User talk:Andrewa/Archive 5

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your comment at RM

Andrewa... You may want to clarify your comment at the RM at Talk:Masonic Temple (New Britain, Connecticut). I think you got the proposal mixed up. Did you intend to Support the move to Temple B'Nai Israel (New Britain, Connecticut)... or did you intend to oppose the the move (and want to keep the article at Masonic Temple (New Britain, Connecticut) - ie the current title)? Either way is fine... I just want to make sure your intent is known. Blueboar (talk) 23:22, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

A bloomin' good question... my brain must have been in reverse or something, crunch. Fixed, thank you! Andrewa (talk) 03:34, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Georgia (country) to Georgia move suggestion

Please comment here. Thanks. georgianJORJADZE 00:22, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for 21 August 2013

Both VisualEditor and MediaWiki were upgraded recently. For VisualEditor, this is the long-awaited post-Wikimania update with many bug fixes and enhancements. Work also continues on speed at opening and during use, as well as on the bugs reported here and at other Wikipedias. The full report is at Mediawiki.

References are displaying properly, even when nested (T52749) or in image captions (T2000. Reference lists are now always fully populated with references (bug 50094). Firefox users can insert an existing reference in the first paragraph (T54159). Opera users no longer see corruption of categories when a reference was added (bug 50385).

Stray spaces are being stripped from the start of paragraphs to end one of the common <nowiki> problems (T53462). We also fixed a round-tripping bug that caused desirable whitespace in templates (used to make templates more legible, e.g., by putting each parameter in an infobox on a separate line) to get corrupted (bug 51150).

Wikilink handling was improved. Users are not allowed to create internal links to invalid titles (titles that are actually impossible due to limits on acceptable character combinations in titles, not redlinks) (T35094). You can extend wikilinks, but it won't do so over a wordbreak (like a space) (bugs 49931 and 51463).

A handful of fixes to the user interface were made. The toolbar doesn't float over personal tools after opening a dialog or the inspector (T54441). Toolbars were also re-written to be collapsible/expandable, with room for more icons. Buttons in dialogs can now be activated using the Tab ↹ and ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ key commands (bug 50047). This saves time for editors, because you don't need to take your hands off the keyboard to click a button. We fixed a handful of bugs that affected only certain articles or certain browsers, including toolbar buttons in Firefox (bug 51986) and dialog panels that didn't always scroll correctly (bug 51739). Bugs with undo/redo getting confused have been fixed (T54113).

Images, in addition to getting references displaying correctly, also saw improvements with a set-empty |link= parameter no longer corrupted (51963). We corrected thumbnail images' display so that they look don't wrong in some contexts (bug 51995). Inserted images no longer explicitly set their alignment, but instead inherit the default position in compliance with the Manual of Style (bug 51851).

More edit notices, warnings, and metadata like information about Pending Changes on an article now appear as appropriate (bug 49699). When new articles are created, users are now shown the <newarticletext> message (bug 51459). VisualEditor now handles templates that set "meta" items (like a category) and nothing else better (bug 51322). If the database is locked when a user tries to save with VisualEditor, they now get a message telling them as such and an opportunity to try again, rather than a silent failure (bug 51636).

When you save the page, having the default preference set to "mark all my edits as minor by default" no longer overrides the setting in the save dialog (bug 51515). If you open VisualEditor from a section edit link, the section's title will be pre-filled in in the edit summary box when you go to save it (bug 50872). The size of the save dialog box in the Monobook skin has been fixed (bug 50058). Also, wikipage content handlers like sortable tables are re-run automatically after saving (T53565).

A very early version of the mathematics equation editor is now available for testing on mw:Mediawiki. If you would like to help improve the user interface for math editor, please test out the extension at mw:Mediawiki:Sandbox and leave your comments directly at the discussion page for the Math Node User Interface at Mediawiki. You should be able to use your regular username and password should to login to Mediawiki.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 17:48, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:Warmoth logo.jpg)

Thanks for uploading File:Warmoth logo.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Werieth (talk) 13:22, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

The logo was removed from the article on 22/8 by an IP with a history of vandalism. It was reinstated on 30/8. To flag it for deletion on 27/8 was just plain careless. No wonder we have difficulty keeping constructive editors, when vandals receive such effective support. Andrewa (talk) 02:06, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for September 5

This Thursday's VisualEditor update was mostly about stability and performance improvements, and some preparatory work for major planned improvements, along with bug fixes for non-English language support and right-to-left text. Everything that the English Wikipedia received today has been running on Mediawiki for a week already.

Officially, the problem with the link inspector not linking to a specific section on a page (bug 53219) was fixed in this release, although that critical patch actually appeared here earlier.

