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I claim the guideline should read
Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{
subst:Unsigned}}: {{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}
.
Another editor wants it to read
Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{
subst:Unsigned}}: {{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}
.
I challenged this editor to exhibit a recent example of anyone including the date and time (much less in the rigid UTC format that allows it to be adjusted properly for each editor's time zone when the page is displayed) [1] [2] but so far that challenge has gone unmet. Like the cat that ate some cheese and stood outside the mouse hole, I wait with baited breath. E Eng 03:12, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
|<var>DATE AND TIME</var>
- was already there, and is long-standing. It can be traced back ten years to
this series of edits made by
SMcCandlish (
talk ·
contribs); and even that, minus the <var>...</var>
tags, goes back even further, to
this edit in 2007. You removed it, I reverted you, and then you removed it a second and indeed third time, both being reverted by
RexxS (
talk ·
contribs). Diffs:
your initial removal;
my revert;
your second removal;
RexxS's first revert;
your third removal; and
RexxS's second revert. Your claim of "It's not edit warring to unrevert once (or even twice) with clear reasoning" in the fifth of those diffs is not supported by
WP:EW, much less by
WP:BRD."I challenged this editor to exhibit a recent example of anyone including the date and time...". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
{{
subst:unsigned}}
, but EEng asked for uses by other people. One such is
Graham87 (
talk ·
contribs), for example with
this edit. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 12:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
"These instructions aren't for bots"- nobody said they were, but we would expect an edit to be the same whether an editor or a bot made it. As a bot makes the overwhelming majority of these additions, our guidance for editors should mirror how that is accomplished. As for finding the right timestamp, I usually just look in the page history. I know how what timezone I'm in. -- RexxS ( talk) 20:32, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
Still waiting for someone to explain how editors are supposed to know how to get the right date to paste in.- what do you think that I wrote in the second paragraph here? -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 20:52, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
I don't see your confusion regarding UTC format: these are easily obtained from the top of the diff, or from the page history - simply copypaste the relevant text
09:56, 15 March 2020 (UTC); and that is in exactly the format that is suitable for the
{{
subst:unsigned}}
template. You can even omit the (UTC)part and
{{
subst:unsigned}}
will add it in for you. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 20:54, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
are easily obtained from the top of the diff, or from the page history - simply copypaste the relevant textWILL NOT WORK unless you happen to have your timezone preference set to UTC. You need to absorb that if you are to participate usefully in this conversation. Really. 20:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
If this is too difficult to figure out, or you are in a hurry, then leave out the time, and only put in the date.Further improvements can be made to the documentation.— Bagumba ( talk) 11:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
"why are we defaulting to specifying the use of both of them in this guideline?"because we want editors to use both of them as it's best practice, and it makes sense that we should encourage those who are capable of figuring out the date and time to do so.
"we'd default to leaving them both off"is a long way off the mark, because the template without both parameters produces this:
{{subst:unsigned}}
→ — Preceding
unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]]) "I would think we'd default to leaving them both off for this guideline."is just plain wrong. See Law of holes. -- RexxS ( talk) 21:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Would:
Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{ subst:Unsigned}}:{{ subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}
or ideally but optionally{{ subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}
.
...work for everyone? --valereee ( talk) 12:10, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it: {{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}
. (Ideally but optionally a timestamp will be added as well – see the template documentation.)
"Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{subst:Unsigned}}: {{subst:unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}."is better. -- RexxS ( talk) 18:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
before patience wears thin– and when patience wears thin, then ... what? Go on, tell us. Really, tell us! I'd love to see you draw wider attention to this thread. E Eng 05:03, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
But, you are wrong, no matter how much you pretend otherwise– Right back at ya', Rex. The difference being, of course, that (as seen below) now that the technical issue has been competently ventilated nobody – nobody – agrees with you.
If you think your behaviour here is beyond criticism– I fear no scrutiny. Watch out for that boomerang!
References
Let's take an example. At Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines/Archive 13 #WP:REDACT there's a single post in a section. Let's pretend it was unsigned and we wanted to add the {{ unsigned}} template:
{{subst:unsigned|Epinoia|00:16, 27 September 2019}}
You can check by comparing the result of that template with the actual timestamp in the archive that it would produce the correct result, i.e. Epinoia (talk) 00:16, 27 September 2019 (UTC), and that those steps will always give you the result you need. -- RexxS ( talk) 01:58, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{subst:Unsigned}}: {{subst:unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}"
If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it: {{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}
. (Ideally but optionally a timestamp will be added as well – see the template documentation.)
No, RexxS, it's not difficult. It is a bit complicated, as we can see from the need for six steps to provide a tutorial, so it's something those who are as inept as I will have to take a few minutes to learn. Not everyone will want to do that, and if we imply that both the username and the timestamp are required by instructing them to include both, many may just not bother. Or they may make an assumption about how to fill in the timestamp and get it wrong, which everyone seems to agree is worse than not including the time at all. Interestingly your tutorial isn't even touched on at the template documentation; it seems to assume no one is as inept as I. Maybe we should add it there? --valereee ( talk) 09:49, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
EEng, I accept your correction. As for the question under contention, I would never go through conversion steps every time I encounter an unsigned comment — I get way too many of these on my talk page alone (I've gotten five yesterday, for example — I didn't even bother unsigned-ing all of them, for that matter). Anyway, unless there's a one-step automated process to facilitate this, I will continue to leave the unsigned template I add undated. And I'm not even committing to adding it each and every time — the way I see it, there's nothing compelling me, the volunteer, to do so. El_C 15:49, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be "six steps". I can just as easily give the instructions in one step:
Despite all of the hand-wringing, none of this is difficult to do. -- RexxS ( talk) 16:57, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
WTF do people need to look up their UTC offset? I don't think I've never not known my UTC offset since I was maybe 14 or younger, no matter if I'm in a place with or without DST. I personally feel unsigned is a dumb template. xsign or unsigned2 makes things easier. Why copy twice or fiddle around with the order when you can just copy once? I personally keep edit history time stamps in UTC partly for this reason, but even if you do choose local time, it still seems easier to fiddle around with the date without messing around with the order.
P.S. To be clear, I don't sign comments much, but when I do I always add the date. Since my edit history is in UTC, all it really means is I copy a slightly longer thing and then replace the space with a |. I have been using unsigned2 regardless of whether they were accounts or IPs but now that I know about xsign I will still use it.
I appreciate it's a bit more work if your edit history is not in UTC, but I think people are overestimating how much extra work it is for the plenty of people who do use UTC in their edit histories. If you don't bother to copy and paste the user name, then it is a bit more work but I find it risky to go by memory. It's easy to get the capitalisation wrong. And as for IPs.....
