User talk:Rjwilmsi/Archives/2008/November

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Thanks

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
For Your tireless corrections and contributions! — Nvineeth talk 10:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Template dates

Very few people outside astronomy can read ISO dates. I don't understand citation templates, but while auto-formatting of dates is being deprecated and the always-small minority of Wikipedia readers who are Registered Users is turning off "User Preferences", why is it necessary to change real-world dates to ISO dates in e.g. Fairness Doctrine? Is there some technical reason I don't understand? Thanks. —— Shakescene (talk) 00:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The template only works with ISO dates for the accessdate field. There is discussion underway on the template talk pages, particularly Template_talk:Cite_web#Edit_requested_dates:_optional_links_and_style to try to implement a new parameter to format these dates, and to remove date linking. If you had made the effort to look at the article before and after you would see that my edit corrected redlinks in references 13 and 14 and made the date display in reference 16. Rjwilmsi 07:56, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Dates in Cite News

I see that in this article that you have modified the dates to not include the day of the week. I don't see that the quoted style used is an antithesis of the {{Cite News}} template. Sometimes with newspaper articles, knowledge of the actual day of the publication can lead to some interpretation of the news itself. -- billinghurst (talk) 02:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

None of the cite templates use days of the week within dates. Many recommend the use of the ISO format date which definitely doesn't include the day of the week, particularly now that date linking has been deprecated. If a reader is particularly interested in an article they will surely click the link to read the whole article and see the details? If you feel strongly about this then I suggest you ask for opinions on the {{Cite news}} talk page. (Note that I also expanded month abbreviations as part of that edit in compliance with template examples). Thanks Rjwilmsi 07:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Vrajlal Sapovadia

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Vrajlal Sapovadia, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because, even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Edcolins (talk) 15:16, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

The Invisible Barnstar
I'm awarding you this for all the Template Lang changes you've made to articles I created such as Central Indonesian National Committee, Archipelago Republic Party and Sovereignty Party. I know the correct format now! Davidelit (talk) 11:13, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Section rewrite needed Talk:Laurentian Upland

Please see comments on Talk:Laurentian Upland. The section about the Laurentian Highlands seems to be a copyvio of the article Home > The Canadian Encyclopedia > Geography > Land Features > Laurentian Highlands IMHO the wikipedia article needs a re-write. This query is being sent to you as you have done revisions/corrections to the article Laurentian Upland. SriMesh | talk 01:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

References

I was just curious. Is there a reason to add "" in named references, see Emirates Airline? Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 02:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's the format used at Help:Footnotes and there can be problems if quotes aren't used (if there are spaces in the reference name?), so it seems useful to add the quotes alongside other formatting fixes, though I don't make edits just to add quotes to reference names. Thanks Rjwilmsi 07:56, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. That's the link I was missing. I had only seen Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners#Same ref used twice or more and I didn't know about the problem with a space in the name. Thanks again. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 09:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Moved from my user page: On Deerhound Temperament

On Deerhound Temperament: Dear Rjwilmsi, if you would like to make a contribution or correction to this heading in the Scottish Deerhound, a contribution which should be neither arbitrary nor simply a personal opinion, please supply your motivation for calling the link "Deerhound Character" 'very misleading and untrue', then deleting it. We welcome discussion, especially that which is based on verifiable experience. --Richard Hawkins (talk) 17:00, 11 November 2008 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Scottish_Deerhound"

Please review the article's revision history before contacting editors. You have contacted the wrong editor – see [1]. Rjwilmsi 17:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

My apologies!!--Richard Hawkins (talk) 21:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Vrajlal Sapovadia

An article that you have been involved in editing, Vrajlal Sapovadia, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vrajlal Sapovadia. Thank you. --Edcolins (talk) 21:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ref name quotes

Is it really necessary to have quotes around the name of a reference? As in <ref name="foo">. What's wrong with <ref name=foo>?--Patrick «» 21:35, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

See User_talk:Rjwilmsi#References above. Rjwilmsi 21:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Mis-use of lang template

Please be careful when added the lang template to an article via AWB. There are a couple English words that you labeled as Sanskrit and Latin in the article History of primitive and non-Western trumpets. I reverted your edits twice in respect to this matter. --dbolton (talk) 01:21, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

My apologies for that - I didn't spot the error. I see you've now corrected the article so it shouldn't be incorrectly changed again. Thanks Rjwilmsi 08:00, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Could you please explain more fully...