A number of bugs related to copy-and-paste functionality were fixed (48604, bug 50043, bug 53362, bug 51538, among others). Full rich copy-and-paste from external sources into VisualEditor is expected "soon".

In other fixes, you can no longer add empty ref tags (<ref/>) (bug 53345). Selecting both an image and some text, and then trying to add a link, previously deleted the selected image and the text. This was fixed in bug 50127. There was another problem related to using arrow keys to move the cursor next to an inline image that was fixed (bug 53507).

Looking ahead: The next planned upgrade is scheduled for next Thursday, and you should expect to find a redesigned toolbar with drop-down menus that include room for references, templates, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, and code formatting. There will also be keyboard shortcuts for setting the format (paragraph vs section headings).

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being determined at this time. Generally speaking, languages that depend on the input method editor are not going to receive VisualEditor this month. The current target date is Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

The article Slow Dance (poem) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Not an article and no chance it could ever become one

While all constructive 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. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:31, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Nomination of Slow Dance (poem) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Slow Dance (poem) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Slow Dance (poem) until a consensus is reached, and anyone 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.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:45, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Sydney September 2013 edit-a-thon invite

Hi there! You are cordially invited to an edit-a-thon this Saturday (21 September) in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW), where you can collaborate with other Wikipedians throughout the day. Andy Carr, a senior librarian at SLNSW will also be helping out. The theme of the edit-a-thon is paralympics sports, but you are free to come along to meet other wiki contributors, and edit other topics.

If you are unable to attend in person, we will also be collaborating online. Details and an attendee list are at Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/September 2013. Hope you can make it! John Vandenberg 08:59, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

(this automated message was delivered using replace.py to all users in Wikipedians in Sydney)

Ban Uno the First

Hi, I reported him on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrator_intervention_against_vandalism, but so far theres no reply. It's somewhat urgent, as this user is vandalising pages quite fast. He is a sock of Unorginal (note spelling), who was banned for sockpuppetry and vandalism. This new account is continuing in that fine tradition. Could you please ban him as soon as possible. Thanks, Benboy00 (talk) 18:58, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

PS I chose you at random from the list of active administrators, in case you were wondering. Benboy00 (talk) 18:59, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Done. Benboy00 (talk) 19:14, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for September 19, 2013

VisualEditor has been updated twice in the last two weeks. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week.

As announced, the toolbar was redesigned to be simpler, shorter, and to have the ability to have drop-down groups with descriptions. What you see now is the initial configuration and is expected to change in response to feedback from the English Wikipedia and other Wikipedias. The controls to add <u> (underline), <sub> (subscript), and <sup> (superscript), <s> (strikethrough) and <code> (computer code/monospace font) annotations to text are available to all users in the drop-down menu. At the moment, all but the most basic tools have been moved into a single drop-down menu, including the tools for inserting media, references, reference lists, and templates. The current location of all of the items in the toolbar is temporary, and your opinions about the best order are needed! Please offer suggestions at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar.

In an eagerly anticipated upgrade to the reference dialog, newly added references or reference groups no longer need the page to be saved before they can be re-used (bugs 51689 and 52000). The 'Use existing reference' button is now disabled on pages which don't yet have any references (bug 51848). The template parameter filter in the transclusion dialog now searches both parameter name and label (bug 51670).

In response to several requests, there are some new keyboard shortcuts. You can now set the block/paragraph formatting from the keyboard: Ctrl+0 sets a block as a regular paragraph; Ctrl+1 up to Ctrl+6 sets it as a Heading 1 ("Page title") to Heading 6 ("Sub-heading 4"); Ctrl+7 sets it as pre-formatted (bug 33512). Ctrl+2, which creates level 2 section headings, may be the most useful.

Some improvements were made to capitalization for links, so typing in "iPhone" will offer a link to "iPhone" as well as "IPhone" (bug 50452).

Copying and pasting within the same document should work better as of today's update, as should copying from VisualEditor into a third-party application (bug 53364, bug 52271, bug 52460). Work on copying and pasting between VisualEditor instances (for example, between two articles) and retaining formatting when copying from an external source into VisualEditor is progressing.

Major improvements to editing with input method editors (IMEs; mostly used for Indic and East Asian languages) are being deployed today. This is a complex change, so it may produce unexpected errors. On a related point, the names of languages listed in the "languages" (langlinks) panel in the Page settings dialog now display as RTL when appropriate (bug 53503).

Looking ahead: The help/'beta' menu will soon expose the build number next to the "Leave feedback" link, so users can give more specific reports about issues they encounter (bug 53050). This change will make it easier for developers to identify any cacheing issues, once it starts reporting the build number (currently, it says "Version false"). Also, inserting a link, reference or media file will put the cursor after the new content again (bug 53560). Next week’s update will likely improve how dropdowns and other selection menus behave when they do not fit on the screen, with things scrolling so the selected item is always in view.

