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Hi, Tony. As far as I know, you're the best copy-editing editor around, so I came here to ask you a favor, if you don't mind. There is a FAC nomination of May Revolution which I believe that is a lot of potential, but it's has not acchieved FA standards yet. Could you spare some time to review this article and help improve its prose, please? Thank you very much, -- Lecen ( talk) 23:06, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Re this edit, I wonder if some of WP:MOSNUM has escaped your attention, particularly the bit that says, "Where Wikipedia does not mandate a specific style, editors should not attempt to convert Wikipedia to their own preferred style"? It appears that you have changed dozens of dates in that article to the American style for no reason, and then mandated that use at the top! Some of the other parts of that massive edit were inconsequential but possibly slightly useful so I can't be bothered to go through the whole article sorting out the mess. Looking at your contribution history it seems that you did similar things to several dozen articles today alone. Are you planning on putting the dates at Ötzi the Iceman back to European format soon? -- Nigelj ( talk) 19:25, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi mate, re. your last edit summary/question, you know you're preaching to the converted when it comes to using larger images, so no issue there...;-) My only concern is that placing that image on the right generates a great deal of white space after the section heading; even if we move the image down to the next second para, it'd encroach on the next section. I think image placement in the vicinity of infoboxes is never ideal, but having text squeezed a bit seemed preferable to a lot of white space. I have two laptops at home, one with 10" screen and one with 15", and the space occurs no matter which -- any suggestions? Cheers, Ian Rose ( talk) 10:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
Be aware that the editable version of the TFP feature is really used for modelling suggestions that are being flagged up on wp:Errors. Changing as you did at 04:25 today does not alter the Main Page, and those who might change it on the Main Page are unlikely to see it if not drawn to their attention at ERRORS. Kevin McE ( talk) 12:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
Just to comment on the image size thing, which is cropping up in lots of places. I think you have to recognise that images are there to be clicked on. Readers are not stupid and they learn or find out that to get a bigger image you need to do more than just look at the page and wonder why the image is not presented in a larger size. Have a look at website like the BBC news website, which while it is a news website and not an encyclopedia website, it does have 'boxes' on the page that have pictures of varying size. But it does still have small images. And unlike Wikipedia, when I sometimes want to see a larger version of the images they are using, I click and it takes me to the news story (or feature) and often the image in question is not there at all! Very disappointing. But I do think it is possible to go overboard with making images bigger. There will always be a need for the smaller thumbnails to allow room for the text. And there should be more text than images on Wikipedia's front page, though I do also think that a major overhaul of the design is needed (the last one was 2006), but that would entail changes to all the processes that currently feed into it. Though you seem to have been trying to make changes to all those processes! Maybe a more centralised discussion about the main page as a whole would be better than approaching each 'box' separately? Carcharoth ( talk) 22:28, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
A. You might srsly be surprised how man "normal people" (not young webhead techie wiki-crowd editors, but normal readers) do not know to click on the photo or do not do it routinely.
B. Some websites give a bigger pic when you click on an image. Some do not. It is by no means universal for that to happen.
C. Clicking sux. I want to incorporate info as fast and efficient as I can.
D. Doesn't help if the page is printed.
P.s. That said, your MP review was bitchin'. TCO ( reviews needed) 02:16, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Carcharoth, sorry to have taken so long to respond.
"I think you have to recognise that images are there to be clicked on. Readers are not stupid"—Several responses. Typically readers are faced seeing with the display size on a page or a humungously large original at full res if they wanted to divert to the pic page (we should hope not unless they have a special reason for doing so); sometimes the full tragedy takes a little while to download, too, aside from the need to navigate around the wallpaper. Many visitors to the main page won't know about this double-clicking function. But more important than this impracticality is the need to treat the pics as functional in the context of the main-page information and layout, without reference to the original pic at full res at Commons or wherever.
The great concern is to redesign the main page so it looks good and uses images well, while having good functionality and accessibility; this is the agenda for almost every other website, even if some don't meet these challenges as well as they could. There is too much text on WP's main page, all sandwiched into a dense forest of big grey paragraphs and messy bullets, vying for the limited real estate. Let's remember that the page stretches down a long way, and User:Dispenser has pointed out research results that show the alarmingly small proportion of visitors to any site who scroll down.
The double-column idea guarantees that images have to be tiny, especially on the cramped 45% right-side. While some portraits are discernible at 100px (and luckily OTD and ITN choose mostly portraits), their impact and interest factor rates about 2/10 on my scale.
"Best of all would be a hover-and-expand feature for images, but I think at the moment the hover function mousetips the alt text (or something)?" I'm not convinced the accessibility can't be good in a mouse-over-expanding-images main page. I'm not saying it's a doddle (what to do about the imageless TFAs needs to be worked through; but then, imageless TFAs right now are a major downer). Tony (talk) 06:13, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
The Signpost Barnstar | ||
For your excellent and consistent work as the main writer of the Signpost's "Featured content"/"Features and admins" section that I was allowed to witness during my past year as the Signpost's editor, as well as for numerous improvements of the Signpost's readability and visual appeal, I award you the Signpost Barnstar. Regards, HaeB ( talk) 00:53, 9 July 2011 (UTC) |
Hi Tony. I know you generally don't review articles unless they are already at the Feature article nominees board, but I was wondering if you could take a quick look at Indonesian National Revolution and tell me if you think it would have a good chance or not; no need to go in-depth, just the basics. If it looks good, I hope to nominate it so it can be FA status by Indonesia's Independence Day on 17 August. Thanks. Crisco 1492 ( talk) 14:30, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Created from data supplied at
User:Snottywong/Article creation stats.
Tony
(talk)
14:38, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Tony, following on from your comments on the 11 July TFL blurb and your (understandable) disappointment at the quality of the Somerset TFA blurb, I'd just like to invite you, if you dare, to spend a few moments reviewing our TFL blurbs which, generally, will be available no less than two weeks before hitting Main Page. As we're only a one-day-a-week brigade, it's easier for us to ensure quality, but as you pointed out a while back, we should be aiming higher, and we currently have a growing consensus in the list world that 2/3 times a week should be achievable. However, we don't want to fall into the TFA trap of weak blurbs, so right now I'm just putting this out here to ask if you'd be kind enough to support our ongoing (current) scheme of Monday=TFL day, and hopefully support our future Sat/Sun/Mon (perhaps) = TFL days. As ever, thanks for your interest in our process, and for the time you invest in dragging us from the grammatical gutter. The Rambling Man ( talk) 18:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Tony, "... if people really do want to walk away, that's fine ..." you said, I don't support that, not in general and particularly not in the situation, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 12:45, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I started with a 100 word para (bout right length I thought). Director told me to get it up to 1200 spaces (I guess that is 200 words+) for balance versys rest of page (they actually WANT more text, not just tolerate it). So...I put a para break in! It made sense idea wise. And looked just ducky. non-wikians saw it running and no one thought it bad (looked like magazine text). Wikians didn't like it though...for being different and it got changed back after a few hours. Really don't think it was bad though. Think it was good. :) TCO ( reviews needed) 00:21, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, just a quick request, I've now queued up our TFL blurbs to the end of August, (only six), so was wondering, if you had the time and energy and inclination, if you could give us some feedback/copyedits of them. Mind you, that does depend on whether FLs continue to feature on main page, which seems in doubt right now given the various wide-ranging main page update discussions... Hope you're well. For your convenience, July and August are the links. The Rambling Man ( talk) 14:51, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Rather than overwhelm that talk page with more side-discussion, I've come here to bring up another reason why I objected to the wording "obvious faults in prose, structure, and formatting". You use the word obvious to ensure that it doesn't become an open-ended review, but turn it around and imagine that you wrote a new article that you thought was good, and then had someone tell you that there was an "obvious fault". Even if it was true, it would be a bit discouraging, wouldn't it? I would have no objections to someone suggesting improvements to 'prose, structure, and formatting', but I would be a bit more diplomatic about it. Having said that, the last time I pointed out an 'obvious' fault to someone (the title in an article about a person had a spelling mistake and the name was not spelled consistently in the article) they retired, though that may have been due to other matters. It is a very minor point, so can you not agree that rephrasing "obvious faults" might gain more acceptance for the idea that all articles should at some point get a basic review done? Carcharoth ( talk) 16:55, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
It's a handful, but I'm determined to get Richard Nixon to FA and you seem the guy to go to.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 00:23, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
The Barnstar of Diplomacy | |
For coming up with some great ideas for how to improve the DYK and seeming to be the only person actually actively coming up with trial and errors to do so. I was very impressed by your graphs and you current trial with the mini review for the July 19th entries. Great job, hopefully this will come to something. I think its a great idea. And if people can't be bothered to do the reviews it would be tough luck! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:03, 25 July 2011 (UTC) |
Jayjg (talk) 01:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
A fellow editor has raised a query on my talk page about some musical numbering which was affected by the dashes script. As an expert in music and style matters, can you advise please? -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 06:11, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, just saw a newly created article, 2011 Kosovo-Serbia border clashes and thought, per the new consensus at WT:MOS, that it should be moved to 2011 Kosovo–Serbia border clashes because Kosovo and Serbia are two separate entities. Is that correct? Cheers, Jenks24 ( talk) 10:37, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. Question about this new DYK setup. Is the nominator supposed to add this to the nomination themselves, or do we wait for someone else to do it (as you did)? If it's the former, I'll make sure I do so on the rest of my nominations. But let me know either way. Thanks! — Hun ter Ka hn 13:56, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
With regard to the article Synaptula lamperti, I would not have nominated it for DYK myself as I knew it had its failings resulting particularly from the limited sources I had found. Someone else nominated it however so it is under the spotlight.
It is difficult to extract information from the few available sources about an obscure species, and which may use technical terms, without doing some close paraphrasing. If I find several sources, I can often see how they have all close paraphrased one another and it is not always apparent which is the original. Either I use the same material that they have done or I can't write the article. When it comes to describing an organism there is always a conventional order in which things are written and it is difficult to avoid the technical terms. I try to avoid close paraphrasing as much as possible but can't avoid it completely.
Is Wikipedia the better for the article? I think it is. Are any of the sources going to complain? I think not. Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 05:50, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi there! I think I've missed something. DYK used to be quite simple, but now it seems to have got overly complicated, and I'm worried that new users won't understand it. Hell, I'm an arbitrator, and I struggled to understand the new system. Is this now set in policy, or can people review DYKs without it? The Cavalry ( Message me) 11:18, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Response: Chase me, I'm glad to see you back. The nomination system has new instructions that enable a watchlistable sub-page for each nom, which is a significant advance for the forum. But beyond that, it's not the nomination so much as the reviewing system that has been modified, so one hopes there's nothing to put off new editors wanting their work exposed on the main page. But one thing I personally would like to see is the expectation that more nominators return to their nomination page to engage with reviews; this often hasn't occurred and is part of the cycle that disenchants potential reviewers from participating.
There's been a lot of discontent about DYK over the past few months (coming after several previous waves, I believe; but I wasn't around DYK then). You might be interested in this summary of recent RfC results:
This came after a lot of discussion:
Then a series of DYK-specific RfCs were launched over the past two weeks:
And several other discussion threads.
So now after all of this kerfuffle, at least we have overwhelming consensus for an explicit reviewing checklist, comprising almost entirely the existing rules of DYK, which clearly haven't been implemented properly until now. There's a degree of disquiet among a few DYK regulars as to what type of checklist should be used, but the RfC has made that pretty plain, I think.
To answer your opening question, yes, there's no policy-driven checklist, but the RfC has made it abundantly clear that a specific set of aspects must be explicitly checked and passed; I guess this could be done by typing out in long-hand that one thinks a nom should pass on each ground, but they would need to be spelled out (not just "Passes all DYK requirements"). Tony (talk) 12:14, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, I think this page is a good start for reviewing, but beyond that I think we need a page somewhere about how to correctly paraphrase and summarize. In my mind the issue boils down to teaching some fundamental writing strategies. I'm popping in & out today until a bit later, but I wanted to float the idea while it's on my mind. Truthkeeper88 ( talk) 17:01, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. Although I think your formal review system is a great idea and the raise in standards that are needed I'm afraid to say it has put off many of the decent DYK regulars including myself and both of my regular fellow writers who are unwilling to go to such lengths jsut to get a DYK credit. I thought having to review other people's work even briefly before was pushing it before but having to conduct a formal review for each one I think is a little too far. The only way I can see it working in the long run is if we adopt say 5 or so DYK reviewers who are given the task of overlooking DYKs much like you did recently. I know you haven't time for it yourself on a permanent basis but I feel if we could free it up for DYK article writers so they write an article and simply propose and leave it up to ADYK reviewer to pick out anything issues I feel it would releive the pressure on the writer. I mean say you spend three hours writing an article the last thing you want to do is have to do detective work on somebody else's article just so you can get your credit.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
User:Khazar's quit, User:Nvvchar's quit, User:Rosiestep relatively inactive past week, these are amongst our most prolific contributors. We can't afford to lose these people. Its sad to see. Is the main page of wikipedia more important than our most productive editors? We need to find a balance Tony, can you respond? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:55, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
But the DYK system appears to have been constructed to encourage quantity instead, made possible by the quick-and-easy approach. What upsets many members of the community is that if newly created/expanded articles are to be showcased on the main page, there should an expectation of quality and policy compliance that takes a little time and concentration to achieve, even with short articles. (I'd have thought a major justification of DYK was to induct newish editors into these skills, to establish relationships between them and more experienced editors—but this hasn't been happening.)
DYK finds itself caught between:
(1) its toxic reputation in the community (I don't need to link you to that);
(2) the growing emphasis on professionalism in content venues over the past few years (especially WRT copyvio, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing);
(3) calls to significantly improve the content and design of WP's main page, and on the other side;
(4) an entrenched DYK culture of pumping through huge quantities in short shifts on the main page, over checking for compliance and quality and giving them the time-exposure they deserve.
I'm puzzled when you say, "I feel if we could free it up for DYK article writers so they write an article and simply propose and leave it up to a DYK reviewer to pick out anything issues I feel it would releive the pressure on the writer." I didn't have relieving pressure on writers right up there as a priority, actually: in the view of many editors, there's been far too little pressure on the DYK process, witness the widespread dump-and-run practice of nominating and failing to return, and the introduction of a quid-pro-quo reviewing requirement that masquerades as full, policy-compliance reviewing, but which has typically been a one-line wave-through. I think you'll find the community won't support a system that discourages the induction and mentoring of newish editors into the article improvement process—it matters nil that these are short, sometimes stubby articles: people expect them still to be good examples of WP's output if they're on the main page, and why not?
