![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 140 | ← | Archive 145 | Archive 146 | Archive 147 | Archive 148 | Archive 149 | Archive 150 |
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Pamela Geller. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello SMcCandlish: An invitation for you to check out the Sustainability Initiative, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia projects. If you're interested, please consider adding your name to the list of supporters, which serves to express and denote the community's support of the initiative. Thanks for your consideration! North America 1000 09:40, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
But of course, there has been more going on than just that...
Dreamy Jazz Bot is up and running!
Dreamy Jazz Bot has been approved and is now up and running.
What it does is places missing links to orphaned portals. It places a link in the See also section of the corresponding root article, and it puts one at the top of the corresponding category page.
We have thousands of new portals that have yet to be added to the encyclopedia proper, just waiting to go live.
When they do go live, over the coming days or weeks, due to Dreamy Jazz Bot, it will be like an explosion of new portals on the scene. We should expect an increase in awareness and interest in the portals project. Perhaps even new participants.
Get ready...
Get set...
Go!
Another sockpuppet infiltrator has been discovered
User:Emoteplump, a recent contributor to the portals project, was discovered to be a sockpuppet account of an indefinitely blocked user.
When that happens, admins endeavor to eradicate everything the editor contributed. This aftermath has left a wake of destruction throughout the portals department, again.
The following portals which have been speedy deleted, are in the process of being re-created. Please feel free to help to turn these blue again:
New portals since the last issue
Keep up the great work
Until next time, — The Transhumanist 09:16, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
On 12 February 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article William Hoskins (inventor), which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that William Hoskins, the co-inventor of modern billiard chalk, also invented the electric heating coil, used to create the first electric toasters? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/William Hoskins (inventor). You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, William Hoskins (inventor)), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
– Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down
You might be familiar with the Ref desks, by their link on every new portal. They are a place you can go to ask volunteers almost any knowledge-related question, and have been a feature of Wikipedia since August of 2005 (or perhaps earlier). They were linked to from portals in an effort to improve their visibility, and to provide a bridge from the encyclopedia proper to project space (the Wikipedia community).
Well, somebody proposed that we get rid of them, and the community decided that that was not going to happen. Thank you for defending the Ref desks!
Here's a link to the dramatic discussion:
The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...
The wake of disruption left by Emoteplump and the admins who reverted many (but not all) of his/her edits is still undergoing cleanup. We could use all the help we can get on this task...
Almost all of the speedy deleted portals have been rebuilt from scratch.
For the portals he/she restarted (many of which were done mistakenly, overwriting restarts and further development that had already been done), and/or tagged as the maintainer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch
10,000 portals, here we come...
We're at 5,705 portals and counting.
New portals since issue #28
Let's take a closer look at these...
1) Creating new portals
Portal creation, for subjects that happen to have the necessary support structures already in place, is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.
Eventually, we are going to run out of navigation templates to base portals off of. Though there are still thousands to go. But, when they do run out, we'll need an easy way to create more. A nav footer creation script.
Meanwhile, other resources are being explored and developed, such as categories, and methods to harvest the links they contain.
2) Expanding existing portals
The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...
More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish.
3) Converting old portals
By far the hardest and most time-consuming task we have been working on is updating the old portals, the very reason we revamped this WikiProject in the first place.
There are two approaches here:
4) Linking to new portals
Or "portal deorphanization"...
Dreamy Jazz Bot is purring along.
And a tool in the form of a script is under development for linking to portals at the time they are created, or shortly thereafter.
5...
See below...
New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...
Saved portals, are portals with a saved page.
What is the next stage in the evolutionary progression?
Quantum portals.
What are quantum portals?
Portals that come into existence when you click on the portal button, and which disappear when you leave the page.
Or, as Pbsouthwood put it:
...portals that exist only as a probability function (algorithm) until you collapse the wave form by observing through the portal button (run the script), and disappear again after use...
Introducing...
Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals (see it's talk page).
Keep on keepin' on
...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 08:38, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello SMcCandlish, I hope you are, and have been well. I mentioned you in this discussion but my alerts notification did not show that mention as having been sent? I am curious, since this marks the first time it has ever happened to me: have you set your preferences in some way that blocks others from sending you an alert that your name has been mentioned? If not, I'll pursue a technical answer, if so, a technical solution. Thank you.-- John Cline ( talk) 11:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Here it is:
What goes in the blanks?