I still find copy and pasting on mobile annoying but frankly it just means I don't generally add unsigned templates on mobile. In a number of cases I find the date is more important than the username or IP, especially when people correctly indent which while rare for those who don't sign can happen with responses in the same thread.
I've added this line. Does that resolve things? – xeno talk 18:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
{{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}
. The date and time parameter is optional....and I'm entire fine with that, no need for additional links directly to any documentation. If anything, make it more clear that if you're absolutely compelled to replicate the work of a bot, here's a link for you to follow to learn more. In no circumstance have I suggested we should "re-explain details on every page". Stop setting up straw men, please. CapnZapp ( talk) 16:26, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
"We don't write guidance just to please one editor." Now you're just obnoxious. Secondly, what happened to your prior bluster? You don't get to pretend you didn't insult me or set up straw men. Your baseless claims of my incompetence merely makes you look like a fool. Thirdly, you keep trying to avoid seeing my point: don't make the documentation look as if it recommends users to manually add signatures! As you yourself say, it's a last resort and should be treated that way. In fact, do go ahead and write something to the effect of "if you're going to add a signature that SineBot failed to do ..." since that's actually excellent phrasing. CapnZapp ( talk) 08:23, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
← Do feel free to tweak further. – xeno talk 19:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
Have a look over here if you want. CapnZapp ( talk) 10:07, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to check out Wikipedia:Contributing to complicated discussions. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 04:02, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Right now under ===How to use article talk pages=== there's this:
Can someone (a) explain what this is talking about, and (b) give an example of the evil it's meant to prevent? I have a sneaking suspicion this is one of those solutions-in-search-of-a-problem. E Eng 00:04, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
I am not knowledgeable about using and editing Wikipedia entries but I am knowledgeable about Privateersman, Buccaneer, Pirate, Merchant Seaman of Berkeley County and Company, Planter of Carolina and SC Legislator Captain George Raynor b. 1658 of Charelston, SC. I have researched him for over 25 years. He lived on Johns Island, SC where he received a land grant of 1,020 acres from the Lord's proprietors on 9 October 1694. His land bounded by the lower public road also bordered the Stono River at Old Dock Creek near Fenwicke Hall and was bounded by the land of Susannah Bosomworth, George Saxby and William Harvey. Robert Fenwick, pirate and brother of John Fenwick of Fenwick Hall, was a close associate of Captain Raynor and was one of the Red Sea Men. Captain George Raynor married Dorcas Davis daughter of Capt William Davis and his wife Mary Godfrey (previously of Barbados who had immigrated from England). They also lived on Johns Island outside of Charleston SC. Davis's plantation was bounded by Kiawah Creek. In 1694 Captain George Raynor purchased Town Lots 211 and 212 Market Street at Oyster Point in Charleston, SC. George Raynor later purchased Kiawah Island then sold half of the island to Captain William Davis. A small portion of Kiawah that acquired the name Cap'n Samms Spit was given to one of Raynor's ship's crew members known as Cap'n Samms. The other portion of Kiawah that Raynor had retained was left for his daughter. George and Dorcas Raynor had a daughter named Mary who eventually wed King Roger Moore. Roger Moore was the son of South Carolina Governor James Elizie Moore. Roger, along with his brothers Nathaniel and Maurice, migrated to the Cape Fear region of North Carolina and founded Old Brunswick Town. This is the same Roger Moore who built Orton Plantation. Roger and Mary Moore had one known son George Moore who was likely named for his grandfather George Raynor. When George Raynor died his daughter Mary and his wife Dorcas inherited his properties. Mary also died young and her husband Roger Moore inherited his wife's share of Raynor's estate. Roger Moore sold part of his father-in-laws Johns Island property on November 2, 1720 to Alexander Hext/Hixt. Following the death of her husband George Raynor, Dorcas Davis Raynor (1672-1715) later married Samuel Eveleigh (1672-1738). When Dorcas died Eveleigh sold the Raynor properties that he had inherited through his wife.
Captain George Raynor and Josiah Raynor of New York were two different men but may have been related as I believe that George Raynor of South Carolina, who may have been named John George Raynor, was also a descendant of the Raynors of New York. It is my belief, based on my Raynor family research that Josiah and George were cousins and both descendants of Robert Reynere of England. Braynordavis ( talk) 00:51, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
It seems like a longstanding unstated norm on Wikipedia that it is good practice to familiarize yourself with a discussion before participating in it. I recently wrote an essay, WP:Read before commenting ( WP:READ), to state this explicitly, and I propose that it be integrated into this guideline by adding the following bullet in the "Good practices for talk pages" section directly under the "be concise" bullet:
- Read before commenting: Familiarizing yourself with a discussion before participating makes it easier to build consensus.
What do you all think? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 09:01, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
Quite a barrier to entry if the discussion is 100,000 words over 6 months. :-) North8000 ( talk) 13:42, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Check out Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Thursday font change. At 13:30 today, I posted a CSS rule to undo the font change. As late as 17:02, people were still asking how to do it. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 19:17, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Guess I'll go ahead and comment: I don't see that this addition is needed and my thoughts on the matter are more so in line with WhatamIdoing's. While I don't strongly oppose the addition, I do strongly oppose the "and harder to make a fool of yourself" piece. That's not the tone we use in our policies and guidelines, and this shouldn't be the start of using such a tone. I find that piece inappropriate, and I would have reverted it by now if I didn't think that EEng would revert me. I'm surprised it's lasted this long in the guideline. I mean, Moxy and RexxS, are you also okay with it? If I felt inclined, I would (as EEng knows) start the dreaded RfC on it. But I'll settle for leaving a post at WP:Village pump (policy) for more opinions. If most others aren't concerned about it, I won't be either. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 19:59, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Note: subheading added by {{u| Sdkb}} talk at 04:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Regarding this, this, this and this? Ridiculous. Guess it's RfC time after all, with good advertising for it. Let's see what the wider Wikipedia community thinks about it. Either leave it out or reword it. Or RfC time. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 23:57, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
And regarding this and this, lovely WP:Harassment. Harassment is, after all, one of the things you are known for. With the harassment I face daily, especially from WhenDatHotlineBling and My Royal Young, you have your work cut out for you, though. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 04:27, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Harassment is, after all, one of the things you are known for. You may be in too much of a hurry to understand something (as, for example, in this link [6] which you just posted as "evidence" of harassment), and you may not like my call-a-spade-a-spade approach, but that doesn't mean you're being harassed. So the next time you say something like that you better have actual evidence or you'll be at ANI so fast it'll make your head spin.
You added SportingFlyer as a cover– Welcome to crazytown. E Eng 22:28, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Familiarizing yourself with a discussion before participating makes it easier to build consensus (and harder to embarrass yourself).