To return to your first concern, that editors are "leaving" DYK—well, let them. Too many DYKs are getting through unchecked, and the calls to slow it down are deafening. If traffic slows, thank heavens—we can all breath a bit and make DYKs a proud part of the main page and an incubator for skilled editors who have the keenness to stick around. As User:Demiurge said yesterday at DYK talk:
“ | If the number of submissions is dropping as a result of the new process, then that's clearly a positive outcome. The number of hooks cycling through the front page can be reduced as necessary to allow for the increased time that reviews will take, and thus everything (eventually) will start to work differently. And hopefully better. The transition period may be a little painful, that's all. | ” |
Yeah I agree, in part its finding a balance I think. The thing is Tony whilst declining DYK input may be a good thing it is not a good thing that we are losing such productive editors who are a net plus for the project, regardless of DYK. IN regards to the pressure, yes it would seem it was too slack, but my point is why would I bother doing a ten minute review of somebody else's article just to simply get my article on the main page? The sad thing though is that many editors have clearly treated DYK like a game and are more interested it would seem in having their credit or daily buzz. I know DYK is a big motivator for many but it should not be central to wikipedia. I treat it as a harmless start to what could later become a GA. In regards to award as I've mentioned at the DYK, although this could be extended beyond DYK, I feel Tony that given our budget of $20 million this year? I think we could find that bit extra to invest a bit back into the project. If it would be too much to award editors for every good 25 articles they write, what about a monthly prize like that for the best article written in that month, say the best three articles like a Gold Prize, Silver Prize and Bronze Prize. Whilst this may be difficult if articles are collaborations you could work out what individual editors have contributed by their amount of referenced prose. Of course articles would need to be assessed to ensure that nobody has plagiarised or warbled on just to make their efforts look more respectable. People may think I'm crazy, whatever, but in a way an Amazon award scheme could also work for wikipedia. I know that money is seen as a taboo on wikipedia but I feel there should be a mechanism in place which gets editors to strive to produce the best article in a month. If the top prize was say a $500 voucher, second prize $250 third prize $100, fourth prize $50, fifth prize $25 that's what, $925 a month, less than $12,000 a year. Similarly you could have a prize for Best Article expansion and Best New Article. Perfectly reasonable I think given what our budget is. We could easily raise that in a day or two. If I won best article of the month or third best or whatever I would likely use an e-voucher to buy books to write articles. I think it could prove an effective scheme. I just feel we need to introduce things like this to just get editors more of a will to improve their articles and go that bit further. If that amount was offered the chance to be awarded with Best Article of the Month and a $500 voucher would really motivate to produce better work. Perhaps this scheme should be introduced for DYK to bring back the motivation. I agree with you that it is very important that initial step from stub to start class as a precedent for GA and higher and we desperately need to motivate people to expand our stubs and indeed start new content, especially from the non anglosphere.. If such a scheme were introduced, suddenly I would have a reason to bother doing a review and nominating my article for the chance of winning something. Its things like this which work. This way we would have a vigorous reviewing scheme in place raising standards and still give editors a reason to want to contribute.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
With Nixon set for FAC tonight US time, there is a remaining matter. People keep changing the last sentence of the first paragraph from "Nixon is the only President to resign the office." to "Nixon is the only President to have resigned the office." I think the first sentence is more effective, and is grammatically sound, but you are the expert. Also, I would appreciate it if you would look over what I have done with the images in the Presidential section (basically added a large image at the start of each major section, as you did with Domestic Policy, as the way of giving the reader a break from the unending text.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 13:07, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
I noticed that no one was updating the DYK queues. Or the hooks. But I also noticed that if you put the hooks up there, other editors magically find problems with them (after x days of no comment after its approval) and then after a few hours of those being discussed you can move it to a queue.
No one has come to yell at me yet so I assume I haven't cocked anything up to a significant magnitude but could you just confirm this for me? Otherwise I'm afraid the deluge will start. Panyd The muffin is not subtle 20:08, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony! I always was stunned how professional you corrected my shameful translations for the signpost, thanks again for that! I now proposed another article here for a report of a conference which I've organized: User:DerHexer/Report about Wikipedia trifft Altertum. When my report will be accepted for the signpost, I'd be very glad if you could correct my mistakes and esp. improve my style as you excellently did before. :-) Many thanks in advance and kind regards, — DerHexer (Talk) 01:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Were your enthusiastic comments at DYK on Babette Rosmond meant as a gtg? They sounded that way to me, so I moved it to Prep 2. After doing so, I noticed you hadn't filled in the 2 close paraphrase lines of the review. I did a spot check myself and did not find problems. If I did wrong, please let me know. And while I am here, warm and enthusiastic thanks for your helpful and PRACTICAL approach to making it easier for reviewers to do a better job. I have learned a lot from reviewing at DYK, much of it from you. Sharktopus talk 03:33, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Excuse me Tony. I am wondering if you can write a Feature for WikiProject Video games' Newsletter? We would like to get someone with an outside perspective to write about their area of expertise and what VG project members should consider when navigating the process. GamerPro64 22:20, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
And write a specification for a directorate? Seems like people can't really have opinions on the idea when it's not fully formed. Which is fair enough. Panyd The muffin is not subtle 16:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Under your new system, is it compulsory to review another article?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
(Relocated here for wider discussion. Tony (talk) 13:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
If you have a moment, please review and comment on WT:DYK#Review checklist templates or WT:DYK#The review checklist, redux. The issue of whether or not signatures are necessary within the checklist has come up (along with suggestions from NuclearWarfare and myself about how to get by without them), and as far as I remember you were the editor who wanted signatures. rʨanaɢ ( talk) 20:56, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Hello. You have a new message at Template talk:DYKrev's talk page.
I have attempt to rectify your queries. Maybe you could have another look? I was trying very hard to give a balanced presentation -- if there's still a problem, could you suggest in which direction the writeup is skewed so I can adjust? Thanks, - Jarry1250 Weasel? Discuss. 11:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
I nominated HMS Phoenix (N96) for DYK about a week ago. I have made changes based on the feedback I have received but editors have stopped commenting. Could you take a look at Template talk:Did you know/HMS Phoenix (N96) please? Thanks, Ryan Vesey Review me! 14:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Quick question, forgive me if the answer is buried in MOS somewhere,
Which is more correct;
Chzz ► 09:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
It's mentioned Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(biographies)#Honorifics. Lightmouse ( talk) 10:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, everyone. Chzz ► 14:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
The BBC and other news outlets have no choice but to use it in the short form: they habitually use social titles such as Mr, but Mr Attenborough would be erroneous for a knight. I, too, believe that Sir, Dame, Lady and other such honorifics ought to be included in the link, being part of the respective person's name for all intents and purposes (in contrast to, say, military ranks). Waltham, The Duke of 18:51, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
I didn't make the statement you're objecting to on WT:DYK#Opposed to the new templates and instruction creep. Did you mean to refer to Piotrus instead? Prioryman ( talk) 12:35, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
In your article Redundancy exercises: removing fluff from your writing the link http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=673919 (near "The Economist style guide on unnecessary words gives excellent advice.") seems to be broken:
Hi Tony1, I noticed that when you ran what I assume to be a script on Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, a hyphen was added to the breed name (Duck-Tolling) throughout, including in reference titles and interwiki links. As far as I know, this isn't appropriate and doesn't match the article title either, so I removed the hyphens. I'm leaving you this message because I also edited the Signpost featured content page to remove the hyphen there. Since authorities including the Nova Scotia Legislature and the Canadian Kennel Club all refer to it without the hyphen, as well as the American Kennel Club/Australian National Kennel Council/Kennel Club (UK) and books, I don't think it should be included. I suppose there might be some ambiguity there but it seems minimal and the description removes all doubt. Anna (talk) 14:15, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Jujutacular talk 11:07, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
I recently used that DYK review template, and I did find it rather easy to get sucked into a long review. It was partly due to a rubbish internet connection at the time, but I took well over an hour to do Template talk:Did you know/Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski. I could help but compare that to where someone reviewed by nomination at Template talk:Did you know/Ramsay Heatley Traquair. I have no way of knowing how long that review took, or how thorough it was (I would need to ask MelanieN), but it certainly took less time to type. I was thinking it might be an idea to raise at WT:DYK how long people take to do such reviews, and whether any balance should be struck between reviewing each nomination for as long as needed (ideal) and reducing expectations of reviewing to a certain amount of time (less quality but less time-intensive and possibly more efficient).
Going back to Template talk:Did you know/Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski, there are a couple of issues surrounding how hook changes are proposed. I had commented at length on the hook there, proposing an alternative wording for the hook and pointing out issues with overlinking and one incorrect word. The promotor (Crisco 1492) didn't incorporate all the changes (one link to World War II was removed and the book title was capitalised), but you later removed the overlinking here (comic book) and I made the other change here (adopted vs adapted). What I was wondering was whether my change was correct (seeing as you didn't make the change, I want to double-check that as some online guides I checked didn't seem 100% clear on this, though Googling "adopted into a book" versus "adapted into a book" seems pretty clear), and whether there should have been more discussion of the hook wording and formatting before promotion. I've raised this at Crisco 1492's talk page (see here]), and I'm also going to ask Volunteer Marek (the article nominator) to comment (as the nomination subpage is now closed), as they might have some thoughts on the matter. Carcharoth ( talk) 04:16, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
In your review of the Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski nomination, I think you wrote too much and took too long; the thoroughness is great, but there are ways of checking through that don't take an hour (on a good connection). I'd hope for 5–10 mins per review, and these reviews can be shared, or should be, as part of the QPQ requirement. It's galling that Crisco treated your work with casual neglect, it seems. And did the nominator engage with the issues? That is one of the points of properly reviewing. I'll be raising this at the DYK discussion page. Tony (talk) 06:10, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
"but found the nomination closed"—that sounds as though Crisco is entirely at fault, so I'm unsure why it's a matter of being "fair" to him. They're obsessed with filling up this waterfall of crap that goes out on our main page. That's what is behind this abject failure to check things properly.
"I would concentrate on ensuring that reviewers explicitly mention all the criteria and the result of their review of those criteria, regardless of whether they use a checklist." Indeed, but isn't it easier if there's a bulleted list? Just sign with four tildes to approve, it says (in effect). "You could also just reject reviews that fail to say whether all the criteria have been checked or not." Well, yes. That is what should be happening.
"Adapt" is correct, sorry not to have mentioned that last time.
"This '–' is an en-dash, right? And this '—' is an em dash, right?" Yep. And for full dates, the en dash needs to be spaced on both sides. That is established in millions of examples on en.WP. I fixed it in the article.
I see Rjanag has referred to me as "stupid", in effect. One rule for admins, another rule for everyone else, I see. Pity about WP:CIVIL. Tony (talk) 06:46, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
{{
DYKproblem}}
and other methods of pinging exist as a courtesy, but there has never been a rule or even an expectation that people must use them.
rʨanaɢ (
talk)
06:57, 14 August 2011 (UTC)The Editor's Barnstar | |
I simply admire your work here. What better reason to give a barnstar? Atomician ( talk) 02:42, 16 August 2011 (UTC) |
I find this humorous. Thanks Tony! -- Efe ( talk) 13:40, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
There is a huge batch of new WP:FS created on July 30 and 31 that have not yet been included in WP:POST. What is going on?-- TonyTheTiger ( T/ C/ BIO/ WP:CHICAGO/ WP:FOUR) 14:03, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
And having looked at FSC, I see that it still largely consists of nominations by TTT of crappy arrangements/compositions of national anthems and other genres, beautifully performed by the US Navy Band. There are issues of
(1) the quality/notability of the music (and I don't mean an extremely boring hymn—or worse, a weird "western" tonal arrangement of an arabic piece—is notable just because the Sultan of Blah makes it his "national anthem" for when he steps of the plane in Washington to bargain with his oil reserves);
(2) the extent to which arrangements should be acceptable more generally;
(3) the status of the FS criteria, which were significantly altered without notice and without consensus in May.
I certainly don't think The Signpost should be highlighting some of the stuff being promoted; it would not be fair to the high quality and hard work that goes into newly promoted content in the other forums. Tony (talk) 02:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
We have rejected more then we have accepted over the past few months. If we can get the silly criteria worked out I think we can move towards legitimacy. -- Guerillero | My Talk 02:08, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be an inconsistency. I see all the above, and I see this. Am I missing something? -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 04:08, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi
I have been using links to your exercises as places where GOCE members can go to learn and improve their copy-editing.
I did not think about how that might affect you, as I know that there have been a couple of comments on your subpages about the exercises, including from myself :¬)
Is it ok for me to still give them out? I know you are busy in RL.
I also have another question that I shall send in an email. You do not need to answer by mail, a simple yes or no here will suffice, as I wouldn't want to compromise your anonymity. Chaosdruid ( talk) 04:42, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
It has been reported that television is now teaching children to value fame foremost, whereas benevolence is being devalued. Please see
Popular TV shows teach children fame is most important value, UCLA psychologists report / UCLA Newsroom. You can imagine the values that (some) young people bring with them when they edit Wikipedia. (People of all ages are impressionable, but children especially so.)
—
Wavelength (
talk)
17:07, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi. As I'm sure you know, you were named by Pmanderson recently on my talk page as one of a party of editors with whom he has some protracted conflict. Subsequent to discussion of that conversation at AN/I, I have decided to file a case with ArbCom to address issues that I'm not sure AN/I is capable of dealing with. Because you were mentioned in the post that started this particular grass fire, I'm thinking of you as a primary candidate to list as a party to the arbitration.
Are you okay with that? - GTBacchus( talk) 06:57, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm not blithely filing anything; I just said that. My primary intention right now is to be sure I don't act blithely. Your trust that I'm not going to do that is appreciated.
I have no idea why he attacked you on my page. But if I'm trying to get a problem addressed, where am I supposed to start? Maybe with the post that provoked the thread? I'm no Sherlock, but it seemed like a starting point.
Who should be listed? I don't know; tell me. - GTBacchus( talk) 07:58, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh, and by "he", yes. I mean Pmanderson. - GTBacchus( talk) 17:05, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I suggest you read the conversation between myself and Carcharoth on his talk page. - GTBacchus( talk) 00:38, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
[1] As far as I can tell, that article's references had a mosdate-acceptable style, and used it consistently (or if not, nearly enough that the style was evident). I'm sure you're familiar with DATERET. When you make these sort of edits, you change so many paragraphs that almost any other subsequent edit makes a simple undo impossible, which brings up WP:FAITACCOMPLI (and its older target Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and_characters_2#Fait_accompli). I'm disappointed, Tony. I'm also disappointed at a couple of your recent WT:MOSDATE comments which appear to apply (incorrect) motives to some of my actions. You seem to express dislike when others attribute motives to you. Gimmetoo ( talk) 08:48, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
But, I appreciate you have IT expertise, so it's obviously beneficial for the project if such issues can be worked through in places like MOSNUM talk with your assistance. I hope to learn a few technical things from you. Tony (talk) 09:45, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Discussion moved to WT:SIGNPOST per Jarry. Pine talk 19:57, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
I took the liberty of adding mine and Happyme22's obscure politician from Whittier, which oddly was not on the list you put up. I guess after Whitlam, it's all downhill from there ... -- Wehwalt ( talk) 23:37, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
in this case the article is properly referenced using general referencing. it could probably benefit from a little formatting, but it is otherwise fine. -- emerson7 15:37, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the notes in the newsroom. I have been having difficulty maintaining consistency across issues when it comes to drafting subtitles, external link placement, whether or not to attribute authors alongside publications, and so forth. In the interests of maintaining standards and increased professionalism, would you have any interest in setting out the house style a little more comprehensively?