All I can come up with is "Summer" and "Winter", respectively. Are there corresponding adjectives besides these? — The Transhumanist 03:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello. Finally I got my chance to help get your essay up and running for the next issue of the Signpost. I edited it slightly so if you see something you don't like it, feel free to edit anything you want.
Well, as I was somewhat expecting, the essay was twisted by various busybodies into "meaning" what it doesn't mean at all. I'll say here what I said at MfD: Feel free to delete the Signpost thing. It wasn't intended for that venue, but someone who edits it wanted to include it [see above]. I had my misgivings, predicting that various of the too-easily-offended would willfully misinterpret it, which is exactly what's happened. It wasn't transphobic in the faintest. A number of ranty editors utterly missed the point. It's about Wikipedia editors engaging in language-change activism trying to push non-mainstream stylistic strangeness, including a) fake pronouns like zie and hirm, b) unusual trademark stylizations, and c) excessive honorifics. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the off-site usage or the values of those who engage in it. It's about and only about encyclopedic usage. If you want to go change WP:MOS to say "It's okay to exactly mimic the appearance of logos, to write of Jesus and Mohammad with "Our Lord" and "Peace Be Upon Him" before and after (respectively) their names, to inject made-up pronoun shenanigans like ze and xir into our articles", well, good luck with that. Never going to happen. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:55, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Nine days after far-right advocate Jeremy Joseph Christian allegedly stabbed three men on the Portland TriMet transit system, Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017, which was met by thousands of counter-protesters.
the phrase "Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017" is not in any way, shape, or form parenthetical. A parenthetical phrase is conceptually an aside, this is not, it's the absolute core of the sentence, You and Curly Turkey are dead wrong, but I'm tired of this shit, so...
Beyond My Ken ( talk) 06:37, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Anyway, this was part of why I posted something about WT:MOS not being a dramaboard, and people having to make a case at a venue like ANI. They would actually have to marshal a buttload of diffed evidence to prove an intractable problem, and no one's likely to do that over a minor incident of comma peccadillo-mongering, especially when CMoS citations and the like will probably just put the matter to bed. Besides, it's more productive to just disprove a claim than to have "the Man" muzzle the claimant. >;-) Even the two RM regulars I was kinda-sorta thinking should be T-banned from MoS stuff have notably chilled out over the last 6 months because their arguments just keep failing. It would have been nice to not have had to spend 2+ years deflating their constantly recycled (
WP:IDHT) arguments, but in the end it's better to have the editors around since they're otherwise productive.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
12:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
I think it might be a good idea for those who watch the various MOS pages and are active on their talkpages to stop answering general style questions and instead refer them to the language refdesk. My reasoning is that a lot of the negativity directed towards the MOS and its "regulars" comes from seeing the talkpage of a style guideline being used for answering style questions that are not covered by said guideline. This gives the answers the appearance of consensus-based legitimacy and any critisism of that is, I think, totally valid. The talkpages should be for improvement-based suggestions and clarification of existing guidance. No?
I'm sending this to several people so please respond on my talkpage. Thanks. Primergrey ( talk) 14:35, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Aurora, Illinois shooting. Legobot ( talk) 04:23, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
Hey Thanks for contacting me back. The main information source for billiards is the WPA.ORG. The WPA (World Pool Association) is to pool like the NFL is to football. This source is the governing body of Professional billiards. Artistic Pool (trick shots) ,8 & 9 ball are each separate divisions. The WPA-APD is World Pool Association Artistic Pool Division, WPA-APD.ORG. There is other sources like A to Z etc..
I would like very much to work on a undated piece on billiards. However I need a few days to learn how to navigate the site. I will not try to publish or post any without you seeing it first. ~Cary WalkinAlmanac 05:23, 22 February 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by WalkinAlmanac ( talk • contribs)
Lee Vilenski is apt to be more available to help for the time being. And, yeah, it can take a while to get up-to-speed on all of Wikipedia's ways. Lots of rules and norms, but given that it's the no. 5 most-used Website in the world, and no. 1 as a general information source, one can see why! PS, on formatting stuff here: If you try to indent a paragraph on a wiki talk page by introducing a bunch of leading space, it will actually produce weird results (monospaced font like a code block). Indenting the first line of paragraphs isn't a style we use anyway. Also, the way to sign your posts is with ~~~~
, which auto-generates the date and links to your user and talk pages. If you want it to also include "~Cary", you can edit the signature string in
Special:MyPage/Preferences.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
05:40, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
![]() |
The Civility Barnstar |
For being endlessly patient, civil, and understanding in an XfD you opened, and giving everyone thorough, policy-and-guideline–backed responses. Softlavender ( talk) 04:10, 23 February 2019 (UTC) |
Your responses, often multiple to individual editors, are an example for us all.
