User talk:Rich Farmbrough/Archive/2017 March

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Benson article[edit]

Please sir, your article on the author "Benson" is very poorly written, you have been editing for a decade + before me so I can't really tell you much. Article lacks citation, article has Poor punctuations, subject of article barely passes WP:GNG, a new editor can err in this manner but an experienced editor like yourself should know that before an article goes live it should be perfected, upon orientation Wikipedia makes us understand that we are not engaging in a race and you shouldn't have to put up articles urgently, I suggest you at least furnish your articles with proper reference so as to eliminate notability issues if you want to keep creating articles like the aforementioned article Celestina007 (talk) 19:46, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please feel free to improve the article. Compare, for example with this one. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
(talk page watcher) For the benefit of anyone else curious, this appears to be about Benson E. Hill. PamD 22:11, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

...is being promoted on Windows 10. Interesting to see the pageviews.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 08:52, 2 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

WikiProject Genealogy - newsletter No.2[edit]

Newsletter Nr 2 for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)

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Progress report:

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(In case you are not familiar with IRC, or would prefer some info and intro, please see Wikipedias IRC tutorial)

At m:Talk:Wikimedia_genealogy_project#Wikimedia_user_group is discussed the possibility of creating a genealogy-related Wikimedia user group: please submit comments and suggestions, and whether you would like to be a member in such a group. Prime goal for the group is the creation of a new, free, genealogy wiki, but there is also a discussion weather we should propose a new project or support the adoption of an existing project?

Read more at Meta; Wikimedia genealogy project where you also can support the creation with your vote, in case you haven't done so already.

Future:

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You can

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Wikidata weekly summary #250[edit]

Listas parameter work[edit]

Hi Rich, could you take a quick look at this and tell me if I'm doing this correctly? I'd like to help eliminate the backlog, but I want to make sure I'm going about it properly. Lepricavark (talk) 16:52, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I think I've got the hang of it now, aside from one question. In an article with a parenthetical description after the name, such as Rich Rodriguez (baseball), am I supposed to include the parenthetical material in the listas parameter? Lepricavark (talk) 17:13, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
After some consideration a couple of months ago, it seems that the answer is no - it's not necessary (any more). It seems that the software will sort identical "listas" values as if the article name were appended. This provides the same sort order as if we had included the parenthetical. And most people probably don't include it so it makes sense to go witth that. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:09, 7 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Lepricavark (talk) 20:08, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Denton Halt railway station[edit]

Hi Rich; please revert your move of Denton Halt railway station - we've been carefully moving them in the other direction for some years now. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:43, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have done so. I can see no reason to disambiguate a halt though. It's like saying "Denton Station station". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:53, 8 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Thank you; see WP:NCUKSTATIONS - the thing about halts is that the word "Halt" was normally actually shown on the nameboards on the platforms. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:38, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Like with universities. So perhaps we should have "Cambridge University university" or "Warwick University redbrick university". While a fait accompli was achieved in 2007, no consensus was arrived at on the talk page of the guideline you refer to: and if it had been I would argue that names ending in Station, Halt, Junction, Interchange, Terminus and the like should be excluded, for reasons of redundancy. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:30, 9 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Note to self[edit]

Chage to numbered list. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 09:25, 10 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Wikidata weekly summary #251[edit]

Spelling of Encyclopædia Britannica categories[edit]

I see you moved category "1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica articles with no significant updates‎" to "1911 Encyclopædia Britannica articles with no significant updates‎". I didn't see any discussion on this change (I created the category and I'm still populating it) but maybe I missed it. @PBS:, are you aware? And I concur that the æ spelling is strictly correct. I have AWB paste-more setting that uses the "ae" spelling and there are still 417 pages with that spelling. Should they all be edited - is this a work in progress, or is the category redirect supposed to be adequate?