Either you are very active, or you have a very active robot. I hope it is a robot. I must have left over tens of thousand of wikidates over the last four years. And now that they are no longer policy I would be happy to learn that a happy a robot was reverting them to regular dates.

Other edits I don't understand. Why put a "| format=PDF" in {{cite}} tags that point to .pdf? Those refs render with a little .pdf icon next to them. Why isn't this sufficient?

My tens of thousands of References used "camel back ref names. You or your robot is putting quotes around all of them. Which seems both ugly -- and unnecessary. Why the quotes?

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 14:41, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Re PDF: templates support the field so it seems appropriate to add it for completeness. I'm not sure that all Wikipedia users recognise the PDF icon. If you think they do, then go ahead and post on the citation talk pages to ask for the field to be ignored where an icon is displayed. It would be trivial for me to disable the fix if that change was made, and I wouldn't oppose it if that was the considered consensus.
Re: quotes. I took inspiration from User:AnomieBOT who suggests that named references without quotes can cause problems. I saw an example in the documentation using quotes so worked on that basis. However, I've now found the full documentation at Wikipedia:REFNAME which says "The ref name need not be placed within quotes unless it contains a space or some non-ASCII characters". Hmm, I'll update my script to restrict adding quotes to those cases, and continue correcting other curly quotes, single quotes and adding second quotes to half quoted ones.
Thanks Rjwilmsi 17:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Careful with AWB

A bot rescued a citation after your AWB edit to Aspirin. Please check that the correction was a good one. --GraemeL (talk) 20:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, my apologies - the problem was the difference between references named "G Levy" and 'G Levy'. I've fixed my script. Rjwilmsi 20:15, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Glad you got it fixed. Keep up the good work. --GraemeL (talk) 20:21, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Careful again, this edit labelled 'typos and gen fixes' changed "Related topics" to "See also"; per WP:SEEALSO, both are acceptable. Regards, the skomorokh 13:37, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

That's an AWB general fix. Do I need to report the replacement of "Related topics" to "See also" as an AWB bug? Rjwilmsi 20:37, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Rjwilmsi/DeletedEdits

I had to paste it from a log file, so the formatting is pretty bad, but these are your 100 most recently deleted contributions. - Mgm|(talk) 12:37, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

GSH Suffern

Hi there, so that I know for the future, what's wrong with "the first and only"? Thanks! StarM 15:36, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If something is the only one of its kind then it must have been the first, so "the first and only" is a redundant phrase. The typo fix rule for this originated from this discussion. Thanks Rjwilmsi 15:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
I happen to disagree, but that's OK. There's only one thrift shop on my block, but it wasn't the first. There was another several years ago. I can live witout the wording. StarM 16:02, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

"Demographics of ..." standardization

Please see the cleanup that was required in Demographics of Uzbekistan and Demographics of Tajikistan after automatic find/replace attempted by User:Thehelpfulone‎. Please check if similar problems do not occur in the "Demographics of ..." articles that you have been standardizing. --Zlerman (talk) 04:20, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm willing to help but intend to wait for feedback from The_Transhumanist before making more edits. Rjwilmsi 07:48, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Irish Translation on Lovington, Somerset

Hi, Earlier today you tidied an Irish Translation on Lovington, Somerset - any idea why an Irish /Gaelic translation should be included on this Somerset article? or can I safely remove it?— Rod talk 14:48, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you ask the editor who added it: see [2]. Rjwilmsi 18:21, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Demographics feedback

Thank you for helping out. These really need it.

As you requested, here's some feedback:

  • Demographics of El Salvador had 2 statistics headings, and some double blank lines.  Done
  • Demographics of Egypt had some inappropriate <br /> codes in there, and some double blank lines (caused by following a heading with a br).  Done
  • Demographics of Ecuador was missing the statistics heading, and the subheadings were h2 instead of h3. There were also a lot of double blank lines.  Done
  • Demographics of East Timor had "Demographics" heading, which was redundant with the page title (changed it to "Statistics"); Heading "Age structure" had content on the same line, dewikifying the heading; extra blank lines. The lead really belonged in the section, as it introduced the statistics.  Done
    • The stats are out of date (2002), and should really be replaced with the 2008 data from the CIA's latest edition.
    • This page has no lead section. I've tagged it, and have removed the other tags.
  • Demographics of Dominica - double and triple blank lines.  Done
  • Demographics of Cuba - "Demographic data" implies raw data (one entry per citizen - the statistical summarization of the data is what we have here); I changed this to "Demographics statistics".
  • Demographics of Canada - this article doesn't have the CIA stats, and so the changes you made slightly scrambled the page. Be careful - AWB makes changes to the whole page, not just the parts you want, so you have to go through AWB's display and double-click on any changes you don't want (they're highlighted) to deselect them. I've reverted your edit.  Done
  • Demographics of Burma - I changed "Miscellaneous statists" to "Statistics" (for consistency), and added a section lead ("The following statistics are from the CIA World Factbook.").  Done
  • Demographics of Bulgaria - It was missing a section lead, and the graph was totally out of whack.  Done
    • This article still needs a lead paragraph. I've tagged it.
  • Demographics of Belgium - changed h2 headings to h3 (for the CIA stats only), and added "Statistics" h2 heading and section lead.  Done
  • Demographics of Bangladesh - I like the indents. (I didn't change anything).  Done
  • Demographics of Argentina - added section lead and fixed 2 headings, and changed the bullet style to the indent style used in Demographics of Bangladesh.
  • Demographics of Anguilla -
  • Demographics of American Samoa -

(I'm still looking the rest over, and will add my observations above).

The Transhumanist    19:34, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi there! I'm also working on this and other find / replace work. If you want to do this task, then I've got another find/replace task to do, or if you want me to help, I don't mind! (Just don't want us to do the same thing twice!). The Helpful One 21:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Given the number of corrections made to the above and per-article fixes, I don't think this is a simple find & replace exercise that can be handled by AWB, so I don't intend to work on it any further. Rjwilmsi 22:11, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, AWB can handle any number of search/replace designations in a single pass. You'd be surprised at how much it can do. The Transhumanist    22:36, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I am fully aware of AWB's functionality. However, I just think that the changes required to these articles cannot be achieved by using a generic set of find and replace entries in AWB, as the number of corrections you have made to my edits shows that each article deserves separate treatment. Rjwilmsi 22:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm getting a better feel for the task, and I'm certain I can break it down into "simple" AWB search/replace operations. By the way, do you know how to use AWB's "regex" feature? The Transhumanist    22:44, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I have a script with hundreds of regexes. Rjwilmsi 22:47, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Cool, you're an expert. Am I glad I've found you! I'm guessing it should be pretty easy for you to whittle this task down. One thing that is really bugging the hell out of me are all the <br> and <br /> codes in there at the beginning of lines. Could you replace those with ": " (a colon with a space after it)? That would sure help a lot. But be sure to only do that to the CIA statistical material and not the rest of the articles' content. I'll throw other search/replaces at ya as I come across them. Thanks, man. The Transhumanist    01:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

CIA World Factbook demographic statistics

AWB can be configured to skip pages that don't have that, which should help keep the run focused.

Each data type has an identifier, so the formatting surrounding those can be cleaned up pretty easily. Most of the data to be changed is in the same (incorrect) format. And most of the rest of it is in another (equally incorrect) format.

Also, pages in the correct format can be identified pretty easily and skipped by specifying strings that is found only in that format.

Does that help?

The Transhumanist    02:58, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


I've added the above heading to all the country demographics articles up through Demographics of Malawi. The Transhumanist    05:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Kudos: You are now the first as the most-edited Wikipedian in the English Wikipedia!!!

Hi Rjwilmsi, Kudos and Congratulations!!! I just want to declare that you are currently the king or the winner for such title: You have overtaken User:Bearcat! What is your say? Wanna party? :-) Wwooohhooo!!! 124.13.192.101 (talk) 06:46, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Ref name better filled