Familiarizing yourself with a discussion before participating ______________________:
Editors who have familiarized themselves with a discussion are more likely to make useful contributions to it, or something along those lines? Newyorkbrad ( talk) 06:59, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Editors who have familiarized themselves with a discussion are more likely to make useful contributions to it. Zero talk 13:30, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.– J.S. Mill) I completely agree about the obviousness, which is what makes Levivich's point above, about turning it into something people can smile at (and so remember), so good. E Eng 16:51, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
makes it easier to build consensus, which is just a vague platitude (sorry, Sdkb), but starting with Isaacl's suggestion, how about
... you can avoid repetition, or falling into misapprehensions the discussion has already cleared up, thereby better respecting others' time.
Familiarize yourself with the entire discussion so you can avoid repeating points already made, thereby making the conversation more effective.isaacl ( talk) 00:13, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect
Wikipedia:BOTTOMUP. The discussion will occur at
Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 11#Wikipedia:BOTTOMUP until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.
YorkshireLad
✿
(talk) 14:12, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
There is an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice#Does this page reflect community consensus that would create a new policy and would change our existing policy regarding when editors are allowed to delete other editor's comments. I am not implying that this change would be good or bad; that's for the community to decide. More input from experienced editors would be helpful. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 05:37, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
References
|
---|
References
|
I would like to request that an uninvolved editor apply Template:Hidden archive top to this thread per WP:FORUMSHOP, WP:BATTLEGROUND, and the basic principle that this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, not a place to fight over reference desk policies. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 04:20, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Sigh. It has recently come to my attention that the edits made to implement this: Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines/Archive 13#Summary so far might not work as intended. The intention was to escape the nebulous and ill-defined "rule of thumb" language and to make it clear user talk pages are not bound by restrictions such as 75K length or stale discussion incidence. In other words, that it's nobody's business if I let my own user talk page grow to contain, say, hundreds of entries in the TOC, or if I create, say, a byzantine indexing system that pushes that TOC well below the first screenful, or if I, say, end up having a user talk page several magnitudes bigger than a mere 75K.
Disclaimer: Let it be clear that my own personal opinion is for our policies and guidelines to be clear and concise. If they say talk pages should not contain many stale discussions, or if they say talk pages should not (much) exceed 75K, then it should be possible to gently nudge or template transgressors, and eventually start automatic archiving for them. However, consensus was strongly against this. So I'm settling for the next best thing, to have the guideline at least be clear and upfront about this. There should be no doubt in the readers mind our guideline lets you have any kind of user talk page you wish (as regards length and organization only, of course). Language like "rule of thumb" can be interpreted differently by different editors (is it something to act upon, or is it merely air talk there to impress visitors with no actual significance?) and is therefore something to avoid.
I believed I achieved this with the latest bouts of edits, but maybe I did not? Before making any changes I'd like to first determine if that is so, or if the current guideline accurately reflects this intent. CapnZapp ( talk) 09:33, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
This is still not getting anywhere. Either the guidelines on talk page length (75K, stale discussions) apply to user talk pages, or they don't. Consensus clearly is against enforcing the guidelines, so the logical conclusion is to rewrite the guideline making it clear they don't apply to user talk pages. We don't have guidelines just for them to be ignored. We especially don't have them to give new users something to believe in, while secretly they don't apply to users experienced enough to know which guidelines that can safely be ignored. The guideline needs to clearly explain to the reader what applies equally to everybody. This can be anything, as long as its written down, so it can be read and known and challenged. If the consensus is somehow for the limitations (75K, stale discussions) to apply, while also letting users off the hook, fine. But then this needs to be addressed openly and explicitly. In other words, there needs to be an explanation for how both of these things get to be true at the same time, and that this explanation is easy to understand. That is, "consensus" needs to assume responsibility for the incongruity here. "Consensus" needs to be held accountable, which it just isn't unless words are put to the page.
If you think you can get a straight answer out of these guys Bsherr, feel free to try, because I couldn't. All I can do is update the actual guideline, since that is so far the only thing that gets them out of the woodwork so they can be forced to engage in consensus-building discussion. That is, I'm not trying to oppose you with my change, I'm merely attempting to jump-start a discussion that "consensus" clearly does not wish to have. If you want to fight for your interpretation, that's fine, but then you also need to explain to me how exactly your statement (3) works, so we can explain it to the reader, and not just assume it is understood. CapnZapp ( talk) 09:51, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Johnuniq, at this stage I'm not trying to change the guideline. I'm merely trying to make it (much) more clear that while it is permissible to warn users (especially new users), there is no actual enforcement. CapnZapp ( talk) 18:27, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Bsherr, you're explaining to me your position. I'm not asking for a personal explanation - I want the guideline to be clearer, so no explanation is needed. How would you suggest we phrase this in the guideline so the next reader understands it? CapnZapp ( talk) 18:28, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Phil Bridger: Did you read my post (starting with This is still not getting anywhere
). Do you still believe I'm looking for excuses to "beating up any particular editors"?
CapnZapp (
talk) 18:32, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
It appears that everybody is fine with the guidelines clearly saying you should archive and such, while at the same time being fine with this to be trivially ignored. This reeks of hypocrisy to me, since if you don't know better you get the impression the guideline is to be followed, but if you try to act upon it you're the one getting admonished. It's a clear case of double standards. Wanting to have the cake while eating it (newbs fixing their talk pages while I don't have to). Other guidelines don't work this way. If the consensus is that it's a recommendation only that you can freely choose to not follow, that is of course fine - but it is also spelled out for everyone to realize. But not in this case. Read the guideline and walk away with a completely different impression than if you "just know".
That's it. If anyone care to bring this up to a higher level, to break this local cabal of a consensus that flies in the face of what Wikipedia usually is, feel free. CapnZapp ( talk) 18:29, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
WP:BOTTOMPOST says: "The latest topic should be the one at the bottom of the page, then the next post will go underneath yours and so on. This makes it easy to see the chronological order of posts."
"Latest topic" isn't defined, and could be interpreted one of two ways:
I propose that we codify that both ways are acceptable.
The reason the second version is important is because sometimes a topic is still actively being discussed while several new topics below it are dead and aren't being discussed any more. In that case, the topic that's actively being discussed is stuck in the middle (or top) of the Talk page, and it isn't apparent when perusing the Talk page that there's an active discussion there. I think there's an expectation that the most recent activity will be at the bottom, or near the bottom of the Talk page, but that doesn't happen when active discussions get orphaned in the middle. As an example, see WP Talk Verifiability. The active discussion topic "RfC: Let's define self-published sources" has seven topics below it that have been dead for as long as five weeks.