Also, there is still a notable inconsistency. Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica contains 14 subcategories, some with ae and some with æ. Do you plan to rename them all? David Brooks (talk) 04:54, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@David Brooks "WP:BEANS"! @Rich Farmbrough Please do not rename any other of these categories without a consensus to do so.
There was a WP:RM AT Talk:Encyclopædia_Britannica#Requested move initiated by my in June 2013 to move Encyclopædia Britannica to Encyclopaedia Britannica which was closed with no consensus. So there is no consensus to use Encyclopædia Britannica over "Encyclopaedia Britannica" and for these hidden maintenance templates I think that having the characters "ae" available on the keyboard outweighs the pedantic use of "æ", so I would support a move back for this template. -- PBS (talk) 09:37, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The vast majority of the hidden categories are only added by templates, therefore there is no difficulty over keyboards etc.
Yes the name of the work is "Encyclopædia Britannica", correcting a mis-spelling seems like a good idea. I am fixing the mis-spellings in main-space, though it may take some time (this will include the category). This is something I did a few years ago, it is surprising how many have appeared since. Similarly there were mis-spellings of various other encyclopaedias that should be "Encyclopedia" - I will also look at those if I get time.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:33, 16 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
I agree. The correct spel;ing is Encyclopædia Britannica, and when I see it misspelled I make the correction, too. 7&6=thirteen () 21:36, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm only mildly opposed to neutral on this, but I would have appreciated a discussion or announcement because, as I said, I have AWB text-paste set up with the "ae" spelling. I spelled the category that way because the majority of EB1911-related categories separate the vowels. If you're willing to do the work of editing 400+ pages and the templates, go ahead. I also endorse PBS's comment about difficulty of typing ("the vast majority" doesn't mean "all"), although that's mitigated because I rely on the AWB paste, or copy-paste from somewhere else. David Brooks (talk) 01:00, 17 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have wrapped the category up into a template {{EB1911 article with no significant updates}}, this solves the problem for both parties. The name of the category no longer appears on the page, so if will not register if someone in the future does an AWB search for "Encyclopaedia Britannica", or "Encyclopædia Britannica", and it will allow for any future expansion of the template for example adding a notes= parameter to allow notes to be kept inside the template, rather than as has been done up to now with them being added as hidden comments after the category, and also perhaps the adding of a date parameter so that it is known when the template was added. These issues can be discussed on the talk page of the template. -- PBS (talk) 07:57, 18 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I Was going to suggest that it should be triggered by {{EB1911}}, as a separate issue, but I'm sure this will work nicely. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 08:09, 18 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Sounds good. Existing items have been moved. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 08:09, 18 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Thanks much, PBS. You've done the job I briefly considered but just got too lazy, and thanks for editing the 400+ articles. I'll comment more later (out of time this morning) but a brief note: separately, Trivialist has been tidying up by editing Rich's new category to the old one (not a criticism; I assume he has not seen PBS's update). As a result there are still 9 articles with the raw Category markup. I'll change them to the template later unless someone else finds them. David Brooks (talk) 18:10, 18 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Correct; I was just cleaning up soft-redirected categories. (Needed something to do for a few minutes. :) ) Trivialist (talk) 18:12, 18 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • It would have been nice if one of the above editors had mentioned that the incorrect spelling has been restored. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:08, 18 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Thank you, and PBS and Trivialist, for paying attention to this dusty corner of WP. I've made a few edits to the docs for the category and template, and fixed those 9 stray articles that used the category directly; I'll keep an eye out for recurrences.
Rich, that's true, but the ae versus æ spelling is an orthogonal point and would require revisiting the non-consensus proposal from 2013. As nobody seemed energized by the inconsistency among categories (see here), I really don't see the need for effort. Countering PBS's point, though: I never type out these category names in full. I either auto-complete, copy-paste, or use macros.
Just a reminder of how I see the difference between the category and the {{Update-EB}} flag. The category is for articles like "Jean-Claude-Marie-Achille Idiot (1742–1807) was a French poet. He is best remembered for the epic C'est trop long." (which is almost certainly still true). The emphatic template is for "Bhuger supports an industry of rice and tanning. Its sulphurous springs are known for curing women's ailments." (which may still be true for all I know, but probably not).
Finally, I'm not sure that {{Update-EB}} with section=yes does the right thing category-wise, but it's rare. David Brooks (talk) 22:25, 18 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well I think on the whole we have moved forward, which is a Good Thing. I'm not too bothered about the naming of hidden maintenance cats, though I feel rather lazy for not going and filing a comprehensive rename request. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:32, 18 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Genealogy project need your vote for creation of an email list[edit]

Newsletter Nr 3 for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)

Participation:

This is the third newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise.

(To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please see below)

Request:

In order to improve communication between genealogy interested wikipedians, as well as taking new, important steps towards a creation of a new project site, we need to make communication between the users easier and more effective.