Softlavender (
talk)
04:10, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Cleanup-Html. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Cleanup-Html redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. -- Beland ( talk) 19:24, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello SMcCandlish. I noticed your !vote in this discussion and wanted to share an observation, regarding it, with you.
While I am certain that you acted with no ill intent, the levity used in closing your comment is ill informed and actually perpetuates one of the most common myths associated with Dyslexia that exists. The disorder has nothing to do with juxtaposing letters within words or any similar tendencies as they approach the ultimate myth of mirror writing. It is a cognitive disorder that affects one's ability to process language whereas a dyslexic might be seen writing it as dislexick, they would never be seen writing it as lysdexic.
I say this only because you are so well respected in this community that your word is accepted by observers in numbers untold as the unequivocal truth and this time you have not held yourself to the required standard of such high esteem. Thank you for understanding.-- John Cline ( talk) 07:26, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
Shouldn't something about "an em dash is conventional" be addressed in the MoS? I "fixed" these because I assumed they were MoS-incompliant, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would gnome them away. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes
Issue 32, January – February 2019
French version of Books & Bytes is now available on meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team -- MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 03:30, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, articles should not be moved, as you did to
Aurora, Illinois shooting, without good reason. They should have a name that is both accurate and intuitive. Wikipedia has some
guidelines in place to help with this. Generally, a page should only be moved to a new title if the current name doesn't follow these guidelines. Also, if a page move is being discussed, consensus needs to be reached before anybody moves the page. Take a look at the
welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you.
Hello. It appears your talk page is becoming quite lengthy and is in need of
archiving. According to
Wikipedia's user talk page guidelines; "Large talk pages become difficult to read, strain the limits of older browsers, and load slowly over slow internet connections. As a rule of thumb, archive closed discussions when a talk page exceeds 75 KB or has multiple resolved or stale discussions." - this talk page is 100.7 KB. See
Help:Archiving a talk page for instructions on how to manually archive your talk page, or to arrange for automatic archiving using a
bot. If you have any questions, place a {{
help me}} notice on your talk page, or go to the
help desk. Thank you. --
Jax 0677 (
talk)
20:58, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello. Was your recent move a result of closing the RM discussion on the talk page? (I assume you know the RM was happening as you have commented on that talk page several times in recent days.) But you did not close the discussion and you did not cite the discussion in your move summary, which makes me wonder. — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 22:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
![]() | |
The Hidden Valley, Negev | |
---|---|
... with thanks from QAI |
Thank you for article improvements in February! -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 13:23, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
You sure about that? Also, while I'm here, "verh dispassionately". I suspect you meant very. ― Mandruss ☎ 13:41, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for
deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour and please be sure to
sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you.
Fæ (
talk)
15:05, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
User:SMcCandlish/It, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for
deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:SMcCandlish/It and please be sure to
sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of
User:SMcCandlish/It during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you.
Jc86035 (
talk)
15:55, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
that's the way dummies talk to each other, "You look like X" where X is selected from the collection of drivel that dummy A can confidently expect e shares with dummy B. Rarely is there ever a striking resemblance in fact, and usually it means A is trynna hit on B. 98.4.103.187 ( talk) 16:14, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Please bear in mind that "I didn't intend it to be offensive" is not the same as "it wasn't offensive". DS ( talk) 18:28, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
So, I tried humor for a change. That also turned into drama, but it was worth a try. I knew of course that some people would be offended. Some people will always be offended any time any approach of any kind is used to address something about which people have heated opinions. We can't stop discussing and stop trying different essay and proposal and RfC and whatever approaches just because some people will predictably get mad that it's not reflecting their viewpoint or sensibilities.
I'm bummed that people not in that "give me zie or else" micro-camp have also been offended. I should probably have declined the request to turn it into a Signpost piece. I should probably also have made it clearer in the original essay that the issue isn't "he" or "she" or "they" (accepted English usage) in agreement with expressed identity, nor is it mocking the concerns of TG/NB people; the issue is stuff that isn't recognizably English, and which most TG people don't use, and which RS do not use (in their own voices). I didn't develop it further enough to make it very clear that it's also about how closely neo-pronoun fandom mirrors attempts to over-stylize trademarks, to inject religious honorifics (and military ones, and others, like overuse of post-nominals and gentry titles in mid-sentence, etc.), to over-capitalize specialist terms, and various other "style warrior" problems Wikipedia suffers. It all comes down to "Wikipedia will write in my group's style, the One True Way, or we'll never stop fighting."
