User talk:Ohconfucius/archive16

DEFENDER OF HONG KONG

7:52 AM, Wednesday May 22, 2024

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... Subset terms A subset term identifies a set of members of a larger class. Common subset terms are including, such as, and among. Don't use redundant subset terms (so avoid constructions like these: Among the most well-known members of the fraternity are included two members of the Onassis family; The elements in stars include hydrogen, helium and iron, etc.). Don't use including to introduce a complete list, where comprising, consisting of, or composed of would be more accurate. Read more ... Add this to your user page by typing in {{Styletips}}

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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WP:MOSNUM

Hello. Noticed you referring to WP:MOSNUM in your edit summary when converting ISO dates to another format. Please would you only change ISO dates to one of the formats acceptable at WP:MOSNUM#Full date formatting, rather than the 30 Jan., 2009 you used at Ashley Young. In the case of Mr Young, a British sportsperson, that would be the international format 30 January 2009, i.e. month written out in full and no punctuation. Thanks, Struway2 (talk) 07:05, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

This is in a table, I guess. Yeah, I not a fan of the abbreviations and dots myself; nor of ISO, but I suppose it's the only compressed version that looks OK in a table. (?) Tony (talk) 07:48, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I shouldn't be answering on someone else's talk page... It was in the date and accessdate params of cite-template formatted references, not in a table. Is this some bit of the MoS I've missed? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 07:53, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh, sorry! Being dates in the cramped refs section, I thought intuitively that an abridged presentation, which was still dmy, would be suitable. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:12, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I'm not convinced that cramping the refs section even further with abbreviations and cluttering with dots and commas is worth ignoring the rules for, though. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:00, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I should lose the dots as well... I've seen that done quite often. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:02, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

There is really too much abbreviation already in refs, gen fixes will expand most dates in refs from abbreviations. Personally I favour putting refs right at the end of the visible page, then length ceases to be any problem - it is little enough problem as it is. Rich Farmbrough, 20:05, 20 July 2010 (UTC).

Redirect

Thanks. I forgot about that. Enter CBW, waits for audience applause, not a sausage. 17:49, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

ENGVAR script

G'day! Just a quick note: it appears that your script does not recognise "urbanized" when converting to the -ise spelling. Would you be able to correct this? Cheers, Hayden120 (talk) 11:37, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

• Usually, the word 'urbanized', like '~ized/~ization', will be transformed. I have just tested it, and it seems to work as intended. However, I suspect that the instance where it did not convert was due to its being within a <ref> template, where these conversions are best avoided - we try to keep quotes and their spellings 'verbatim'. I presume you are referring to this text. I ran the code, and indeed 'industrialized' was converted but 'urbanized' apparently missed. For the moment, I cannot explain this inconsistency. I would have to examine the code more precisely, and maybe make a tweak to it based on the findings. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:48, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
  • I think that the protection code would treat the whole citation as a single string, and act on one 'z-word' instance only. It would have protected the first instance (ie 'urbanized') and not the second instance (ie 'industrialized'), so that when the conversion code acted, it changed 'industrialized' to 'industrialised', leaving 'urbanized' untouched. I have now modified the code to catch a second instance. Thank you for your feedback. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:10, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I didn't notice that those words were inside a citation; I would have left them if I did. I'll change them back. Thanks, Hayden120 (talk) 03:01, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

I just had the same problem again, here, for "neutralises". It was the third instance of the spelling in a quotation. Would you please be able to alter the script so it does not modify citations? Many thanks, Hayden120 (talk) 10:25, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Piped ISO's

Will try to do this, bit busy just now. Rich Farmbrough, 19:48, 20 July 2010 (UTC).

Commas in years

I thought the convention was that years exceeding 4 digits, like numbers exceeding 3 digits, retained commas. If I'm wrong, or if there's a WP:MOSDATE clause to the contrary, I apologize. I partially reverted your edit at Year 2038 problem. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:49, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

• I don't think that question has been properly dealt with, let alone for there to be a 'convention' to deal with it. But I certainly see the problem with treating it as an ordinary number over 10,000 as suggested in MOSNUM although the parsing problem is also a real one. The year in question is so theoretical anyway, and nobody is likely to care past 4 digits. But back to our problem - perhaps we should format it using {{gaps|292|277|026|596}} Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 23:14, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

User:Ohconfucius/EngvarB.js

Suggestion I suggest that you make the script ignore text within category names to keep this from happening (scroll to the bottom, of course.) —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion: Read the documentation: it is very clear that this sort of thing is going to happen, and any editor who uses the script needs to be vigilant, as I was - I manually reverted the category (scroll to the bottom, of course). Radiopathy •talk• 18:39, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for alerting me. Problem is now fixed. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 21:58, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
• @ Radiopathy: I noticed that you have a monobook.js and vector.js, and that Engvar.js is imported into the monobook. Just to inform you it can be used in the new skin too. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 22:07, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks...now what does that mean?!? Radiopathy •talk• 22:25, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

• I don't know whether you're using the new skin or old, or both, but you import 'User:Smith609/toolbox.js' into your vector file (new skin) and 'User:Ohconfucius/EngvarB.js' into your monobook file. To save you from changing to old skin just to use EngvarB, you can import it into your vector file too. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 22:31, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Responses @Ohconfucius: Thanks. @Radiopathy Why wouldn't he make this change? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:38, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Addendum @Radiopathy: You did it again; this time, I fixed it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:46, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• I've just checked the script on the John Lennon article, and the problem I was notified of has definitely been fixed. I presume Radiopathy merely forgot to refresh the browser cache. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:23, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Digging up the dirt.

I didn't really appreciate this. Tony was the one attacking, making snide comments that had nothing to do with the subject,[1] making false accusations,[2] and digging up the dirt.[3] Like the first snide comment, that had nothing to do with the subject and all of those were devoid of fact. --AussieLegend (talk) 04:23, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• You have a right to your point of view, but as I already said, I didn't appreciate your escalation. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:31, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

It was not an escalation but a rebuttal of yet another of Tony's unfounded allegations. He was the one who escalated by bringing in irrelevant rubbish. What does Australia have to do with column headings in TV episode lists? You might notice the end of my post: "Perhaps it might be better to stay on topic." I was trying to keep the discussion on the track, with some facts thrown in. --AussieLegend (talk) 05:42, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• Definitely should stay on topic, but your post was a mixed message at best. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:14, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Vibes

It's true that Koavf and I have had some bloody wretched disagreements in the past. I, however, have determined to get on with the business of building an encyclopædia and purposefully avoid conflict. I no longer keep an eye on his contribs (he still watches mine), but our paths cross at times, and there are some editing patterns that I still feel the need to comment on. I prefer to not have conflict, and hopefully time will take care of that. Radiopathy •talk• 02:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:12, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
• PS don't forget to refresh your vector/monobook cache for the script changes to take effect. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:14, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Right In the past there was tension; as far as I'm concerned, Radiopathy is just trying to make Wikipedia better. Any disagreements that we have at this point are simply misunderstandings or miscommunication. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:51, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

• I am most delighted to hear that. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:55, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

New article

Please have a look when you have time. Maybe you can suggest a better name for it.

Protests against suppression of Cantonese speaking tradition

Arilang ^talk 13:14, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Signpost have decide that you should not be able to read commentary on the problems with censorship. This is the first time commentary has been censored from the Wikipedia Signpost, however, evidently, speaking out against Jimbo Wales' actions in the recent Commons debacle is too controversial.

Since I started editing Wikipedia, I've created literally hundreds of Featured pictures, a dozen or so Featured articles, a couple Featured portals, a featured list, and various other things.

What has my reward been?

I've been harassed, bullied, and generally treated like dirt. An arbcom case was opened by Charles Matthews, then a sitting arbitrator, to punish me for not immediately agreeing to his request to reconsider a block, with no additional information than "I think it's a good idea". I instead sought opinions on ANI, and so Charles Matthews got his friends in the Arbcom to harass me for three months. After two months, they decided that they really should have sought other means of dispute resolution, and opened an RfC... which came out firmly in my decfense. This wasn't what they wanted, so they ignored it, attacked those who spoke out against me, and did what they wanted

It took a year for the Arbcom to finally agree to withdraw the case, replacing it with an apology, and detailing the many procedural and ethical lapses.

More recently, I've been blocked for having an arbcom statement slightly over the limit - while I was in the middle of a lengthy rewrite. The other user I was in dispute with also had a statement over the limit throughout that time... and was never so much as warned.

Wikipedia treats its users like shit, but, ironically, only the long-time experienced users. If you ever begin to become jaded, your upset at Wikipedia will be used to implement more injustices.

Here we see an example. At the start of the news cycle, I wrote an editorial, following the Signpost's stated guideance for such. When it was done, I was told that they no longer publish editorials, and, instead of raising a fuss, I offered to simply publish it as a comment to stories, and the thread discussing it was closed.

Two hours before publication, the editor of the Signpost deleted the comment, without telling anyone. I objected; he had participated in the discussion, and the discussion had been closed for nearly a week, with the comment ready for publication throughout that time. I had dropped my insistence on publication of editorials, or any attempt to revise the article into a non-editorial overview, based on what I had seen as the agreement.

Now, not only is talking about censorship censored, but even a private complaint about at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AWikipedia_Signpost%2FNewsroom&action=historysubmit&diff=375694073&oldid=375693486 editor making grossly inaccurate personal attacks against me, based on patently false allegations, has been censored.

I quit. Both the Signpost, and Wikipedia.

Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:26, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

• Dude, don't be hasty. It's more than obvious you are mad. Yes, I removed your "private complaint" which, in fact was anything but, by virtue of where it was. You left a steaming note on his talk page, and there did not seem to be any reasonable attempt to sort the matter out calmly and in private - which was my gripe. Jimbo is no saint, and I am by no means his fan-boy. I've been in similar schtucks before, and yes, you feel shitty about yerself after you've been dumped on, but you soon get over it. Don't despair. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I have never once seen a tangible benefit from my work, not even a thank you. I have, however, been shit on over and over. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:36, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not here to be thanked, but for my own enjoyment. Being thanked is just the icing on the cake. OTOH, lashing out at everybody, including those who are trying to prevent your self-destruction, is unhelpful. But don't despair. After you look at the situation again rationally, you will probably wonder what the big deal was. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

BTW, here's some icing for you ;-) Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:40, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion re: The Beatles

I've started a discussion here that you may be interested in. Radiopathy •talk• 16:39, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Silliest wikilink of the month award

This user is the proud winner of a Silliest wikilink of the month award.

- Presented on behalf of His Grace. Pat on the back and a firm handshake. Ceoil (talk) 22:42, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Did you change the script?

It makes the changes and tags the article, but I don't get the "difs" so that I can see what changes took place and edit if necessary. Radiopathy •talk• 01:16, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, I'm sorry I did make a couple of tweaks, and forgot to re-enable the diff-preduction. Now reinstated. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:16, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Glitching again. Radiopathy •talk• 13:58, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Where's the glitch? Have you got a diff for me? Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:12, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Simplifying ENGVAR script

Hi!!!

I was looking at your script and I think you could simplify it a lot if you use an array to store the "substitution rules". I did this in another script I use at pt.wikisource for OCR corrections and it seems that the same principle apply here. You could use something like this for the rules:

	var table = {
		'aluminum':	'$1aluminium',
		'artifact':	'$1artefact',
		...
	};

and then do a loop through it:

	for (var word in table) {
		regex_function1(word, table[word]);
	}

The regex_function1 would be created with the code which is currently used explicitly in each row of your code. For example:

function regex_function1(w1, w2) {
	var regex1 = new RegExp('([^\\w\\d\\-\\/])' + w1, 'g')
	txt.value=txt.value.replace(regex1, w2);
}

What do you think?

By the way, did you notice my previous comment?