If you are active at other Wikipedias, the next group of Wikipedias to have VisualEditor offered to all users is being finalized. About two dozen Wikipedias are on the list for Tuesday, September 24 for logged-in users only, and on Monday, September 30 for unregistered editors. You can help with translating the documentation. In several cases, most of the translation is already done, and it only needs to be copied over to the relevant Wikipedia. If you are interested in finding out whether a particular Wikipedia is currently on the list, you can leave a message for me at my talk page.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Your closure there seems premature and oddly condemnatory; it almost sounds like you posted a boiler-plate closing reason regarding official names (is that what you did?). Only one person other than the requestor participated in the discussion, so I'm not sure what you mean by "all parties". There was barely a "discussion" with "points", valid or otherwise, and I'm surprised you'd close the request before the requestor responded to my inquiry regarding whether the stadium has actually been renamed yet.

Furthermore, despite what WP:ON says, it is exceedingly common to rename articles about buildings with sponsorships when those sponsorships change, as third-party sources (for whatever reason) tend to get on board immediately (as if they think they're legally obligated to). It is rare that this is not done, and most editors don't even bother going through a move request. (Cowboys Stadium is undergoing a move request after spending a couple months at its new name, AT&T Stadium. Sears Tower was moved to Willis Tower almost immediately upon being christened as such. New Meadowlands Stadium was renamed to MetLife Stadium the day its new name took effect. Kodak Theatre was renamed to Hollywood and Highland Center (Theatre) the day Kodak's sponsorship was cut, and renamed Dolby Theatre the day Dolby's commenced.)

In other words, if this stadium's rename has already occurred (and this stadium is not nearly as famous as AT&T Stadium, Willis Tower, MetLife Stadium, or Dolby Theatre), the move request is reasonable and should remain open or be relisted instead of closed. Unfortunately, you didn't wait for the requestor to respond with that information, and, for some reason, chose to write a somewhat condescending closing remark. Further, if the stadium has been renamed, you should not have performed this revert, regardless of what the article title ends up being; if that's the name of the stadium, that's the name of the stadium and it should be the title of the infobox (like at Cowboys Stadium). -- tariqabjotu 17:06, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