For the more average editor, would an explanatory intro have mattered? Probably not. Are they mostly reacting to claims that it's transphobic without bothering to check? Sure looks that way. I decline to be held responsible for people choosing not to distinguish between "hate speech against TG/NB people" and "raising an issue observed among some editors, which has something to do with TG/NB people". There's a form of guilt-by-association happening here. "This [attempt at] humor involved TG/NB people somehow, ergo it must necessarily be against them and against the entire left/progressive political wing, ergo you are a transphobe fascist." It's just fallacious. (And so very wide of the mark. And right-wingers can be Wikipedians, too, last I checked, though I am not one.) PS:
WP:Never offend anyone, in any way, for any reason isn't a thing here (in or out of mainspace). We'd have to delete all kinds of stuff, starting with
MOS:DOCTCAPS and
Historicity of Jesus.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
23:24, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
This is only incidentally related to MoS, and much more about WP:NPOV and WP:NOT, the actual policy authority from which all of MoS's material on tone and encyclopedic appropriateness is derived. If you're just telling me "You should have predicted this backlash for multiple reasons", I do concede on that. The fact that it's about X doesn't erect a magical wall against misinterpretation of it as being about Y, especially given a couple of wording flubs like "trans-" (should have used "post-") and "come out" (should have used something grandiose, given the fictional cult-leader context, like "self-actualized").
Regarding "if someone told me in person that they preferred the use of certain pronouns, I wouldn't go looking for usage across reliable secondary sources to ascertain which pronouns to use when referring to them" – that's fine for your interaction (including on our talk pages), and if such a declaration is self-declared in print then it's good enough for
WP:ABOUTSELF purposes, but we do in fact have a duty otherwise, in the encyclopedia content, to do that RS research. See, e.g.,
Talk:Rose McGowan for an example of why. Random editors making identity claims about third parties are not facts we can report, they're just claims made by random editors. And none of that relates to whether WP should ever use xie in its own voice.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
03:31, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Hey, I don't shout but let me try: WHAT THE HECK?!! I was offline for a couple of days and the whole encyclopedia dissolves into chaos. I am speechless, and if groveling in abject humility helps, then I will do it. I haven't read all the comments but I will. Best Regards, Barbara ✐ ✉ 16:18, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
At any rate, I have not denied any responsibility for what I wrote. I've already revised my userspace copy to remove various "trigger terms". I've consistently (on all these pages, and at ANI) denied that Barbara_(WVS) had anything to do with the actual content – it's 100% me. I've conceded that inclusion in the Signpost was probably bad idea. And I've stated flat-out that I'm well aware that anything that addresses or even comes close to TG/ NB people and pronouns is inevitably going to piss off some subset of people. But I cannot be held responsible for people willfully misreading it to mean what they want it to mean (including their utter bullshit claims like "This says you can't use singular they" or "This says you can't use she for a transwoman" or "This says nonbinary people are wrong for using something like zie in their own lives")just so they get to have their ranty-pants funtime on the Internet. I'm not the Internet whipping boy, and WP is not a flame forum for "the sport of debate". Awareness that some will take offense about any criticism of anything that touches in any way on TG/NB or LGBT+ matters does not somehow require me to remain silent. Nor does a majority of LGBT+ people holding one view require one of their number who disagrees to remain silent (though, in point of a fact, a majority of LGBT+ people are not supportive of using fake words like zie in formal writing; many are not even willing to do this conversationally and will simply speak around it).
You can't seriously hold the position that "Granted, some people are more easily offended than others" and simultaneously deny that people have plenty of (how much? that's up to interpretation) responsibility for the offense they choose to take over something that doesn't say anything like what they claim it says. That combination is just
cognitively dissonant and
oxymoronic.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼
05:18, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
I read the Signpost humor piece & enjoyed it immensely. Best laugh I had, in quite a while :) GoodDay ( talk) 04:58, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 140 | ← | Archive 145 | Archive 146 | Archive 147 | Archive 148 | Archive 149 | Archive 150 |
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Pamela Geller. Legobot ( talk) 04:24, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello SMcCandlish: An invitation for you to check out the Sustainability Initiative, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia projects. If you're interested, please consider adding your name to the list of supporters, which serves to express and denote the community's support of the initiative. Thanks for your consideration! North America 1000 09:40, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
But of course, there has been more going on than just that...