I'm not suggesting to make it a requirement to move active topics to the bottom of the pages, but it should at least be acceptable. I've tried to move the active RfC to the bottom of the Talk page, which I think is in keeping with the spirit of WP:BOTTOMPOST, but another user keeps reverting me, claiming his interpretation of WP:BOTTOMPOST is the only correct one. But it's not really defined, so I'm putting the question to the community.
So, on the question of both methods being acceptable, Support, Oppose, or Tweak? - MichaelBluejay ( talk) 05:01, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Example: Talk:Ayurveda#A lead paragraph without the whitewashing I made a proposal for a lead paragraph. put it on hold until an RfC closed, then made the edit. The section was in the middle of the page, but I knew that as soon as I made the edit there would be a lot of discussion, so I moved it to the bottom. This should be a judgement call. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 11:27, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
As an example, see WP Talk Verifiability., they fail to disclose a number of key facts: (a) which particular edits at WT:V this relates to (for the record, they are: 1 & 2 and my revert; 3 and my revert); (b) this was discussed at my talk page a few days ago, where Izno ( talk · contribs) also commented; and (c) it is related to an ongoing RfD (since closed as delete -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 19:20, 20 August 2020 (UTC)).
EEng, regarding this? Why tell editors to post at the bottom and not state why we are telling them that? Do you really believe that is the best route, or are you reverting just to revert me? You really think I need to provide diffs of newbies wondering why they are being told to post to the bottom or repeatedly posting to the top after being told to post to the bottom...when many of us have experienced this?
And, Francis Schonken, regarding this? My reason was not "Oh, I talked it over with Johnuniq, and our opinions trump others' opinions." It's that Johnuniq is the one who initially removed that part, I asked him about it via email, and he was clear that he went overboard on that matter and he agrees that this piece should stay. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 03:50, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
What valid reason is there to remove this long-standing short piece from the guideline? Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 03:52, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
without telling them why– What are you talking about? My text [10] was
Start new topics at the bottom of the page, where they are most visible. Use the "New section" button (at the top of the page) to do this.
What valid reason is there to remove this long-standing short piece– The reason is that this page is 30% longer than it needs to be because of all the soporific blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, so nobody reads it and the rules we're trying to inculcate slumber here unspied upon, magnificently impotent. That's why. E Eng 04:14, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Start new topics at the bottom of the page: If you put a post at the top of the page, it is confusing and can easily be overlooked
Start new topics at the bottom of the page where they won't be be overlooked
Consider the situation where there is an active talk page with many sections. You see a thread in the middle of the page that has not had a new comment in weeks. You wish to add a comment. Your options are:
Did I miss any?
So, which unpopular option do you want to pick? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 14:43, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
hard to see how your theory or my theory could be confirmed– Right, but I'm not proposing an elaboration of the already-complex guidelines in order to solve a problem merely conjectured. E Eng 03:22, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
1 or 2, but not 3. Simple. CapnZapp ( talk) 18:12, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
same thing discussed in several sections" concern, since your link effectively inactivates the old section - any editor that find the old section can (and probably should) follow your link before placing his or her comment. Note: this is exactly the same as when you find an archived discussion you want to revisit - you're instructed to start a new section on the active talk page. If you want/need to repost parts of the previous discussion, you copy (or link to) it, you never move it.
While the guideline says "The latest topic should be the one at the bottom of the page, then the next post will go underneath yours and so on. This makes it easy to see the chronological order of posts", I seriously doubt that anyone would report a violation if the person doing the splitting kept the two sections together where the one section used to be -- especially if it was split into a subsection.
Despite the above wording allowing the moving of part of a section, and contrary to what some editors on this page have implied, I could find no language that specifically allows or disallows moving an entire section section. (Feel free to correct me if I missed it.) I am unconvinced that we need to modify the existing guidelines to address this. We already have ways of dealing with disruptive edits without trying to specify all the ways someone can be disruptive. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 09:52, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
moving stuff around should be done rarely and only by experienced editorsand
That can't be codified in a guideline. Specifically that it can't and is not codified in our current guidelines. This should not change. Yes, exceptions occur. No, that still doesn't mean "Moving parts of a section is already permitted" - I've explained how a split/fork does not suggest/encourage movement of existing content. Thanks, CapnZapp ( talk) 09:39, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Some talk page archives (which are subpages, i.e. "Talk:Foo/Archive 1") have their subject pages (i.e. "Foo/Archive 1") as redirects to their base pages (i.e. "Foo"). The argument in favor is that this provides a convenient manner of linking to the base page rather than a red link. The arguments against are that this pollutes search results, that the most relevant breadcrumb trail back to the base talk page is already part of the interface, and that this creates a lot of redirects with little utility. For occurrences in the article namespace, there has been a consensus at WP:RFD to delete. (See Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 November 2#Neutral country/Archive 01, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 November 10#Mainspace archive subpages, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 January 27#Mainspace archive subpages, etc.) There is also an RfD concluding in deletion for a similar redirect in the Help namespace (with an ironic topic) ( Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 July 3#Help:Archiving a talk page/Archive 1). I recently commenced an RfD for one in the Wikipedia namespace ( Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 September 23#Wikipedia:Template index/Cleanup/Archive 1), but it occurs to me that it would be useful to form a consensus about a uniform practice, and then to document it in an appropriate guideline. So, should these redirects be created or not (and should this vary by namespace)? -- Bsherr ( talk) 15:21, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
DNMB ( talk) 00:15, 28 December 2020 (UTC) Hi, I need help put back in order Bobbie Shaw Chance references. Thanks. ( DNMB ( talk) 00:15, 28 December 2020 (UTC));
I know in general we aren't supposed to edit archive pages. There is one that should have a {{reflist-talk}}
that doesn't have one, so the references come out in the wrong place. Is it too strange to edit, so they come out right?