Have a nice week! Helder 13:56, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for pinging me again. Indeed, I did miss your last posting, probably because somebody posted at around the same time. I had wondered how I could simplify the script, and will try out the code you suggested, and will feedback to you. Cheers! Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:03, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
  • I've implemented your suggestion from last time, and it works fine. I would however mention that the strings such as '[^\w\d\-\/]' are very much needed, and cannot be replaced by '\W' or '\b' as these words often crop up in urls. One possible simplification here that I haven't tried is replacing '[^\w\d\-\/]' with [ ]. Unfortunately, I also found the the '\b' character behaves strangely in this flavour of regex - it seems to be recognised as having a "physical existence" just like any other character, so needs to be in a bracket and retained. As for the above suggestion, I have looked at your portuguese code. I am wondering why the need for several tables within the same function? Thanks in advance for your help. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:52, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
    • Hello! I use more than one table at pt.wikisource because I'm testing two kinds of conversions: those which apply only when the string is a "whole word" and those which are always applied. For example, I want to convert 'for' => 'fôr', but not 'forte' => 'fôrte', so I use something similar to your \w (I've set a variable containing all the letters 'A-Za-zÁÀÂÃÇÉÊÍÓÒÔÕÚáàâãçéêíóòôõú' which can be in a word). In other cases, it is not a problem if the string is converted even if it is contained in other word (like 'compreendid' =>'comprehendid', which is useful for conversion of 'compreendido', 'compreendida', 'compreendidos', 'compreendidas'). I'm also trying to implement a way of adding automatically conversion rules for words with first letter in upper case so that I only need to add the lower case rule (for example, 'For' => 'Fôr' doesn't need to be added since the table already contain 'for' => 'fôr'). But this is still a little buggy =/
    • You can move codes like (<.+?>[^<]+?), ([^<]+?<\/.+?>), (\[Category:[^\]]*?), etc... (which appears in lots of lines) to outside your table and put it only inside a loop (or a function). This could make the code more understandable and easy to update... =) (note that I did this for ([^\\w\\d\\-\\/]) in the example above). This is another reason why I use more than one table... Helder 21:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

∂˚˚•ˆ∆´¬¬®–…¬˚ßg

It missed "color" here and "flavored" here. Radiopathy •talk• 02:55, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

• thanks for the feedback. 'color' (as opposed to 'colors' or 'colored') is a word which is often used in html formatting, so conversion is deliberately avoided so as to reduce the incidence of false positives. Similarly, words which are preceded by hypens are deliberately protected because the form '-word' is very frequently used in urls. As the string '-flavored' can be quite typical, I will try and find a work-around for both these cases if I can. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:03, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
• OK, currently, I cannot see a way of easily transforming 'color' without creating false positives, so I have not done anything about that. However, I have modified the script for the hyphenated words '-colored', '-flavored', '-humored', which should now be transformed. Clear your cache and try it out. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Rye Toe! I tried it on Flavored liquor (I didn't save it, of course) and it got every instance. Radiopathy •talk• 04:46, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

• I think using this version is a better test, because it catches the hyphened variety. The script, before my change just earlier, should have worked on the instances of Flavored liquor. ;-) Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't get it to do Mother's Little Helper again, but it worked great on 'lemon-flavored' at Lemonade. Radiopathy •talk• 04:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

• Good. You confirmed my test results. Ta! Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

You may like to look on the Runescape Wikia AWB typo list. (Uses British English.) Probably stuff you already have, but FWIW. Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 22 August 2010 (UTC).

Discussion invitation

Hi Ohconfucius, I would like to invite you to a discussion on setting up good guidelines for tennis player notability. Please feel free to give comments and suggestions there. Thank you. Arteyu ? _{Blame it on me !} 09:42, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Editing other users' comments

Just a note that editing other users' comments (as you did here) is inappropriate, per WP:TALKO - it's always assumed that editors have written their own comments, and by adding a "weasel words" tag into someone else's sentence, it makes it look as if the original author must have added it themselves. If you want to pick up on a particular phrase, just mention it in your response. I've removed the tag, I'll leave you to re-edit your last comment however you like, in light of this. Thanks. --McGeddon (talk) 09:23, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks, Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:26, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Attention and participation

As you've previously commented on this topic, your attention and participation is invited here: Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Ncmvocalist_needs_to_step_down_or_be_replaced — Rlevse • Talk • 23:47, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Hello Ohconfucius! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot notifying you on behalf of the the unreferenced biographies team that 3 of the articles that you created are currently tagged as Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring these articles up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current 943 article backlog. Once the articles are adequately referenced, please remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag. Here is the list:

1. Dave (singer) - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
2. Norma Mascoll - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
3. Luis Anderson McNeil - Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 10:40, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Script

You seem to be running some kind of script to clean up articles, such as Gregorian calendar. Please take care that the script does not introduce citation templates in articles that do not use them, and that it does not unlink significant years. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:53, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

• I thank you for your comment, but I must respectfully disagree with you. Firstly, I am not running a script; secondly, the actions you referred to in your above message were made (manually) after careful thought and consideration. I am sorry it did not meet with your approval. However, it seems that the problem may be yours and not mine, for I am not aware of any policy or guideline which forbids adding citation templates in the situation you described, so I will kindly ask you to draw my attention to any relevant chapter or verse where it says this is not allowed. The reference you point to is problematic because of its length (it runs to 883 characters) and the alternating use of single and double quotes, making it difficult to determine, when looking at it in edit mode, which part is reference and which part is quote. Your familiarity with the subject, and your apparent dogmatic opposition to citation templates appears to have robbed you of your objectivity, for I feel that insertion of the citation template improves legibility. Furthermore, the policy on linking is quite clear: there is nothing germane in the article 1582 which has not already been dealt with in the Gregorian calendar article; adding that link does not help the reader to any better an understanding of the subject. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:10, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

There are statements in Wikipedia:Citing sources, which is a guideline, concerning adding templates to article to articles not currently using them:

though note that templates should not be added without consensus to an article that already uses a consistent referencing style.

Because templates can be contentious, editors should not change an article with a distinctive citation format to another without gaining consensus. Where no agreement can be reached, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.

As for linking 1582, there are entries that help to give some concept of what else was happening in the world at the time of the calendar change. The link is not mandatory, but it isn't prohibited either. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:14, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

• I am quite familiar with WP:RETAIN, which you cited in your first comment. You seem to be conflating having citation templates with having a citation style; What you state is a common argument used apparently to justify date linking, but that doesn't wash because you have failed to demonstrate how it is wikt:germane, and now you seem to be trying another line of argumentation – Year linking is clearly discouraged per WP:Linking. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:18, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Dated templates

I have to tell it the templates, however to draw it's attention to the articles in question there will need to be a category structure, such that undated templates sit in a first level sub-cat of Category:Wikipedia_maintenance_categories_sorted_by_month. Note that it will also canonicalise the template names, so moving them to the clearest names before starting is a Good Thing. (I would recommend "Use British English" etc.) Rich Farmbrough, 14:35, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

No problem if you continue to use {{Dmy}} adn {{Mdy}}. Rich Farmbrough, 00:02, 25 August 2010 (UTC).

Moving Day (New York City)

Just a quick note to point out that on this article, which I wrote, when you were properly fixing some MOSNUM problems, you also changed the wording of a couple of direct quotes to bring them into compliance with MOSNUM. Obviously, the wording of a direct quote should never be changed - since they were blockquotes, I figure you probably didn't notice they were quotes at the time, which is understandable. Still, I'm bringing it to your attention (even though your edit was almost two months ago -- I just noticed the mistake now) so you'll be sensitized to the problem in the future. Best, Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:32, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, the edit was this. I've fixed them now. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:33, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree I should not have changed what was in the quotes. I was probably getting too mechanical, being 'in the flow', as it were. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:44, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Category:Use British English

Hi, what's your intention with Category:Use British English? It is categorized as a cleanup category (i.e. category of pages that have some kind of a problem that should be fixed), but from the descriptions it seems to me that it should just list articles written in British English. Also, it says that {{EngvarB}} will add an article to that category, but that's not the the case (at least currently). Svick (talk) 08:43, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

• The original intention was to do just that. But now my idea may be a bit unorthodox – now I think it could be used as a status monitor of all articles written in British English, and not as a cleanup as such. Bearing in mind the possibility of erroneous tagging if done by bot, articles need to be tagged manually. And bearing in mind article evolution, I would be sending a bot around to clean up spelling after, say, 12 months have elapsed. The bot would correct any new introductions since the last visit, and would also put the visit date on the template. I haven't worked out how to add tagged articles to the categories; I am in exchanges with Rich Farmbrough on the subject. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 13:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

  Ok. Thanks for the explanation. Svick (talk) 19:50, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

  Note that I created the Category:Use British English from August 2010, and set up the template to categorise appropriately. There are only about 1000 articles with EngvarB. Rich Farmbrough, 17:43, 22 August 2010 (UTC).

  Thanks, Rich --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 23:23, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

  Incidentally appropriate wording for the dated categories can go in Template:Monthly_clean_up_category/Messages/Use_British_English. Rich Farmbrough, 15:26, 23 August 2010 (UTC).

Thanks, I've just created Category:Use dmy dates --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:37, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

User:ZirconiumTwice

Looks like he's reverted your 3RR warning to him. His contribution and user talk page history suggests he's been a problem editor in the past, so he bears watching, I think. Strange Passerby (talk) 06:33, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

• He's quite entitled to remove stuff like that from his talk page. I'm ready to go to AN3 to get him blocked if he continues to edit war. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:35, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Oh, I'm fully aware that he is; I've been around far longer than this account suggests. It did seem to me that he was getting close, if not already over, the 3RR. Strange Passerby (talk) 06:38, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank semi-spam

Thanks for your support in my RfA, which was closed as successful. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 15:37, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

• No thanks needed. Just keep doing what you do, but with mop in hand. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:41, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Hong Kong to FA status

Hi Ohconfucius, the semi-protected for Hong Kong expires in 20 September 2010, I feel like we should take this opportunity to push the article to FA status without vandalism interferences. I started cleaning up the History section since that was a section where we received large amount of negative remarks on. I thought about requesting a copy-editor to take quick look at it too, since I'm concern about WP:FA Criteria 1a. Thanks, Ta-Va-Tar (discuss–what?) 03:03, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for your request. Looking at the article now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:58, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

File:LEUNG image subject

Just wanted to know why you reverted my edits in the article. --FDJoshua22 11:45, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

• WP does not permit use of any non-PD images of living persons, and I don't see how you own the copyright to the image, despite your claim, and thus be able to release it to the public domain. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 11:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Speedy-deleting the Leung family picture

Next time remember to notify the uploader when you tag something for speedy-deletion. I've started a discussion thread on this page. --Deryck C. 12:12, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

• I'm only obliged to consider notifying the uploader of a speedy. Well, I did consider: based on the brief exchange here above, I decided that he was aware it was against copyright, yet he decided to put the image back in the article, so I felt that no further warning was necessary. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:48, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

• • It's great that you answered his question here, and it would be better if you changed the default edit summary of Popups to say that you believe the picture is uploaded against Wikipedia's copyright rules. --Deryck C. 14:26, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
    • I'm sorry. I should not have used popups. I don't use it often, and I regretted not being able to put in an edit summary as soon as I clicked on the 'revert' button. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:35, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Scripts...

Hi!!!

How is everything?

You probably will like to know that at fr.wikisource they have a script (fr:s: oldwikisource:MediaWiki:Modernisation.js) which is used for modernization of texts written in old dialects. The script allow the reader to click in a menu in the sidebar to see the modernized version of text, based on a table of "old word" : "new word" pairs available at fr:s:Wikisource:Dictionnaire.

You can test it acessing, for example, the page fr:s:La Cigale et la Fourmi and clicking at "Texte modernisé" in the sidebar (then the text of the page will change accordingly to the dictionary - but since there is an image in the beginning of the page, it may be a good idea to see the page in full screen mode to notice the changes happening ;-) ).

I found this when I proposed a similar feature (from MediaWiki) at multilingual wikisource: Using LanguageConverter syntax at Wikisources.

Best regards =) Helder 22:08, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for your message. Interesting discussions indeed about Engvar and translations! Unfortanately, I cannot access any demonstration: I tried going to Modernisation.js, and the page is blank. It's rather bizarre as I cannot access it nor see its history. I see the word list (dictionnaire), but see no sidebar buttom to transform (BTW, I have imported the same script as in your vector file). Maybe they have disabled it temporarily. But based on the discussion, I already get a pretty good idea of what they are trying to do there even without the demonstration.