Do you know the status of Pine's story? It would be good to have it written up for Monday's issue.
Spring and summer have passed with nary a blip on the ACE front. I had almost forgotten the institution's existence with the quiet year we've had, but if there's to be a discussion before the last minute, the window of opportunity narrows. Reply where you wish. Mahalo, Skomorokh 15:48, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Pine's story? I'm out of the loop on that. Will look.
Like last year, I hold little hope of a software revamp, but we can subsist on the current version year after year, I suppose. That, above all, needs early action in any year the community is serious about improving SecurePoll, since a Foundation developer, like Tim Starling, needs to be brought onboard before formulating the viable options for an RfC, during an RfC, and of course after it. I'm keener to get the community discussing a preferential system, which would at least avoid the strong downward distortion of the support-ranking figures, which I notice are being dragged out without explanation and compared with non-competitive votes such as RfAs and RfBs at the current RfC on the voting threshold for promoting editors to crat (against much higher admin and crat thresholds, 56.7% is cited as the arbcom threshold, I suppose on the basis of last year's S / (S + O), where many voters click on oppose to make their support votes more powerful. Oranges compared with apples.) But I think the chance of getting movement on the existing voting system is zilch. And people seem more willing to discuss it when the buzz is in the air, in October/November. Perhaps a Signpost article on possible voting systems, in early October? Tony (talk) 16:26, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
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I'm very unhappy with Rjanag's "You're just too stupid for your own good" comment, not made any easier by his supporters pointing to my block log. But just look at my block log; it's daft admins making daft blocks. They walk away from their crimes, but we victims can't. Malleus Fatuorum 02:53, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
It was from 0–10, not 1–10. I don't work for the WMF, I wasn't a part of Referendum Community, and I'm not a sysop on any Wikimedia project; any statement I make is entirely unofficial. If you wish to receive an official statement, I recommend asking a member of the Referendum Committee. The eleven numbers represented the degree to which the voter agreed or disagreed with the statement presented. Zero represented the strongest degree of disagreement, five represented neutrality, and ten represented the strongest degree of agreement. -- Michaeldsuarez ( talk) 12:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
You said, "You can see the consensus in a recent archive at MoS talk." Can you give me a (few) link(s), or at least some good search terms to use? (As you can imagine, searching for "links", say, is pretty much useless.) I'm sure you have a much better idea of where to look than I do.... - dcljr ( talk) 12:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I replied to your question [2] but have now removed my reply because there is even more to this than I had realised. Here, for example, at Production Process, and Synthesis gas bother me. There seems to be a difference of terminology between USA and UK (I am old-fashioned UK) although this does not affect the hyphen/dash situation. However, it is possible that when a hyphen is used (and generally a space is used) it may be by mistake for a dash (chemists not caring much about this sort of thing). However from an "etymological" point of view it may be there are arguments for both hyphen and dash. I am investigating. I personally don't much care about the "punctuation" but I am interested in the origin and exact meaning of the phrase. In any case I remain sure that the phrase is best with just spaces (but with whatever redirects are reasonably plausible). Thincat ( talk) 11:26, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes. I think it was fundamentally a misunderstanding surrounding the meaning of the word "stress", but, since mutliple editors evidently do construe it as a definite/medical concept, I'm fine with you changing my wording. Regards, - Jarry1250 Weasel? Discuss. 11:45, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
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To receive this newsletter on your talk page, join the project or sign up here. If you are a member who does not want delivery, please go to this page. EdwardsBot ( talk) 18:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Tony1, you have boldly moved a whole bunch of articles to new titles with lower-case letters. However, many of these moves are misguided, such as in 3GPP Long Term Evolution and IP Multimedia Subsystem: these are all proper names. 3GPP Long Term Evolution is not an article on the long-term evolution of the 3GPP standard but discusses a standard that is called Long-Term Evolution (LTE). Similarly, IP Multimedia Subsystem does not discuss a multimedia subsystem of the IP protocol but is a specific protocol named IP Multimedia Subsystem. Please revert these changes! Nageh ( talk) 12:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Neither High Speed Packet Access nor 3GPP Long Term Evolution contains a hyphen. (This annoys me too, but the trademarked names are beyond our control.) I've undone the moves accordingly. — David Levy 19:07, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree with what's been discussed here. In particular: (1) Standard documents frequently deviate from standard capitalization. Textbooks, in contrast, have been edited by language experts and are a much better reference for spelling questions. They generally follow the philosophy laid out above. (2) Many computing terms have been established without required hyphens. WP should accept that only for proper nouns. -- EnOreg ( talk) 09:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Please stop changing proper nouns to common, when you don't understand the subject matters. Please review all and revert article names such as HSPA, which now again requires admin intervention. Kbrose ( talk) 21:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I seem to be missing some context. Could you elaborate on the copyright issue that you mentioned in your note to me? Thanks. I am all too aware of the capital letter confusion and lack of a good MOS for computing and Internet articles. Feel free to help with some proposals. If I have the time, I would like to summarize the previous discussion since I agree with the result (what I think it is, at least) . W Nowicki ( talk) 18:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
rʨanaɢ ( talk) 05:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Tony, I am quite offended that you accused me of plagiarism. You need to be a little more objective and do a lot more research before you spout your mouth off. I have NEVER published anything that has not been fully attributed. You are making a VERY serious accusation about someone that is in the writing business.
The original article in question was 100% written by me and is now out of date since a new edition of the book has been published. The article content is no longer valid and a misleading representation of the book. The content of the article needs to be re-written (I do not have time to do that) or deleted. I am opting for the latter.
Sincerely, Todd — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toddwill ( talk • contribs) 13:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. The image is of the blade (the wavy one on the bottom) and the sheathe (the straighter one at the top). There are not two knives, but two parts of a single knife. I noted JJ Harrison as making the derivative work for his work turning this into this, which is more or less what is featured now. If you have any more questions, please let me know at my talk page. Thanks! Crisco 1492 ( talk) 13:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
I believe the former "irc" link is now what you get if you click on the word #wikisignpost (though you may wish to try that). I assume it's IRC presentation standardisation across Wikipedia. HTH, - Jarry1250 Weasel? Discuss. 17:15, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, a couple of years ago you kindly did a very useful review – and an interview with me, as I recall! – of my Inner German border article. I'm back with another "anniversary" article, Battle of Vukovar, which I've likewise rewritten and expanded with the intention of getting it to featured status by the anniversary date of 18 November (oddly enough, only 9 days after the anniversary of the IGB's opening...) If you have the opportunity to do a review of this one as well I'd be very grateful. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Vukovar/archive1. Prioryman ( talk) 00:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Nobody responded, but Signpost made a story about it, but not as "breaking news". As Wikizine has space to make irregular editions, we published information about it as "techflash" edition. -- millosh ( talk (meta:)) 14:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
And I read about changing of the main editor... Everything is fine. We should think about cooperation; at least about creating a union of Wikimedia journalists ;) -- millosh ( talk (meta:)) 14:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
The tabular data is available at [3]. My instinct would be to say that Features views have indeed dropped slightly in the last 6 months, although I can run a proper regression if you would like. - Jarry1250 Weasel? Discuss. 15:33, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi. I am Jivesh. I read you user page and i was quite impressed. Do you do copy-edits? ★Jivesh 1205★ ( talk / ♫♫Give 4 a try!!!♫♫) 15:25, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I have procedurally closed the requested move you started at Category talk:College Sports Fan Sites#Requested move because categories can't be renamed in the same fashion as articles/templates/Wikipedia space/portals, etc. (something to do with the MediaWiki software). They have to go through the categories for discussion process. For simple capitalisation fixes like this one, you can nominate at WP:CFDS, which is what I have done for this category. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, it will be renamed in two days. Best, Jenks24 ( talk) 17:10, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, Can you take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#NO_Internal_consistancy. I really don't think it's suitable to be inconsistant within an article. Thanks Tony1, Antony, Admin Tony, SysOp Tony, SysOp Tony1 etc. Regards, SunCreator ( talk) 22:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
I didn't realize I was reverting you, so here's a chance to put your version back in. But as you can see, [4] [5] I don't get it. Art LaPella ( talk) 04:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Art, this is just so much garbage. Sorry to be sharp, but really, you've spattered it with so much blue that the linking system is fatally weakened, not to mention the whole purpose of TFA. And yes, if you want to scattergun link to just about everything, you should be auditing those targets. Tony (talk) 06:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
One of my biggest pet peeves is the "Random Business Term That Is Capitalized To Sound Important"; thank you for all of your recent work in many articles to eliminate that particular theme in our coverage of business and economic topics. I'd throw some random barnstar on here, but I'm lazy and you're sick and unlikely to appreciate it. :) Kuru (talk) 22:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Tony. Yes, new to editing but wanting to get more involved. Thanks for the advice. I take it that adding a new section on the talk page triggers the nice 'new message' banner. Very nice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ged Byrne ( talk • contribs) 08:56, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Tony, I want to bring this chapter from a technical handbook to your attention. It uses capitalization in a grammatically correct way, i.e., upper-casing for specific solutions (such as protocols) and lower-casing for generic terms such as public data network (PDN) and subscriber network interface (SNI). HTH, and get well soon. :) Nageh ( talk) 12:01, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the reference, Nageh. I wouldn't use capitals quite as much as that document does. For example it appears to use capitals in headings and captions:
However it does illustrate nicely that capitals aren't required in full forms just because capitals are used in abbreviations:
Just my thoughts. Lightmouse ( talk) 14:05, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to develop a rule-of-thumb list of items that might not be subject to the default downcasing. A list might include the following items that refer to specific things, as opposed to generic things:
Sometimes considerable thought is required to sort out whether items should reasonably be uppercased. Tony (talk) 02:11, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Concerning your question to Dicklyon, google is useful in some cases, but rarely delivers a solution on a silver plate. Every publisher, including WP, faces the conundrum of what to do when external usage is not uniform and is in part at odds with its own house style. I think a case-by-case approach is required that considers WP's guide lines and policies, external style guides, and usage by writers in a field. I agree with Dicklyon that if only "most" external examples go against our own house style, it's not necessarily enough to overturn that style. It would need to be an overwhelming, almost exclusive usage to consider creating an internal inconsistency within WP. This is what other publishers do. Tony (talk) 10:33, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Sometimes we encounter people who seem to give evidence of being closed-minded about one thing or another. Rarely we meet someone who speaks openly about being closed intellectually to evidence that would contradict a position already chosen. You might be interested to read the words of Richard Lewontin, as found at the following page.
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.
Other statements by him can be found at
Richard Lewontin - Wikiquote.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
05:22, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
(a) I've been recommending your exercises to RL friends who keep saying they are the best resources they have read. (b) you've ruined my life. I walked past a sign today that said "24 hour a day [parking]". What was my first thought? "You can remove two words from this..." Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:51, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
G W … 08:17, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the note, I left an explanation on the talk page at the time of the move. Hekerui ( talk) 12:54, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi. Regarding your question on my talk page a few days ago, I have now sent the article to AfD. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Freedom through choice if you would like to comment. Cheers, Jenks24 ( talk) 14:38, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I've been tidying up some old stuff and I've come across Talk:George Frideric Handel/Archive 2 # Birth date, the last entry in which thread was by you.
Can you cast your mind back and remember just what it was you were saying was "very sensible"? I'd like to revive my original proposal but it may need more contemporary discussion now that 3 years have passed. Cheers. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:27, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I noticed you moved this article earlier today, but a quick Google search doesn't seem to show show anything significant to suggest there are benefits in other countries with this name. Surely we don't need to disambiguate this? TheRetroGuy ( talk) 12:58, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, just a request. When you do the write-up for the four new FPs ( File:Extermination of Evil Sendan Kendatsuba.jpg, File:Extermination of Evil Shinchū.jpg, File:Extermination of Evil Shōki.jpg, File:Extermination of Evil Vaisravana.jpg), could you mention that it means all of the images from Extermination of Evil are now featured, as File:Extermination of Evil Tenkeisei.jpg has been featured since 2009. Thanks. Crisco 1492 ( talk) 01:56, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
I am reverting your changes. Leebrandoncremer ( talk) 03:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Well why change something you know nothing about? I worked at NASA I know what i am talking about, just stick with what you know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leebrandoncremer ( talk • contribs) 03:24, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
These acronyms are established industry wide for these articles, they have become Proper Names. The agency uses them as such so back off change the world some where else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leebrandoncremer ( talk • contribs) 03:31, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
You are a word snob, get a life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leebrandoncremer ( talk • contribs) 03:39, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
I will monitor you moron.
You are a sad and lonely man. I feel very sorry for you. Correcting other peoples work because you have no abilities of your own. How sad.
Your not even close to being clever. Any changes you make to any work I see in the future will simply be reversed. Im guessing you're suffering from little man syndrome.
It is true that writers take editors edits personally, so I will acknowledge that as my failing. The point still stands, in the case of NASA acronyms, it is an accepted theme. To delineate between outside similar objects, NASA acronyms become proper nouns. They are written as such. I understand the need for accuracy across the board in WP but from other space related articles, and there are 1,000s, this is the accepted format. Each word of the acronym is capitalised to show its name and to where the acronym derives its name. My apologies Tony, I was too defensive. Leebrandoncremer ( talk) 11:04, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Thats all well and good but the American Govt, Armed Forces, USAF (Air Force), USA (Army), USN (Navy) and NASA use acronyms routinely, to create proper nouns... The name NASA for example... National Aeronautics and Space Administration becomes NASA and all the terms they create follow the same rule. Leebrandoncremer ( talk) 13:40, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
No my point was not those names themselves, but the acronyms for things they produce. Such as the 1,000s of acronyms NASA produces. You guys are way too focused here.
Hi. I saw your comments on the talk page there. In order to clarify the "keeps" and "deletes" for the box, would you please also weigh in above under the "Comments" section to show your vote and referencing your 6 reasons below? All the best, -- Ssilvers ( talk) 02:07, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
We only disambiguate titles if there is a chance of confusion with other topics and no clear primary usage. That doesn't seem to be the case here, so I don't think the article should have been moved to General Services Administration (US government). postdlf ( talk) 14:21, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Candidate support vs ranking formula.pdf, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 17:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Enwiki ArbCom 2010 supports vs ranking percent.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 18:01, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the praise for National Treasures of Japan and sorry for not replying to your email. I guess it is too late now for that. Should check email more regularly. In fact I only noticed that you had sent me an email through Truthkeeper88's talk page. bamse ( talk) 00:39, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Ooh, so it is! Top hit in four search engines I tried... I hadn't realised you were world-famous! Though I'm sure the shortcut will still be useful within Wikipedia. Good job on the visitors' hook, too.