Gah4 (
talk) 00:34, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
Flyer22 Frozen and I are having a disagreement at Talk:Transsexual about the normal order of replies to a given talk page comment. My belief, based on 6 years of participating in discussions on Wikipedia, is that replies to the same comment, at the same level of indentation, are generally added one beneath the other chronologically, to preserve the natural flow of discussion. Flyer22 Frozen disagrees. Who's right? — Sangdeboeuf ( talk) 06:27, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
{{
small}}
). If it's a regular post that is fairly likely to generate a reply to it, I'll almost always bottom-post it (quoting with {{
tq}}
as seems needed, if the thread is long and my reply is a screenful or more away from what I'm replying to). In this specific instance, it looks like Flyer was making a substantive point, while the other was just providing some trivial one-liner update, so the injection might subjectively have been considered reasonable. I would not have done it at the same indent level, but one deeper: OP says yadda yadda. -PrimoPoster
::I interject! -InternetLoper
:The original first reply. -QuickOnTheBall
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 07:41, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
OP says yadda yadda. -PrimoPoster
::I interject! -InternetLoper
:::Reply to Loper. -PrimoPoster
::::Reply to Primo. -InternetLoper
:::::Reply to Loper. -PrimoPoster
::::::Reply to Primo. -InternetLoper
:The original first reply. -QuickOnTheBall
::Some stuff. -PrimoPoster
:::Some more stuff. -QuickOnTheBall
::::Even more stuff. -PrimoPoster
This seems like it could seriously break the flow of discussion, especially if the lower sub-thread actually came first. —
Sangdeboeuf (
talk) 08:30, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
:*
markup that should have been **
, and so on; they can tell by overall familiarity and previous problem-solving with it, like people who live in San Francisco can tell where they are even when the fog is thick. FWIW, I have repeatedly pestered the MW devs, at every version of their bug-tracking system over the years, to reparse talk pages to stop treating :
and *
as list markup and do something else with them. There are a lot of potential solutions, but the devs just DGaF about this.Geekery: One approach would be using <article>
, or trusty ol' <div>
with some classes. For intentional "lists proper", like examples of article text one is working on with a list in it, a <notalk>
wrapper could make that material be parsed the same way it is in main or project space. And there could be an __ISTALK__
magic word that forced the parser to treat a non-talk page, like ANI or VPPOL, as a talk page for parsing purposes. (There's already some more internal way of doing this, and that's why ANI has a "New section" button in addition to "Edit"; but there's no reason it shouldn't be doable just with an in-page bit of code, I would think). None of this is terribly difficult; there's just no will at WMF to do anything about talk pages being a "user-hateful" experience for the visually impaired.
PS, if I may ramble about technically related matters: Similarly, the parser needs to stop ever, on any page, treating :
or ;
as
d-list markup, unless they actually form a valid d-list. According to the HTML specs, any <dt>
must be followed by another (for multi-term entries) or by a <dd>
; and a <dd>
must be preceded by another (for multi-definition entries) or by a <dt>
; ergo, any purported d-list that does not have both at least one <dt>
(;
) and at least one <dd>
(:
), in that order, is not a valid <dl>
, and instead should be re-parsed as <div>
s with styling to produce boldface or indentation, respectively. This is actually a pretty simple coding job, but after just shy of 20 years, it's clear we're never going to get it, at least not without major staffing and priority changes on the development side. There are many other "basic HTML standards-compliance screwups" going on in MW that many of us have flagged for repair since the mid-2000s, with no action on them.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 20:59, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
"This seems like it could seriously break the flow": Sure, and this is why it's not advisable to do it with anything likely to generate responses. E.g., I just did an "injection" a few minutes ago [13], a one-liner note that requires no reply and isn't likely to generate one. If it did, then it would be sensible to refactor it back into the conventional article flow (adjusting the indent level), and if that put it way below another long branch of the thread, maybe refactor one's initially injected comment to have a
quotemaking the context clearer (especially if that once-injected post was pretty context-free in its content, having at the time been immediately after the OP); this post is itself an example of that quote-for-context style. :-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:59, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
[N]ot advisable to do it with anything likely to generate responsesseems to rule out the idea of interjecting with a
substantive point, as you said Flyer22 Frozen did here. Substantive replies often generate more replies, that's kind of the point. — Sangdeboeuf ( talk) 22:30, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
So, isaacl, going by your "uncollaborative" logic (which would apply to a whole lot of people who are actually being collaborative at various talk pages), the editor who made this post should not have placed it there? It should have been after my second post? And when replying to you right now, this post should be where it is instead of being ahead of SMcCandlish's post with correct indentation...even though placing it ahead of SMcCandlish's post with correct indentation would be clearer and I would not have needed to address you by your username? No need to ping me if you reply. In fact, please don't. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 07:49, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
For another example, we can look at this section of Jytdog's talk page ... If I wanted to reply to Roxy the dog, I would do so right beneath Roxy the dog's post with correct indentation ... And for those even higher up, I obviously would not reply to them all the way at the bottom.This is exactly what both Isaacl and I have been saying with regard to level of indentation. No one is suggesting that all new comments should go at the bottom of the page or thread.
Editors do stuff like that all the time without issue.Obviously it was an issue this time, hence this discussion. — Sangdeboeuf ( talk) 01:47, 3 December 2020 (UTC) (edited 01:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC))
SMcCandlish, you stated, "Flyer was making a substantive point, while the other was just providing some trivial one-liner update." Exactly. That is why I made the choice I did in that case. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 07:54, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
{{
reply to}}
template may be used, which (if used properly) generates a bell notification. If the user concerned desires not to receive those, the variant {{
no ping}}
is available, as demonstrated at the start of this post. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 16:09, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
{{
noping}}
template, if the user name is written without linking to the user's page. For conciseness, I didn't choose to highlight that the text in your 2 December post is in alignment with this (although you did in fact link to my hypothetical user page); my apologies.
isaacl (
talk) 02:55, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
The process of enabling talk page archiving on a Wikipedia users own talk page can be time consuming such that it leads to the reason why not many long talk pages utilize talk page archiving. By default, sections on a users talk page should automatically go to archive if they are not edited for 15 days. Each archive should have a maximum of 30 sections. This would make the talk pages of all Wikipedia users look neat, without the need of manually activating and starting a talk page archive. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold ( talk) 02:00, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
References
Hello, I recently edited the Wikipedia page /info/en/?search=Imagine_Dragons that provides information about a band named Imagine Dragons.I made a minor edit,nothing controversial whatsoever,but my edit was deleted by another user and I got a message by them saying that I am "engaged in an edit war".That user did not send me a message to voice their opinion and say why they disagree,but they just deleted my edit and messaged me to threaten that I could be "blocked from editing" if I tried to edit that page again.Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be a site in which users cooperate to provide a plethora of information?Threatening another user that you will subtract their right to enrich the information furnished does not strike me as a very democratic act that encourages the collaboration of worldwide users towards the goal of rendering accurate information.I would like to ask how can a user be entitled to delete another user's edit and what can I do to defend my equal right to edit.