Dreamy Jazz Bot is up and running!
Dreamy Jazz Bot has been approved and is now up and running.
What it does is places missing links to orphaned portals. It places a link in the See also section of the corresponding root article, and it puts one at the top of the corresponding category page.
We have thousands of new portals that have yet to be added to the encyclopedia proper, just waiting to go live.
When they do go live, over the coming days or weeks, due to Dreamy Jazz Bot, it will be like an explosion of new portals on the scene. We should expect an increase in awareness and interest in the portals project. Perhaps even new participants.
Get ready...
Get set...
Go!
Another sockpuppet infiltrator has been discovered
User:Emoteplump, a recent contributor to the portals project, was discovered to be a sockpuppet account of an indefinitely blocked user.
When that happens, admins endeavor to eradicate everything the editor contributed. This aftermath has left a wake of destruction throughout the portals department, again.
The following portals which have been speedy deleted, are in the process of being re-created. Please feel free to help to turn these blue again:
New portals since the last issue
Keep up the great work
Until next time, — The Transhumanist 09:16, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
On 12 February 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article William Hoskins (inventor), which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that William Hoskins, the co-inventor of modern billiard chalk, also invented the electric heating coil, used to create the first electric toasters? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/William Hoskins (inventor). You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, William Hoskins (inventor)), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
– Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down
You might be familiar with the Ref desks, by their link on every new portal. They are a place you can go to ask volunteers almost any knowledge-related question, and have been a feature of Wikipedia since August of 2005 (or perhaps earlier). They were linked to from portals in an effort to improve their visibility, and to provide a bridge from the encyclopedia proper to project space (the Wikipedia community).
Well, somebody proposed that we get rid of them, and the community decided that that was not going to happen. Thank you for defending the Ref desks!
Here's a link to the dramatic discussion:
The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...
The wake of disruption left by Emoteplump and the admins who reverted many (but not all) of his/her edits is still undergoing cleanup. We could use all the help we can get on this task...
Almost all of the speedy deleted portals have been rebuilt from scratch.
For the portals he/she restarted (many of which were done mistakenly, overwriting restarts and further development that had already been done), and/or tagged as the maintainer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch
10,000 portals, here we come...
We're at 5,705 portals and counting.
New portals since issue #28
Let's take a closer look at these...
1) Creating new portals
Portal creation, for subjects that happen to have the necessary support structures already in place, is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.
Eventually, we are going to run out of navigation templates to base portals off of. Though there are still thousands to go. But, when they do run out, we'll need an easy way to create more. A nav footer creation script.
Meanwhile, other resources are being explored and developed, such as categories, and methods to harvest the links they contain.
2) Expanding existing portals
The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...
More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish.
3) Converting old portals
By far the hardest and most time-consuming task we have been working on is updating the old portals, the very reason we revamped this WikiProject in the first place.
There are two approaches here:
4) Linking to new portals
Or "portal deorphanization"...
Dreamy Jazz Bot is purring along.
And a tool in the form of a script is under development for linking to portals at the time they are created, or shortly thereafter.
5...
See below...
New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...
Saved portals, are portals with a saved page.
What is the next stage in the evolutionary progression?
Quantum portals.
What are quantum portals?
Portals that come into existence when you click on the portal button, and which disappear when you leave the page.
Or, as Pbsouthwood put it:
...portals that exist only as a probability function (algorithm) until you collapse the wave form by observing through the portal button (run the script), and disappear again after use...
Introducing...
Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals (see it's talk page).
Keep on keepin' on
...'til next time, — The Transhumanist 08:38, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello SMcCandlish, I hope you are, and have been well. I mentioned you in this discussion but my alerts notification did not show that mention as having been sent? I am curious, since this marks the first time it has ever happened to me: have you set your preferences in some way that blocks others from sending you an alert that your name has been mentioned? If not, I'll pursue a technical answer, if so, a technical solution. Thank you.-- John Cline ( talk) 11:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Here it is:
What goes in the blanks?