In other news, a crazy semester has left me way behind in my Signpost reading. Is there any way to view past issues in single page format? Adrian J. Hunter( talk• contribs) 12:13, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I'm contacting you regarding this edit. I went to Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2011_October_6 as suggested on the page to point out that the source was a public domain U.S. government text (as was indicated in the article), but noticed that no investigation had been posted there. Could you let me know what your intentions are here? Thanks much! Haus Talk 20:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
The obscuring of Italian Wikipedia emphasized to me the somewhat vulnerable nature of access to Wikipedia, and, by extension, to the Internet, because of legislative, technical, economic, or environmental factors. Remembering that continued access is not absolutely guaranteed, I ask myself how I can best spend my time if this is my last day or week or month. I need to prioritize the ways in which I contribute and also the ways in which I benefit. The expression
Carpe diem ("Seize the day") is timely. Steve Jobs made some comments about the use of time. (
Steve Jobs - Wikiquote)
—
Wavelength (
talk)
20:21, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Please engage in discussion in Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#comet_and_galaxy_examples instead of reverting again the examples without discussion or proof of consensus. -- Enric Naval ( talk) 08:31, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your interest in Gestalt Practice. This is a technical subject. Let me ask you to please reverse the changes that you made to the Gestalt Practice article. First, there is a good reason why it is called Gestalt Practice. Both words are capitalized to distinguish it from Gestalt therapy, otherwise the phrase "Gestalt practice" is misconstured to be the practice of Gestalt therapy. That is wrong. Gestalt Practice is something different. Also, in the footnotes, there is a text called the Manual of Gestalt Practice in the tradition of Dick Price. That's the name of the document. Removing the capital letters is a mistake. The footnote becomes meaningless. I understand your passion for correctness. I understand your campaign against capital letters. However, in this case the changes you made will cause the article to be misconstured by readers. I understand that you couldn't have been aware of these issues in advance. I appreciate your help. I would like to ask you to please reverse the changes that you made to the original Gestalt Practice article. I have posted this comment in order to inform you fully about these issues. I want to give you the opportunity to reconsider the work you have done on the article. I want you to know what is going on, rather than slam your hard work. I did not know any other way to ask you for help with this problem. I certainly don't want to create a contentious atmosphere. Thank you once again. You are welcome to remove this comment after you have addressed this matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callaban ( talk • contribs)
Hi Tony. Could you please take a look at Talk:21-Hydroxylase/Archive 1#Requested move when you get a chance? Cheers, Jenks24 ( talk) 06:55, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi, Tony. Thank you taking care of standardizing titles of different shale oil extraction processes. The only question is related to the Gas combustion retort process. I added my comments to the article's talk page and maybe you could add what you think about this issue. Thank you in advance. Beagel ( talk) 09:55, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Please simplify the DYK nomination process. I've completely cocked up the nomination here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:50, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony - Please revise your move of the ground granulated blast furnace slag article to ground-granulated blast-furnace slag. The hyphen may belong in "blast-furnace" as the adjectival form of "blast furnace", but "ground" and "granulated" are separate adjectives modifying "slag" - "granulated blast-furnace slag" is a by-product which is then ground to make GGBS for commercial use. "Granulated" is a necessary adjective as slag can be produced in ways which don't result in granulation. The correct description, as indicated by the FHWA (in one of the references), is ground granulated blast-furnace slag.
Incidentally, what's with using characters which can't be directly typed in article titles? What's wrong with using the hyphen which appears on everyone's keyboard?
Argyriou (talk) 04:32, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony (talk) 06:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Sven Manguard Wha? 12:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
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I understand the logic in rewriting "value added tax" as "value-added tax". Unfortunately, the phrase is always spelt without a hyphen in British and EU legislation, and is almost always written accordingly in British publications.
It seems to me that the problem is that one phrase refers to two concepts:
Though the legislative and official spellings might not be conclusive, in practice the vast majority of British publishers have followed it, at least when referring to the specific tax.
Capital gains tax is not usually hyphenated, not even when referring to Capital gains tax in the United States, and the same is true of many state benefits (such as Severe Disablement Allowance, which I note that you recently re-titled but did not hyphenate!).
Articles about English-speaking countries follow the style applicable to the country concerned, where there is international inconsistency. It may be that, outside the EU, there is a policy debate about value-added taxation in general, where the case for hyphenation would be strong.
But I would suggest that, for consistency with other taxes and international usage, references to "value-added tax" be reverted to "value added tax".
This may also be applicable to other state schemes which you have boldly hyphenated recently.
— Richardguk ( talk) 12:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
I think what's going on here, as so much of the time, is that people drop hyphens from familiar phrases. For example, most people write "high school student" without any implication that the student is on dope. Similarly, if you write about value-added taxes a lot, you're likely to drop the hyphen there too. But our audience is more diverse than that, and we cannot assume that our readers are familiar with the topic of an article. Therefore we should hyphenate to avoid ambiguity. This isn't a ENGVAR thing, as it happens in all national standards; it's an accessibility issue.
A good example, I think, is the uproar over hyphenating small cell carcinoma. Most of the people editing that article are medical students or even oncologists, and they see no need to hyphenate. (One even threatened to stop editing WP if we "vandalized" the article by hyphenating it.) But for the naive reader, a "small cell carcinoma" suggests a small tumour. (As in, much better to have a small cell tumour than a giant cell tumour.) Similarly, for the editors of the VAT article the topic is so familiar that hyphenation may seem silly. For our readers, however, many of whom are not familiar with VAT, it's not silly at all. — kwami ( talk) 14:35, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
However, I'm agnostic as yet on "value-added tax". Let's see what others say. Tony (talk) 14:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
I hope I haven't undermined my own case by the strength of my views! I note kwami's comment (which I responded to above) but also the weight given by Lightmouse to legislative usage. In fairness, it is also notable that, even a week later, no other editors have reverted or commented on the original VAT edits and article moves.
As discussed, I accept that there is a strong case for retaining the hyphen when the phrase is used to mean value-added taxes in general, rather than the specific EU/UK tax, though even here consistency between the abstact and particular lends some weight to hyphenating both.
Given your original conditional offer to self-revert, and your pragmatic comment today about " Ground-granulated blast-furnace slag", would it now be OK for one of us to take the hyphen back out of "value-added tax"?
For reference, the relevant articles, and the titles I would tentatively propose, are:
Current title | Proposed title |
---|---|
Value-added tax | Value added tax |
VAT identification number | retain (but copy edit) |
European Union value-added tax | European Union value added tax |
European Union value-added tax area | European Union VAT area (abbreviation to avoid lengthy compound) |
VAT-free imports from the Channel Islands | retain (but copy edit) |
— Richardguk ( talk) 22:31, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi, you were one of the FA reviewers. Could you take a look at this discussion and consder weighing in? All substantive FA reviewers are being asked.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 18:20, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
On WP:POST/N, you said...
Thanks for that! — Tom Morris ( talk) 09:22, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
OK, I'm working on another coin article, and the artist gave some as gifts at the New Year. Is it New Year's gifts, New Years' gifts, or some other variation? The source is no help, it is a quotation, Adolph Weinman, the artist in question says "in time to be presented as New Year Gifts". Thoughts? US usage.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 11:27, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
See here. 96.238.184.111 ( talk) 18:48, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony - I've noticed that several times in your downcasing RMs, you simultaneously edit the article text to downcase instances of the titles in the article body. As you can see, I've supported several of your moves, but I think it's bad form to edit articles at the same time you propose a downcasing move. Why not wait until the RM runs its course, and edit then? Dohn joe ( talk) 19:13, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Hey. If you're looking for an angle on the new featured material, there are now 100 featured topics on the site, first time that happened since the original shift from 1/3 of articles needing featured status to 1/2. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 16:28, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
Dear Tony1, the discussion on capitalizing protocol layers in the article on the OSI model has still not come to a conclusion and frankly the guys are driving me crazy. They seem unwilling to recognize any argument nor do they make theirs explicit. I don't see how reaching an agreement is possible under these circumstances. Would you have some advice how to deal with this situation? Thanks, -- EnOreg ( talk) 20:34, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony, why do you waste our time with RMs when PROD would obviously be a better route? Dicklyon ( talk) 03:32, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony, I'm rushing to get an issue written and out a.s.a.p, but could use a second set of eyes to review/copyedit, as prose written pre-dawn has a tendency to turn to mush and fact checking is cursory. N&N, ITN, Arb and Tech need a look if you can spare the time. Skomorokh 06:29, 18 October 2011 (UTC) OK, within an hour. Tony (talk) 06:30, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I wonder if you could weigh in at Talk:India#Rotation_vs._slide_show, where there is a discussion in progress about the possibility of having a slide show (a la the newspaper web sites) without a purge. You were mentioned as an expert. Thanks. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 15:42, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I moved HIV Rev response element, but not HIV ribosomal frameshift signal. Looks like "Rev" is the proper noun of Rev (HIV).
I moved Henry Hub, since it's the proper name of an actual building. The pricing point is named after it.
You might be interested in Talk:Ground_granulated_blast-furnace_slag#the_hyphen_between_the_first_two_words.
-- Enric Naval ( talk) 20:38, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Hello.
Please note that I have undone this edit. "Ryll-Nardzewski" is a hyphenated name of just one person. The result is not named after two people named "Ryll" and "Nardzewski". Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:33, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony, you might be surprised that in autoregressive moving-average models, autoregressive is not a modifier of moving-average model. You got the hyphen right in your move, but if you really want it to be right, you need an en dash to signify that it is a model that is both autoregressive and moving average. This en dash is sometimes found in better sources (like this book), as is the hyphen, but I haven't found them both together, which is the only thing that is grammatically and stylistically correct. But people who use these buzz phrases forget that it might be wise to do their best to convey the meaning, rather than rely on readers being in the know. What do we do about that then? Dicklyon ( talk) 21:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
And your hyphen in Light-speed silicon chip makes sense, but the article and its title don't. I've put a merge proposal on it. Good thing I'm stalking you. Dicklyon ( talk) 23:03, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether renaming "Multilinear principal component analysis" to "Multilinear principal-component analysis" was a very good idea either. It should at least match principal component analysis (i.e. the correct parenthesization here would be "(multilinear ((principal component) analysis))"). In this case I think the literature is pretty clear that it should be written without a hyphen. — Ruud 21:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony.
Thank you very much for editing and improving my first article. There's an ongoing Article for Deletion discussion on it right now. Your insights on the matter will be greatly appreciated. Kind regards, GuterTag ( talk) 10:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony, we've never had any interaction, but I've long respected you as an editor and admired your work here. I have to say that I found your comments to be both disheartening and inaccurate. Here is what happened, as I see it: I made a bold edit. I thought it was an improvement, and I left a detailed summary. I was reverted without so much as a word. While I don't edit-war, I have no problem undoing a revert when the editor can't be bothered to leave a simple edit summary, explaining why he or she felt I was wrong. When I was reverted a second time, I didn't continue to revert, but rather went to the talk page. The consensus there seemed (to me) that while the long-standing version may or may not have been more ideal than mine, it was preferable to the newer version. It was on this basis that I reverted to the long-standing version. After thinking it over, I soon decided to err on the side of caution, and self-revert. The "adding and removing" took place literally over a matter of seconds. The next day, I again went to the talk page. The editor who originally reverted me said it was fine to revert to the long-standing version, and this is what I was attempting to do when I inadvertantly removed "and topical", which you kindly corrected. So in summary, I made:
I feel that this is a far cry from your characterization of "adding and removing, adding and removing". My sole intention was to improve Wikipedia, as I'm sure your's is. Regards. Joefromrandb ( talk) 00:34, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Writing new policies isn't something I'm particularly good at - so I'm going to leave it to you. Given the number of comments so far I doubt waiting a bit will make a big difference. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 08:15, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I have opened an RfC related to an issue on which you recently commented: Wikipedia_talk:Selected_anniversaries#Year_wikilinking_in_OTD. Nikkimaria ( talk) 03:19, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony1. As someone who has a strong command of English grammar, would you provide advice at Talk:Middlesex (novel)#Intersex grammar? Thank you, Cunard ( talk) 04:22, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, just to let you know that I've opened up a thread about your recent page moves at Talk:Second-language acquisition#Hyphen or no hyphen?. I'd appreciate it if you could comment. Thanks — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 11:43, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Hello there. I'm writing to tell you that the editors of the Signpost are making an effort to revive the long dormant Dispatches section. Your name is listed in the "Members" section, indicating that you have or had a willingness to help write or critique Dispatches.
Since the project was inactive for over a year, I have moved all of the names previously in the Members section to the "Inactive" subsection. If you no longer wish to participate in the capacity described above, you do not need to do anything, this will be the last time you hear from me on the matter of dispatches.
If you are, however, still interested in Dispatches, please go put your name back into the main members section. I will take that as an indication that it is okay to continue to send your way both Dispatch related messages and individuals seeking assistance with Dispatches in the areas you specified as being your specialties.