Thank you
Just browsing wiki ( talk) 18:22, 23 December 2020 (UTC)Just_browsing_wiki
I have added more independent references into the article "Intelligent laser speckle classification "against its deletion consideration. Orunab ( talk) 01:18, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
Hi, I would like to change the article associated with ‘gympie pyramid’. Today I added two youtube links, one about the pyramid itself and the other related to polygano walls in South America, as one wall like that was associated with the pyramid. I also deleted two web links, which are not existing. Changes were reversed today. So here we are, I am knew to the editing and find this article needs a general overhaul as most written is not relevant, some is wrong and some missing. Hope I can bring my ideas here forward and get a change granted. Chris Wikigetsme123 ( talk) 09:21, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
Hi. If another editor keeps on refactoring over my objection, moving my comment on a talk page not his own to a prior discussion I opened on an unrelated article (higher on the page, so less likely to be seen), and refuses to stop--saying it is ok for him to do that, how can I best address this? Thanks. -- 2603:7000:2143:8500:6960:9DFE:CAD2:CC8E ( talk) 18:57, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
I've started a discussion about disallowing "font gimmicks" site-wide as part of the MOS at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Font gimmicks. This page mentions them under Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Layout so I figured page watchers might be interested. Woodroar ( talk) 00:48, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
At WP:UNC, it mentions usernames in old signatures' usernames can be changed for privacy reasons (although they will still be in the old revisions of the page). This isn't mentioned in the Editing own comments section, which can lead to confusion. Should a note about this be added to the section? -- Pithon314 ( talk) 22:28, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
Omitting timestamps from one-message sections may leave those sections unarchived for a long time, as archiving bots depend on discussion dates to know whether it is time to archive them. An undated talk section won't get archived until someone either dates the signature or manually archives it. ( DIFF)
Example:
This signed but not dated unsigned comment (§ Hokkaido's required to redirect municipalities) remained at the top of the talk page on 12 January 2021, even though several more recent discussions had already been archived by
Lowercase sigmabot III. I
dated the unsigned edit 10:53, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
and then
manually archived that one section to where the bot would have put it if it had been properly dated. –
wbm1058 (
talk) 16:49, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
subst:
is more "optional" than the date. –
wbm1058 (
talk) 17:14, 12 April 2021 (UTC)WP:TALKOFFTOPIC says collapsing "normally stops the off-topic discussion, while allowing people to read it by pressing the 'show' link." In short, the guidance says, "don't collapse an on-going off-topic discussion." What should be done to keep a discussion section from becoming unwieldy when editors are simultaneously discussing (a) a content dispute and (b) editors' behavior on that talk page during that dispute? (Asking for a friend.) Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 17:03, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
In short, the guidance says, "don't collapse an on-going off-topic discussion."This isn't quite true. There are two very important qualifiers - I mentioned this below, but "involved" and "over the objections of other editors" are carrying a lot of weight there. I feel that normally, if nobody has attempted to shut down a discussion, you can take a stab at collapsing it provided it isn't glaringly obvious that someone will object (often, for particularly trivial tangents, it's reasonable to hope that everyone involved will be embarrassed they were contributing to it and wander off.) When a hatting is likely to be more contentious, you should wait for outside editors to do it. But there's absolutely several cases where you can collapse an ongoing off-topic discussion. -- Aquillion ( talk) 07:22, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
I've just learned about the hat template. I'm wondering whether the "normally stops the off-topic discussion" phrase is based on {{ hat}}/{{ hab}}, which has language specifically ending discussion. In contrast, {{ Collapse top}}/{{ Collapse bottom}} does not contain that language. Is there some reason to not modify the text at WP:TALKOFFTOPIC to permit the collapse templates for an on-going off-topic discussion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Butwhatdoiknow ( talk • contribs) 18:23, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
Current text:
Proposed text:
Rationale: While the "hat" pair specifically states that the discussion is closed, the "Collapse" pair does not. Allowing an involved editor to employ Collapse allows the off-topic discussion to continue without further cluttering up the on-topic conversation. Any objection? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 05:40, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
As explained above, (1) there is no proscription against contributing to a collapsed discussion and thus (2) the phrase "this normally stops" means "this normally has the effect of stopping." To explicitly state this in the guidance I suggest changing:
to:
This text clarifies that, for example, a Collapse with an "On-going discussion of editing etiquette" title will not normally stop discussion. Thoughts? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 21:14, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
it may make sense to move off-topic posts to a more appropriate talk page. If a conversation is off-topic but worth continuing, I think it is usually better to continue it on the appropriate talk page, where others who are interested might better notice it. Collapsing a conversation has the usual effect of suppressing participation, so should only be the preferred option when that is actually your intention. -- Bsherr ( talk) 19:50, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Based on the discussion above (including concerns raised about prior proposals) my current proposal is to change:
to:
This change is intended to incorporate Bsherr's explanation (above) that "there is no proscription against contributing to a collapsed discussion, the intent is to state only that collapsing a discussion usually has the behavioral effect of discouraging further contributions to the discussion." Any substantive objection to this change? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 06:02, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Simplified, the first three sentences of WP:TALKOFFTOPIC say this:
If the intent of these three sentences is to say that a Collapse is always a Hat then I'll be happy to propose a re-write that says that. If the intent is to say that a Collapse is "normally" a Hat but sometimes it may be something else then I'll be happy to propose a re-write that says that. But which is it? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 04:06, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@ EEng: I reverted your changes to the part about user access levels. I have personally found the link to Special:ListUsers helpful, and it seems like we'd want people to see directly that they can't get away with misrepresenting their credentials, so to speak. While I agree that users shouldn't brag, I'm not sure that needs to be a WP:RULE, nor should it be specific to talk pages. It might go at Wikipedia:Etiquette if anywhere. -- Sangdeboeuf ( talk) 18:08, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
As I didn't find anything in the guidelines as to what to do when the talk pages have obscenities / vulgarity / crude humour, I looked into the archives and found this "unresolved" thread from user
Kaldari:
/Archive 8#WP:TPG being cited to protect vandalism from being removed.
Although the last post there asked for help in resolving a discussion at
Talk:Rubyfruit Jungle, I could not find the discussion there as it had been removed, and not archived. What I got from
its history was that it was resolved as: "irrelevant obscenities and crude humor" is vandalism and should be removed from talk pages.
Was this resolution incorporated back into the talk page guidelines? I would like to know if I can delete the comment from 133.87.57.32 at
Talk:Bernhard_Caesar_Einstein#Question?, or the guidelines won't let me.
