex issue than it might look; I've started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Plants#Foreign language common names if you're interested. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:45, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Sure, thanks for the note. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 09:51, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Portal:Sports and Games / WikiProject talk:Sports

 – Just a notice.

I removed the portalwarning template from the WikiProject Sports talk page as I changed Portal:Sports and Games to use {{random portal component}} back in December. I note that you re-added the warning template earlier this year so thought I'd drop you a line out of courtesy to say I've removed it. Nanonic (talk) 01:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

As long as it works! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 20:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Fisting- edit request

Resolved
 – Declined.

Can you please remove the fisting image? Not only is it unnecessary and offensive, there is evidence based upon postings on another website that the one member who adamantly insists the image remains is an actual image of himself. Why in the world would someone insist on having a graphic sexual image of themselves on the net?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Manofbiescuit (talkcontribs) 20:00, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

 Not done Why would I remove it? It's not my image, I'm not a regular editor there, am not an admin, and even if I was, the policy-based consensus was to keep it. The image has to be an image of someone, by definition; as long as it doesn't violate someone's privacy or copyright, it doesn't matter who the image features. An article about a sexual practice necessarily requires a "graphic" sexual image in order for it to be illustrative. I (and Wikipedia) have no opinion as to why someone might or might not want to pose for sexual photography; it's immaterial. The consensus was that such a picture (not necessarily that one, but consensus expected a comparable replacement, not simply deletion) was not "unnecessary". Finally, please see WP:NOT#CENSORED; if you find images or discussion of sexual practices "offensive", please avoid articles on such topics. The encyclopedia cannot be stripped of everything that offended someone somewhere or half our content, even on basic topics like breast or democracy or god would have to be deleted. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 20:14, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Le Fanu

Resolved
 – Expanding the lead per WP:LEAD is the solution.

Just to let you know why I reverted you at Sheridan Le Fanu: If I were asked what work of his was "best known", I'd certainly answer Uncle Silas; but Joyce scholars might answer The House by the Churchyard, and others might have different suggestions. Without sources, such a judgment has no place here. Deor (talk) 06:11, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

There's an obvious solution then: Mention all three. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 06:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Resolved
 – Fixed in the case of Abyssinia; working on correcting the WP:DAB issue with Thulsa Doom; and water dog was intentional.

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Appeasement (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
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Writing well…

Hello Stanton, and have a happy new year !

I have seen all your boxes about style and grammar, and that is nice. :-) Except that I see you put two spaces after a period !? These times I find often these bloody two — or even three or four ! — spaces after a period. I remove them, of course. But in some places these “errors” appear after every period or so. What a pain ! I often edit Wikipedia with a rather wide fixed-width font, and these errors make really big gaps, I hate that. And now I discover that some people do that on purpose !? It's just plain wrong.

Cheers,

--Nnemo (talk) 01:30, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

HNY to you, too. :-) I do this for a reason, that doesn't even have anything to do with "style", but practicality. I put two spaces after ends of sentences in Wiki source code, expand one to two, and collapse three or more to two, because two spaces is what almost all style guides that comment on the matter recommend for fixed-width, word processed (or, in ye olden tymes, typewritten) manuscripts, wikicode is our electronic, fixed-width (unless you use WP settings to use a proportional font) equivalent of a manuscript, and MediaWiki software automatically collapses the two spaces to one when the rendered content is presented to the reader. It simply makes the source code easier to read, an increasingly needed feature as template and citation code becomes more common and more complex in the wikicode of article prose. It helps editors, and has no effect on readers. I hope you'll reconsider and not compress double (only triple+) spacing to single. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I'm raising this at WT:Manual of Style#Two vs. one space characters after terminal punctuation, as it deserves wider community input. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 01:46, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, SMcCandlish. You have new messages at Armbrust's talk page.
Message added 21:33, 14 January 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 21:33, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

January 2012 Newsletter for WikiProject United States and supported projects

 – Just projectspam.