My mistake: the script is here: oldwikisource:MediaWiki:Modernisation.js. Helder 17:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

• As to your Engvar script modifications, I may have mentioned to you previously that I never succeeded in getting the last module to work. I have played with it a bit, although I shall soon be overwriting the existing EngvarB.js code with test1.js code, which is with the old Function Simple. I presume your version of the script must work for you, and am a bit mystified and frustrated why I cannot get the script to even load once the final module (function Simple) is substituted. Furthermore, because I have been a naughty boy, I have a prohibition from running automation on en.WP, so until I successfully appeal it, this continues to severely limit my ability to fully test the script with tangible results; I cannot save the changes. :-( More on that anon. Regards, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:40, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to take a look next week... Helder 17:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

This change seems to be working. I've changed the order of some lines, so that those which starts with "([ \|\[])" can be in a loop. The others are in another loop, and working. Give it a try =) Helder 23:24, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for your update. The script is working a lot better now. But I've been experiencing problems with it apparently running out of steam, as it were, before the job is finished. The process seems to grind to a halt prematurely on both British and Oxford buttons, so the unprotect function isn't engaged; no diff, and tagging with {{EngvarB}}. It's about as far as I am technically able to offer to you as a bug report. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:07, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

After you described the problem I remembered that my second test above also didn't had the summary. So, I looked at firefox console and noticed an error was happening in the loops. The problem was the need of double backslashes when defining the regexes inside strings.

In the latest version, it was added also code for try/catch errors in the loops. This way, you'll be notified if it was added some really broken regex to the tables ;-)

Now it is working (I hope!). Helder 13:04, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Wow, thanks for that. I'll say I would never have found the bug – I was expecting the script to stopped at or close to the point of error, and certainly not after it had done most of the conversion, where the code was already bugged up. I'll report back later, after I've run a few tests on real articles. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:00, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Just a note about this edit: I think you'll need to change the name of function Ohc_rmflinks() back to rmflinks(), because this is the name of the function called by Regex menu framework. Helder 17:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks, I'll put it back. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 00:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Signpost global delivery

Hi, thanks a lot for agreeing to help with this! I'm starting EdwardsBot weekly as part of the Signpost publication process and the global bot's syntax seems to be basically the same, so I don't mind much if the process is 17 instead of 16 steps. But it would still save me time if you could do it.

One thing that should be worked out beforehand is the delivery format. I would suggest the same that we have been using for EdwardsBot so far (example - a content list with a link to each story). Until interwiki transclusion becomes reality, the template that EdwardsBot uses here can't be used on other wikis. I've been working out how to extend Pretzels' Signpost template system by other display options (for other Signpost delivery formats such the RSS feed or mailing list announcements, but this should work as well). That would mean one would have a page here on en: with ready-made text (automatically updated as soon as the new issue comes out) for copying+pasting into the spam page on Meta.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:30, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I just replied on my talk page. Did you read my message above? Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:11, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declined: Tennessee Technology Center at Shelbyville

Hello Ohconfucius. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Tennessee Technology Center at Shelbyville, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: A7 doesn't apply to schools, and it's not overly spammy. . Thank you. GedUK  13:17, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

problem user

Hi, I am seeking to have someone explain the civility policy to User:Surturz here. Tony (talk) 16:13, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Life on Earth

Hi,

I've undone this change. "Earth" is a proper noun, so would be capitalised whether it was in a title or not; changing the redirect broke links such as the one in the lede of abiogenesis, which use life on Earth (note the lack of initial capital). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 12:41, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

• OK, fair enough. Thanks for the message. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 13:03, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of "Giorgi Latsabidze"

I see on my talk page that you nominated this article for deletion at 03:58, 9 September 2010 (UTC). It was then promptly deleted by user Kimchi.sg at 04:03, 9 September 2010. Since the article and its talk page are already deleted, it is not possible to contest the tagging as you suggested. So, what can be done to protest this undiscussed deletion? I wrote a message to Kimchi, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kimchi.sg#Regarding_protesting_the_deletion_of_.22Giorgi_Latsabidze.22, questioning this procedure and attempting to start a discussion. As I explained to him, I started this article last year, and it has been edited several times since then and numerous elements have been added. Some of these may be legitimately objectionable, but I cannot investigate this possibility since the current article is not accessible. So what do you suggest I do now? Music43lover (talk) 20:17, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

• replied at chez Kimchi. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:07, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

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

3RR warning???

Fwiw, I hope you have read Wikipedia:Don't template the regulars (WP:DTTR) before performing such silly stunts again because ANI is not a good place for you to be. This is my advice for you. --Dave ^{♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫®} 16:26, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Manila hostage crisis#WP:ALSO

Per WP:BRD, please state your opinion there above, rather to be a contentious editor yourself, when all I have done is 1 RR (Lambanog has stuck to WP:1RR so you should back off and mind your own business) prior to you wrongfully warning me for 3 RR. As I've mentioned above, knock it off before I take you to WP:ANI for this wrongful accusation. Take heed. --Dave ^{♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫®} 16:45, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

• As much as I appreciate your advice, and your quoting of essays, I would advise you to read How to Win Friends and Influence People. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:37, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

• By my dead reckoning, I think I can win a few more friends over @ ANI (mind you, this wrongful accusation by you isn't something funny and you'd most probably be blocked for a short period of time, more than enough to tarnish your own reputation here, had I proceeded with it) than you could ever get out of a book, I'm not even going to assume that you bought it. So please don't assume anymore, it will only make you look like a fool for making others look like one (its in there, read it~!). --Dave ^{♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫®} 05:18, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

3O for Manila hostage crisis

I've removed your request for another third opinion. I'm still active on the page and will continue to provide assistance. If you feel that my opinion is insufficient, though, consider WP:RFC. I've given 3Os for quite some time now, though, and hopefully I can help mediate this out. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 04:14, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

• thanks. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:18, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Signpost

Thanks for giving my contribution a haircut. I wasn't sure if there was a guideline on length. Is there? (Regardless, you improved my text anyway). hamiltonstone (talk) 03:48, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

• You're welcome! I have not received specific guidelines for word length, but Tony told me he was considering them. It would certainly help to have proper terms of reference. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:54, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Hong Kong gathering

There will be a gathering in Hong Kong this weekend (Wikipedia:Meetup/Hong_Kong_51) to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the Hong Kong Wikimedian community. Come along - I really hope a few more English Wikipedians will be there, and it'll be a good time to meet up and talk about things. --Deryck C. 07:42, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Linking Paris

Paris is linked in the tables in French Chess Championship because every city is linked in that column. Appearance and consistency are important in a table, and linking Paris is not distracting here. In fact, not linking Paris is a distraction because of the unnecessary difference in appearance for those entries. Quale (talk) 03:47, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

• Look, try to apply a bit of common sense, please. Paris appears about 15 times in that table, there are only two other non-Paris cities. Linking of Paris becomes highly distracting because you can hardly see what the other two cities are. If you feel so strongly about consistency, you ought to uniformly not link any city in that table. After all, Toulouse and Nice are already linked above, and therefore are not necessarily, notwithstanding what the guideline permits you to link.--Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:00, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I had the exact same problem on table pages I wrote. Consistency and appearance were both important to me too.

But the overlinking was nuts.

What I did was to keep the links for rare ones, while for common ones (Paris, in your case), I linked the first appearance and delinked the remainder.

And that looks just fine after you've been looking at it for a while.

Varlaam (talk) 04:56, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Sea of blue Paris

You are correct in this case, in my opinion.
Paris is as well known as anything can be, particularly in this context.
The sea of Paris makes it that much harder to see the non-Paris cases, which often are places the average person has never heard of.
Consider restoring that link to Toulouse to show the contrast.
Good luck, Varlaam (talk) 04:50, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
• <--See this dot? That's the good luck barnstar, the tasteful, less ostentatious edition.

• Thanks. And I applaud your creativity! --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:07, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Script

You may want to (if you haven't already) raid my monobook.js search for the confusingly named ==Spelling - did muck with header levels - now date formats per new MoS==. It is not bomb-proof and the older stuff elsewhere (years old) I'm sure is not as good as what you got from Lightmouse. Rich Farmbrough, 06:36, 15 September 2010 (UTC).

List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors

I've undone your redirect of List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors to WP:CHILDPROTECT. I'll be asking at ANI for help fixing the talk page, so consider this a notification of that as well. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 15:19, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

• I'm not sure why you mentioned ANI, are you perhaps suggesting I did something improper by redirecting it? Anyhoo, I consider it not only to be an indiscriminate list, but it is also objectionable – offending even my libertarian sensibilities. I have therefore sent it to afd. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 00:55, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

• • I've just reverted your (OhC's) most recent edit to the AfD. I'm sure that you meant well, and suspect that you intended something quite different, but the duplication was inexplicable. -- Hoary (talk) 00:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
    • Bizzare, as I didn't even edit that page today. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

New Scripts

These scripts are great, and as you are doing, I wouldn't hand these to just anybody you might even consider setting them up like AWB where you need approval before using them. One thing I see that could be rearranged is the Date script has a edit notice of [[WP:MOSNUM|unified date formats]], rem [[wp:overlink]] which I have yet to use Both scripts on the same article and the overlink script has no edit summary at all. each script needs it's own edit summary. As far as performance I did need to go to my .js page once so far and re-bypass my cache. Otherwise I love these scripts and again thanx for the hook up :P. Mlpearc powwow 15:01, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

• Also these links are redirects [[WP:MOSNUM|unified date formats]] needs to be

• [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)|unified date formats]]

• And [[wp:overlink]] needs to be

• [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (linking)#Overlinking and underlinking|wp:overlink]]

Mlpearc powwow 15:01, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks. Your feedback is much appreciated. I will be updating the script from time to time according to feedback received, please put these on your watchlist, and purge your cache when these show up there. FYI, 'overlinking' is in the edit summary of the MOSNUM date script refers to the code within which unlinks all dates and date fragments. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Also I just noticed, is there a way to set the overlinking script to NOT, or give the option to not look at the infobox ? There's a lot of pages that could use a little overlinking clean up but, In most cases you would not want to de-link the infobox. Mlpearc powwow 14:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

• I will have a think about a solution to that problem. In the meantime, I would suggest that you copy the infobox into the clipboard before you run the script, to post it back after running it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

  That will work :P. Mlpearc powwow 16:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I removed your personal attack

I removed your personal attack from my talk page, but I wanted to respond here to some of the factual claims within it.

1. "he seeks a way of giving it de facto permanence" - this is false. I seek broad community consensus for whatever we end up doing, and I support an orderly process of discussion and revision in the pursuit of that consensus. This is the Wikipedia way. I am unwilling to impose the will of the majority (which is strongly in support of Pending Changes) by fiat.

2. Your claims that I am trying to "save face" by imposing PC through some "unilateral" "dictat" is completely at odds with the facts.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

• I am sorry you took my post to be a personal attack, as it was not so intended. I usually call things as I see them. People might or might not say I have insight or a unique perspective, depending on whether they agree with my viewpoint. I do admit, though, I could have been more diplomatic, and so I sincerely apologise. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:49, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
  • It was a bit narky, OC, but Jimbo might have left it there and added his response with better effect. I do sympathise with his line. He's made aware of the threat to the stream of donations when BLPs go badly wrong. But more use of semi-protection by admins is the simpler solution, IMO. Tony (talk) 14:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
    • Yes, PC has been surrounded by drama within the community since it was introduced. It never ceases to amaze me how often we strive for complex and technologically advanced solutions when simple ones are often more elegant, and do the job just as well. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you... I'm sorry I took so long to get back to you. But thank you for the apology, I appreciate it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 01:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pending changes/Straw poll on interim usage

Hi. As you recently commented in the straw poll regarding the ongoing usage and trial of Pending changes, this is to notify you that there is an interim straw poll with regard to keeping the tool switched on or switching it off while improvements are worked on and due for release on November 9, 2010. This new poll is only in regard to this issue and sets no precedent for any future usage. Your input on this issue is greatly appreciated. Off2riorob (talk) 23:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Fancine

I have removed the prod tag you placed on Fancine, as the article has been at AfD before and therefore cannot be deleted via prod. Compliance with policy/procedure is the only reason I did this; I have no prejudice to opening another AfD. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 20:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Template:ISO listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:ISO. Since you had some involvement with the Template:ISO redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Bridgeplayer (talk) 10:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Kilgour-Matas report

A GA Review of Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China is taking place, and the question of splitting out the section Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China#Falun Gong allegations: 2006 into a standalone article has been raised. This will be a controversial move as there are people who have objected to the allegation and corresponding report being a standalone article, and have insisted on merging it back into Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China. I support the content being moved into a standalone article, with a summary left behind, as currently this one allegation dominates the article. Added to which the allegation and the report have gained enough media attention to meet notability guidelines. My proposal is to create the article Kilgour-Matas report, leaving a summary behind, and to immediately open a discussion on WP:AfD regarding the notability of the topic. The version I would use is this one, and to update it with pertinent amendments made to Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China, using the images that are in that article. Your comments, suggestions, and involvement in this is welcomed and encouraged. SilkTork *^YES! 14:52, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

• replied at User talk:SilkTork --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:46, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Falun Gong material

Just curious as to whether you see any existing concerns on the content relevant to the subject right now. John Carter (talk) 17:23, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

• Although I have been involved in some articles touching on Falun Gong matters, I seem to be in stress-avoidance mode. I now find it hard to motivate myself to even looking at those central articles in any great detail or with a critical eye. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:03, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
  • I understand, believe me; I've been kind of doing the same myself, partially because I've been busy fighting fringe theories elsewhere. I was just wondering. John Carter (talk) 15:13, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
    • You're a very brave man indeed, John. I take my hat off to you. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:18, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Msg on Wikinews

I've left you a message on Wikinews - Amgine (talk) 02:32, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Another script

Hi!