- Jay
(Talk) 14:37, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
Insulating Ceramic Rocket Stoves
For rocket stoves in general, a narrow gap between an insulating stove liner and the cookpot helps insure almost complete combustion. 'Transfer the heat efficiently by making the gaps as narrow as possible. <ref>
https://www.bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/Still/Rocket%20Stove/Principles.html<ref> For an insulating ceramic rocket stove, this consists of curved insulating bricks formed into a cylinder, such that the cook '...pot fits down inside with only a narrow gap all around...'<ref>
https://ceramics.org/ceramic-tech-today/international/reducing-air-pollution-insulating-ceramic-rocket-stoves<ref>
The bricks are insulating, giving a highly energy efficient stove, and these are composed of 50/ 50 by volume, clay and a combustible material, e.g., charcoal, that burns out when the bricks are fired.<ref>
https://morebooks.de/store/gb/book/environmental-health-and-development-for-all/isbn/978-620-2-51414-9<ref> The bricks start out as pre-mixed powders of clay and charcoal, then wetted and formed into the bricks, using purpose-made molds, as shown. Powders are used because this maximizes the bonding between adjacent particles, thus maximizing the strength of the bricks. <ref>
https://morebooks.de/store/gb/book/environmental-health-and-development-for-all/isbn/978-620-2-51414-9<ref>
The bricks are placed together using a mortar mix of 50/ 50 by volume, pre-mix powders of clay and sand, which is then wetted. The clay brings about a bond between the bricks. The sand prevents this mortar from shrinking away from the bricks. In general, as powders, '...the strength of the agglomerates is because of adhesion between the particles. <ref>
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080347202501027<ref>
In establishing a scientific basis for the insulating ceramic rocket stove, there is an important need to address it's affordability to those impoverished, e.g., of daily income US$1 or $2. All over the developing world there are low-income potters who produce, e.g., water containers and cook pots that are affordable within their communities. Once these potters are trained in model and mold making, <ref>
https://morebooks.de/store/gb/book/plaster-of-paris-techniques/isbn/978-620-0-78788-0<ref> they will be able to fabricate these insulating rocket stoves, affordable to their neighbors. Women potters in Burkino Faso, for example, could be easily trained to produce these stoves. <ref>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qXo8X48DI<ref>
FahnbullehV (
talk) 13:50, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
Dear All
Why was the text under Ensana hotels article declined? It is just a descriptive text of our company. This is a sister company of Danubius hotels that has a page already.
Thanks for the info.
Br Lukas Bek — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukas Bek ( talk • contribs) 18:01, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
A sentence in wp:TALKOFFTOPIC currently reads:
This text could be read to suggest that involved editors may end discussions in some other way (
expressio unius est exclusio alterius). To avoid this outcome I suggest changing the text to:
Any concerns regarding this change? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 22:08, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
This is my first edit to Wikipedia. My apologies if I did it wrong. Should I have included the link here? I'm still learning! Chemkatz ( talk) 22:40, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing on 21 March 2019 changed a WP:TALKHEADPOV phrase "Keep headings neutral: A heading should indicate what the topic is ..." to "Keep headings neutral: A heading on an article talk page should indicate what the topic is ..." with edit summary = "That recommendation does not apply to the thousands of instances of "A barnstar for you!" on user talk pages". True, but the WP:TALK introduction says about the guidelines of the page: "They apply not only to article discussion pages but everywhere editors interact, such as deletion discussions and noticeboards." I believe that the edit was going too far and I do not see that there was consensus at the time. I propose that we should change to "Keep headings neutral: A heading on a talk page, other than a user talk page, should indicate what the topic is ...". Disclosure: recently I referred to WP:TALKHEADPOV on WP:RSN, I was wrong, but changing now obviously can't affect current headings. Peter Gulutzan ( talk) 18:50, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
It's probably in there i just skimmed the page — Preceding unsigned comment added by VeraCruz776 ( talk • contribs) 18:20, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
I first submitted my name only and without attached text it was declined within second, indicating that no on read anything. I then submitted the text which was also rejected immediately meaning that no one had read or reviewed the content. Your website is cumbersome and difficult to navigate and does not ultimately tell you where you are in the review order. Please explain how a submission is automatically rejected before being read? Is there a real person I may speak with? My words are true and accurate and I remain sincere.
Cheers, and thanks, Dana Dana Skye Nicholson ( talk) 01:07, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 |
I claim the guideline should read
Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{
subst:Unsigned}}: {{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}
.
Another editor wants it to read
Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{
subst:Unsigned}}: {{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}
.
I challenged this editor to exhibit a recent example of anyone including the date and time (much less in the rigid UTC format that allows it to be adjusted properly for each editor's time zone when the page is displayed) [1] [2] but so far that challenge has gone unmet. Like the cat that ate some cheese and stood outside the mouse hole, I wait with baited breath. E Eng 03:12, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
|<var>DATE AND TIME</var>
- was already there, and is long-standing. It can be traced back ten years to
this series of edits made by
SMcCandlish (
talk ·
contribs); and even that, minus the <var>...</var>
tags, goes back even further, to
this edit in 2007. You removed it, I reverted you, and then you removed it a second and indeed third time, both being reverted by
RexxS (
talk ·
contribs). Diffs:
your initial removal;
my revert;
your second removal;
RexxS's first revert;
your third removal; and
RexxS's second revert. Your claim of "It's not edit warring to unrevert once (or even twice) with clear reasoning" in the fifth of those diffs is not supported by
WP:EW, much less by
WP:BRD."I challenged this editor to exhibit a recent example of anyone including the date and time...". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
{{
subst:unsigned}}
, but EEng asked for uses by other people. One such is
Graham87 (
talk ·
contribs), for example with
this edit. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 12:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
"These instructions aren't for bots"- nobody said they were, but we would expect an edit to be the same whether an editor or a bot made it. As a bot makes the overwhelming majority of these additions, our guidance for editors should mirror how that is accomplished. As for finding the right timestamp, I usually just look in the page history. I know how what timezone I'm in. -- RexxS ( talk) 20:32, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
Still waiting for someone to explain how editors are supposed to know how to get the right date to paste in.- what do you think that I wrote in the second paragraph here? -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 20:52, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
I don't see your confusion regarding UTC format: these are easily obtained from the top of the diff, or from the page history - simply copypaste the relevant text
09:56, 15 March 2020 (UTC); and that is in exactly the format that is suitable for the
{{
subst:unsigned}}
template. You can even omit the (UTC)part and
{{
subst:unsigned}}
will add it in for you. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 20:54, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
are easily obtained from the top of the diff, or from the page history - simply copypaste the relevant textWILL NOT WORK unless you happen to have your timezone preference set to UTC. You need to absorb that if you are to participate usefully in this conversation. Really. 20:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
If this is too difficult to figure out, or you are in a hurry, then leave out the time, and only put in the date.Further improvements can be made to the documentation.— Bagumba ( talk) 11:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
"why are we defaulting to specifying the use of both of them in this guideline?"because we want editors to use both of them as it's best practice, and it makes sense that we should encourage those who are capable of figuring out the date and time to do so.
"we'd default to leaving them both off"is a long way off the mark, because the template without both parameters produces this:
{{subst:unsigned}}
→ — Preceding
unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]]) "I would think we'd default to leaving them both off for this guideline."is just plain wrong. See Law of holes. -- RexxS ( talk) 21:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Would:
Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{ subst:Unsigned}}:{{ subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}
or ideally but optionally{{ subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}
.