I personally am hoping to get at least one Dispatch out before 15 November, so that the section can avoid being officially inactive for a full year (the last dispatch was 15 November 2010). Cheers! Sven Manguard Wha? 08:31, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I have reverted your edit to make the capitalization "consistent" in the Archaea article. The differences in capitalization are intentional, as the taxon name is capitalized but the informal name of the member organisms is not. The differences in capitalization are intentional and carry information. If you wish to "fix" the dashes, please do this as a separate edit, as reverting only the capitalization changes would be a huge hassle. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 02:36, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
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Why did you move Computational chemical methods in solid state physics to Computational chemical methods in solid-state physics and then change the redirect back to the original artcile content? Am I missing something? -- Bduke (Discussion) 20:18, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
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I was going to ask Malleus as he did the GA review, but then I read his talk page. So ... on Walking Liberty half dollar#Reception, I like the first paragraph, but worry about the phrase " little attention was given to the half dollar." near the end. It is almost a repetition, but is also a nice segue into the public voting with their pocketbooks that they liked it. Do you have an opinion? My preference is to keep it, I'll tell you.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 22:26, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for proofing the report. I temporarily undid your edit because you (probably inadvertently) altered a direct quote, and I absolutely won't run a piece unless the quote is, word for word, how I received it. I'll manually put just about everything else back in in about 12 hours, though, when I get back home. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:01, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
This page 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. |
Hi, Tony. As far as I know, you're the best copy-editing editor around, so I came here to ask you a favor, if you don't mind. There is a FAC nomination of May Revolution which I believe that is a lot of potential, but it's has not acchieved FA standards yet. Could you spare some time to review this article and help improve its prose, please? Thank you very much, -- Lecen ( talk) 23:06, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Re this edit, I wonder if some of WP:MOSNUM has escaped your attention, particularly the bit that says, "Where Wikipedia does not mandate a specific style, editors should not attempt to convert Wikipedia to their own preferred style"? It appears that you have changed dozens of dates in that article to the American style for no reason, and then mandated that use at the top! Some of the other parts of that massive edit were inconsequential but possibly slightly useful so I can't be bothered to go through the whole article sorting out the mess. Looking at your contribution history it seems that you did similar things to several dozen articles today alone. Are you planning on putting the dates at Ötzi the Iceman back to European format soon? -- Nigelj ( talk) 19:25, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi mate, re. your last edit summary/question, you know you're preaching to the converted when it comes to using larger images, so no issue there...;-) My only concern is that placing that image on the right generates a great deal of white space after the section heading; even if we move the image down to the next second para, it'd encroach on the next section. I think image placement in the vicinity of infoboxes is never ideal, but having text squeezed a bit seemed preferable to a lot of white space. I have two laptops at home, one with 10" screen and one with 15", and the space occurs no matter which -- any suggestions? Cheers, Ian Rose ( talk) 10:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
Be aware that the editable version of the TFP feature is really used for modelling suggestions that are being flagged up on wp:Errors. Changing as you did at 04:25 today does not alter the Main Page, and those who might change it on the Main Page are unlikely to see it if not drawn to their attention at ERRORS. Kevin McE ( talk) 12:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
Just to comment on the image size thing, which is cropping up in lots of places. I think you have to recognise that images are there to be clicked on. Readers are not stupid and they learn or find out that to get a bigger image you need to do more than just look at the page and wonder why the image is not presented in a larger size. Have a look at website like the BBC news website, which while it is a news website and not an encyclopedia website, it does have 'boxes' on the page that have pictures of varying size. But it does still have small images. And unlike Wikipedia, when I sometimes want to see a larger version of the images they are using, I click and it takes me to the news story (or feature) and often the image in question is not there at all! Very disappointing. But I do think it is possible to go overboard with making images bigger. There will always be a need for the smaller thumbnails to allow room for the text. And there should be more text than images on Wikipedia's front page, though I do also think that a major overhaul of the design is needed (the last one was 2006), but that would entail changes to all the processes that currently feed into it. Though you seem to have been trying to make changes to all those processes! Maybe a more centralised discussion about the main page as a whole would be better than approaching each 'box' separately? Carcharoth ( talk) 22:28, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
A. You might srsly be surprised how man "normal people" (not young webhead techie wiki-crowd editors, but normal readers) do not know to click on the photo or do not do it routinely.
B. Some websites give a bigger pic when you click on an image. Some do not. It is by no means universal for that to happen.
C. Clicking sux. I want to incorporate info as fast and efficient as I can.
D. Doesn't help if the page is printed.
P.s. That said, your MP review was bitchin'. TCO ( reviews needed) 02:16, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Carcharoth, sorry to have taken so long to respond.
"I think you have to recognise that images are there to be clicked on. Readers are not stupid"—Several responses. Typically readers are faced seeing with the display size on a page or a humungously large original at full res if they wanted to divert to the pic page (we should hope not unless they have a special reason for doing so); sometimes the full tragedy takes a little while to download, too, aside from the need to navigate around the wallpaper. Many visitors to the main page won't know about this double-clicking function. But more important than this impracticality is the need to treat the pics as functional in the context of the main-page information and layout, without reference to the original pic at full res at Commons or wherever.
The great concern is to redesign the main page so it looks good and uses images well, while having good functionality and accessibility; this is the agenda for almost every other website, even if some don't meet these challenges as well as they could. There is too much text on WP's main page, all sandwiched into a dense forest of big grey paragraphs and messy bullets, vying for the limited real estate. Let's remember that the page stretches down a long way, and User:Dispenser has pointed out research results that show the alarmingly small proportion of visitors to any site who scroll down.
The double-column idea guarantees that images have to be tiny, especially on the cramped 45% right-side. While some portraits are discernible at 100px (and luckily OTD and ITN choose mostly portraits), their impact and interest factor rates about 2/10 on my scale.
"Best of all would be a hover-and-expand feature for images, but I think at the moment the hover function mousetips the alt text (or something)?" I'm not convinced the accessibility can't be good in a mouse-over-expanding-images main page. I'm not saying it's a doddle (what to do about the imageless TFAs needs to be worked through; but then, imageless TFAs right now are a major downer). Tony (talk) 06:13, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
The Signpost Barnstar | ||
For your excellent and consistent work as the main writer of the Signpost's "Featured content"/"Features and admins" section that I was allowed to witness during my past year as the Signpost's editor, as well as for numerous improvements of the Signpost's readability and visual appeal, I award you the Signpost Barnstar. Regards, HaeB ( talk) 00:53, 9 July 2011 (UTC) |
Hi Tony. I know you generally don't review articles unless they are already at the Feature article nominees board, but I was wondering if you could take a quick look at Indonesian National Revolution and tell me if you think it would have a good chance or not; no need to go in-depth, just the basics. If it looks good, I hope to nominate it so it can be FA status by Indonesia's Independence Day on 17 August. Thanks. Crisco 1492 ( talk) 14:30, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Created from data supplied at
User:Snottywong/Article creation stats.
Tony
(talk)
14:38, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Tony, following on from your comments on the 11 July TFL blurb and your (understandable) disappointment at the quality of the Somerset TFA blurb, I'd just like to invite you, if you dare, to spend a few moments reviewing our TFL blurbs which, generally, will be available no less than two weeks before hitting Main Page. As we're only a one-day-a-week brigade, it's easier for us to ensure quality, but as you pointed out a while back, we should be aiming higher, and we currently have a growing consensus in the list world that 2/3 times a week should be achievable. However, we don't want to fall into the TFA trap of weak blurbs, so right now I'm just putting this out here to ask if you'd be kind enough to support our ongoing (current) scheme of Monday=TFL day, and hopefully support our future Sat/Sun/Mon (perhaps) = TFL days. As ever, thanks for your interest in our process, and for the time you invest in dragging us from the grammatical gutter. The Rambling Man ( talk) 18:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Tony, "... if people really do want to walk away, that's fine ..." you said, I don't support that, not in general and particularly not in the situation, -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 12:45, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I started with a 100 word para (bout right length I thought). Director told me to get it up to 1200 spaces (I guess that is 200 words+) for balance versys rest of page (they actually WANT more text, not just tolerate it). So...I put a para break in! It made sense idea wise. And looked just ducky. non-wikians saw it running and no one thought it bad (looked like magazine text). Wikians didn't like it though...for being different and it got changed back after a few hours. Really don't think it was bad though. Think it was good. :) TCO ( reviews needed) 00:21, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, just a quick request, I've now queued up our TFL blurbs to the end of August, (only six), so was wondering, if you had the time and energy and inclination, if you could give us some feedback/copyedits of them. Mind you, that does depend on whether FLs continue to feature on main page, which seems in doubt right now given the various wide-ranging main page update discussions... Hope you're well. For your convenience, July and August are the links. The Rambling Man ( talk) 14:51, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
Rather than overwhelm that talk page with more side-discussion, I've come here to bring up another reason why I objected to the wording "obvious faults in prose, structure, and formatting". You use the word obvious to ensure that it doesn't become an open-ended review, but turn it around and imagine that you wrote a new article that you thought was good, and then had someone tell you that there was an "obvious fault". Even if it was true, it would be a bit discouraging, wouldn't it? I would have no objections to someone suggesting improvements to 'prose, structure, and formatting', but I would be a bit more diplomatic about it. Having said that, the last time I pointed out an 'obvious' fault to someone (the title in an article about a person had a spelling mistake and the name was not spelled consistently in the article) they retired, though that may have been due to other matters. It is a very minor point, so can you not agree that rephrasing "obvious faults" might gain more acceptance for the idea that all articles should at some point get a basic review done? Carcharoth ( talk) 16:55, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
It's a handful, but I'm determined to get Richard Nixon to FA and you seem the guy to go to.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 00:23, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
The Barnstar of Diplomacy | |
For coming up with some great ideas for how to improve the DYK and seeming to be the only person actually actively coming up with trial and errors to do so. I was very impressed by your graphs and you current trial with the mini review for the July 19th entries. Great job, hopefully this will come to something. I think its a great idea. And if people can't be bothered to do the reviews it would be tough luck! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:03, 25 July 2011 (UTC) |
Jayjg (talk) 01:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
A fellow editor has raised a query on my talk page about some musical numbering which was affected by the dashes script. As an expert in music and style matters, can you advise please? -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 06:11, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, just saw a newly created article, 2011 Kosovo-Serbia border clashes and thought, per the new consensus at WT:MOS, that it should be moved to 2011 Kosovo–Serbia border clashes because Kosovo and Serbia are two separate entities. Is that correct? Cheers, Jenks24 ( talk) 10:37, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. Question about this new DYK setup. Is the nominator supposed to add this to the nomination themselves, or do we wait for someone else to do it (as you did)? If it's the former, I'll make sure I do so on the rest of my nominations. But let me know either way. Thanks! — Hun ter Ka hn 13:56, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
With regard to the article Synaptula lamperti, I would not have nominated it for DYK myself as I knew it had its failings resulting particularly from the limited sources I had found. Someone else nominated it however so it is under the spotlight.
It is difficult to extract information from the few available sources about an obscure species, and which may use technical terms, without doing some close paraphrasing. If I find several sources, I can often see how they have all close paraphrased one another and it is not always apparent which is the original. Either I use the same material that they have done or I can't write the article. When it comes to describing an organism there is always a conventional order in which things are written and it is difficult to avoid the technical terms. I try to avoid close paraphrasing as much as possible but can't avoid it completely.
Is Wikipedia the better for the article? I think it is. Are any of the sources going to complain? I think not. Cwmhiraeth ( talk) 05:50, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi there! I think I've missed something. DYK used to be quite simple, but now it seems to have got overly complicated, and I'm worried that new users won't understand it. Hell, I'm an arbitrator, and I struggled to understand the new system. Is this now set in policy, or can people review DYKs without it? The Cavalry ( Message me) 11:18, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Response: Chase me, I'm glad to see you back. The nomination system has new instructions that enable a watchlistable sub-page for each nom, which is a significant advance for the forum. But beyond that, it's not the nomination so much as the reviewing system that has been modified, so one hopes there's nothing to put off new editors wanting their work exposed on the main page. But one thing I personally would like to see is the expectation that more nominators return to their nomination page to engage with reviews; this often hasn't occurred and is part of the cycle that disenchants potential reviewers from participating.
There's been a lot of discontent about DYK over the past few months (coming after several previous waves, I believe; but I wasn't around DYK then). You might be interested in this summary of recent RfC results:
This came after a lot of discussion:
Then a series of DYK-specific RfCs were launched over the past two weeks:
And several other discussion threads.
So now after all of this kerfuffle, at least we have overwhelming consensus for an explicit reviewing checklist, comprising almost entirely the existing rules of DYK, which clearly haven't been implemented properly until now. There's a degree of disquiet among a few DYK regulars as to what type of checklist should be used, but the RfC has made that pretty plain, I think.
To answer your opening question, yes, there's no policy-driven checklist, but the RfC has made it abundantly clear that a specific set of aspects must be explicitly checked and passed; I guess this could be done by typing out in long-hand that one thinks a nom should pass on each ground, but they would need to be spelled out (not just "Passes all DYK requirements"). Tony (talk) 12:14, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, I think this page is a good start for reviewing, but beyond that I think we need a page somewhere about how to correctly paraphrase and summarize. In my mind the issue boils down to teaching some fundamental writing strategies. I'm popping in & out today until a bit later, but I wanted to float the idea while it's on my mind. Truthkeeper88 ( talk) 17:01, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. Although I think your formal review system is a great idea and the raise in standards that are needed I'm afraid to say it has put off many of the decent DYK regulars including myself and both of my regular fellow writers who are unwilling to go to such lengths jsut to get a DYK credit. I thought having to review other people's work even briefly before was pushing it before but having to conduct a formal review for each one I think is a little too far. The only way I can see it working in the long run is if we adopt say 5 or so DYK reviewers who are given the task of overlooking DYKs much like you did recently. I know you haven't time for it yourself on a permanent basis but I feel if we could free it up for DYK article writers so they write an article and simply propose and leave it up to ADYK reviewer to pick out anything issues I feel it would releive the pressure on the writer. I mean say you spend three hours writing an article the last thing you want to do is have to do detective work on somebody else's article just so you can get your credit.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
User:Khazar's quit, User:Nvvchar's quit, User:Rosiestep relatively inactive past week, these are amongst our most prolific contributors. We can't afford to lose these people. Its sad to see. Is the main page of wikipedia more important than our most productive editors? We need to find a balance Tony, can you respond? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:55, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
But the DYK system appears to have been constructed to encourage quantity instead, made possible by the quick-and-easy approach. What upsets many members of the community is that if newly created/expanded articles are to be showcased on the main page, there should an expectation of quality and policy compliance that takes a little time and concentration to achieve, even with short articles. (I'd have thought a major justification of DYK was to induct newish editors into these skills, to establish relationships between them and more experienced editors—but this hasn't been happening.)
DYK finds itself caught between:
(1) its toxic reputation in the community (I don't need to link you to that);
(2) the growing emphasis on professionalism in content venues over the past few years (especially WRT copyvio, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing);
(3) calls to significantly improve the content and design of WP's main page, and on the other side;
(4) an entrenched DYK culture of pumping through huge quantities in short shifts on the main page, over checking for compliance and quality and giving them the time-exposure they deserve.
I'm puzzled when you say, "I feel if we could free it up for DYK article writers so they write an article and simply propose and leave it up to a DYK reviewer to pick out anything issues I feel it would releive the pressure on the writer." I didn't have relieving pressure on writers right up there as a priority, actually: in the view of many editors, there's been far too little pressure on the DYK process, witness the widespread dump-and-run practice of nominating and failing to return, and the introduction of a quid-pro-quo reviewing requirement that masquerades as full, policy-compliance reviewing, but which has typically been a one-line wave-through. I think you'll find the community won't support a system that discourages the induction and mentoring of newish editors into the article improvement process—it matters nil that these are short, sometimes stubby articles: people expect them still to be good examples of WP's output if they're on the main page, and why not?