All I can come up with is "Summer" and "Winter", respectively. Are there corresponding adjectives besides these? — The Transhumanist 03:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello. Finally I got my chance to help get your essay up and running for the next issue of the Signpost. I edited it slightly so if you see something you don't like it, feel free to edit anything you want.
Well, as I was somewhat expecting, the essay was twisted by various busybodies into "meaning" what it doesn't mean at all. I'll say here what I said at MfD: Feel free to delete the Signpost thing. It wasn't intended for that venue, but someone who edits it wanted to include it [see above]. I had my misgivings, predicting that various of the too-easily-offended would willfully misinterpret it, which is exactly what's happened. It wasn't transphobic in the faintest. A number of ranty editors utterly missed the point. It's about Wikipedia editors engaging in language-change activism trying to push non-mainstream stylistic strangeness, including a) fake pronouns like zie and hirm, b) unusual trademark stylizations, and c) excessive honorifics. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the off-site usage or the values of those who engage in it. It's about and only about encyclopedic usage. If you want to go change WP:MOS to say "It's okay to exactly mimic the appearance of logos, to write of Jesus and Mohammad with "Our Lord" and "Peace Be Upon Him" before and after (respectively) their names, to inject made-up pronoun shenanigans like ze and xir into our articles", well, good luck with that. Never going to happen. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:55, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Nine days after far-right advocate Jeremy Joseph Christian allegedly stabbed three men on the Portland TriMet transit system, Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017, which was met by thousands of counter-protesters.
the phrase "Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017" is not in any way, shape, or form parenthetical. A parenthetical phrase is conceptually an aside, this is not, it's the absolute core of the sentence, You and Curly Turkey are dead wrong, but I'm tired of this shit, so...
Beyond My Ken ( talk) 06:37, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Anyway, this was part of why I posted something about WT:MOS not being a dramaboard, and people having to make a case at a venue like ANI. They would actually have to marshal a buttload of diffed evidence to prove an intractable problem, and no one's likely to do that over a minor incident of comma peccadillo-mongering, especially when CMoS citations and the like will probably just put the matter to bed. Besides, it's more productive to just disprove a claim than to have "the Man" muzzle the claimant. >;-) Even the two RM regulars I was kinda-sorta thinking should be T-banned from MoS stuff have notably chilled out over the last 6 months because their arguments just keep failing. It would have been nice to not have had to spend 2+ years deflating their constantly recycled (
WP:IDHT) arguments, but in the end it's better to have the editors around since they're otherwise productive.
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SMcCandlish
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¢ 😼
12:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
I think it might be a good idea for those who watch the various MOS pages and are active on their talkpages to stop answering general style questions and instead refer them to the language refdesk. My reasoning is that a lot of the negativity directed towards the MOS and its "regulars" comes from seeing the talkpage of a style guideline being used for answering style questions that are not covered by said guideline. This gives the answers the appearance of consensus-based legitimacy and any critisism of that is, I think, totally valid. The talkpages should be for improvement-based suggestions and clarification of existing guidance. No?
I'm sending this to several people so please respond on my talkpage. Thanks. Primergrey ( talk) 14:35, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Aurora, Illinois shooting. Legobot ( talk) 04:23, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
Hey Thanks for contacting me back. The main information source for billiards is the WPA.ORG. The WPA (World Pool Association) is to pool like the NFL is to football. This source is the governing body of Professional billiards. Artistic Pool (trick shots) ,8 & 9 ball are each separate divisions. The WPA-APD is World Pool Association Artistic Pool Division, WPA-APD.ORG. There is other sources like A to Z etc..
I would like very much to work on a undated piece on billiards. However I need a few days to learn how to navigate the site. I will not try to publish or post any without you seeing it first. ~Cary WalkinAlmanac 05:23, 22 February 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by WalkinAlmanac ( talk • contribs)
Lee Vilenski is apt to be more available to help for the time being. And, yeah, it can take a while to get up-to-speed on all of Wikipedia's ways. Lots of rules and norms, but given that it's the no. 5 most-used Website in the world, and no. 1 as a general information source, one can see why! PS, on formatting stuff here: If you try to indent a paragraph on a wiki talk page by introducing a bunch of leading space, it will actually produce weird results (monospaced font like a code block). Indenting the first line of paragraphs isn't a style we use anyway. Also, the way to sign your posts is with ~~~~
, which auto-generates the date and links to your user and talk pages. If you want it to also include "~Cary", you can edit the signature string in
Special:MyPage/Preferences.