I see that you are combining refs by "ref name" where that has been overlooked. While that is very helpful, I would ask you to consider that where the style of an article avoids the "ref name =Kenn/" form (I've just seen your edits on Mary Shelley and Learned Hand), that that may be a deliberate style choice by the editors. As someone who has worked on a number of ref-heavy articles, I believe that the above form is hard to work with as an editor for two reasons: 1) If the first reference is removed, the rest become orphaned; 2) The content of the reference is not self-evident from its appearance on the page—in other words, "Kenn/" tells you nothing much about the source, and so you have to check up to the first usage. In time, as the content of articles changes, these problems become worse, which is why a transparent reference method is more useful. Including the reference details in each "ref name" occurrence" is extremely helpful to editors, in my opinion. Even if you disagree with me on this, I believe the reference style of an article should be respected, especially on carefully thought-out pages. qp10qp (talk) 12:25, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Per WP:REFNAME ...In subsequent uses of the named tag the use of <ref name="name" /> is encouraged rather than copying the whole footnote again, as whole footnotes tend to reduce the readability of the article's text in edit mode, which makes finding specific parts of the text when editing tedious... I'm in compliance with the documentation. I suggest you see if there is a consensus to change it before part reverting any more of my edits. Rjwilmsi 12:44, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with qp10qp and suggest you to slow down your ref-editing. Before reading your talk page, I've reverted another of your ref-condensations, because it made editing harder. You have substituted two separate references (different facts) to the same page in a book with one named reference. Several other pages of the book were also cited. In this case similar citation of all pages is the better option and the main authors of that page have surely thought about that.
And please, there exist no laws on Wikipedia and there is no "being in compliance with the documentation". Guidelines are really guidelines and must not replace common sense. But please read WP:REFNAME#Caution_on_converting_citation_styles - especially about reaching concensus before changing citation styles. User:Nillerdk (talk) 13:15, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
As someone who doesn't like the "ref name" system anyway (because for wide pages ranges, it doesn't help you locate the specific page), I only use it for very narrow page-ranges or single pages, where it is easy for readers to find the source material. Because of this limited use, the issue of making the readability of the article's text harder is peripheral; and, as I've explained, for me, the readability of a full reference is greater than of an opaque piece of code which forces me to check higher up the page for its mother reference. But this is a matter of opinion. It is clear to me that the guideline on respecting existing citation styles should be taken into account and not discarded on the grounds of the guideline you quote, which does not address the volatility of a format that depends on the first reference never being cut. But don't worry, I won't be following you around making reverts; I garden a very small patch. qp10qp (talk) 13:17, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
As someone who does like the "ref name" system and who systematically uses it, I have to stress that it is totally inappropriate in at least one instance (as indicated above): in an article that cites different pages from the same book (or journal article) a separate "unnamed" ref has to be used for each page cited; otherwise the reader will have difficulties tracing and verifying the separate references. No ref conversion (automatic or manual) may be allowed in these instances. I know that I am repeating what a previous editor has already said in passim in this thread, but from my experience this is so important that I feel necessary to highlight it. --Zlerman (talk) 13:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
Zlerman, I understand that each page of a book is referenced separately (or at least this is a good way to cite it...). So I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. If there are two references to the same book & page my script will create a name for the first occurrence (based on author, year, page) and use that name for all exactly identical subsequent references. There is no combining of references to different pages. I don't understand the problem? Rjwilmsi 13:39, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Qp above. This combination makes it harder to edit the article later - notes are frequently "broken" when information is removed. Also, the naming conventions being used are inconsistent and difficult to follow. See, for example, here. We have "Author 1", "Author 2", etc., but the citations are to very specific page ranges. Also, we have note named "Qtd." (this means "Quoted in") - hardly specific. We also have very specific page ranges simply named "Author". None of this is helpful - in fact, it is harmful. I cannot go back and easily start adding or taking away notes. Awadewit (talk) 19:38, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
I believe I have addressed those issues by the script update I have detailed below. I can undo that edit and reapply using my updated script, if you ask me to do so. Thanks Rjwilmsi 19:42, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Script updates:I have made a couple of changes to my script, which I hope will address some of the comments made above. The changes are:

  • if the only change my script makes to a page is to remove the text of duplicate references where both references are named, used the same name, and have the same reference content, the script will automatically skip the page, as this edit would not make a visible difference to a reader of the page.
  • when removing the text of second and further duplicate references, my script will only remove the reference text where it is greater than a set character length (I will try 25 characters). I believe that this brings a compromise between the usefulness of seeing the reference content, especially if it is a reference to a page of a book by giving the author's name and the page/year only, but will allow removal of lengthly references, so that the readability of the page for editors is improved, and if an update to a lengthly reference is needed, it only needs to be changed in one place. In such cases, of course, no references will actually be deleted.
  • when inserting a reference name for duplicate unnamed references, I have updated my script so that the author's name and page number and/or year if provided should be used as the reference name, to avoid having ambiguously named references just with the author's name. This then combines the reference in the notes section to use 4a, b, c etc. without changing the reference text displayed.