To return to your first concern, that editors are "leaving" DYK—well, let them. Too many DYKs are getting through unchecked, and the calls to slow it down are deafening. If traffic slows, thank heavens—we can all breath a bit and make DYKs a proud part of the main page and an incubator for skilled editors who have the keenness to stick around. As User:Demiurge said yesterday at DYK talk:
“ | If the number of submissions is dropping as a result of the new process, then that's clearly a positive outcome. The number of hooks cycling through the front page can be reduced as necessary to allow for the increased time that reviews will take, and thus everything (eventually) will start to work differently. And hopefully better. The transition period may be a little painful, that's all. | ” |
Yeah I agree, in part its finding a balance I think. The thing is Tony whilst declining DYK input may be a good thing it is not a good thing that we are losing such productive editors who are a net plus for the project, regardless of DYK. IN regards to the pressure, yes it would seem it was too slack, but my point is why would I bother doing a ten minute review of somebody else's article just to simply get my article on the main page? The sad thing though is that many editors have clearly treated DYK like a game and are more interested it would seem in having their credit or daily buzz. I know DYK is a big motivator for many but it should not be central to wikipedia. I treat it as a harmless start to what could later become a GA. In regards to award as I've mentioned at the DYK, although this could be extended beyond DYK, I feel Tony that given our budget of $20 million this year? I think we could find that bit extra to invest a bit back into the project. If it would be too much to award editors for every good 25 articles they write, what about a monthly prize like that for the best article written in that month, say the best three articles like a Gold Prize, Silver Prize and Bronze Prize. Whilst this may be difficult if articles are collaborations you could work out what individual editors have contributed by their amount of referenced prose. Of course articles would need to be assessed to ensure that nobody has plagiarised or warbled on just to make their efforts look more respectable. People may think I'm crazy, whatever, but in a way an Amazon award scheme could also work for wikipedia. I know that money is seen as a taboo on wikipedia but I feel there should be a mechanism in place which gets editors to strive to produce the best article in a month. If the top prize was say a $500 voucher, second prize $250 third prize $100, fourth prize $50, fifth prize $25 that's what, $925 a month, less than $12,000 a year. Similarly you could have a prize for Best Article expansion and Best New Article. Perfectly reasonable I think given what our budget is. We could easily raise that in a day or two. If I won best article of the month or third best or whatever I would likely use an e-voucher to buy books to write articles. I think it could prove an effective scheme. I just feel we need to introduce things like this to just get editors more of a will to improve their articles and go that bit further. If that amount was offered the chance to be awarded with Best Article of the Month and a $500 voucher would really motivate to produce better work. Perhaps this scheme should be introduced for DYK to bring back the motivation. I agree with you that it is very important that initial step from stub to start class as a precedent for GA and higher and we desperately need to motivate people to expand our stubs and indeed start new content, especially from the non anglosphere.. If such a scheme were introduced, suddenly I would have a reason to bother doing a review and nominating my article for the chance of winning something. Its things like this which work. This way we would have a vigorous reviewing scheme in place raising standards and still give editors a reason to want to contribute.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
With Nixon set for FAC tonight US time, there is a remaining matter. People keep changing the last sentence of the first paragraph from "Nixon is the only President to resign the office." to "Nixon is the only President to have resigned the office." I think the first sentence is more effective, and is grammatically sound, but you are the expert. Also, I would appreciate it if you would look over what I have done with the images in the Presidential section (basically added a large image at the start of each major section, as you did with Domestic Policy, as the way of giving the reader a break from the unending text.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 13:07, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
I noticed that no one was updating the DYK queues. Or the hooks. But I also noticed that if you put the hooks up there, other editors magically find problems with them (after x days of no comment after its approval) and then after a few hours of those being discussed you can move it to a queue.
No one has come to yell at me yet so I assume I haven't cocked anything up to a significant magnitude but could you just confirm this for me? Otherwise I'm afraid the deluge will start. Panyd The muffin is not subtle 20:08, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony! I always was stunned how professional you corrected my shameful translations for the signpost, thanks again for that! I now proposed another article here for a report of a conference which I've organized: User:DerHexer/Report about Wikipedia trifft Altertum. When my report will be accepted for the signpost, I'd be very glad if you could correct my mistakes and esp. improve my style as you excellently did before. :-) Many thanks in advance and kind regards, — DerHexer (Talk) 01:36, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
Were your enthusiastic comments at DYK on Babette Rosmond meant as a gtg? They sounded that way to me, so I moved it to Prep 2. After doing so, I noticed you hadn't filled in the 2 close paraphrase lines of the review. I did a spot check myself and did not find problems. If I did wrong, please let me know. And while I am here, warm and enthusiastic thanks for your helpful and PRACTICAL approach to making it easier for reviewers to do a better job. I have learned a lot from reviewing at DYK, much of it from you. Sharktopus talk 03:33, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Excuse me Tony. I am wondering if you can write a Feature for WikiProject Video games' Newsletter? We would like to get someone with an outside perspective to write about their area of expertise and what VG project members should consider when navigating the process. GamerPro64 22:20, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
And write a specification for a directorate? Seems like people can't really have opinions on the idea when it's not fully formed. Which is fair enough. Panyd The muffin is not subtle 16:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Under your new system, is it compulsory to review another article?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
(Relocated here for wider discussion. Tony (talk) 13:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
If you have a moment, please review and comment on WT:DYK#Review checklist templates or WT:DYK#The review checklist, redux. The issue of whether or not signatures are necessary within the checklist has come up (along with suggestions from NuclearWarfare and myself about how to get by without them), and as far as I remember you were the editor who wanted signatures. rʨanaɢ ( talk) 20:56, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Hello. You have a new message at Template talk:DYKrev's talk page.
I have attempt to rectify your queries. Maybe you could have another look? I was trying very hard to give a balanced presentation -- if there's still a problem, could you suggest in which direction the writeup is skewed so I can adjust? Thanks, - Jarry1250 Weasel? Discuss. 11:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
I nominated HMS Phoenix (N96) for DYK about a week ago. I have made changes based on the feedback I have received but editors have stopped commenting. Could you take a look at Template talk:Did you know/HMS Phoenix (N96) please? Thanks, Ryan Vesey Review me! 14:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Quick question, forgive me if the answer is buried in MOS somewhere,
Which is more correct;
Chzz ► 09:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
It's mentioned Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(biographies)#Honorifics. Lightmouse ( talk) 10:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, everyone. Chzz ► 14:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
The BBC and other news outlets have no choice but to use it in the short form: they habitually use social titles such as Mr, but Mr Attenborough would be erroneous for a knight. I, too, believe that Sir, Dame, Lady and other such honorifics ought to be included in the link, being part of the respective person's name for all intents and purposes (in contrast to, say, military ranks). Waltham, The Duke of 18:51, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
I didn't make the statement you're objecting to on WT:DYK#Opposed to the new templates and instruction creep. Did you mean to refer to Piotrus instead? Prioryman ( talk) 12:35, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
In your article Redundancy exercises: removing fluff from your writing the link http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=673919 (near "The Economist style guide on unnecessary words gives excellent advice.") seems to be broken:
Hi Tony1, I noticed that when you ran what I assume to be a script on Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, a hyphen was added to the breed name (Duck-Tolling) throughout, including in reference titles and interwiki links. As far as I know, this isn't appropriate and doesn't match the article title either, so I removed the hyphens. I'm leaving you this message because I also edited the Signpost featured content page to remove the hyphen there. Since authorities including the Nova Scotia Legislature and the Canadian Kennel Club all refer to it without the hyphen, as well as the American Kennel Club/Australian National Kennel Council/Kennel Club (UK) and books, I don't think it should be included. I suppose there might be some ambiguity there but it seems minimal and the description removes all doubt. Anna (talk) 14:15, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Jujutacular talk 11:07, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
I recently used that DYK review template, and I did find it rather easy to get sucked into a long review. It was partly due to a rubbish internet connection at the time, but I took well over an hour to do Template talk:Did you know/Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski. I could help but compare that to where someone reviewed by nomination at Template talk:Did you know/Ramsay Heatley Traquair. I have no way of knowing how long that review took, or how thorough it was (I would need to ask MelanieN), but it certainly took less time to type. I was thinking it might be an idea to raise at WT:DYK how long people take to do such reviews, and whether any balance should be struck between reviewing each nomination for as long as needed (ideal) and reducing expectations of reviewing to a certain amount of time (less quality but less time-intensive and possibly more efficient).
Going back to Template talk:Did you know/Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski, there are a couple of issues surrounding how hook changes are proposed. I had commented at length on the hook there, proposing an alternative wording for the hook and pointing out issues with overlinking and one incorrect word. The promotor (Crisco 1492) didn't incorporate all the changes (one link to World War II was removed and the book title was capitalised), but you later removed the overlinking here (comic book) and I made the other change here (adopted vs adapted). What I was wondering was whether my change was correct (seeing as you didn't make the change, I want to double-check that as some online guides I checked didn't seem 100% clear on this, though Googling "adopted into a book" versus "adapted into a book" seems pretty clear), and whether there should have been more discussion of the hook wording and formatting before promotion. I've raised this at Crisco 1492's talk page (see here]), and I'm also going to ask Volunteer Marek (the article nominator) to comment (as the nomination subpage is now closed), as they might have some thoughts on the matter. Carcharoth ( talk) 04:16, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
In your review of the Wacław Gluth-Nowowiejski nomination, I think you wrote too much and took too long; the thoroughness is great, but there are ways of checking through that don't take an hour (on a good connection). I'd hope for 5–10 mins per review, and these reviews can be shared, or should be, as part of the QPQ requirement. It's galling that Crisco treated your work with casual neglect, it seems. And did the nominator engage with the issues? That is one of the points of properly reviewing. I'll be raising this at the DYK discussion page. Tony (talk) 06:10, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
"but found the nomination closed"—that sounds as though Crisco is entirely at fault, so I'm unsure why it's a matter of being "fair" to him. They're obsessed with filling up this waterfall of crap that goes out on our main page. That's what is behind this abject failure to check things properly.
"I would concentrate on ensuring that reviewers explicitly mention all the criteria and the result of their review of those criteria, regardless of whether they use a checklist." Indeed, but isn't it easier if there's a bulleted list? Just sign with four tildes to approve, it says (in effect). "You could also just reject reviews that fail to say whether all the criteria have been checked or not." Well, yes. That is what should be happening.
"Adapt" is correct, sorry not to have mentioned that last time.
"This '–' is an en-dash, right? And this '—' is an em dash, right?" Yep. And for full dates, the en dash needs to be spaced on both sides. That is established in millions of examples on en.WP. I fixed it in the article.
I see Rjanag has referred to me as "stupid", in effect. One rule for admins, another rule for everyone else, I see. Pity about WP:CIVIL. Tony (talk) 06:46, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
{{
DYKproblem}}
and other methods of pinging exist as a courtesy, but there has never been a rule or even an expectation that people must use them.
rʨanaɢ (
talk)
06:57, 14 August 2011 (UTC)The Editor's Barnstar | |
I simply admire your work here. What better reason to give a barnstar? Atomician ( talk) 02:42, 16 August 2011 (UTC) |
I find this humorous. Thanks Tony! -- Efe ( talk) 13:40, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
There is a huge batch of new WP:FS created on July 30 and 31 that have not yet been included in WP:POST. What is going on?-- TonyTheTiger ( T/ C/ BIO/ WP:CHICAGO/ WP:FOUR) 14:03, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
And having looked at FSC, I see that it still largely consists of nominations by TTT of crappy arrangements/compositions of national anthems and other genres, beautifully performed by the US Navy Band. There are issues of
(1) the quality/notability of the music (and I don't mean an extremely boring hymn—or worse, a weird "western" tonal arrangement of an arabic piece—is notable just because the Sultan of Blah makes it his "national anthem" for when he steps of the plane in Washington to bargain with his oil reserves);
(2) the extent to which arrangements should be acceptable more generally;
(3) the status of the FS criteria, which were significantly altered without notice and without consensus in May.
I certainly don't think The Signpost should be highlighting some of the stuff being promoted; it would not be fair to the high quality and hard work that goes into newly promoted content in the other forums. Tony (talk) 02:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
We have rejected more then we have accepted over the past few months. If we can get the silly criteria worked out I think we can move towards legitimacy. -- Guerillero | My Talk 02:08, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
There seems to be an inconsistency. I see all the above, and I see this. Am I missing something? -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 04:08, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi
I have been using links to your exercises as places where GOCE members can go to learn and improve their copy-editing.
I did not think about how that might affect you, as I know that there have been a couple of comments on your subpages about the exercises, including from myself :¬)
Is it ok for me to still give them out? I know you are busy in RL.
I also have another question that I shall send in an email. You do not need to answer by mail, a simple yes or no here will suffice, as I wouldn't want to compromise your anonymity. Chaosdruid ( talk) 04:42, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
It has been reported that television is now teaching children to value fame foremost, whereas benevolence is being devalued. Please see
Popular TV shows teach children fame is most important value, UCLA psychologists report / UCLA Newsroom. You can imagine the values that (some) young people bring with them when they edit Wikipedia. (People of all ages are impressionable, but children especially so.)
—
Wavelength (
talk)
17:07, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi. As I'm sure you know, you were named by Pmanderson recently on my talk page as one of a party of editors with whom he has some protracted conflict. Subsequent to discussion of that conversation at AN/I, I have decided to file a case with ArbCom to address issues that I'm not sure AN/I is capable of dealing with. Because you were mentioned in the post that started this particular grass fire, I'm thinking of you as a primary candidate to list as a party to the arbitration.
Are you okay with that? - GTBacchus( talk) 06:57, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm not blithely filing anything; I just said that. My primary intention right now is to be sure I don't act blithely. Your trust that I'm not going to do that is appreciated.
I have no idea why he attacked you on my page. But if I'm trying to get a problem addressed, where am I supposed to start? Maybe with the post that provoked the thread? I'm no Sherlock, but it seemed like a starting point.
Who should be listed? I don't know; tell me. - GTBacchus( talk) 07:58, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh, and by "he", yes. I mean Pmanderson. - GTBacchus( talk) 17:05, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I suggest you read the conversation between myself and Carcharoth on his talk page. - GTBacchus( talk) 00:38, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
[1] As far as I can tell, that article's references had a mosdate-acceptable style, and used it consistently (or if not, nearly enough that the style was evident). I'm sure you're familiar with DATERET. When you make these sort of edits, you change so many paragraphs that almost any other subsequent edit makes a simple undo impossible, which brings up WP:FAITACCOMPLI (and its older target Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Episodes_and_characters_2#Fait_accompli). I'm disappointed, Tony. I'm also disappointed at a couple of your recent WT:MOSDATE comments which appear to apply (incorrect) motives to some of my actions. You seem to express dislike when others attribute motives to you. Gimmetoo ( talk) 08:48, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
But, I appreciate you have IT expertise, so it's obviously beneficial for the project if such issues can be worked through in places like MOSNUM talk with your assistance. I hope to learn a few technical things from you. Tony (talk) 09:45, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Discussion moved to WT:SIGNPOST per Jarry. Pine talk 19:57, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
I took the liberty of adding mine and Happyme22's obscure politician from Whittier, which oddly was not on the list you put up. I guess after Whitlam, it's all downhill from there ... -- Wehwalt ( talk) 23:37, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
in this case the article is properly referenced using general referencing. it could probably benefit from a little formatting, but it is otherwise fine. -- emerson7 15:37, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the notes in the newsroom. I have been having difficulty maintaining consistency across issues when it comes to drafting subtitles, external link placement, whether or not to attribute authors alongside publications, and so forth. In the interests of maintaining standards and increased professionalism, would you have any interest in setting out the house style a little more comprehensively?