—
SMcCandlish
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05:40, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
![]() |
The Civility Barnstar |
For being endlessly patient, civil, and understanding in an XfD you opened, and giving everyone thorough, policy-and-guideline–backed responses. Softlavender ( talk) 04:10, 23 February 2019 (UTC) |
Your responses, often multiple to individual editors, are an example for us all.
Softlavender (
talk)
04:10, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Cleanup-Html. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Cleanup-Html redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. -- Beland ( talk) 19:24, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello SMcCandlish. I noticed your !vote in this discussion and wanted to share an observation, regarding it, with you.
While I am certain that you acted with no ill intent, the levity used in closing your comment is ill informed and actually perpetuates one of the most common myths associated with Dyslexia that exists. The disorder has nothing to do with juxtaposing letters within words or any similar tendencies as they approach the ultimate myth of mirror writing. It is a cognitive disorder that affects one's ability to process language whereas a dyslexic might be seen writing it as dislexick, they would never be seen writing it as lysdexic.
I say this only because you are so well respected in this community that your word is accepted by observers in numbers untold as the unequivocal truth and this time you have not held yourself to the required standard of such high esteem. Thank you for understanding.-- John Cline ( talk) 07:26, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
Shouldn't something about "an em dash is conventional" be addressed in the MoS? I "fixed" these because I assumed they were MoS-incompliant, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would gnome them away. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
Books & Bytes
Issue 32, January – February 2019
French version of Books & Bytes is now available on meta!
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team -- MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 03:30, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, articles should not be moved, as you did to
Aurora, Illinois shooting, without good reason. They should have a name that is both accurate and intuitive. Wikipedia has some
guidelines in place to help with this. Generally, a page should only be moved to a new title if the current name doesn't follow these guidelines. Also, if a page move is being discussed, consensus needs to be reached before anybody moves the page. Take a look at the
welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you.
Hello. It appears your talk page is becoming quite lengthy and is in need of
archiving. According to
Wikipedia's user talk page guidelines; "Large talk pages become difficult to read, strain the limits of older browsers, and load slowly over slow internet connections. As a rule of thumb, archive closed discussions when a talk page exceeds 75 KB or has multiple resolved or stale discussions." - this talk page is 100.7 KB. See
Help:Archiving a talk page for instructions on how to manually archive your talk page, or to arrange for automatic archiving using a
bot. If you have any questions, place a {{
help me}} notice on your talk page, or go to the
help desk. Thank you. --
Jax 0677 (
talk)
20:58, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
Hello. Was your recent move a result of closing the RM discussion on the talk page? (I assume you know the RM was happening as you have commented on that talk page several times in recent days.) But you did not close the discussion and you did not cite the discussion in your move summary, which makes me wonder. — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 22:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
![]() | |
The Hidden Valley, Negev | |
---|---|
... with thanks from QAI |
Thank you for article improvements in February! -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 13:23, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
You sure about that? Also, while I'm here, "verh dispassionately". I suspect you meant very. ― Mandruss ☎ 13:41, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for
deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour and please be sure to
sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you.
Fæ (
talk)
15:05, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
User:SMcCandlish/It, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for
deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at
Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:SMcCandlish/It and please be sure to
sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of
User:SMcCandlish/It during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you.
Jc86035 (
talk)
15:55, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
that's the way dummies talk to each other, "You look like X" where X is selected from the collection of drivel that dummy A can confidently expect e shares with dummy B. Rarely is there ever a striking resemblance in fact, and usually it means A is trynna hit on B. 98.4.103.187 ( talk) 16:14, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Please bear in mind that "I didn't intend it to be offensive" is not the same as "it wasn't offensive". DS ( talk) 18:28, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
So, I tried humor for a change. That also turned into drama, but it was worth a try. I knew of course that some people would be offended. Some people will always be offended any time any approach of any kind is used to address something about which people have heated opinions. We can't stop discussing and stop trying different essay and proposal and RfC and whatever approaches just because some people will predictably get mad that it's not reflecting their viewpoint or sensibilities.