I think you may like to test this script (together with this css). The script will add a menu at the top of pages and let you change the spellings from/to Britsh/American English based in lists of words (which currently are at Dictionary/en-US and /en-GB), editable by anyone.

You can see what happens in the dictionary pages, for example, or accessing articles where there are words in the lists (like Belgium and others). I don't know much of English, so the tables were just an adaptation of this table and may need revision by native English speakers ;-) Helder 16:32, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

• Hey, that's a really neat idea of a script. There are a few glitches, though, these are easily detected when looking at, say, Barack Obama. Somehow, I feel that the dictionary list may be too comprehensive for its own good, as it contains many ambiguous words which are probably better off not translated – words like 'Vice President' becoming 'Vise President', and 'pin their hopes' becoming 'prong their hopes'. Thanks also for drawing my attention to Ubuntu project, and Greasemonkey. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

  Indeed: when I found the script at oldwikisource:MediaWiki:Modernisation.js and the French table at s:fr:Project:Dictionnaire used for modernization of old French texts, I really liked to know that it was possible to do that also with javascript (I was aware of Language Converter from MediaWiki, but it is made in PHP). Since then I've tried to adapt it for a more general use (like conversion to en-GB/en-US variants of English, or pt-PT/pt-BR variants of portuguese, and also modernization of Portuguese texts at s:pt:).

  Don't take those tables very seriously... They are merely illustrative and were not reviewed... (and actually I'm not that good in English to do so... =/) Feel free to update them, removing or adding things in the tables, or to share the idea with anyone which may be interested... I'll probably work with the script only at Portuguese projects, but if it is useful for English too it is just a matter of making the tables good enough (the script is essentially a "parser" for the tables. So, if they are good, the script has good results, but if not... oh well).

  The adapted version of the script has some configuration variables which can be adjusted to fit your specific needs. For example, you can remove the highlight of converted words (or customize it in CSS...)

  BTW, you have added some things which may not be useful to you... The script only needs the part below "var ws_alphabet", as in my diffs. But if you want to add more buttons to your toolbar, there are some tips at usability:Toolbar_customization/Library ;-).

  Best regards, Helder 12:26, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks. YOu've given me plenty to play with and think about. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:08, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
• Also, I kind of like how all the links to scripts are highlighted. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:44, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Me too ;-) Helder 11:44, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

"In the news"

Thanks for keeping up the drumbeat for sanity in linking to "in the news" Wikinews articles. It will take long time to get this changed, but we may see something changed if we keep it up! We have lots of supporters. Alas, so do they!  :) Student7 (talk) 12:22, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Question

What exactly do you have against Wikinews? or are you just crying out loud because no one cared there about your "proposed changes"? Nice vendetta. --Diego Grez (talk) 02:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• Vendetta? Indeed not. I see a problem, I roll up my sleeves to fix it. I thought I made it plain and clear in my edit summary: "rem useless Wikinews links - what we have is infinitely better and more complete coverage". I see no value of those specific WN links – debunk that if you can. There may be some exceptions, but it was certainly not the case with the ones I removed. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:24, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Just for being a Wikimedia project, Wikipedia shall help Wikinews because it is clearly the most popular one; I'll give you just one example, what happens on WP:ITN, do they link to Wikinews stories? do they promote writing on Wikinews instead of writing articles here even when there is a WP:NOTNEWS policy? The Wikipedia policy contradicts itself most of the times, and not for good. If you come here with consensus to remove the Wikinews links just because they are based on Associated Press or Reuters articles (Tell me, which news agency does not do that?), I myself will do my part on the other place. Where do you want us to link? To these agencies instead of Wikipedia's sister project? You really should read [4]. A few quotes for you: "Wikipedia is not a news service [...] That's the job of Wikinews. We shouldn't be in the business of writing articles about breaking news stories, unless we can be very confident, as in the case of the September 11 attacks, that in the future there will be a significant call for an encyclopedia article on that topic."; "Wikinews can also be cited in its capacity as an amalgam of primary sources. Citing a news summary article on Wikinews, which in its turn cites the multitude of news sources that it is summarizing, can save Wikipedia the trouble of citing the long list of news sources directly itself." "Wikipedia and Wikinews complement each other in this respect. [a news backgrounder]", et cetera, et cetera... Want me also to remind you of the newly created drama there by you and company? --Diego Grez (talk) 02:40, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
    • Interesting that you should compare WN with other newspapers, or Reuters or Associated... WP cites news articles in abundance. Most WP editors now know to source articles. A significant proportion of WP articles now cite and link to newspapers. The {{Wikinews}} tag is usually added, not by writers of those articles, but as an afterthought. You have been around WP yourself to know that. For the most part, where there is a WN link, there are maybe 50 news links. How does that add value? It may suit the purposes of ITN to link to WN, and I do se a role for it there, I fail to see it in mainspace. Just to give an example: Monty Python and the Holy Grail linked to WN with a bit of trivia ({{Wikinews|Monty Python's "Holy Hand Grenade" sparks bomb scare}}). Go figure. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:02, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

      I was unaware that trivial was a MoS criterion. While I do not know enough about en.WP to make any judgements, I was wondering if you could tell me if automating the removal of any Wikinews template (or any other sister project template) would be considered normal wikipedia contributor activity? What I would most like to do is avoid exactly the kind of guerrilla warfare which appears to be happening right now. I've asked Diego Grez (and others) to not engage in any provocative behavior, and will make every effort to avoid giving any form of offense. I wish you and your efforts very well. - Amgine (talk) 03:24, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, McNeil's right-hand man, on the spot. Hi. Tony (talk) 03:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Hello Tony! - Amgine (talk) 03:42, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• No, Tony. That would be Baawolf. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• • • • Thank you for trying to keep the temperature down. I do a lot of copyediting and cleaning up, I am also constantly testing out scripts and regexes, so please think nothing of that little experiment I was carrying out. If I want to remove WN links, I would do these manually. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

        You're welcome. I hope we can continue to communicate maturely. - Amgine (talk) 03:42, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

        He's not heeding your advice, and has reverted all the removals, sometimes with sarcastic edit summaries. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:40, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

        My sincere apologies; I don't feel I can be held responsible for xyr actions, but I did make an attempt to prevent provocative actions. I'm not sure Diego understood that responding to provocation should also be avoided. When next xe and I are online at the same time I will try again. - Amgine (talk) 06:10, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Help WN by linking to its rehashes of the original news sources? No, that certainly should not be done, Diego. The model for WN was always fatally flawed: to rehash the main stories coming out of the big ones on the net. There are at least three problems:

1. In attempting to avoid accusations of plagiarism, the technique, at its heart, involves a laboured rewording of professional text that was already carefully constructed around what is known, what is surmised, and what is not known. Professional journalists become expert at minimising the latter, and distinguishing the first two from each other (although they often slip up on that distinction, whether by accident or on purpose). WN is at a huge disadvantage in having to paraphrase this: there are minefields at every turn in giving the wrong impression of that professional balance between the three aspects.
2. Why would WP, and anyone else, for that matter, source a rehash of the original professional sources, when we could source the sources in the first place. Why risk yet another filtering of inforrmation?
3. WN can only be published after the sources it feeds on.
4. WN has little nor no primary news-gathering infrastructure, and never will—that costs huge amounts of money. It is all very well for a few editors to boast that they gain the occasional accreditation to cover an event, but it is largely or wholly self-funded, and couldn't possibly be taken seriously as a raison d'etre for its existence.
5. WP seems to do the live stuff better, I'm afraid. It has many many times the editorial resources; it is more selective in its choice of what to cover (not claiming to vie with the broadsheets and online news-providers); and it nurses no conventional journalistic pretentions about itself.

I have received an email from a WN regular saying how appalled they are at the way I have been treated. Actually, I feel lucky compared with one person, who left only a few months ago after being treated dreadfully (look at the edit-summary), and here (straight after a death in the family), or someone else, who has left in disgust after a bout of abuse: no, the email was from a current regular at WN who would not dare to speak out on-wiki.

But I see that McNeil will escape without having to answer calls by several editors, some established, to justify his actions and behaviour. Thus, his behaviour will continue. It is dysfunctional to an extreme point, and needs to be addressed by the Foundation. You have a hide coming here and whining about why WP doesn't link to WN. I would prefer to discuss with you and others there how WN's model can be changed to enable it to survive.

Before you lurch into the same old anti-en.WP resentment fest that McNeil has sucked you and others there into, please remember that I came there as a friend, to help in what I am expert at: language, style guides, and the framing of advice to professionals. It's my RL job, as well as a pursuit on en.WP. You continue to support a corrupt power regime in which one bureaucrat acts against the most basic rules, including heavily "involved" actions and rank rudeness, insults, and bullying; and the other then stops discussion of it by freezing the ~ANI page. The advice of the steward is ingored. I see that McNeil will escape without having to answer calls by several editors, some established, to justify his actions and behaviour. Thus, his behaviour will continue. It is dysfunctional to an extreme point, and needs to be addressed by the Foundation. You have a hide coming here and whining about why WP doesn't link to WN. I would prefer to discuss with you and others there how WN's model can be changed to enable it to survive than to deal with your support of the status quo. Tony (talk) 03:29, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Tony, with regards to your points, the same were made about Wikipedia when it was young, by other established institutions. I agree that Wikinews has a stepper hill to climb, but you are focusing on the negatives, without looking at the positives or the future of Wikinews (which is part of the WMF mission). While I appreciate you bring some of these Wikinews issues here for context, accusations against Wikinews, or Wikinews people, arn't appropriate here; the appropriate place to take issue with Wikinews is either on Wikinews, or on Meta. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The atmosphere at WN itself is toxic, especially to those they consider to be not "in their club". It makes it very hard to discuss at WN itself the parlous state of the culture, and to encourage a serious review of the model for WN. I think the Foundation might be asked to conducdt a review of that model—here, I'm not being negative, but positive, which is the way I approached WN from the start. Unfortunately, you are treated as a crim if you're not Approved by those who have got themselves into a position of power there. Everything you say is construed as an unwarranted criticism. Well, guess what: fed up with that. Where on Meta would one conduct a discussion? Tony (talk) 07:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I have no experience with the Wikinews Arbitration Committee; I expect you could initiate a case in which he would be recused. It would be worth knowing whether this has been attempted before.