There are a number of important issues here. Thanks for raising them first on my talk page, that was certainly the right thing to do.
Now for the bad news. No, it's certainly not a boiler-plate closing reason, I spent some time typing it in one character at a time and I'm afraid I think as a lead for your argument here this is completely uncalled-for.
And I think that the close was a good idea. I judged that there was a rough consensus, supported by policy, that the proposal was at least premature. I did consider relisting, but relisting is to seek further discussion, not to wait for future events. So I decided it was not appropriate in this instance.
I'm sorry I've trodden on your toes so far as the request to the proposer goes, but frankly I thought and still think that the answer is irrelevant. But I could be wrong here. Consensus can change, and perhaps Wikipedia:official names needs a rewrite to reflect such a change in our practice, with probably a corresponding tweak to WP:AT. If the examples you cite above are typical, then there's a strong case for this.
And in any case, if the answer was important, we probably have as much chance of finding it as the person you're asking does. I did have a look both at the signage on our image, and at the reference given in the talk page, and the answer to your question seemed to be no. And I've now had a look at the web [1], and in the last week there seem to have been only fourteen mentions of Four Winds Field at Stanley Coveleski Stadium, and many of these are Wikipedia, and many of the rest are facebook. If you're correct that there's a legal requirement to use the new name, it seems most unlikely that it's official as of yet.
Where to now? As I said, you've raised many issues. Having given me this chance to respond, you could now take it to Wikipedia:move review, and perhaps that is the best next step. We need other input on this, in my opinion. Or, we could wait and see whether we get any input either here or at Talk:Stanley Coveleski Regional Stadium#Move close, a section I have just started. (But to stress, you were right to come here first, and I appreciate that.)
There are other considerations which we should consider. It seems that the name Stanley Coveleski Stadium (perhaps with the Regional dropped) will continue in both common and official use, and covers the whole complex. Would it perhaps be better to expand the scope of the article to cover the whole venue? That, with a redirect from the new official name (which we should have anyway, see below) would avoid all the problems. It seems unlikely that we'll have another article on the complex. Again, I could be wrong.
I have created the redirect from the new/proposed official name. I should have done that before. The news stories do say that the approval seems a formality, and the new name is already in use on facebook as stated above.
Depending on the outcome of the move review, I'll think of how Wikipedia:official names needs to change. Either way it seems to me that it does need to change in the light of your comments above, at the very least to clarify the points you raise.
Should the review fail, perhaps we should also revisit the examples you give above. But none of them, it seems to me, were quite as quick off the mark as this proposal. Again, I could be wrong. Andrewa (talk) 21:03, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
The boiler-plate reason was a genuine question, because it was written as if dozens of people had participated in a vigorous discussion, when, in fact, it was just the nominator and one additional participant ("all parties" -- there were only two, "valid points" -- you mean, the one point?); it didn't look like a closing reason tailored to this particular RM thread. [I'm excluding myself because, in case you didn't realize, my comment was not an attempt to be involved in the discussion, but a desire to ascertain more information so I could choose between relisting (if the name is in place) or closing (if the name hadn't been changed).]
There were three participants, including yourself, and you quite clearly and correctly indicated that if the new name was not actually the name yet then the move should be rejected.
I also tried to ascertain whether the name has officially been changed yet, but I imagine the ambiguity exists because the team's season is over. So, no one really cares what the stadium is called until the spring. But, given the team's website has been updated with the title "Four Winds Field", I gather the new name is in effect (perhaps Four Winds Field might be a more appropriate title). Either way, that's a point for the requestor to answer or demonstrate, not me, so I would have left it to him/her. I don't understand why you feel that, even if the name change had/has been implemented, you would have done the same thing. If/when the name change occurs, it is a valid question worth considering, and I can't imagine you would have enough information to make any decision.
Yes, Four Winds Field is another possibility. I see you have created the redirect. Good. That's actually more important than the article name.
Going back to the examples I provided, you vastly underestimate the rapidity with which those articles were moved. The fact that Cowboys Stadium is undergoing a move request is an anomaly; these articles tend to be moved without move requests, generally on the day the new names take effect (which actually happened on the Cowboys Stadium article a couple months ago; it's only recently that someone objected). Willis Tower was moved a couple hours before its name change (although a RM discussion was launched soon afterward confirming the move), even though many people today still call it the Sears Tower. MetLife Stadium was moved the day of its name change, as was Dolby Theatre during both its name changes; there was no RM discussion for any of those renames. I'm not sure WP:ON needs a rewrite; it's just well understood that sources change on a dime when a new sponsorship deal is announced.
I'm afraid I think you are misquoting me there.
Points about expanding the scope of the article are potentially valid, but, again, that's to be discussed during the move request. This looks like an obvious case where the RM discussion should be relisted, and, yes, I'll start a move review in the not-too-distant future if you're not open to doing that. -- tariqabjotu 02:52, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
I still see no point in relisting at this point, but I will not object if you do reopen and relist the RM, and you may quote me on that of course, and again thank you for raising it here first. I will then be free to exercise a vote, as I understand it, and I think I should do so as I won't close it a second time and I think I do have something to contribute to the discussion. But I suggest you do not reinstate the changes that I reverted. Let the RM run its course first.
The advantage of a move review over relisting would be to attract other editors, and in particular experienced editors who specialise in the issues you raised above.
Consensus not to move at this stage was my closing comment, and I was wrong in that obviously! I still don't expect the move request to succeed, but I could be wrong in that too. That's why we collaborate. Andrewa (talk) 05:14, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK

I've replied here to a question or half-question that you asked or half-asked nearly 7 years ago. I thought I'd let you know just in case you don't keep things on your watch list for 7 years :) Tlhslobus (talk) 05:57, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter on 16 October 2013

VisualEditor is still being updated every Thursday. As usual, what is now running on the English Wikipedia had a test run at Mediawiki during the previous week. If you haven't done so already, you can turn on VisualEditor by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable".

The reference dialog for all Wikipedias, especially the way it handles citation templates, is being redesigned. Please offer suggestions and opinions at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. (Use your Wikipedia username/password to login there.) You can also drag and drop references (select the reference, then hover over the selected item until your cursor turns into the drag-and-drop tool). This also works for some templates, images, and other page elements (but not yet for text or floated items). References are now editable when they appear inside a media item's caption (bug 50459).

There were a number of miscellaneous fixes made: Firstly, there was a bug that meant that it was impossible to move the cursor using the keyboard away from a selected node (like a reference or template) once it had been selected (bug 54443). Several improvements have been made to scrollable windows, panels, and menus when they don't fit on the screen or when the selected item moves off-screen. Editing in the "slug" at the start of a page no longer shows up a chess pawn character ("♙") in some circumstances (bug 54791). Another bug meant that links with a final punctuation character in them broke extending them in some circumstances (bug 54332). The "page settings" dialog once again allows you to remove categories (bug 54727). There have been some problems with deployment scripts, including one that resulted in VisualEditor being broken for an hour or two at all Wikipedias (bug 54935). Finally, snowmen characters ("☃") no longer appear near newly added references, templates and other nodes (bug 54712).