The January 2012 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

 
--Kumi-Taskbot (talk) 19:44, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

MOS capital letters - religious doctrine

As the author of much of the language still extant in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Doctrine, I am hoping you can help me understand its intent. Is the main purpose there to remind us to avoid capitalizing common nouns that are incorrectly capitalized by doctrinal adherents or is there more to it? Jojalozzo 04:52, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

That was the entire idea. Most often it ends up being adherents of schools of thought or professional practice that overcapitalize (Method Acting, etc.) rather than the religious faithful. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 07:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
In light of running across a relevant discussion, I should also clarify that its intent is to avoid over-capitalization of "religious" things just because they're mentioned in a religion context, especially when doing so introduces redundancy. E.g. "The Virgin Birth" is understood to refer to the birth of Jesus in Christian doctrine, but the concept of "virgin births" (lower case) occurs in many religions. Capitalizing the phrase "the Virgin Birth of Jesus" is redundant and tautologous, and a clear example of such over-capitalization, because the phrase refers really to one of these alleged miracles, specifically the one involving Jesus. It's directly comparable to the difference between "the One True Cross" as a proper noun, referring to the cross Jesus was crucified on, or and over-capitalization as in "when Jesus was nailed to the Cross"; there were three crosses there that day that people were nailed to, and the usage here is generic, so the capitalization is grammatically incorrect. It's just plain bad writing. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 08:27, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
I think it is implicit here that "The Virgin Birth" is a proper name because it refers to a specific event, Jesus' virgin birth, true? We are assuming the capitalized term is accorded the Christian interpretation in Wikipedian culture. Jojalozzo 15:06, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Right, though I did not mean to imply that "The" would be capitalized there. My point was that a phrase like "Jesus' virgin birth" would not be rendered "Jesus' Virgin Birth" because it's redundantly over-indicating that, yes, we mean the Christian event/concept "the Virgin Birth". Nor say "Christians believe strongly in the virginity of Mary and thus in the literal Virgin Birth of Jesus", etc. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 15:10, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Notice concerning an action at ArbCom

A request has been filed for the Arbitration Committee to look at long-term issues with editing in the Article Titles and MOS areas at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Article titles/MOS. I have added your name as a party, since it is clear that you have been involved at pages that are within the scope of the action. NoeticaTea? 05:25, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Article titles and capitalisation case

An arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation. Evidence that you wish the Arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence sub-page, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation/Evidence. Please add your evidence by February 12, 2012, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can contribute to the case workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 14:59, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Arb case

I removed your statement from the main case page, as the note at the top says it shouldn't be edited. Up to you whether to move it to the talk page or the evidence page. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:02, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I was named as a party. Why would my statement not be included? Like, how did the other ones get there if not be parties editing the page to put them there? Honestly, I pay little attention to ArbCom and various other forms of wikilawyerly bickering, so I'm not very familiar with the procedures. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 02:16, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
This is why it is better to allow the case clerks to handle such matters. Not only are we experienced in arbitration procedure and how to explain it to parties, we are also neutral outsiders, and our actions tend to be better received than when they are performed by the filing party.
Back to the matter in hand: the case has been accepted by the Arbitration Committee and opened with the statements as things stood at the time of the request, and no further amendments should be made to the case page. The case is now in the evidence phase, and evidence can be entered here. Your statement looks like the basis for evidence, though of course it should be backed up with diffs, and it contains a link to evidence in userspace, which is prohibited by policy.
If you have any questions, I am at your disposal, as is User:Worm That Turned, although as a trainee working on his first case, he may not as yet feel as comfortable with dealing with certain questions as some of the more experienced clerks. Regards --Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 15:15, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Well severe egg on my face, as I see you have posted both on the case talkpage and entered evidence; I really ought to have spotted that before posting advice. --Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 16:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
  • For whatever it's worth, Alexandr is correct that belated statements aren't added to the case page (for accuracy's sake), but I see you since have added a statement to the case talk page, which is acceptable. However, you also submitted evidence that largely exists of narrative material, with a link to a page in your userspace that contains evidence. I would recommend you delete your current evidence section and replace it with the subpage material, because annexed material is not taken into account. If you require assistance with other aspects of the inane (but necessary) bureaucracy of our proceedings, please contact me, another drafter, or a clerk. Thanks, AGK [•] 16:30, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Ah so! Okay, I'll try to fix it up later tonight or tomorrow and file these procedures in memory in case there's a next time (hopefully not; I've been on WP for something like 6 years w/o ever having to deal with ArbCom stuff). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 00:35, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
I believe that the evidence I've posted conforms almost entirely to the requirement that "Evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient." I'm linking to specific discussions (i.e. sections) in talk pages. While I have provided some diffs with regard to specific allegations I've make on the talk page of the case, I think it's now a matter of paring the evidence down to the most crucial so it's under the 500-word limit. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 10:28, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Your Arbitration evidence is too long