meta:Requests for comment is the process for requests which that cant be resolved on the local project. I recommend you read through meta:Wikimedia Forum/On disbanding Wikiquote (which was an RFC of sorts) to see the type of opposition you may face to the prospects of shutting down a project, and meta:Requests for comment/Ramir on Russian Wikibooks for a successful example of an admin who was taken down a notch or two. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, John. You really are a valuable font of advice about interwiki things. BTW, I'm not suggesting that WN be shut down; rather that its role and model be reviewed by the Foundation Board, with a view to recommending options for (i) how it might adapt to the rapidly changing news environment out there; and (ii) how its relationship with en.WP might be improved. The dysfunctional culture that is all too much in evidence now was never an inevitable outcome; but I do think improving (i) and (ii) might automatically improve it. Tony (talk) 07:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, very helpful indeed. Having been a bystander in that fiasco, I was flabbergasted at what went on there. Those venues you suggested must be explored for change to take place. Although I am slightly wary that the small circle which runs WN can satisfactorily deal with its own cultural and governance issues, it would only be proper to jump through the hoops there as a first move. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:55, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
• Likewise, myself and others were not specifically wanting Wikiquote to be shut down; rather we wanted its management and the WMF to recognise the underlying faults in the implementation, needing improvement to the model, and that its content could be moved under the banner of another project if its management did not improve. I see now that q:Special:Longpages has not improved from the situation I reported two years ago at meta:Wikimedia Forum/On disbanding Wikiquote.
  As I see it, a similar fundamental issue for Wikinews is where to draw the line between creating better news stories, and ripping off content from reputable sources? The free content movement should take a leaf out of the book of the free software movement, which developed standards which tried to ensure their software was *different* and *better* than proprietary software equivalents.[5] To take this to the extreme, we would need to avoid reading non-free news before writing our own news story, but news isn't able to be written in a vacuum. As a result, this is not an easy problem. I wonder about my own wikinews stories, which I believe are better than other news venues produced about the same topic, however I am sure that every wikinews author would say the same about their own work ;-) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

• John, I wasn't aware that you were involved in the WQ issue. I'll look through this soon. On WN, yes, what you're saying here points to the need for stricter guidelines (even tutorials, dare I say it?) as to how to improve on the sources; a big part of this, I guess, should be how to select the right stories, stories that lend themselves to such improvement. The days of scattergun selection, in which many of the stories are very nicely covered already by the major news organisations, and are less useful in WN's current mode than the source links at the bottom, should be put to bed.

  What also exercises my mind is how to increase the readership. It might be heresy on my part (?), but I think they should consider (1) deadlined publications, less frequent, since they have much larger impact and are an easier way to gain "branding" (branding is what WP has ... it's what WN conspicuously lacks). And (2) a careful mix of op eds—really well-written, interesting ones.

  These are just off-the-cuff thoughts that have been rootling around in my mind for a week. Perhaps a combination of both specific-time publications and a continuous, ongoing "breaking news" section that is updated regularly. Unsure.

  What WN desperately needs as well is more editors, an open culture, and a smoother relationship with en.WP and WN's foreign counterparts. On the former, it is a pity that there isn't more confluence between our front-page news items and WN; but I don't think it's appropriate to have that relationship until WN transforms itself.

  All of these matters might be considered by a WMF review. One thing is certain: there is some kind of role for the Foundation to forge in an era of fast-declining business models for the traditional news and journlism organisations. I just don't think we've got it nearly right yet. Tony (talk) 03:33, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Protect words

I noticed this amongst my scripts, but I have no idea what it is. Radiopathy •talk• 03:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing that out. I'm sorry for the confusion it may have caused. I had upgraded the script, and that was a button I use to test proper functioning of the protect mechanism, to make sure that certain words, or words inside Categories, quotations etc, don't get acted upon by the script. As it is no longer mentioned in the documentation, I have now disabled it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China

I have posted a GA reassessment at Talk:Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China. Please feel free to comment. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Please comment here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:56, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Your WN comment

I've replied at your comment. Thanks for bringing it to our attention! - Amgine (talk) 04:05, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

ENGVAR script

It missed "center" here (the dif really isn't relevant because I caught it and did it manually). Radiopathy •talk• 19:03, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, as I may have mentioned in the documentation, this highly pervasive word can cause a great deal of problems, so the script deliberately avoids converting 'center' in this simple guise. Changing 'centering' or 'centered' can be done without ambiguity or affecting html formatting, but unfortunately this is not the case for 'center'. So I'm afraid we're left with manual detection and conversion for this. Sorry --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Date corrections

Hi,
your script to correct dates is a bit off, it appears: In this diff you changed the ISO dates to dmy dates, but it seems the article originally had mostly mdy dates (and you also added the {{mdy}} marker).
Cheers, Amalthea 08:40, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

• oops! thanks for picking it up. I'll sort it out. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:57, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Thanks. Amalthea 09:37, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

What key is this in?

Look at this! It actually looked this way in the article, too! Radiopathy •talk• 19:44, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

• Most of my compositions are in the key of D. Looks like the protection somehow didn't get reversed. I will look into the problem and get back. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:47, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

• I should point out that that was the date script, not ENGVAR. Radiopathy •talk• 02:51, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

• OK, thanks for the clarification. No wonder I couldn't replicate the problem. However, it does look like the ENgvar missed a few words. Need to get to the bottom of it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:55, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
• I immediately assumed it was the ENgvar script because of the way the music note appeared in 'surprised' which I have to protect from conversion. The appearance must be because the MOSNUM script somehow interacted with the Engvar script. So far, I cannot see why or how it would have done so – none of the functions share the same name. Anyway, sorry to bore you with the detail... I have made a patch which should deal with the problem for now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:15, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your comments on Talk:History of Paraguay, and for taking the time to look into the changes that were in dispute. As a result of your comments, I think we are making progress on resolving this. Regards, Ground Zero | t 19:38, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

• I'm glad you're closer to resolving the differences. The key being to better understand how to construct useful links. My explanations were shallow (because it was late at night when I wrote), and Greg did a great job with giving concrete examples of how to add value to the project with linking. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:50, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Travis Cherry

Hi,

You marked my oage for deletion. I think you said there were no references, and it was for self-promotion, but i think if you check the links again, you will see that all references to me are not user created. They are all links to oages that reference my work. allmusic, artistdirect, and discogs are sites that reference me that i had nothing to do with. (i.e. I cant change anything they write.) Also allmusic is used as the reference by the Grammy commitee to allow artists and executives to become voting members of the Grammys. I would ask that you recheck.

I placed another link on there referencing The North Carolina Project, and i also removed anything that cannot be referenced. This is not for my self promotion. i apologize if it appeared that way. Thanks! Superkat2 (talk) 21:55, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

• There are two fundamental issues with the Cherry article. Firstly, it is by no means clear that the subject meets our notabiility criteria. He may have done a lot, worked with many notable people, but that in itself does not necessarily make him notable. Secondly, there is a problem with the sources supplied. I would refer you to Wikipedia:Verifiability. Regards, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:10, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oh, I'm sorry. From re-reading your message above, it seems that you are the subject. That would bring to mind yet another guideline you must pay attention to: WP:COI. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:45, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Why the de-linking?

Curious to know why you are delinking some places in airline destinations lists.119.155.35.220 (talk) 00:33, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

• There is a very high probability readers will have gone to any given 'destination' page because they were already interested in airlines/geography, or were previously at an airline article. The pages are close to directory-style information as we are likely to have on Wikipedia. I was surprised to see these pages, and was even more surprised to see that in most cases every destination was linked: continent, sub-continent, country, state/division city, and the name of the airport served. In other words, everything on that page was blue, except the background ;-). The geographical cascade is already obvious by article structure. I would classify many of these links as unnecessary 'chain links' which contribute little to the deeper understanding of the articles. Readers are most likely to be informed by the airport (or maybe city) articles – what I mean is readers will NEVER click on the Thailand article to learn (or expect to learn) about Air Canada (see following example), nor will they expect to find any enlightenment there about Air Canada, hence the removal of the highest-level links.

  I would also mention in passing that there were also instances where headers were linked viz: ==[[Asia]]==. Such links are discouraged, and should be removed as a matter of course. I hope that addresses your query. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:05, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, makes sense now, you have taken up quite a chore, sorry for having reverted some of your edits.116.71.5.231 (talk) 11:35, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

• No worries. I wish I had a bot to do these edits, but there you go... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:35, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Hi Ohconfucius, according to WP:Airlines, airline destination lists should be all-blue - so I think it's a bit intrusive of you to edit every single airline destination list just to change the colour of text which has been used for years on Wiki. Just a personal opinion; I think you've been wasting your time here, although I'm not going to revert all of your edits obiously '~' Speed74 (talk) 19:23, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Thanks for alerting me to where the problem is. I'll go fix it there. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:52, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

"Dubious" template on Nobel Prize

Hello,

well, the main argument behind me adding it is the very fact that I added it. I mean - knowing how, in my mind, Dalai Lama's political views are often contrasted with those of the government of the PRC, I just found it... surprising to see that he's been classified as a Chinese person himself. And I believe that many other people may react similarly, too. So I added this template - perhaps there are others, more suitable for the situation, but it was the first idea I got - hoping that someone would clarify that statement by explaining whether it refers to his having a Chinese citizenship, to his ethnicity (though I guess there are no single "Chinese people"), or to some still else criterion.

Personally, I'd just say he's Tibetan. But again, that's just me, having no knowledge about him at all. So I hoped someone would help me in that.

Thanks, viny.tell // 19:32, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

assistance recruitment

Hi Ohconfucius, I'm not sure if you noticed, but Hong Kong is up for FAC again at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hong Kong/archive4. It would be great if you could lend a helping hand with an outstanding issue regarding lead paragraph and too much blue links. Thanks! Ta-Va-Tar (discuss–?) 13:48, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

New article

Hi, please add content to Yuan Tengfei, and I hope this time it wouldn't get deleted like before. Arilang ^talk 08:38, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

script glitch?

Hi, TRM pointed out this one (dates within quotes were altered, and flag icons messed with). Tony (talk) 17:15, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks. I've never experienced those situations before, so they weren't foreseen in the script. I've made some tweaks. Clear your browser cache and try it now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:59, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

3RR

Gee, thanks! (Most appreciated!!) I see censorship and bullying are alive and well, and heartily supported by you. Pdfpdf (talk) 16:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• your sentiment is duly noted. I have no horse in that race, and it was not intended to be censorship although I see you interpreted as such. I would once again point out (as I did in my edit summary) that an editor is entitled to remove comments posted to his/her talk page; the reasons for removal are irrelevant. You were being extremely aggressive in making known your point, to the point of harassment, so I only thought it fair to warn you of a breach or impending breach of WP:3RR. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Brigida Banti

Thank you very much for copy-editing my rough English in the article Brigida Banti. I have made myself some further minor corrections, when necessary to make clearer the facts reported; and I wonder if you would be so kind as to edit two more corrections I don’t feel able to make myself.

1. As far as I can remember, Michael Kelly’s enthusiasm was raised by Banti’s performance as Euridice, which he chanced to attend, and not by her whole activity in Venice in the eighties;

2. "vulgar, impudent, dissolute and even a drunkard" are not the precise words written by Lorenzo Da Ponte and so they ought not to be put in inverted commas. Should you like to edit a correct precise quotation, here is Da Ponte’s text: “...she was an ignorant bad female, foolish and insolent, who, having been used from her early youth to singing around cafés and streets, took to the theatre, where only her voice led her, all habitudes, manners and morals of an impudent Corisca. Loose in her tongue, looser in her actions, addicted to guzzling, licentiousness and to the bottle, she would always appear as she actually was in front of everybody, she did not know any kind of moderation, she exercised no restraint; and when any of her passions was whetted by difficulties or opposition, she became an asp, a fury, a hell demon, that would be able to turn a whole empire topsy-turvy, not only a theatre ...” (for the Italian text, cf. here)

Finally, what about now removing the copy-edit template? Cheers Jeanambr (talk) 21:41, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I haven't the faintest idea about who Corisca is (maybe a then famous theatre character?)!