Looking ahead: Development work right now is on rich copy-and-paste abilities, quicker addition of citation templates in references, setting media items' options (such as being able to put images on the left), switching into wikitext mode, and simplifying the toolbar. A significant amount of work is being done on other languages during this month. If you speak a language other than English, you can help with translating the documentation.

For other questions or suggestions, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting problem reports at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and other ideas at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of interest

A discussion you may be interested in is this RFC, a proposal to make the second comma in a date/place optional. United States Man (talk) 06:01, 27 October 2013 (UTC)


Conduct of the RM

I'm afraid I regard the argument you have made at Talk:Fort Lauderdale Strikers (1994–97)#Requested move 20 October 2013 as a personal attack on the proposer. Feel free to reply here or there, or on my own talk page. Andrewa (talk) 02:32, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

  • Hi Andrew. Nice to speak with you. You are probably not aware of what's been happening with the individual in reference in the article, so I will shed some light. The message written there was not a personal attack as I even stated. It really was not, but I can see where it may be misinterpreted. It was an observation in reference to something prior. I had done a massive expansion on the team in the article, creating a more insightful information. Where there was only a minimal scope of the history of the club there is now a larger scope covered. Let's just say I have created over fifty articles in relation to different history of the team and relating topics.
  • The user time and time again through conversation demonstrated that he/she was not as familiar with the topic, in fact, really uninformed about the entire history. This person pursued an extreme undoing of several contributions I did, without notifying me, and requesting immediate deletions. This person didn't even contact me to try to explore more about the topic or even attempt to ask in good faith why certain things were done. Even when I responded to the person in a constructive way elsewhere, soliciting collaboration, the individual went ahead and defamed my character by calling me a sockpuppet. That is something disturbing and that is something as an admin you should look into, rather than look here at me.
  • I said what I said in the talk page you bring up because I was making a point that the individual was pursuing deletions or undoings without proper foundation or understanding of the topic or even contacting me. Regardless, I am a positive contributor and my efforts to the site speak for themselves.
  • With regard to that particular page, I suggest that you don't rename it. I am finishing something that should be done in about two days. From there I can discuss it with you and you can also gain more details about the club as a whole. Take care. NYCWikiKid (talk) 03:00, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your contributions, and I hope they will continue.
I'm quite happy to look at the sockpuppet allegation. Please provide diffs. Where and when was this allegation made? How was it resolved?
Reverting is a part of the process here, but there are restrictions on edit wars, and controls on deletions. Again, if these haven't been working, provide links and I'll investigate.
Two experienced admins have now independently told you that your comments breached the behavioural guideline on personal attacks. Your response to the first was to repeat the comment, and put another attack into the edit summary.
I don't think anybody is going to block you for the indiscretions to date, but your attempts to justify them worry me. The policy does not regard any of these factors as valid reasons for a personal attack. So if you do this again and someone does block you, it will be hard to criticise their action. If you're involved in content disputes, you should be particularly careful.
There is no need for personal attacks, and they don't help your cause. Andrewa (talk) 06:30, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 2

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Ladies and gents! The disambiguation page is now undeleted as a result of the recent deletion review. Therefore, I invite you to particapte in the move discussion. --George Ho (talk) 18:52, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Another requested move has started. --George Ho (talk) 04:30, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Personal slurs

"heat with which you are arguing" - you know you need to look at yourself before making these kind of statements. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:02, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I do try to do so. I'm very sorry that you find this a personal slur. It wasn't intended to be that, but it was certainly intended to be a wake-up call. You don't seem to be arguing logically, which is unusual for you, and there does seem an element of passion there.
And I agree that I am not always innocent in this regard, if that's what you mean by look at yourself. But in this particular discussion I think I've kept my cool, and been quite dispassionate and reasonably objective. And in any case, talking about my behaviour is a change of subject. Two wrongs do not make a right. You could even see this new line of argument as a personal slur on me, couldn't you?
I do have Christian beliefs (radical protestant you might call them) and I do sing in a choir at a Roman Catholic church for a once-a-month Taize service. But I have no beliefs that would predispose me to using the honorific personally, so far as I can tell. Andrewa (talk) 21:02, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Anthrax