Do you know the status of Pine's story? It would be good to have it written up for Monday's issue.
Spring and summer have passed with nary a blip on the ACE front. I had almost forgotten the institution's existence with the quiet year we've had, but if there's to be a discussion before the last minute, the window of opportunity narrows. Reply where you wish. Mahalo, Skomorokh 15:48, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Pine's story? I'm out of the loop on that. Will look.
Like last year, I hold little hope of a software revamp, but we can subsist on the current version year after year, I suppose. That, above all, needs early action in any year the community is serious about improving SecurePoll, since a Foundation developer, like Tim Starling, needs to be brought onboard before formulating the viable options for an RfC, during an RfC, and of course after it. I'm keener to get the community discussing a preferential system, which would at least avoid the strong downward distortion of the support-ranking figures, which I notice are being dragged out without explanation and compared with non-competitive votes such as RfAs and RfBs at the current RfC on the voting threshold for promoting editors to crat (against much higher admin and crat thresholds, 56.7% is cited as the arbcom threshold, I suppose on the basis of last year's S / (S + O), where many voters click on oppose to make their support votes more powerful. Oranges compared with apples.) But I think the chance of getting movement on the existing voting system is zilch. And people seem more willing to discuss it when the buzz is in the air, in October/November. Perhaps a Signpost article on possible voting systems, in early October? Tony (talk) 16:26, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
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I'm very unhappy with Rjanag's "You're just too stupid for your own good" comment, not made any easier by his supporters pointing to my block log. But just look at my block log; it's daft admins making daft blocks. They walk away from their crimes, but we victims can't. Malleus Fatuorum 02:53, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
It was from 0–10, not 1–10. I don't work for the WMF, I wasn't a part of Referendum Community, and I'm not a sysop on any Wikimedia project; any statement I make is entirely unofficial. If you wish to receive an official statement, I recommend asking a member of the Referendum Committee. The eleven numbers represented the degree to which the voter agreed or disagreed with the statement presented. Zero represented the strongest degree of disagreement, five represented neutrality, and ten represented the strongest degree of agreement. -- Michaeldsuarez ( talk) 12:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
You said, "You can see the consensus in a recent archive at MoS talk." Can you give me a (few) link(s), or at least some good search terms to use? (As you can imagine, searching for "links", say, is pretty much useless.) I'm sure you have a much better idea of where to look than I do.... - dcljr ( talk) 12:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
I replied to your question [2] but have now removed my reply because there is even more to this than I had realised. Here, for example, at Production Process, and Synthesis gas bother me. There seems to be a difference of terminology between USA and UK (I am old-fashioned UK) although this does not affect the hyphen/dash situation. However, it is possible that when a hyphen is used (and generally a space is used) it may be by mistake for a dash (chemists not caring much about this sort of thing). However from an "etymological" point of view it may be there are arguments for both hyphen and dash. I am investigating. I personally don't much care about the "punctuation" but I am interested in the origin and exact meaning of the phrase. In any case I remain sure that the phrase is best with just spaces (but with whatever redirects are reasonably plausible). Thincat ( talk) 11:26, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes. I think it was fundamentally a misunderstanding surrounding the meaning of the word "stress", but, since mutliple editors evidently do construe it as a definite/medical concept, I'm fine with you changing my wording. Regards, - Jarry1250 Weasel? Discuss. 11:45, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
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To receive this newsletter on your talk page, join the project or sign up here. If you are a member who does not want delivery, please go to this page. EdwardsBot ( talk) 18:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Tony1, you have boldly moved a whole bunch of articles to new titles with lower-case letters. However, many of these moves are misguided, such as in 3GPP Long Term Evolution and IP Multimedia Subsystem: these are all proper names. 3GPP Long Term Evolution is not an article on the long-term evolution of the 3GPP standard but discusses a standard that is called Long-Term Evolution (LTE). Similarly, IP Multimedia Subsystem does not discuss a multimedia subsystem of the IP protocol but is a specific protocol named IP Multimedia Subsystem. Please revert these changes! Nageh ( talk) 12:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Neither High Speed Packet Access nor 3GPP Long Term Evolution contains a hyphen. (This annoys me too, but the trademarked names are beyond our control.) I've undone the moves accordingly. — David Levy 19:07, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree with what's been discussed here. In particular: (1) Standard documents frequently deviate from standard capitalization. Textbooks, in contrast, have been edited by language experts and are a much better reference for spelling questions. They generally follow the philosophy laid out above. (2) Many computing terms have been established without required hyphens. WP should accept that only for proper nouns. -- EnOreg ( talk) 09:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Please stop changing proper nouns to common, when you don't understand the subject matters. Please review all and revert article names such as HSPA, which now again requires admin intervention. Kbrose ( talk) 21:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I seem to be missing some context. Could you elaborate on the copyright issue that you mentioned in your note to me? Thanks. I am all too aware of the capital letter confusion and lack of a good MOS for computing and Internet articles. Feel free to help with some proposals. If I have the time, I would like to summarize the previous discussion since I agree with the result (what I think it is, at least) . W Nowicki ( talk) 18:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
rʨanaɢ ( talk) 05:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Tony, I am quite offended that you accused me of plagiarism. You need to be a little more objective and do a lot more research before you spout your mouth off. I have NEVER published anything that has not been fully attributed. You are making a VERY serious accusation about someone that is in the writing business.
The original article in question was 100% written by me and is now out of date since a new edition of the book has been published. The article content is no longer valid and a misleading representation of the book. The content of the article needs to be re-written (I do not have time to do that) or deleted. I am opting for the latter.
Sincerely, Todd — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toddwill ( talk • contribs) 13:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. The image is of the blade (the wavy one on the bottom) and the sheathe (the straighter one at the top). There are not two knives, but two parts of a single knife. I noted JJ Harrison as making the derivative work for his work turning this into this, which is more or less what is featured now. If you have any more questions, please let me know at my talk page. Thanks! Crisco 1492 ( talk) 13:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
I believe the former "irc" link is now what you get if you click on the word #wikisignpost (though you may wish to try that). I assume it's IRC presentation standardisation across Wikipedia. HTH, - Jarry1250 Weasel? Discuss. 17:15, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, a couple of years ago you kindly did a very useful review – and an interview with me, as I recall! – of my Inner German border article. I'm back with another "anniversary" article, Battle of Vukovar, which I've likewise rewritten and expanded with the intention of getting it to featured status by the anniversary date of 18 November (oddly enough, only 9 days after the anniversary of the IGB's opening...) If you have the opportunity to do a review of this one as well I'd be very grateful. The discussion is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Vukovar/archive1. Prioryman ( talk) 00:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Nobody responded, but Signpost made a story about it, but not as "breaking news". As Wikizine has space to make irregular editions, we published information about it as "techflash" edition. -- millosh ( talk (meta:)) 14:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
And I read about changing of the main editor... Everything is fine. We should think about cooperation; at least about creating a union of Wikimedia journalists ;) -- millosh ( talk (meta:)) 14:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
The tabular data is available at [3]. My instinct would be to say that Features views have indeed dropped slightly in the last 6 months, although I can run a proper regression if you would like. - Jarry1250 Weasel? Discuss. 15:33, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi. I am Jivesh. I read you user page and i was quite impressed. Do you do copy-edits? ★Jivesh 1205★ ( talk / ♫♫Give 4 a try!!!♫♫) 15:25, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I have procedurally closed the requested move you started at Category talk:College Sports Fan Sites#Requested move because categories can't be renamed in the same fashion as articles/templates/Wikipedia space/portals, etc. (something to do with the MediaWiki software). They have to go through the categories for discussion process. For simple capitalisation fixes like this one, you can nominate at WP:CFDS, which is what I have done for this category. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, it will be renamed in two days. Best, Jenks24 ( talk) 17:10, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, Can you take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#NO_Internal_consistancy. I really don't think it's suitable to be inconsistant within an article. Thanks Tony1, Antony, Admin Tony, SysOp Tony, SysOp Tony1 etc. Regards, SunCreator ( talk) 22:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
I didn't realize I was reverting you, so here's a chance to put your version back in. But as you can see, [4] [5] I don't get it. Art LaPella ( talk) 04:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Art, this is just so much garbage. Sorry to be sharp, but really, you've spattered it with so much blue that the linking system is fatally weakened, not to mention the whole purpose of TFA. And yes, if you want to scattergun link to just about everything, you should be auditing those targets. Tony (talk) 06:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
One of my biggest pet peeves is the "Random Business Term That Is Capitalized To Sound Important"; thank you for all of your recent work in many articles to eliminate that particular theme in our coverage of business and economic topics. I'd throw some random barnstar on here, but I'm lazy and you're sick and unlikely to appreciate it. :) Kuru (talk) 22:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Tony. Yes, new to editing but wanting to get more involved. Thanks for the advice. I take it that adding a new section on the talk page triggers the nice 'new message' banner. Very nice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ged Byrne ( talk • contribs) 08:56, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Tony, I want to bring this chapter from a technical handbook to your attention. It uses capitalization in a grammatically correct way, i.e., upper-casing for specific solutions (such as protocols) and lower-casing for generic terms such as public data network (PDN) and subscriber network interface (SNI). HTH, and get well soon. :) Nageh ( talk) 12:01, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the reference, Nageh. I wouldn't use capitals quite as much as that document does. For example it appears to use capitals in headings and captions:
However it does illustrate nicely that capitals aren't required in full forms just because capitals are used in abbreviations:
Just my thoughts. Lightmouse ( talk) 14:05, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to develop a rule-of-thumb list of items that might not be subject to the default downcasing. A list might include the following items that refer to specific things, as opposed to generic things:
Sometimes considerable thought is required to sort out whether items should reasonably be uppercased. Tony (talk) 02:11, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Concerning your question to Dicklyon, google is useful in some cases, but rarely delivers a solution on a silver plate. Every publisher, including WP, faces the conundrum of what to do when external usage is not uniform and is in part at odds with its own house style. I think a case-by-case approach is required that considers WP's guide lines and policies, external style guides, and usage by writers in a field. I agree with Dicklyon that if only "most" external examples go against our own house style, it's not necessarily enough to overturn that style. It would need to be an overwhelming, almost exclusive usage to consider creating an internal inconsistency within WP. This is what other publishers do. Tony (talk) 10:33, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Sometimes we encounter people who seem to give evidence of being closed-minded about one thing or another. Rarely we meet someone who speaks openly about being closed intellectually to evidence that would contradict a position already chosen. You might be interested to read the words of Richard Lewontin, as found at the following page.
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.
Other statements by him can be found at
Richard Lewontin - Wikiquote.
—
Wavelength (
talk)
05:22, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
(a) I've been recommending your exercises to RL friends who keep saying they are the best resources they have read. (b) you've ruined my life. I walked past a sign today that said "24 hour a day [parking]". What was my first thought? "You can remove two words from this..." Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:51, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
G W … 08:17, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the note, I left an explanation on the talk page at the time of the move. Hekerui ( talk) 12:54, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi. Regarding your question on my talk page a few days ago, I have now sent the article to AfD. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Freedom through choice if you would like to comment. Cheers, Jenks24 ( talk) 14:38, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I've been tidying up some old stuff and I've come across Talk:George Frideric Handel/Archive 2 # Birth date, the last entry in which thread was by you.
Can you cast your mind back and remember just what it was you were saying was "very sensible"? I'd like to revive my original proposal but it may need more contemporary discussion now that 3 years have passed. Cheers. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:27, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I noticed you moved this article earlier today, but a quick Google search doesn't seem to show show anything significant to suggest there are benefits in other countries with this name. Surely we don't need to disambiguate this? TheRetroGuy ( talk) 12:58, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, just a request. When you do the write-up for the four new FPs ( File:Extermination of Evil Sendan Kendatsuba.jpg, File:Extermination of Evil Shinchū.jpg, File:Extermination of Evil Shōki.jpg, File:Extermination of Evil Vaisravana.jpg), could you mention that it means all of the images from Extermination of Evil are now featured, as File:Extermination of Evil Tenkeisei.jpg has been featured since 2009. Thanks. Crisco 1492 ( talk) 01:56, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
I am reverting your changes. Leebrandoncremer ( talk) 03:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Well why change something you know nothing about? I worked at NASA I know what i am talking about, just stick with what you know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leebrandoncremer ( talk • contribs) 03:24, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
These acronyms are established industry wide for these articles, they have become Proper Names. The agency uses them as such so back off change the world some where else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leebrandoncremer ( talk • contribs) 03:31, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
You are a word snob, get a life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leebrandoncremer ( talk • contribs) 03:39, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
I will monitor you moron.
You are a sad and lonely man. I feel very sorry for you. Correcting other peoples work because you have no abilities of your own. How sad.
Your not even close to being clever. Any changes you make to any work I see in the future will simply be reversed. Im guessing you're suffering from little man syndrome.
It is true that writers take editors edits personally, so I will acknowledge that as my failing. The point still stands, in the case of NASA acronyms, it is an accepted theme. To delineate between outside similar objects, NASA acronyms become proper nouns. They are written as such. I understand the need for accuracy across the board in WP but from other space related articles, and there are 1,000s, this is the accepted format. Each word of the acronym is capitalised to show its name and to where the acronym derives its name. My apologies Tony, I was too defensive. Leebrandoncremer ( talk) 11:04, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Thats all well and good but the American Govt, Armed Forces, USAF (Air Force), USA (Army), USN (Navy) and NASA use acronyms routinely, to create proper nouns... The name NASA for example... National Aeronautics and Space Administration becomes NASA and all the terms they create follow the same rule. Leebrandoncremer ( talk) 13:40, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
No my point was not those names themselves, but the acronyms for things they produce. Such as the 1,000s of acronyms NASA produces. You guys are way too focused here.
Hi. I saw your comments on the talk page there. In order to clarify the "keeps" and "deletes" for the box, would you please also weigh in above under the "Comments" section to show your vote and referencing your 6 reasons below? All the best, -- Ssilvers ( talk) 02:07, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
We only disambiguate titles if there is a chance of confusion with other topics and no clear primary usage. That doesn't seem to be the case here, so I don't think the article should have been moved to General Services Administration (US government). postdlf ( talk) 14:21, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Candidate support vs ranking formula.pdf, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 17:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Enwiki ArbCom 2010 supports vs ranking percent.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Calliopejen1 ( talk) 18:01, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the praise for National Treasures of Japan and sorry for not replying to your email. I guess it is too late now for that. Should check email more regularly. In fact I only noticed that you had sent me an email through Truthkeeper88's talk page. bamse ( talk) 00:39, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Ooh, so it is! Top hit in four search engines I tried... I hadn't realised you were world-famous! Though I'm sure the shortcut will still be useful within Wikipedia. Good job on the visitors' hook, too.