Thanks Rjwilmsi 19:37, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Changing single to double quotes

Hello Rjwilmsi, as in this edit, you are changing many refs from <ref name='foobar'> to <ref name="foobar">. I think these changes are not relevant: both single and double quotes are completely permitted. Would you please be so kind as to correct your AWB settings. Wim van Dorst (talk) 22:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC).

Per Wikipedia:REFNAME: ...any quotation marks placed around the ref name must be straight quotes (").... That seems quite clear to me. Rjwilmsi 22:24, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
There's some more text to that quotation: Note that any quotation marks placed around the ref name must be straight quotes (") rather than curly quotes (“ or ”). This note is therefore about not using curly quotes. There's nothing about double straight quotes being preferred over single straight quotes. Wim van Dorst (talk) 22:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC).
There is a problem if the quote text contains an apostrophe of course. I think that's the reason for using double quotes. I will post on the Wikipedia:REFNAME talk page for guidance. Rjwilmsi 22:57, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
Posted here. Rjwilmsi 23:03, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. Let's see what that gives. Wim van Dorst (talk) 19:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC).

AWB question

Hi,

how do you get AWB to do this?

Hesperian 23:44, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I run a custom module. The reference renaming bit is new and not very user friendly – not really suitable for others to use just yet. However, the reflinks tool has similar functionality should you want to run it against a few articles. Rjwilmsi 00:11, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Hundred Days

With this edit to Hundred Days article you made two changes. I understand the reason for the first one, but why the second one? -- PBS (talk) 10:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Per WP:REFNAME, reference names using non-ASCII characters are put in double quotes to prevent problems. In the article you mention the reference name uses an endash, which falls outside the range of ASCII characters. In this article's case it may not matter if the reference is only used once, but it's a general fix I include to prevent problems elsewhere/future problems if the reference is re-used. Hope that's clear. Thanks Rjwilmsi 12:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
As it is not clear by eye what sort of dash is being used, it would probably be better to replace the endash with a hyphen in such cases, as it looks odd having just one named citation with quotes around the name when the others do not, and it is inviting someone else to tidy it up by removing the quotes that you have put in. --PBS (talk) 14:42, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
In this particular case what you suggest is probably a sensible approach. However, I believe if I took this approach more widely I would just invite criticism from other editors for changing the name of a reference. Also, for named references without double quotes using other non-ASCII characters such as accents in foreign languages, I could not find a systematic way of replacing those characters. Overall, there is probably not an ideal solution unless each article is treated on a case-by-case basis, which is not something I'm really interested in doing. Of course, editors who come across my work are welcome to make specific changes to a specific article if they think that article merits a particular change. Rjwilmsi 18:30, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Ibid.

Your general reference fixes are much appreciated, especially at articles that I haven't gotten round to updating yet. But, be careful not to mess up ibid, id, op cit, and the like by treating all such footnotes as the same (they are not, they depend on the previous footnote) and naming them as such. All of these usages, of course, should be fixed eventually. Thanks. Srnec (talk) 00:22, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure it's accurate to say that an 'ibid' is always referring to the previous citation as new citations/paragraphs can be added between existing references. Still, I'll add exceptions to avoid 'ibid' and the like as combining them doesn't really fix them. Thanks Rjwilmsi 08:23, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Running AWB

Hi there. I saw your general fixes using AWB and I was thinking about running it on my own account (yes, I have AWB access; I'm working from another terminal atm and I don't want to log in). Anyway, I was wondering if you could reply here on how to set up the module? Thanks :)

You paste in the entire contents of User:Rjwilmsi/genfixes into the box at Tools --> Make module in AWB. Make sure auto tag is checked. If you want to change my module then take your own copy. You may post queries at User_talk:Rjwilmsi/genfixes but I make no promises... Also, any incorrect edits from using my module remain your fault ;) The module may take up to two minutes to process some long pages, though normally it's just a few seconds. Rjwilmsi 20:04, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
I keep getting "compilation errors" though. It says that on Line 89 and 90, "the name 'awb' does not exist in the current context." I tried both the languages available, but the VB one gave so many errors that I figured that it couldn't possibly by the correct language. Do you know what is up with that? 20:36, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
Ah yes, you need to be running the SVN version because that was a feature request I made that was added since the last official release. Alternatively, if you understand the code you can just change all references to that part of it. Rjwilmsi 20:48, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
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