Since you redirected Anthrax (band) to point to the disambiguation page, are you also going to fix the hundreds of links to that title in other articles that (almost always) refer to the American band, but now are taking readers to the disambiguation page, as suggested by WP:FIXDABLINKS? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:46, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Despite what WP:FIXDABLINKS says, IMO that's a job for the community as a whole, not just one person. Care to help?
It wasn't actually me who changed the redirect [2]. But that was the affect of the decision at Talk:Anthrax (American band)#Requested move, as I understand it, so User:Armbrust was quite correct IMO. And I don't think it's all their responsibility to fix all the links, either. It was a community decision. Andrewa (talk) 03:24, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Links fixed. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:48, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Awesome... Anthrax aren't the only ones who rock! Andrewa (talk) 06:44, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Invitation

There is a backstage pass coming up to be followed by an editathon in the State Library of New South Wales on 23 November. This is the first time that an Australian cultural institution has opened its doors to us in this way and will be a special opportunity because the Library is providing: one of its best rooms; its expert curators (along with their expertise and their white gloves); a newly launched website (containing new resources); and of course, items from its collection (including rare and usually unavailable material) which we can look at, learn from, and use, to improve WP articles. For example, on the chosen topic (Australia and WWI), the Library holds many diaries and manuscripts from the period.

As you can see from the Library's project page, they have connected this editathon with their own work. They have already set out a wide range of resources to make things easier for us. Please sign up on the editathon project page if you can participate either online or in person with other Wikipedians. Hope to see you there! Lankiveil (speak to me) 07:11, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

This message has been delivered using AutoWikiBrowser to all users in Category:Wikipedians in Sydney.

I also hope you can make it - it would be great to have a sizeable critical mass. --99of9 (talk) 10:36, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
I would love to... but I'm committed to a yacht race on that day. Apologies! I do hope that a critical mass arives! Andrewa (talk) 10:49, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Ah well, maybe if you race really fast you can join us in the afternoon. Otherwise - next time! --99of9 (talk) 11:19, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


VisualEditor newsletter for November 2013

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some feature changes, major infrastructure improvements to make the system more stable, dependable and extensible, some minor toolbar improvements, and fixing bugs.

A new form parsing library for language characters in Parsoid caused the corruption of pages containing diacritics for about an hour two weeks ago. Relatively few pages at the English Wikipedia were affected, but this created immediate problems at some other Wikipedias, sometimes affecting several dozen pages. The development teams for Parsoid and VisualEditor apologize for the serious disruption and thank the people who reported this emergency at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and on the public IRC channel, #mediawiki-visualeditor.

There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Accidental deletion of infoboxes and other items: You now need to press the Delete or ← Backspace key twice to delete a template, reference or image. The first time, the item becomes selected, and the second time, it is removed. The need to press the delete key twice should make it more obvious what you are doing and help avoid accidental removals of infoboxes and similar (bug 55336).
  • Switch from VisualEditor to the wikitext editor: A new feature lets you make a direct, one-way editing interface change, which will preserve your changes without needing to save the page and re-open it in the wikitext editor (bug 50687). It is available in a new menu in the action buttons by the Cancel button (where the "Page Settings" button used to be). Note that this new feature is not currently working in Firefox.
  • Categories and Languages are also now directly available in that menu. The category suggestions drop-down was appearing in the wrong place rather than below its input box, which is now fixed. An incompatibility between VisualEditor and the deployed Parsoid service that prevented editing categories and language links was fixed.
  • File:, Help: and Category: namespaces: VisualEditor was enabled for these namespaces the on all wikis (bug 55968), the Portal: and Viquiprojecte: namespaces on the Catalan Wikipedia (bug 56000), and the Portal: and Book: namespaces on the English Wikipedia (bug 56001).
  • Media item resizing: We improved how files are viewed in a few ways. First, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). While you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new, higher resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week. If you hold down the ⇧ Shift key whilst resizing an image, it will now snap to a 10 pixel grid instead of the normal free-hand sizing. The media item resize label now is centered while resizing regardless of which tool you use to resize it.
  • Undo and redo: A number of improvements were made to the transactions system which make undoing and redoing more reliable during real-time collaboration (bug 53224).
  • Save dialogue: The save page was re-written to use the same code as all other dialogs (bug 48566), and in the process fixed a number of issues. The save dialog is re-accessible if it loses focus (bug 50722), or if you review a null edit (bug 53313); its checkboxes for minor edit, watch the page, and flagged revisions options now layout much more cleanly (bug 52175), and the tab order of the buttons is now closer to what users will expect (bug 51918). There was a bug in the save dialog that caused it to crash if there was an error in loading the page from Parsoid, which is now fixed.
  • Links to other articles or pages sometimes sent people to invalid pages. VisualEditor now keeps track of the context in which you loaded the page, which lets us fix up links in document to point to the correct place regardless of what entry point you launched the editor from—so the content of pages loaded through /wiki/Foobar?veaction=edit and /w/index.php?title=Foobar&veaction=edit both now have text links that work if triggered (bug 48915).
  • Toolbar links: A bug that caused the toolbar's menus to get shorter or even blank when scrolled down the page in Firefox is now fixed (bug 55343).
  • Numbered external links: VisualEditor now supports Parsoid's changed representation of numbered external links (bug 53505).
  • Removed empty templates: We also fixed an issue that meant that completely empty templates became impossible to interact with inside VisualEditor, as they didn't show up (bug 55810).
  • Mathematics formulae: If you would like to try the experimental LaTeX mathematics tool in VisualEditor, you will need to opt-in to Beta Features. This is currently available on Meta-wiki, Wikimedia Commons, and Mediawiki.org. It will be available on all other Wikimedia sites on 21 November.
  • Browser testing support: If you are interested in technical details, the browser tests were expanded to cover some basic cursor operations, which uncovered an issue in our testing framework that doesn't work with cursoring in Firefox; the Chrome tests continue to fail due to a bug with the welcome message for that part of the testing framework.
  • Load time: VisualEditor now uses content language when fetching Wikipedia:TemplateData information, so reducing bandwidth use, and users on multi-language or multi-script wikis now get TemplateData hinting for templates as they would expect (bug 50888).
  • Reuse of VisualEditor: Work on spinning out the user experience (UX) framework from VisualEditor into oojs-ui, which lets other teams at Wikimedia (like Flow) and gadget authors re-use VisualEditor UX components, is now complete and is being moved to a shared code repository.
  • Support for private wikis: If you maintain a private wiki at home or at work, VisualEditor now supports editing of private wikis, by forwarding the Cookie: HTTP header to Parsoid ($wgVisualEditorParsoidForwardCookies set to true) (bug 44483). (Most private wikis will also need to install Parsoid and node.js, as VisualEditor requires them.)