• Thanks for your work. I notice that the ce tag has been on the article for quite a while, and am sorry you had to wait so long for someone to come and copyedit the article. But now, it's more or less done, and I'm glad to have been of assistance. I have made a few more modifications to the text per your suggestions; Corisca appears to be a figure from the arts of the time, but I cannot make any connection from this article to any other, so we should have to leave it at that and maybe revisit at a later stage. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:48, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much indeed again! Just a final remark: the text quotation seems to be lacking some words for an accomplished meaning. I can’t help thinking we’d better leave my original summarizing reference without inverted commas (reporting she had been vulgar, impudent, dissolute and even a drunkard) and contemporaneously report in the footnote Da Ponte’s whole text translated into English. Maybe it would be both easier and more helpful for English readers. Cheers. Jeanambr (talk) 06:49, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

• Now modified. I found the url to the text, so have now included it. I think it's OK to leave the quote in italian, as we do not have an official English translation tied to a reliable source. Using the link, the quote is easily verifiable. Not that I doubt your translation, which seems faithful, I think that readers can do their own googling to translate it into English should they wish. I hope this is satisfactory. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:27, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you again. Cheers.--Jeanambr (talk) 07:35, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Btw: I have found out that Corisca is a villain, cunning and deceitful character of Il pastor fido, which should have been well-known to Da Ponte.

• Magnifico! Unflattering indeed... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:40, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Everest's peak

Hello, Ohconfucius. You have new messages at Talk:People's_Republic_of_China#Edit_request_from_Dtehapm.2C_27_October_2010.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Committee

You are invited to join the Committee for getting things done Rich Farmbrough, 18:30, 28 October 2010 (UTC).

Mainland China Provincial Templates

I propose that the following be done for all 31 (did I count correctly?) provinces of mainland China: merge the contents of the templates "County-level divisions in Anhui" into "Template:Anhui" (比如说). This has already been done for at least Guangdong, as far as I know. And this is what is done on Chinese Wikipedia. Why have two templates when one, albeit very large, could suffice? --HXL 何献龙 03:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• I'm not sure I understand correctly. Do you have a link of what you want to merge, and a link to the Chinese template end result? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:49, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

meh. I'll give you wiki-links, but won't actually do anything for an example because I don't have the time. Merge the contents of Template:County-level divisions of Anhui into the almost-naked Template:Anhui. For a Sinicised/Japan-ified example, see zh:模板:安徽行政区划 --HXL 何献龙 03:54, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

by the way, since this will be a large change, as hundreds of county pages may already use the template "County-level divisions of...", this may be an issue. We may need to ask a bot owner to have his bot remove all instances of the template "County-level divisions of..." once the merger is complete. --HXL 何献龙 03:54, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe size is less of a concern rather than the bot issue I raised above. --HXL 何献龙 03:54, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for contemplating this proposal. --HXL 何献龙 03:54, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Wouldn't it be so much simpler to just move {{County-level divisions of Anhui}} to {{Anhui}}?

then we lose a lot of information... once we (ought to call in other users as well) reach agreement/consensus, then actually merging the two types of templates ought not take more than a few hours for one editor. I'll call in Benlisquare, Rjanag, and a few others --HXL 何献龙 04:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• It's only a navigational template... But with an edit like this, no information would be lost. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
• Yes, and why not take it to WT:CHINA? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:07, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

well I thought you meant "move County-level divisions of... to Template:Anhui", which is a bad idea. But that edit was good. Meh. Already bothered the two of those users... --HXL 何献龙 04:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

sorry, edit conflict. and no, taking it to there would mean it would be less 明显, ok...? I tried there, but no one responded. --HXL 何献龙 04:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• Well yes and no. It needs to be done somewhere central, and I think it's the best place because it involves a number of templates of the project. You can always ping the others to go look there. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

will move almost everything from here over there. continue there if you wish --HXL 何献龙 04:32, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

• OK, thanks. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

De-Linking in Airline Articles

I'm not sure why you've been doing this in so many articles, but can you please be consistent. What is the point in de-linking some cities, and not others (eg: Korean Air? It is very tedious to go back and fix eg: here. Thanks, Jasepl (talk) 04:42, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for your note. The point is, as is stated in WP:LINK, that certain cities are so well known that there is no need to systematically link them. I understand the consistency argument, but that kind of falls down when some cites (London, New York, Paris) are known to almost all English-speakers, whilst others (Urumqi, Yangon, Brazzaville) are not. Anyway, I will try and stay away from the city links in that category of articles. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:33, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Jasepl, please just revert or ask Ohconfucius to self-revert. I appreciate also the fiddliness of Ohconfucius's fixing of the link-formatting manually in such cases (it can't be done automatically very well at all); whereas reverting is one click. But frankly, I find the linking much more effective when the airport name alone is linked. The fact that Malé Airport is in Malé is no suprise; more functionally, we would rather the readers went to the airport article, since the list is about airports. From the airport article, it is a second away to the town article via a link at the top. MOSLINK also says that as well as focused links, it is important to avoid bunched links where they look like a single one. This is the case through the list. I wonder, also, if less bold could be used in parts of the article, according to WP:MOSBOLD. Thank you. Tony (talk) 08:00, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Tony, there were a number of other breaches of WP:MOS in the example above, such as linked headings; also, I unlinked all countries to reduce the serial linking of continent-country-city-airport, so it may be [relatively] easier to relink manually. although I feel they could just as well be left as they are, and I might go and unlink all the cities too, as you suggested above. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:11, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Thanks Tony and Confucius. I do agree on the not linking part. But I feel it should be consistent; either we link all cities, or none at all. But I suppose this is for the Aviation project contributors to discuss further. Jasepl (talk) 09:04, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
        • Sure. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Date delinking case amendment

The Date delinking case is supplemented as follows:

Remedy #17 ("Ohconfucius automation") of the Date delinkingcase is terminated, effective immediately, and Ohconfucius (talk · contribs) is permitted to use automation subject to normal community guidelines.

Passed by motion 7 to 0 with 1 recusal at 14:35, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee Dougweller (talk) 14:41, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Kilgour-Matas report

I have moved the draft of the Kilgour-Matas report to: Wikipedia:Article Incubator/Kilgour-Matas report. I think a week there, then ask another admin to look it over before moving it into mainspace. Put it up at AfD to get a wider response. If it passes that test, trim the Falun Gong material in Organ transplantation in the People's Republic of China and direct readers to the Kilgour-Matas article. SilkTork *^YES! 11:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Academy of Architectural and Contemporary Themes

You were right about at least some of it being copyvio. I noted a confirmed an example at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2010 November 10 and left a copyvio note for the original contributor. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:29, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

• I had no idea where the article originated from, although I was certain it had to have had a history. Thanks for the detective work. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:35, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Accademia Italiana Thailand

I have removed the prod tag you placed on Accademia Italiana Thailand, as the article was discussed at AfD in April 2009 and is therefore permanently ineligible for deletion via prod. Compliance with policy/procedure is the only reason I did this; I have no prejudice against opening another AfD. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 17:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi again

please have a look at Talk:Boxer Rebellion, and offer your opinion when you have time. Arilang ^talk 04:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

FYI

Skookum1 has claimed in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Southern California Chinatowns that we are friends (intimating Collusion). Although I would be honored to engage in a dialogue with you in the future, this needs to be refuted, as evidence of his lack of veracity. I am not Canvassing, I thought you should be kept informed. Namaste ...DocOfSoc (talk) 10:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Most confusing wikilink removals of the month (sample)

Hi I’m bringing this to your talk page as, again, it’s one of your edits, and also you seem to have been given dispensation to use automated tools again. While the RfC on the wp:link talk page seems to have not really brought much light on the wider issue, there’s still some rather obvious problems with consistency in delinking. For example this recent edit - as well as removing a link to “Melbourne” from the lead, which seems a little bizarre when the page is about a Melbourne suburb - takes out some of the links for the ethnic groups in the place. Now, you could make a case for removing them all - or alternatively for keeping them all, but making them to “people” or “diaspora” articles rather than piping them to country/region pages - but I really do not get on what basis you’ve selectively removed some, eg the link for Greeks but not for Arabs (and, left the latter as a rather odd piped link to “Arabia”). One can make a judgment one way or the other as to whether these are sufficiently relevant links - if they are, per wp:link, they should all be kept, whether “common” or not. Even if you want to quietly bypass that requirement, I can’t see any objective basis for making the distinction as to what is common and what is not as you have. Or even any subjective basis for it to be honest. It just seems utterly random. Overall, it’s not clear whether you’re still doing this sort of thing carelessly, or conversely because you’re trying to think too hard about what to leave in and what to take out. This isn’t the first time that I, or other people, have raised this kind of point in respect of some of your changes either. N-HH talk/edits 14:10, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
Also, while I’m here, a couple more examples - why have you removed a link to “Broadway Theatre” here? And why did you remove the link to Ireland in the See Also section here? Why have you removed a link to the Republican party from the lead here? I'll tidy up/correct some of these, but as noted previously, why should I or anyone else have to, especially for those that can only be seen as outright errors?

• You will probably say you don't care about the reasons why, just that the outcome. But I'll explain anyway why it is not random: 'Arab' is a race, not a nationality. That explains why 'Arab' was left untouched but all other nationalities were unlinked. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Well no, by stating the problems I had understanding your rationale, I was pretty clearly asking for the reasons. That's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. I have to say that seems a pretty random reason (and we could have a meta debate about Arabs being a race, but let's allow that one to pass). What logic or common sense is there behind delinking nationalities but not races? Where does wp:link mandate that kind of distinction? Plus you haven't acknowledged the other problems I've raised. N-HH talk/edits 14:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. You got it spot on. None of the nationality links were relevant. Your changes make them a little more relevant, but not by much. I just removed one link too few. The 'Broadway Theater' link was a deliberate removal, as it does not refer to an institution but the generic concept of NY theatre district, which is pretty well-known' in anglosphere, and I guess you and I will have to agree to disagree about that. The removed link to 'Republican' can be put down to me relearning to use AWB. I will endeavour to ensure there are fewer false positives in future. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Watch this

The ENGVAR script is 'unwatching' pages that I run it on! Radiopathy •talk• 14:15, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

• I'll get onto it... d'you know if is this recent?
  

BTW, I've been informed elsewhere that the Mediawiki software occasionally drops watchlisted items. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:27, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that some of my watched articles were no longer on my watchlist, so I ran the script on Golden Slumbers today, and the page was unwatched after I saved. Radiopathy •talk• 14:30, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

• Tx. I'll run some diagnostics. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
• I am please to inform you that the problem has now been addressed. You were absolutely correct that the code un-watchlists since I know not when. So please check to see what other articles it may have delisted.

Chinatowns in Southern California

Re your comment:

I have just taken out a chunk of OR, and now would challenge the nom to analyse in detail, section by section, what of the remaining sourced information needs to go because it is synthesis or other OR. That should be an easy job, because much of it has sources apposed.

Well, that's been tried, only to see it all restored with complaints of "vandalism" but I fear the "keep" is going to encourage the original research-oriented editor to defy all comers, despite the adjudicating admin's comments about content objections being valid. "Analyse in detail" has been done, and all of the San Gabriel Valley section falls in the category of "SYNTH" and "OR" because none of the cites support that even Monterey Park IS a Chinatown, and not just an area with lots of Chinese commercial establishments and residents; if not even that city says it's that, it's not enough to cite figurative references as if those were conclusive/factual proof. Your Valley Corridor section that you deleted is, so far, still absent; but I wouldn't be surprised if it's put back in, likewise what I just took out......Skookum1 (talk) 21:50, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for the message. Regarding your concerns, although I'm not hugely interested in this topic area, I'll put the article on my watchlist. That means that I will keep an eye on things, and visit the article from time to time to help the cleanup. Don't hesitate to leave a message here if there are specific points you would like me to intervene on. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:53, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I've taken out everything but the Monterey Park section (which I think should also go, completely) and put back in the one-sentence paragraph on the actual historical Chinatowns. So far my deletions of Rowland Heights have not been put back in....but someone (Beback) seems to think it's important to find a citation that the SGV is "the largest concentration of Asians in xxx" and also "the largest Chinese economy outside of China" (whatever that means; I submit that Canada's, even BC's, is vastly larger, once you define "Chinese economy")....the AfD was a disappointment; if "they" want to have shopping-guide content in an article, give it another name and don't co-opt a word which doesn't mean what they're talking about. Not so much a topic I'm interested in, as annoyed by.....Skookum1 (talk) 07:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Musical notes

Hello. I was testing your EngvarB script for the first time on Humour and something surprising happened. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong but nothing was changed except those two instances of "surprise". Please help! Thank you. McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:41, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, I was wondering where I could find a complete list of the changes as I'm not particularly good at reading code. Thanks. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:05, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

One more thing, I recently created the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling)/Words ending with "-ise" or "-ize" and I was wondering if you could tell me if I've missed any exceptions. Thanks. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:07, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for your query. I had this problem reported to me by Radiopathy a while back, and thought I had fixed the problem. I know what it is due to, but the problem does not replicate when I run the script on the article you cited. I need to dig further. My initial guess was that the script may have stalled in the protection loop, before the conversions actually take place. If the browser allows the script to execute properly, you should see the diff of the changes appear once it has finished. Can you please confirm that this was the case, to help with diagnostics? I am also baffled as to why it didn't convert the instance of humor in the opening sentence when I executed it just now, but that's a problem unrelated to yours.