I'm bummed that people not in that "give me zie or else" micro-camp have also been offended. I should probably have declined the request to turn it into a Signpost piece. I should probably also have made it clearer in the original essay that the issue isn't "he" or "she" or "they" (accepted English usage) in agreement with expressed identity, nor is it mocking the concerns of TG/NB people; the issue is stuff that isn't recognizably English, and which most TG people don't use, and which RS do not use (in their own voices). I didn't develop it further enough to make it very clear that it's also about how closely neo-pronoun fandom mirrors attempts to over-stylize trademarks, to inject religious honorifics (and military ones, and others, like overuse of post-nominals and gentry titles in mid-sentence, etc.), to over-capitalize specialist terms, and various other "style warrior" problems Wikipedia suffers. It all comes down to "Wikipedia will write in my group's style, the One True Way, or we'll never stop fighting."
For the more average editor, would an explanatory intro have mattered? Probably not. Are they mostly reacting to claims that it's transphobic without bothering to check? Sure looks that way. I decline to be held responsible for people choosing not to distinguish between "hate speech against TG/NB people" and "raising an issue observed among some editors, which has something to do with TG/NB people". There's a form of guilt-by-association happening here. "This [attempt at] humor involved TG/NB people somehow, ergo it must necessarily be against them and against the entire left/progressive political wing, ergo you are a transphobe fascist." It's just fallacious. (And so very wide of the mark. And right-wingers can be Wikipedians, too, last I checked, though I am not one.) PS:
WP:Never offend anyone, in any way, for any reason isn't a thing here (in or out of mainspace). We'd have to delete all kinds of stuff, starting with
MOS:DOCTCAPS and
Historicity of Jesus.
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SMcCandlish
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23:24, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
This is only incidentally related to MoS, and much more about WP:NPOV and WP:NOT, the actual policy authority from which all of MoS's material on tone and encyclopedic appropriateness is derived. If you're just telling me "You should have predicted this backlash for multiple reasons", I do concede on that. The fact that it's about X doesn't erect a magical wall against misinterpretation of it as being about Y, especially given a couple of wording flubs like "trans-" (should have used "post-") and "come out" (should have used something grandiose, given the fictional cult-leader context, like "self-actualized").
Regarding "if someone told me in person that they preferred the use of certain pronouns, I wouldn't go looking for usage across reliable secondary sources to ascertain which pronouns to use when referring to them" – that's fine for your interaction (including on our talk pages), and if such a declaration is self-declared in print then it's good enough for
WP:ABOUTSELF purposes, but we do in fact have a duty otherwise, in the encyclopedia content, to do that RS research. See, e.g.,
Talk:Rose McGowan for an example of why. Random editors making identity claims about third parties are not facts we can report, they're just claims made by random editors. And none of that relates to whether WP should ever use xie in its own voice.
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SMcCandlish
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03:31, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
Hey, I don't shout but let me try: WHAT THE HECK?!! I was offline for a couple of days and the whole encyclopedia dissolves into chaos. I am speechless, and if groveling in abject humility helps, then I will do it. I haven't read all the comments but I will. Best Regards, Barbara ✐ ✉ 16:18, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
At any rate, I have not denied any responsibility for what I wrote. I've already revised my userspace copy to remove various "trigger terms". I've consistently (on all these pages, and at ANI) denied that Barbara_(WVS) had anything to do with the actual content – it's 100% me. I've conceded that inclusion in the Signpost was probably bad idea. And I've stated flat-out that I'm well aware that anything that addresses or even comes close to TG/ NB people and pronouns is inevitably going to piss off some subset of people. But I cannot be held responsible for people willfully misreading it to mean what they want it to mean (including their utter bullshit claims like "This says you can't use singular they" or "This says you can't use she for a transwoman" or "This says nonbinary people are wrong for using something like zie in their own lives")just so they get to have their ranty-pants funtime on the Internet. I'm not the Internet whipping boy, and WP is not a flame forum for "the sport of debate". Awareness that some will take offense about any criticism of anything that touches in any way on TG/NB or LGBT+ matters does not somehow require me to remain silent. Nor does a majority of LGBT+ people holding one view require one of their number who disagrees to remain silent (though, in point of a fact, a majority of LGBT+ people are not supportive of using fake words like zie in formal writing; many are not even willing to do this conversationally and will simply speak around it).
You can't seriously hold the position that "Granted, some people are more easily offended than others" and simultaneously deny that people have plenty of (how much? that's up to interpretation) responsibility for the offense they choose to take over something that doesn't say anything like what they claim it says. That combination is just
cognitively dissonant and
oxymoronic.
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SMcCandlish
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05:18, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
I read the Signpost humor piece & enjoyed it immensely. Best laugh I had, in quite a while :) GoodDay ( talk) 04:58, 2 March 2019 (UTC)