Hello, SMcCandlish. Thank you for your recent submission of evidence for the Article titles and capitalisation Arbitration case. As you may be aware, the Arbitration Committee asks that users submitting evidence in cases adhere to limits regarding the length of their submissions. These limits, of User:HersfoldArbClerkBot/Length header/Words words and User:HersfoldArbClerkBot/Length header/Diffs diffs maximum, are in place to ensure that the Arbitration Committee receives only the most important information relevant to the case, and is able to determine an appropriate course of action in a reasonable amount of time. The evidence you have submitted currently exceeds at least one of these limits, and is presently at 2179 words and 1 diffs. Please try to reduce the length of your submission to fit within these limits; this guide may be able to provide some help in doing so. If the length of your evidence is not reduced soon, it may be refactored or removed by a human clerk within a few days. Thank you! If you have any questions or concerns regarding the case, please contact the drafting Arbitrator or case clerk (listed on the case pages); if you have any questions or concerns about this bot, please contact the operator. On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, HersfoldArbClerkBOT(talk) 08:01, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Argh. I hate all this legalese stuff. I'll see what I can do. But most of the evidence I'm providing would not be very useful as diffs, because it's not "User324324 posted this uncivil attack on Tuesday [diff]", it's "this entire sprawling conversation demonstrates that members of this project are tendentious and that the rest of the system simply doesn't agree with them". I would prefer that the material be removed after a few days than refactored, as the issue is complex enough that refactoring is likely to introduce errors. Not sure how long it will take me to produce something that gets the gist across without losing context and key material, but it probably will take longer than one day. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 08:18, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
You are the second user I have seen in two days yelling at a poor defenseless bot:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:29, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
All this ArbCom process-for-its-own-sake is tiresome. I did realize it was a bot, but figured one or another of the above-commenting ArbCom clerks would be watchlisting or at least checking back. I added a note at my too-long evidence post that I'm working on paring it down. Besides, beating on bots is more fun than on straw men; they make nice clanking sounds. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 04:34, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
I actually came here to give you some advice about presenting evidence, as you are still working on reducing it to within the limits, and I wanted to help you spend your time usefully. The approach you need to take in the evidence phase is that of summarising the main aspects of the case. The format that works best is "X, Y and Z did A (diff), B (diff), C (diff) which results in such and such problem/flouts WP:RULE_A". As things are, you write "WP:LONG LIST LINK TO ARCHIVE OF SOMETHING narrative" which is taking up lots of words. Secondly, you have an entire paragraph about you compiling evidence which is better suited to the talkpage. Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 19:33, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I will keep that all in mind. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 19:36, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Some falafel and one canadian beer for you!

SMcCandlish , I learnt the death of the great skier Sarah Burke. It's crazy. The life is so fragile. Then thank you for being here and to work on the women sport project. Ce matin j'ai apprise le décès de la grande skieuse Sarah Burke. C'est fou. La vie est si fragile. Alors merci d'être là et de travailler avec moi --Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 20:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Looks tasty! Sorry to hear about Burke. I mostly deal with pool player bios, so I did not know much about her. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 08:22, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar

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