  I was in the process of creating a proper and comprehensive test page, but I got sidetracked. The closest I have to one is at the bottom of my script documentation here. More anon. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:18, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

  • When I click "BRITISH spelling", it appears to do nothing. It says "Error on page" in the status bar at the bottom of the browser. When I manually view the diff, all it's done is added musical notes in the two instances of "surprise". I also tried it on The Beatles and it added a musical note in compromise. It appears to be doing it in words that end in "-ise" in American English too. By the way, I'm using Internet Explorer 8.0.7600.16385 (the latest version) on Windows 7. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:29, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
    • OK, thanks. That confirmed my suspicion that the script stalled. It does appear to do so with some browsers that execute javascript slowly, and sometimes crash, like yours appeared to do. I have never tried it on IE. The only way to be sure the script has executed properly is if you see that the {{EngvarB}} tag (or {{EngvarOx}}) tag has been inserted. The diff is the last step which confirms its completion. When using Firefox on my Mac, I sometimes get a 'script stalled' message, but it asks me whether to continue; it gets there eventually. I also use FF and Chrome on Windows, and the script generally works fine. Safari seems to execute the script the fastest, though. SO I would recommend you try that. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:36, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Thank you. I will download Safari. I'm getting sick of Internet Explorer anyway. The drop down menu for recent edit summaries works better but other than that, Safari is a lot better for editing Wikipedia (I use it on my other computer). McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:50, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Just a supplementary to your list, I presume you have seen this. A table similar to yours exists somewhere, but I have yet to relocate it. Furthermore, I'm not sure it is possible to create a complete list of -ize words. I have come across many variants where the American-created word (or so I believe) out of any given noun does not enjoy any degree of common usage in British English... I have never seen British write words like 'journalize', burglarize', 'routinize', as they generally prefer to use 'to make a journal entry', or 'to have been burgled' --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:36, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Yes, I am aware that Americans tend to make up a lot of words so I was planning on keeping the list small. It is the lists of exceptions that I want to be exhaustive because I don't thin kthere are too many. I have read spelling differences page but as far as I'm aware there's no lists of words ending in "-ise" or "-our", just a few examples and a list of other miscellaneous spelling differences. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:48, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
        • Voilà! There is a small table of the -ize words at Oxford spelling. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:43, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I tried it using Safari and it worked but it did not correct "humor" in the first sentence of Humour. It also wanted to add the EngvarB template even though it already had one. By the way, wouldn't it be best if it added {{Use British English}} instead? That way it avoids the redirect that bots and AWB will waste time correcting and it may be of benefit to unaware editors. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:49, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

• Great! I'm glad the most significant problem has been solved. I'll work on the other two you mentioned. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:56, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Well, not really solved, just avoided by not using Internet Explorer. I tried it again on Humour and it got every instance of "humor" except the first one. However, some of the changed instances were in wikilinks and another in a citation template. Is it possible to avoid those? McLerristarr | Mclay1 11:06, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
    • It should be avoiding the instance within the citation template; also I thought I had a fix for the one inside the piped links, so those need to be investigated. IN my view, it's not desirable to ignore instances within wikilinks. In most cases, it's a problem which redirects were put into place to solve. As for the one in the external links, it's a very ordinary text string, so it's unavoidable, I'm afraid - the only way I know to avoid those for the moment would be potentially to put them inside a citation template; another solution may be for me to write an extra chunk of code to protect url strings of the type '[http://www.google.com/humor google humor]' - something I'm hoping to avoid because it already enormously slows down script execution. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 11:13, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Update:
      1. The code does not convert the bolded 'honor' because the single quote marks render it into a protected string. I don't propose to change that to avoid false positives.
      2. I have now revised the code, which should now protect instances of words within citation templates, within the title field viz: '|titie= this is any string containing the non-British variant |'
      3. As said above, I do not propose to protect the ordinary string of the 'Further reading' references. I would suggest that in order to avoid conversion, one could substitute the quote marks with {{q}}, so anything within the template will be protected; alternatively, simply substitute the space preceding the word to be protected by a nbsp. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:53, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Excellent. One more question, is text inside a {{sic}} template protected? McLerristarr | Mclay1 00:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
        • It wasn't, but is now, thanks to your suggestion. I note, however, someone designing the template had the foresight of preventing automation on such words - if you insert the '|' (pipe symbol). --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
        • Re the above 'Further reading' line: another way of protecting any given word is to capitalise the first letter. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:56, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I hate to be a pain but it's correcting words in URLs and file names. Try it on Airplane! – it's a good one for testing. McLerristarr | Mclay1 03:15, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• Not at all. Thanks for the help in pointing out the problems. I trust that you are deliberately finding articles to test the script on, and not actually trying to convert Airplane! to British English!

  After trying for the last hour or so, I haven't yet managed to cure the problem of the changes to 'image=airplane!.jpg'. I may have to go deeper into the code. I haven't yet tried to cure the problem of {{rottentomatoes|airplane}} although I'm tempted to say that latter one is probably better dealt with by capitalisation. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:00, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

  • Thank you. Yes, I am only testing. At the moment, Safari is coming up with about 100 error boxes when I use the script. After clicking OK a hundred times the script works fine. Is that happening to you too?
    • Sorry, that was due to my last edit, where I tried adding some code to protect interwikis. I'm going back to the drawing board with that. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:15, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
      • No, it's still doing it. Perhaps it was the edit before? McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
        • Try again. I've reverted all today's changes, and disabled changes to 'aeroplane'. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
          • The error boxes have stopped but now the template isn't adding and it's putting musical notes in again. I'm so glad I'm not the one programming this. :P McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:59, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
            • This isn't very interactive. Why don't you email me with your skype handle if you have one? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:07, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
              • Well, I have Skype but I've never used it before and have no idea how to but I could give it a go. How do you send emails with Wikipedia (never done that before either)? McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
                • On the sidebar here on my userpage or talk page, there is a button 'email this user'. Just click on it, and a new page will appear, telling you what to do. If you are on hotmail or gmail, I can chat with you using those if you send me yours. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 06:30, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Also, just a suggestion: currently the edit summary is the same for Oxford spelling as it is for standard British. Could the edit summary be slightly different? McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:13, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Yes, can be done. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:15, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Airplane ->aeroplane

I think I've now resolved that particular issue, as well as instances within {{sic}}, and as image parameters within infoboxes. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:05, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Hoorah!. It's not getting the URLs or the Rotten Tomatoes template either. Excellent! However, it also needs to avoid language templates, mainly {{Lang}} and {{Lang-en-US}}. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:10, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, you're killing me... :-( --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:17, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
• Seriously, I can do that easily enough, but do you think there's a utility? I mean, there are only three articles using that template. Also, the more complex the code, the harder it makes maintenance, so perhaps I won't put that in until it becomes an issue. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:30, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• {{lang-en-US}} and {{lang-en-GB}} are not used often because they look awkward really and, in fact, I don't support their use. But {{lang}} is used a lot, or at least should be. It should be used anywhere a foreign word is used and on pages where American or British variants are given so definitely needs to be implemented on pages such as American and British English spelling differences if it is not already. I noticed when testing the script on humour that several of the foreign language interwiki links spelt "humour" as "humor". Correcting foreign languages which spell the same as American could be avoid if the words were in a language template like they should be (interwiki links will be avoided anyway though). McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:21, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

You may wish to see this. I have no idea what it did, but apparently the script now removes non-existant musical notes. McLerristarr | Mclay1 15:29, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• The notes are used as a unique protection string, and I have never seen urls using the musical notes. Seeing that these are positioned within words which are subject to script action, and in the exact places of insertion, I suspect they may have been left by a previous incomplete script execution possibly by my friend Radiopathy, who frequently uses the script. As a unique character was chosen for protect, the removal relies on a very simple line of code. Checking the urls confirms that the correct urls are indeed without the notes, so I don't think this is a problem within articles. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 15:40, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Aircraft

I'm not sure I agree on changing "aeroplane" and "airplane" to "aircraft". Aircraft is a much broader term that also includes zeppelins and the like. Fixed-wing aircraft is the compromise but that sounds awkward in general text, but so does just "aircraft". "They travelled by aircraft to America", "He caught an aircraft at noon" etc. If a page is written entirely in British English, I see no reason why "aeroplane" can't be used. McLerristarr | Mclay1 12:28, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

• I see what you mean. It's not a strictly ENGVAR change, more a commonality thing. I'll fix it. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 13:01, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Signpost

Hi, as mentioned in the Newsroom, an important item seems to have been overlooked in the Arbitration report. Will you be able to complete it within the next few hours? Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:08, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

• I just got to my desk, and notice that you've already done it. Thanks. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:42, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oxford English

Hey, I was using the Oxford script on The Hobbit and it wanted to covert a few words ending in "-ise" to "-ize" which should end in "-ise" in Oxford English. Is there a way around this problem? I noticed you mentioned it in the script documentation. If it's just a matter of listing all the exceptions, then Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling)/Words ending with "-ise" or "-ize"#Words never ending with "-ize" maybe of some help, otherwise sorry for telling you about something you already know. McLerristarr | Mclay1 01:47, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• I have been concentrating on 'standard' British English spellings, and the Oxford spelling is admittedly a poor cousin (actually stemming from my own preference for s-words in general). Unlike the conversion to -ise, which is more refined (more lines to distinguish the different cases), the code which converts to -ize is a bit crude. I would gladly add more words to the protected list, and make more refinements with your help. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
• I've just looked at the code again. Right now, it will convert to -ization only if the stem is five letters or more; to -ize only if preceded by vowel+consonant(not-s). Thus, of the words on your above list, only 'compromise', 'devise'/revise', 'improvise', premise/promise', 'televise' will be converted. The code has been adjusted accordingly for these. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:57, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Thank you. Just wondering, at the top of the script it reads "PLEASE READ THE DOCUMENTATION at User:Ohconfucius/EngvarB (click on the link above) before using." but there is no link above. Is it just me? McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:41, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
    • It should be displaying the properly within a bluish template, which says "This script seems to have a documentation page at User:Ohconfucius/EngvarB." --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:44, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Yeah, I thought it used to say that but it doesn't anymore. Oh, well, all I have to do is copy and paste and link in the sentence. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:51, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

British English categories

I've created two more sub-categories: Category:All Wikipedia articles written in British English and Category:All Wikipedia articles written in British (Oxford) English. I've updated the templates and progress boxes. The categories do not have many items in them yet according to my Wikipedia, could be to do something to do with the cache or it could be Wikipedia being slow. Eventually though, every article tagged with one of the templates will be added to the respective category as well as the dated category. McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• I see that they are populated now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 11:31, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

AWB

I think this change was undue. With reference to the related citation templates, I do not see why the publications titles would not be linked. For dates, "to avoid ambiguity, write out the month in words, using the same date format as in the main text of the article." What would be useeful would be to replace the date format in accessdate by the format in date (same concern in Charvet Place Vendôme). Could you do it with AWB? Cheers,   Racconish ^Tk 07:05, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

• There is no requirement nor recommendation for dates in the ref section to match the body, the only requirement being consistency within the section. I know of many editors who prefer the ISO-style dates in the references section. It was the mish-mash that led me to harmonise them. As to the unlinking of journal names, the vast majority are well-known publications in Anglosphere; most were linked a multiple number of times. Thanks for your attention. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:18, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

See your point on links. Thanks for the change on Charvet Place Vendôme. Could you possibly do the same on List of Charvet customers?   Racconish ^Tk 07:33, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

• Voilà! --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:44, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again,   Racconish ^Tk 07:52, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

• A pleasure being of service. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:54, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Lists of windmills