Looking ahead:

  • VisualEditor will be released to some of the smaller Wikipedias on 02 December 2013. If you are active at one or more smaller Wikipedias where VisualEditor is not yet generally available, please see the list at VisualEditor/Rollouts.
  • Public office hours on IRC to discuss VisualEditor with Product Manager James Forrester will be held on Monday, 2 December, at 1900 UTC and on Tuesday, 3 December, at 0100 UTC. Bring your questions. Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes.
  • In terms of feature improvements, one of the major infrastructure projects affects how inserting characters works, both using your computer's built-in Unicode input systems and through a planned character inserter tool for VisualEditor. The forthcoming rich copying and pasting feature was extended and greater testing is currently being done. Work continues to support the improved reference dialog to quickly add citations based on local templates.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 22:26, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 2

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Flyleaf (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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December 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Björn Eriksson may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "()"s and 1 "{}"s likely mistaking one for another. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:
  • {for|the Swedish civil servant|Björn Eriksson {civil servant)}}

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 13:50, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, BracketBot, I knew that hatnote wasn't working and couldn't see why not. You have made it clear... can I award a barnstar to a bot? Andrewa (talk) 14:11, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter • 19 December 2013

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked on some toolbar improvements, fixing bugs, and improving support for Indic languages as well as other languages with complex characters. The current focus is on improving the reference dialog and expanding the new character inserter tool.

There have been dozens of changes since the last newsletter. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Rich copying and pasting is now available. If you copy text from another website, then character formatting and some other HTML attributes are preserved. This means, for example, that if you copy a pre-formatted suggested citation from a source like this, then VisualEditor will preserve the formatting of the title in the citation. Keep in mind that copying the formatting may include formatting that you don't want (like section headings). If you want to paste plain, unformatted text onto a page, then use Control+⇧ Shift+V or ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V (Mac).
  • Auto-numbered external links like [3] can now be edited just like any other link. However, they cannot be created in VisualEditor easily.
  • Several changes to the toolbar and dialogs have been made, and more are on the way. The toolbar has been simplified with a new drop-down text styles menu and an "insert" menu. Your feedback on the toolbar is wanted here. The transclusion/template dialog has been simplified. If you have enabled mathematical formula editing, then the menu item is now called the formula editor instead of LaTeX.
  • There is a new character inserter, which you can find in the new "insert" menu, with a capital Omega ("Ω"). It's a very basic set of characters. Your feedback on the character inserter is wanted here.
  • Saving the page should seem faster by several seconds now.
  • It is now possible to access VisualEditor by manually editing the URL, even if you are not logged in or have not opted in to VisualEditor normally.  To do so, append ?veaction=edit to the end of the page name.  For example, change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?veaction=edit to open a random page in VisualEditor.  This is intended to support bug testing across multiple browsers, without requiring editors to login repeatedly.