In other news, a crazy semester has left me way behind in my Signpost reading. Is there any way to view past issues in single page format? Adrian J. Hunter( talk• contribs) 12:13, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I'm contacting you regarding this edit. I went to Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2011_October_6 as suggested on the page to point out that the source was a public domain U.S. government text (as was indicated in the article), but noticed that no investigation had been posted there. Could you let me know what your intentions are here? Thanks much! Haus Talk 20:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
The obscuring of Italian Wikipedia emphasized to me the somewhat vulnerable nature of access to Wikipedia, and, by extension, to the Internet, because of legislative, technical, economic, or environmental factors. Remembering that continued access is not absolutely guaranteed, I ask myself how I can best spend my time if this is my last day or week or month. I need to prioritize the ways in which I contribute and also the ways in which I benefit. The expression
Carpe diem ("Seize the day") is timely. Steve Jobs made some comments about the use of time. (
Steve Jobs - Wikiquote)
—
Wavelength (
talk)
20:21, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
Please engage in discussion in Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#comet_and_galaxy_examples instead of reverting again the examples without discussion or proof of consensus. -- Enric Naval ( talk) 08:31, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your interest in Gestalt Practice. This is a technical subject. Let me ask you to please reverse the changes that you made to the Gestalt Practice article. First, there is a good reason why it is called Gestalt Practice. Both words are capitalized to distinguish it from Gestalt therapy, otherwise the phrase "Gestalt practice" is misconstured to be the practice of Gestalt therapy. That is wrong. Gestalt Practice is something different. Also, in the footnotes, there is a text called the Manual of Gestalt Practice in the tradition of Dick Price. That's the name of the document. Removing the capital letters is a mistake. The footnote becomes meaningless. I understand your passion for correctness. I understand your campaign against capital letters. However, in this case the changes you made will cause the article to be misconstured by readers. I understand that you couldn't have been aware of these issues in advance. I appreciate your help. I would like to ask you to please reverse the changes that you made to the original Gestalt Practice article. I have posted this comment in order to inform you fully about these issues. I want to give you the opportunity to reconsider the work you have done on the article. I want you to know what is going on, rather than slam your hard work. I did not know any other way to ask you for help with this problem. I certainly don't want to create a contentious atmosphere. Thank you once again. You are welcome to remove this comment after you have addressed this matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Callaban ( talk • contribs)
Hi Tony. Could you please take a look at Talk:21-Hydroxylase/Archive 1#Requested move when you get a chance? Cheers, Jenks24 ( talk) 06:55, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi, Tony. Thank you taking care of standardizing titles of different shale oil extraction processes. The only question is related to the Gas combustion retort process. I added my comments to the article's talk page and maybe you could add what you think about this issue. Thank you in advance. Beagel ( talk) 09:55, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
Please simplify the DYK nomination process. I've completely cocked up the nomination here.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:50, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony - Please revise your move of the ground granulated blast furnace slag article to ground-granulated blast-furnace slag. The hyphen may belong in "blast-furnace" as the adjectival form of "blast furnace", but "ground" and "granulated" are separate adjectives modifying "slag" - "granulated blast-furnace slag" is a by-product which is then ground to make GGBS for commercial use. "Granulated" is a necessary adjective as slag can be produced in ways which don't result in granulation. The correct description, as indicated by the FHWA (in one of the references), is ground granulated blast-furnace slag.
Incidentally, what's with using characters which can't be directly typed in article titles? What's wrong with using the hyphen which appears on everyone's keyboard?
Argyriou (talk) 04:32, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony (talk) 06:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Sven Manguard Wha? 12:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
|
I understand the logic in rewriting "value added tax" as "value-added tax". Unfortunately, the phrase is always spelt without a hyphen in British and EU legislation, and is almost always written accordingly in British publications.
It seems to me that the problem is that one phrase refers to two concepts:
Though the legislative and official spellings might not be conclusive, in practice the vast majority of British publishers have followed it, at least when referring to the specific tax.
Capital gains tax is not usually hyphenated, not even when referring to Capital gains tax in the United States, and the same is true of many state benefits (such as Severe Disablement Allowance, which I note that you recently re-titled but did not hyphenate!).
Articles about English-speaking countries follow the style applicable to the country concerned, where there is international inconsistency. It may be that, outside the EU, there is a policy debate about value-added taxation in general, where the case for hyphenation would be strong.
But I would suggest that, for consistency with other taxes and international usage, references to "value-added tax" be reverted to "value added tax".
This may also be applicable to other state schemes which you have boldly hyphenated recently.
— Richardguk ( talk) 12:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
I think what's going on here, as so much of the time, is that people drop hyphens from familiar phrases. For example, most people write "high school student" without any implication that the student is on dope. Similarly, if you write about value-added taxes a lot, you're likely to drop the hyphen there too. But our audience is more diverse than that, and we cannot assume that our readers are familiar with the topic of an article. Therefore we should hyphenate to avoid ambiguity. This isn't a ENGVAR thing, as it happens in all national standards; it's an accessibility issue.
A good example, I think, is the uproar over hyphenating small cell carcinoma. Most of the people editing that article are medical students or even oncologists, and they see no need to hyphenate. (One even threatened to stop editing WP if we "vandalized" the article by hyphenating it.) But for the naive reader, a "small cell carcinoma" suggests a small tumour. (As in, much better to have a small cell tumour than a giant cell tumour.) Similarly, for the editors of the VAT article the topic is so familiar that hyphenation may seem silly. For our readers, however, many of whom are not familiar with VAT, it's not silly at all. — kwami ( talk) 14:35, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
However, I'm agnostic as yet on "value-added tax". Let's see what others say. Tony (talk) 14:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
I hope I haven't undermined my own case by the strength of my views! I note kwami's comment (which I responded to above) but also the weight given by Lightmouse to legislative usage. In fairness, it is also notable that, even a week later, no other editors have reverted or commented on the original VAT edits and article moves.
As discussed, I accept that there is a strong case for retaining the hyphen when the phrase is used to mean value-added taxes in general, rather than the specific EU/UK tax, though even here consistency between the abstact and particular lends some weight to hyphenating both.
Given your original conditional offer to self-revert, and your pragmatic comment today about " Ground-granulated blast-furnace slag", would it now be OK for one of us to take the hyphen back out of "value-added tax"?
For reference, the relevant articles, and the titles I would tentatively propose, are:
Current title | Proposed title |
---|---|
Value-added tax | Value added tax |
VAT identification number | retain (but copy edit) |
European Union value-added tax | European Union value added tax |
European Union value-added tax area | European Union VAT area (abbreviation to avoid lengthy compound) |
VAT-free imports from the Channel Islands | retain (but copy edit) |
— Richardguk ( talk) 22:31, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi, you were one of the FA reviewers. Could you take a look at this discussion and consder weighing in? All substantive FA reviewers are being asked.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 18:20, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
On WP:POST/N, you said...
Thanks for that! — Tom Morris ( talk) 09:22, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
OK, I'm working on another coin article, and the artist gave some as gifts at the New Year. Is it New Year's gifts, New Years' gifts, or some other variation? The source is no help, it is a quotation, Adolph Weinman, the artist in question says "in time to be presented as New Year Gifts". Thoughts? US usage.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 11:27, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
See here. 96.238.184.111 ( talk) 18:48, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony - I've noticed that several times in your downcasing RMs, you simultaneously edit the article text to downcase instances of the titles in the article body. As you can see, I've supported several of your moves, but I think it's bad form to edit articles at the same time you propose a downcasing move. Why not wait until the RM runs its course, and edit then? Dohn joe ( talk) 19:13, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
Hey. If you're looking for an angle on the new featured material, there are now 100 featured topics on the site, first time that happened since the original shift from 1/3 of articles needing featured status to 1/2. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 16:28, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
Dear Tony1, the discussion on capitalizing protocol layers in the article on the OSI model has still not come to a conclusion and frankly the guys are driving me crazy. They seem unwilling to recognize any argument nor do they make theirs explicit. I don't see how reaching an agreement is possible under these circumstances. Would you have some advice how to deal with this situation? Thanks, -- EnOreg ( talk) 20:34, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony, why do you waste our time with RMs when PROD would obviously be a better route? Dicklyon ( talk) 03:32, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony, I'm rushing to get an issue written and out a.s.a.p, but could use a second set of eyes to review/copyedit, as prose written pre-dawn has a tendency to turn to mush and fact checking is cursory. N&N, ITN, Arb and Tech need a look if you can spare the time. Skomorokh 06:29, 18 October 2011 (UTC) OK, within an hour. Tony (talk) 06:30, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I wonder if you could weigh in at Talk:India#Rotation_vs._slide_show, where there is a discussion in progress about the possibility of having a slide show (a la the newspaper web sites) without a purge. You were mentioned as an expert. Thanks. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 15:42, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I moved HIV Rev response element, but not HIV ribosomal frameshift signal. Looks like "Rev" is the proper noun of Rev (HIV).
I moved Henry Hub, since it's the proper name of an actual building. The pricing point is named after it.
You might be interested in Talk:Ground_granulated_blast-furnace_slag#the_hyphen_between_the_first_two_words.
-- Enric Naval ( talk) 20:38, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
Hello.
Please note that I have undone this edit. "Ryll-Nardzewski" is a hyphenated name of just one person. The result is not named after two people named "Ryll" and "Nardzewski". Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:33, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony, you might be surprised that in autoregressive moving-average models, autoregressive is not a modifier of moving-average model. You got the hyphen right in your move, but if you really want it to be right, you need an en dash to signify that it is a model that is both autoregressive and moving average. This en dash is sometimes found in better sources (like this book), as is the hyphen, but I haven't found them both together, which is the only thing that is grammatically and stylistically correct. But people who use these buzz phrases forget that it might be wise to do their best to convey the meaning, rather than rely on readers being in the know. What do we do about that then? Dicklyon ( talk) 21:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
And your hyphen in Light-speed silicon chip makes sense, but the article and its title don't. I've put a merge proposal on it. Good thing I'm stalking you. Dicklyon ( talk) 23:03, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether renaming "Multilinear principal component analysis" to "Multilinear principal-component analysis" was a very good idea either. It should at least match principal component analysis (i.e. the correct parenthesization here would be "(multilinear ((principal component) analysis))"). In this case I think the literature is pretty clear that it should be written without a hyphen. — Ruud 21:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony.
Thank you very much for editing and improving my first article. There's an ongoing Article for Deletion discussion on it right now. Your insights on the matter will be greatly appreciated. Kind regards, GuterTag ( talk) 10:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
Tony, we've never had any interaction, but I've long respected you as an editor and admired your work here. I have to say that I found your comments to be both disheartening and inaccurate. Here is what happened, as I see it: I made a bold edit. I thought it was an improvement, and I left a detailed summary. I was reverted without so much as a word. While I don't edit-war, I have no problem undoing a revert when the editor can't be bothered to leave a simple edit summary, explaining why he or she felt I was wrong. When I was reverted a second time, I didn't continue to revert, but rather went to the talk page. The consensus there seemed (to me) that while the long-standing version may or may not have been more ideal than mine, it was preferable to the newer version. It was on this basis that I reverted to the long-standing version. After thinking it over, I soon decided to err on the side of caution, and self-revert. The "adding and removing" took place literally over a matter of seconds. The next day, I again went to the talk page. The editor who originally reverted me said it was fine to revert to the long-standing version, and this is what I was attempting to do when I inadvertantly removed "and topical", which you kindly corrected. So in summary, I made:
I feel that this is a far cry from your characterization of "adding and removing, adding and removing". My sole intention was to improve Wikipedia, as I'm sure your's is. Regards. Joefromrandb ( talk) 00:34, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Writing new policies isn't something I'm particularly good at - so I'm going to leave it to you. Given the number of comments so far I doubt waiting a bit will make a big difference. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 08:15, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
I have opened an RfC related to an issue on which you recently commented: Wikipedia_talk:Selected_anniversaries#Year_wikilinking_in_OTD. Nikkimaria ( talk) 03:19, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony1. As someone who has a strong command of English grammar, would you provide advice at Talk:Middlesex (novel)#Intersex grammar? Thank you, Cunard ( talk) 04:22, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Tony, just to let you know that I've opened up a thread about your recent page moves at Talk:Second-language acquisition#Hyphen or no hyphen?. I'd appreciate it if you could comment. Thanks — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 11:43, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
Hello there. I'm writing to tell you that the editors of the Signpost are making an effort to revive the long dormant Dispatches section. Your name is listed in the "Members" section, indicating that you have or had a willingness to help write or critique Dispatches.
Since the project was inactive for over a year, I have moved all of the names previously in the Members section to the "Inactive" subsection. If you no longer wish to participate in the capacity described above, you do not need to do anything, this will be the last time you hear from me on the matter of dispatches.
If you are, however, still interested in Dispatches, please go put your name back into the main members section. I will take that as an indication that it is okay to continue to send your way both Dispatch related messages and individuals seeking assistance with Dispatches in the areas you specified as being your specialties.
I personally am hoping to get at least one Dispatch out before 15 November, so that the section can avoid being officially inactive for a full year (the last dispatch was 15 November 2010). Cheers! Sven Manguard Wha? 08:31, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I have reverted your edit to make the capitalization "consistent" in the Archaea article. The differences in capitalization are intentional, as the taxon name is capitalized but the informal name of the member organisms is not. The differences in capitalization are intentional and carry information. If you wish to "fix" the dashes, please do this as a separate edit, as reverting only the capitalization changes would be a huge hassle. -- EncycloPetey ( talk) 02:36, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
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Why did you move Computational chemical methods in solid state physics to Computational chemical methods in solid-state physics and then change the redirect back to the original artcile content? Am I missing something? -- Bduke (Discussion) 20:18, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
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To receive this newsletter on your talk page, join the project or sign up here. If you are a member who does not want delivery, please go to this page. EdwardsBot ( talk) 02:54, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
I was going to ask Malleus as he did the GA review, but then I read his talk page. So ... on Walking Liberty half dollar#Reception, I like the first paragraph, but worry about the phrase " little attention was given to the half dollar." near the end. It is almost a repetition, but is also a nice segue into the public voting with their pocketbooks that they liked it. Do you have an opinion? My preference is to keep it, I'll tell you.-- Wehwalt ( talk) 22:26, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for proofing the report. I temporarily undid your edit because you (probably inadvertently) altered a direct quote, and I absolutely won't run a piece unless the quote is, word for word, how I received it. I'll manually put just about everything else back in in about 12 hours, though, when I get back home. Sven Manguard Wha? 03:01, 29 October 2011 (UTC)