Hi, would you please ensure that at least the first use of a term is correctly wikilinked on the various lists of windmills in European countries? Otherwise the reader might not be able to discover exactly what a moulin tour en bois or a beltmolen or Bockwindmühle is. Mjroots (talk) 07:55, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Yeah, those left me a bit puzzled as to how to deal with them. All were linked to the same term in English, so I decided to eject the link to the 'see also' section. I would have preferred a slightly better introduction passage, though, where the foreign terms would be more clearly explained, or glossaried. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Just remembered, in the Netherlands, a Grondzeiler may be either a smock mill or a tower mill! I though it would be best to link all mill types to ensure that the reader got the correct type every time. Mjroots (talk) 08:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Perhaps it may be better putting in a subsection link, in that case, to reduce the possibility of being unlinked by people like me, thinking it was a repeat! I don't know the subject well enough to decide what the best link is... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:05, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Which goes to show why I left the links in. I've no objection to the removal of date links. Lists were created before it was decided that dates shouldn't be linked generally. I decided against the use of the English terms in text, as that would have meant also renaming all the mills from Moulin, Molen, Mühle etc, where there is no general English name that can be used. Nobody calls the Moulin Rouge the "Red Mill", do they? Mjroots (talk) 08:18, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely right. There were two dutch terms both piped to Tower mill, so they must have specific meaning, and it would be wrong/misleading to distil them up to the common English name. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:22, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe for the moment you'd better stick to date delinking and address the mill type links when you get a better grasp of the topic. List of windmills gives links to all the sublists. Mjroots (talk) 08:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Maybe ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Clean-up

The British English script currently changes "cleanup" to "clean-up" in {{Cleanup}} and as a parameter of {{Multiple issues}}. Could this be avoided? McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• I've just protected the string. Try now. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:50, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Works perfectly. Thank you. Although, by testing it I noticed that the rules do not work when preceded by * or # so listed items are not corrected. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:03, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the feedback. As I don't quite understand what you mean, please could you give me the exact strings/situations still causing the problems? I need to have this to create the most precise protection without giving rise to false positives. Cheers, --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
      • Try using the script on this page. It doesn't correct list items unless the there is a space between the bullet point and the text. McLerristarr | Mclay1 08:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
        • Yes, at present, the words need to be preceded by a space or an opening square bracket to be converted. I wrote those cases to avoid false positives. The hash character (#) could cause problems, as it is used within wikilinks to denote sections, so I need to have a think how to deal with these examples. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:39, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Missing rules and incorrect changes

Hey, just a few things I've discovered through using your great script. Currently, the Oxford script is incorrectly changing "arise" but is not changing "bastardise", "philosophise", "standardise" or "synthesise". Both scripts do not correct "aging" ("ageing"), "counterclockwise" ("anticlockwise" – make sure Oxford doesn't catch the ending), "breathalyze" ("breathalyse"), "cataloged" ("catalogued"), "cataloging" ("cataloguing"), "encyclopedia" ("encyclopaedia"), "encyclopedic" ("encyclopaedic" – but not in maintenance templates), "aerie" ("eyrie"), "gotten" ("got"), "licorice" ("liquorice"), "louver" ("louvre"), "math" ("maths"), "molt" ("moult"), "mollusk" ("mollusc"), "ocher" ("ochre"), "omelette" ("omelet"), "phony" ("phoney") and "specialty" ("speciality"). They're the main ones but not all of them. I've complied a (currently incomplete) list of British and American terms and spellings at User:Mclay1/Britishisms. It's useful for testing the scripts, although not all the list items can be corrected due to ambiguity. In some cases, an American spelling is more common in British English (e.g. "gramme"/"gram") or vice versa but in those cases I've only listed one spelling. Feel free to add to or correct the list if you want. McLerristarr | Mclay1 16:18, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for your comprehensive test notes. Enhancements dealt with as follows:

  changing "arise" but is not changing "bastardise", "philosophise", "standardise" or "synthesise". Both scripts do not correct "aging" ("ageing"), "counterclockwise" ("anticlockwise" – make sure Oxford doesn't catch the ending), "breathalyze" ("breathalyse"), "cataloged" ("catalogued"), "cataloging" ("cataloguing"), "encyclopedia" ("encyclopaedia"), "encyclopedic" ("encyclopaedic" – but not in maintenance templates), "aerie" ("eyrie"), "gotten" ("got"), "licorice" ("liquorice"), "louver" ("louvre"), "math" ("maths"), "molt" ("moult"), "mollusk" ("mollusc"), "ocher" ("ochre"), "omelet" ("omelette"), "phony" ("phoney") and "specialty" ("speciality").

  I figured that words like "math", "phony" and "gotten" are vernacular and likely to be used only in quotes, and conversion risks creating false positives; "Licorice" appears to be an acceptable British spelling, so I will not treat this. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 17:34, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

  • Thanks a lot. According to Oxford Dictionaries Online, which is where I'm getting a lot of the words from, "licorice" is the US spelling. McLerristarr | Mclay1 00:06, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
    • I have now tweaked the code. You now have 'liquorice'; instances preceded by '*' will also now be converted- we just need to be on the lookout for false positives... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:30, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
      • I should point out that I have not added contexts to my list yet so in some cases, nouns and verbs are spelt differently in British English. For example annex (verb) and annexe (noun), which you seem to have added to your script. McLerristarr | Mclay1 16:04, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
        • While I have tried to build in context in some instances (ie practice vs practising, color vs coloured), I was not aware of any issues with annexe, as I have been accustomed to seeing it in all contexts. So I'm glad I have the assistance of somebody more scholarly in refining the script spellings ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:34, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Alexei Sayle

Hi, just a query as to why you removed the wiki link to actor in this article. Would you let me know please as I regularly keep it up to date. ThanksScrabble1968 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:38, 22 November 2010 (UTC).

• Yes, this is a word I systematically remove from biographies. Other words in this category include 'singer', 'musician', 'lawyer', 'politician', to name just a few. The idea behind linking is to create a web of articles that enable a better understanding of the topic being discussed. However, excessive linking can actually have the paradoxical effect of reducing the impact and value of the remaining links in the article, through "dilution". During the project's rapid growth phase, there has been a general tendency to overlink common garden English words. 'Actor' is an obvious candidate for unlinking in that 99.5% of readers will know sufficiently what it means even outside the context of the biography. Linking to 'actor' therefore adds nothing to creating a better understanding of Alexei Sayle. I would refer you to WP:Linking. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 01:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Letting it pass

A semi-fair response. I indeed should not be untowardly bitter towards you. I will change my tone, and now do offer my apologies for the above [on that page, where this was originally written], apparent rudeness. I stand by my assertion that the move to have the original page deleted was wrong, however. I won't say it was scurrilous. But I will say that I believe it was wrong, and I hope it will be fixed. More evidence on the topic has come out since then, and more continues to come to light. We will see a full explanation of the ghastly subject on Wikipedia, of that I am confident. Your problem has always been the misconception that information that incriminates the CCP is not neutral, simply because it incriminates the CCP and effectively validates Falun Gong's complaints. This is the wrong way to understand NPOV. Scholars should just follow the evidence, evaluate it impartially, and follow it to where it leads. Scholars should not suppress information that does not fit a precast notion of "neutrality," where because Falun Gong says 'A' and the CCP says 'Z', the truth must be 'M'. That isn't the meaning of neutrality. And we've seen vast attempts at information suppression based on just that principle. This single point is a large part of my frustration with my experience here, and part of the reason I took a long break after the unfair ban. I have not forgotten that you did not support my being banned, and for that and other reasons respect you. I don't intend to stick around for much longer. Some other editors did a pretty good job of cleaning up the massive mess the Falun Gong page was in (see TheSoundAndTheFury's extensive forensics in the archive; quite impressive), and now I just want to fine tune a number of points, revisit the persecution page, the overseas page, and possibly the organ harvesting page. That sounds like a lot, but I hope it will only take a few months. -- Asdfg12345 05:01, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

• Very good of you to write the above. It is much appreciated. We used to work in a reasonable dynamic tension once upon a time, and I am indeed sorry that it all went downhill, and now you are feeling as jaded as I am. Something about the subject area is very damaging to one's sanity, and I still cannot put the finger on it, after all these years. Just how the instinctive libertarian in me got switched to scepticism of the Falun Gong you know as well as I do. My only regret of past events is that the wrong person got blocked. Now the one that got away is hiding behind the coattails of a certain watchful admin, fearing the site ban he narrowly escaped from would be unleashed if he so much as edits another word in a FLG article. He would have been right six months ago. Very briefly – maybe it was twenty minutes or twenty hours – I felt all my hatred of him come swarming back when he dangled that sword of Damocles of my past alleged sins above my head, but now I'm past caring what happens to him and what he does to me.

  You might have a point with what you say above. If you follow what I do, you will know that I am not adverse to seeing criticism of the CCP. I do understand that A may be correct from some people's perspective and Z may be correct from others'. The M½ you refer to might be yet another's point of view, yet it could turn out to be a horrible comprise that can never be truthful and that pleases no-one.

  I feel much happier these last few months without going anywhere near a FLG article; in fact, even though I watchlisted several potential targets, I would always anxiously hope I would not come across any of the 'usual suspects' (from either side) in the course of editing; I would feel trepidation whenever I saw the name of one appear in the article history. It won't be long before I took those articles off my list. Now that the K&M Report article has survived AfD, I shall make a point to avoid it too. I hope you find your joy in the after-Wikilife. My consolation is that Wikipedia holds many other areas of interest for me that get my adrenaline flowing but do not significantly add to my blood pressure. Hasta la vista! --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:16, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Signpost

Hi Ohconfucius,

I was going to notify you of this discussion regarding some inaccuracies in this week's "In the news" that had been introduced in one of your edits. I see you already became aware of it and I commend your response there. I have started a general discussion about such issues, which you are welcome to join.

Thanks for taking up the responsibility to cover the Arbitration report, it is appreciated, and after the earlier problems I was generally very pleased to see your constructive contributions to the last two issues of the Signpost. However, as I said on IRC at the time, I can't spare you a concluding public response to this, repeating that your edit-wars here and here were absolutely not acceptable, not only considering your own COI at the time and a notion regarding original reporting that directly contradicted Wikipedia:Signpost/About, but also because even more so than in mainspace articles, edit-wars are especially destructive in Signpost stories when publication time is near or overdue (like in the second example, where the story had already been up for 38 hours without any objections by others). I hope that such problems won't repeat, and our discussions in reaching that compromise as well as your recent constructive contributions give me some confidence about this.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:21, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• Thank you for your message. I am the first to admit that errors were made, and I believe that I have already stated that to you at the time either on your talk page, the Signpost talk pages and the IRC. You showed understanding of what was going through my mind at the time, in contrast to the intransigent ignorance of Vocalist's own biased viewpoint. Of course, I will endeavour to build on the lessons learnt to create a better, more objective journal. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Not a completely fair take on the facts, HaeB, in my view. Tony (talk) 13:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

FHTA

My apologies for the offense caused and for assuming bad faith on your part. The comment was not meant as a personal attack but a questioning of your motives as a fellow opponent of political censorship. I hope to bury the hatchet and move along.--William S. Saturn (talk) 05:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• Most gracious of you. Thanks. In turn, I would apologise for having crushed one of your edits in an ec I just learned about. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 05:12, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion for adding templates

I originally (maybe improperly) posted this question on User talk:Ohconfucius/EngvarB but didn't receive an answer. Instead of adding {{EngvarB}} or {{EngvarOx}}, should the script add {{Use British English}} or {{Use British (Oxford) English}} instead to avoid template redirects? GoingBatty (talk) 03:21, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for the reminder. I did indeed see it and apologise for not responding. The change involves a piece of code I borrowed, and I am seeking assistance how to adapt it to do the job you suggested. In the meantime, you may be aware that Smackbot passes by regularly and replaces the redirects, which include {{cn}}, with the proper dated maintenance template. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the response. Didn't realize SmackBot was fixing these - guess I found some that the bot hadn't fixed yet. Good luck with adapting the code! GoingBatty (talk) 04:20, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
    • I believe the Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs), the operator of SmackBot, makes periodic trawling runs through mainspace to correct such. Anyway, you're right that there's no reason not to build the template into the code. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:23, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.