Looking ahead: The transclusion dialog will see further changes in the coming weeks, with a simple mode for single templates and an advanced mode for more complex transclusions. The new character formatting menu on the toolbar will get an arrow to show that it is a drop-down menu. The reference dialog will be improved, and the Reference item will become a button in the main toolbar, rather than an item in the Insert menu.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Help page : Fabien Biancalani

Hello Andrewa, could you possible help me on a recognized artist actor and singer. Sources are reliable, Awareness is recognized, more of two major producing albums and player two films. However, a French contributor continues to unnecessary headbands. Thank you to you--Mediasurf2 (talk) 01:24, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Interesting... Fabien Biancalani is the article. And I notice fr:Fabien Biancalani has been deleted as a hoax (see fr:Wikipédia:Canulars), see fr:Discussion:Fabien Biancalani/Suppression. Andrewa (talk) 02:55, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

In response to your talk at my page ...

...will do. Leprof 7272 (talk) 07:01, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Presumably in response to [4]. Andrewa (talk) 21:24, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

The alkene discussion

I think I have to say this - I am trying not to point you directly to the source of the problem, as I am trying to understand whether the wording can be improved, although I strongly believe everything there is utterly correct. It does seem to give rise to possible misinterpretation, which we may be able to catch by improving the wording. I hope you will not hold my 'refusal' to immediately disclose the full answer against me. --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:03, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

It does seem that you are asking questions which I am answering while you are ignoring mine, and that this has been the pattern for some time. I hope that it might turn into more of a conversation. From experience, this is the only effective way to build consensus. Andrewa (talk) 21:48, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
I am afraid that feeling goes both ways, Andrewa - I do however think that some of the questions you ask can not be answered (well, they are answered with a 'we can't, it is not there'). Also, we are somewhat between a rock and a hard place - you ask us to provide references which support one point, and we say 'they all do' - unfortunately, we do not have all available, nor are all available online, yet you insist that there are some which do not support that one point. How again do you call that form of proving a logical proposition that you can not disprove, all you can do is showing that you are unable to find something that is disproving it? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:53, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter for Janaury 2014

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has worked mostly minor features and fixing bugs. A few significant bugs include working around a bug in CSSJanus that was wrongly flipping images used in some templates in right-to-left (RTL) environments (bug 50910) a major bug that meant inserting any template or other transclusion failed (bug 59002), a major but quickly resolved problem due to an unannounced change in MediaWiki core, which caused VisualEditor to crash on trying to save (bug 59867). This last bugs did not appear on any Wikipedia. Additionally, significant work has been done in the background to make VisualEditor work as an independent editing system.

As of today, VisualEditor is now available as an opt-out feature to all users at 149 active Wikipedias.

  • The character inserter tool in the "Insert" menu has a very basic set of characters. The character inserter is especially important for languages that use Latin and Cyrillic alphabets with unusual characters or frequent diacritics. Your feedback on the character inserter is requested. In addition to feedback from any interested editor, the developers would particularly like to hear from anyone who speaks any of the 50+ languages listed under Phase 5 at mw:VisualEditor/Rollouts, including Breton, Mongolian, Icelandic, Welsh, Afrikaans, Macedonian, and Azerbaijani.
  • meta:Office hours on IRC have been heavily attended recently. The next one will be held this coming Wednesday, 22 January at 23:00 UTC.
  • You can now edit some of the page settings in the "options" dialog – __NOTOC__ and __FORCETOC__ as selection (forced on, forced off, or default setting; bugs 56866 and 56867) and __NOEDITSECTION__ as a checkbox (bug 57166).
  • The automated browser tests were adjusted to speed them up and bind more correctly to list items in lists, and updated to a newer version of their ruby dependencies. You can monitor the automated browser tests' results (triggered every twelve hours) live on the server.
  • Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide was updated recently to show some new and upcoming features.

Looking ahead: The character formatting menu on the toolbar will get a drop-down indicator next Thursday. The reference and media items will be the first two listed in the Insert menu. The help menu will get a page listing the keyboard shortcuts. Looking further out, image handling will be improved, including support for alignment (left, right, and center) and better control over image size (including default and upright sizes). The developers are also working on support for editing redirects and image galleries.

Subscriptions to this newsletter are managed at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Please add or remove your name to change your subscription settings. If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:12, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Andrewa. You have new messages at Talk:Jewson Novices' Chase.
Message added 13:02, 18 January 2014 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Armbrust The Homunculus 13:02, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Sydney Meetup on Monday evening

There's a Meetup in Sydney on Monday (tomorrow) evening from 5:30pm at the Paragon Hotel Circular Quay. We even have an international guest. See the meetup page for more details and to sign up. Sorry for the late notice - I hope you can make it. --99of9 (talk) 05:51, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Andrewa. You have new messages at Cuchullain's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.