At Mail list on meta is discussed the possibility of creating a genealogy-related Wikimedia email list. In order to request the creation of such a list, we need your voice and your vote.

In order to create a new list, we need to put a request it in Phabricator, and add a link to reasoning/explanation of purpose, and link to community consensus. Therefore we need your vote for this now, so we can request the creation of the mail list.

Read more about this email list at Meta; Wikimedia genealogy project mail list where you can support the creation of the mail list with your vote, in case you haven't done so already.

Future:

Don't want newsletters? If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page.

Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy coordinator Dan Koehl.

To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery

Weekly Summary #252[edit]

Editing restrictions bot?[edit]

Hi Rich, as you may recall I requested a bot to ease the new archiving process at WP:RESTRICT. You marked the request with  Doing... on February 13 and I've not heard anything else since then. I've spent the last couple hours trying to do it manually and it is mind-numbingly tedious and I'm not even close to being done with just the arbcom restrictions, so I'm wondering if this is really going to happen or if I should keep slogging through it manually. Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:33, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try and take a look at this, this evening. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:19, 23 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
That'd be great. I actually got it most of the way done, and may finish it manually as this initial culling has required some human judgement to make a few exceptions to the rules, but I can't imagine doing this once a month in perpetuity. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:58, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed your edit referenced in the title above.

Just a timely update: The latest relisting is already 1 day past espiry, and you might want to read the VfD page, here: permalink, and weigh in before it's too late. Just saying. Thanks.96.59.177.243 (talk) 05:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks[edit]

Thanks for fixing my rusty editing just now, though we did conflict as i was trying to save my fixing of it too. Have a nice day Jenova20 (email) 10:18, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Template:Use dmy dates and similar[edit]

Hi. I've seen you adding the template to several articles. The template's documentation page says to "Place this template near the top of articles that use the dd mmm yyyy date format". Why, then, are you adding it at the bottom? ~barakokula31 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's neat and tidy and out of the way, and doesn't annoy people. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:51, 23 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
I don't think I've seen anyone else placing it at the bottom. Have people complained about it being in the way or annoying them previously? ~barakokula31 (talk) 20:00, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
People do regularly complain about maintenance tags at the top, and I believe that the more cruft we have at the top the harder it is for new editors to see past the wikicode to editable text. It is effectively a categorization-only template, therefore placing it at the bottom with the categories makes sense. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:04, 23 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
I'm with Rich on this one, and indeed, am one of those who does put it at the bottom, along with {{use British English}}; these get placed after the navboxes but before the defaultsort & cats. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:16, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The template's documentation says that "The template is useful to the editors to quickly know which date format is to be used when adding new dates into an article", so it is not "effectively a categorization-only template". I don't want to be rude, but I feel that you should ask people if they're fine with it being placed at the bottom (and if there is consensus to do so, the documentation should be amended accordingly) before doing the opposite of what's recommended.
Also, if the documentation is to be changed (and other users, such as User:Redrose64 above, are to become involved), then I don't think a user talk page is the appropriate venue for this discussion. ~barakokula31 (talk) 20:35, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Out of interest I'm running some stats, but they will take a while to cook. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:33, 23 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Normans article.[edit]

Do you have the ability to place the Normans article on protection or semi-protection? It has a history of being persistently vandalized by anonymous accounts, as its history page shows. Thanks. Esnertofidel (talk) 09:22, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't, however there are a number of talk-page stalkers who do, and may be willing to take a look. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 09:33, 24 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
@Esnertofidel: I can, but I really shouldn't protect it directly because I am not familiar with that page and its perceived disputes. It seems to be quite a low level: two bad edits yesterday, one a week earlier, some a week before that. In matters like this, it's best to avoid going to specific individuals, instead you should file a request at WP:RFPP which will gain the attention of several admins simultaneously. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That's probably to lowlevel for protection even these days. Protection was initally developed for pages that were vandalisd every few minutes. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:21, 24 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]
So basically, it's not worth bothering to try and keep an article free of vandalism even when its history page is visibly riddled with constant reversions, because of... reasons. Glad to see we're all enthusiastic about making Wiki a better place. Bye. Esnertofidel (talk) 10:29, 25 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a fair summary. The question about protection is whether the damage done outweighs the benefit. If it does, then imposing it does not make Wikipedia better, it makes it worse. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:44, 25 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]