...work for everyone? --valereee ( talk) 12:10, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it: {{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}
. (Ideally but optionally a timestamp will be added as well – see the template documentation.)
"Attributing unsigned comments: If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{subst:Unsigned}}: {{subst:unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}."is better. -- RexxS ( talk) 18:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
before patience wears thin– and when patience wears thin, then ... what? Go on, tell us. Really, tell us! I'd love to see you draw wider attention to this thread. E Eng 05:03, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
But, you are wrong, no matter how much you pretend otherwise– Right back at ya', Rex. The difference being, of course, that (as seen below) now that the technical issue has been competently ventilated nobody – nobody – agrees with you.
If you think your behaviour here is beyond criticism– I fear no scrutiny. Watch out for that boomerang!
References
Let's take an example. At Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines/Archive 13 #WP:REDACT there's a single post in a section. Let's pretend it was unsigned and we wanted to add the {{ unsigned}} template:
{{subst:unsigned|Epinoia|00:16, 27 September 2019}}
You can check by comparing the result of that template with the actual timestamp in the archive that it would produce the correct result, i.e. Epinoia (talk) 00:16, 27 September 2019 (UTC), and that those steps will always give you the result you need. -- RexxS ( talk) 01:58, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it, typically using {{subst:Unsigned}}: {{subst:unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}"
If a comment is unsigned you can find out, from the page history, who posted it and append attribution to it: {{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP}}
. (Ideally but optionally a timestamp will be added as well – see the template documentation.)
No, RexxS, it's not difficult. It is a bit complicated, as we can see from the need for six steps to provide a tutorial, so it's something those who are as inept as I will have to take a few minutes to learn. Not everyone will want to do that, and if we imply that both the username and the timestamp are required by instructing them to include both, many may just not bother. Or they may make an assumption about how to fill in the timestamp and get it wrong, which everyone seems to agree is worse than not including the time at all. Interestingly your tutorial isn't even touched on at the template documentation; it seems to assume no one is as inept as I. Maybe we should add it there? --valereee ( talk) 09:49, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
EEng, I accept your correction. As for the question under contention, I would never go through conversion steps every time I encounter an unsigned comment — I get way too many of these on my talk page alone (I've gotten five yesterday, for example — I didn't even bother unsigned-ing all of them, for that matter). Anyway, unless there's a one-step automated process to facilitate this, I will continue to leave the unsigned template I add undated. And I'm not even committing to adding it each and every time — the way I see it, there's nothing compelling me, the volunteer, to do so. El_C 15:49, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be "six steps". I can just as easily give the instructions in one step:
Despite all of the hand-wringing, none of this is difficult to do. -- RexxS ( talk) 16:57, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
WTF do people need to look up their UTC offset? I don't think I've never not known my UTC offset since I was maybe 14 or younger, no matter if I'm in a place with or without DST. I personally feel unsigned is a dumb template. xsign or unsigned2 makes things easier. Why copy twice or fiddle around with the order when you can just copy once? I personally keep edit history time stamps in UTC partly for this reason, but even if you do choose local time, it still seems easier to fiddle around with the date without messing around with the order.
P.S. To be clear, I don't sign comments much, but when I do I always add the date. Since my edit history is in UTC, all it really means is I copy a slightly longer thing and then replace the space with a |. I have been using unsigned2 regardless of whether they were accounts or IPs but now that I know about xsign I will still use it.
I appreciate it's a bit more work if your edit history is not in UTC, but I think people are overestimating how much extra work it is for the plenty of people who do use UTC in their edit histories. If you don't bother to copy and paste the user name, then it is a bit more work but I find it risky to go by memory. It's easy to get the capitalisation wrong. And as for IPs.....
I still find copy and pasting on mobile annoying but frankly it just means I don't generally add unsigned templates on mobile. In a number of cases I find the date is more important than the username or IP, especially when people correctly indent which while rare for those who don't sign can happen with responses in the same thread.
I've added this line. Does that resolve things? – xeno talk 18:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
{{
subst:Unsigned|USER NAME OR IP|DATE AND TIME}}
. The date and time parameter is optional....and I'm entire fine with that, no need for additional links directly to any documentation. If anything, make it more clear that if you're absolutely compelled to replicate the work of a bot, here's a link for you to follow to learn more. In no circumstance have I suggested we should "re-explain details on every page". Stop setting up straw men, please. CapnZapp ( talk) 16:26, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
"We don't write guidance just to please one editor." Now you're just obnoxious. Secondly, what happened to your prior bluster? You don't get to pretend you didn't insult me or set up straw men. Your baseless claims of my incompetence merely makes you look like a fool. Thirdly, you keep trying to avoid seeing my point: don't make the documentation look as if it recommends users to manually add signatures! As you yourself say, it's a last resort and should be treated that way. In fact, do go ahead and write something to the effect of "if you're going to add a signature that SineBot failed to do ..." since that's actually excellent phrasing. CapnZapp ( talk) 08:23, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
← Do feel free to tweak further. – xeno talk 19:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
Have a look over here if you want. CapnZapp ( talk) 10:07, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
You are invited to check out Wikipedia:Contributing to complicated discussions. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 04:02, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
Right now under ===How to use article talk pages=== there's this:
Can someone (a) explain what this is talking about, and (b) give an example of the evil it's meant to prevent? I have a sneaking suspicion this is one of those solutions-in-search-of-a-problem. E Eng 00:04, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
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I am not knowledgeable about using and editing Wikipedia entries but I am knowledgeable about Privateersman, Buccaneer, Pirate, Merchant Seaman of Berkeley County and Company, Planter of Carolina and SC Legislator Captain George Raynor b. 1658 of Charelston, SC. I have researched him for over 25 years. He lived on Johns Island, SC where he received a land grant of 1,020 acres from the Lord's proprietors on 9 October 1694. His land bounded by the lower public road also bordered the Stono River at Old Dock Creek near Fenwicke Hall and was bounded by the land of Susannah Bosomworth, George Saxby and William Harvey. Robert Fenwick, pirate and brother of John Fenwick of Fenwick Hall, was a close associate of Captain Raynor and was one of the Red Sea Men. Captain George Raynor married Dorcas Davis daughter of Capt William Davis and his wife Mary Godfrey (previously of Barbados who had immigrated from England). They also lived on Johns Island outside of Charleston SC. Davis's plantation was bounded by Kiawah Creek. In 1694 Captain George Raynor purchased Town Lots 211 and 212 Market Street at Oyster Point in Charleston, SC. George Raynor later purchased Kiawah Island then sold half of the island to Captain William Davis. A small portion of Kiawah that acquired the name Cap'n Samms Spit was given to one of Raynor's ship's crew members known as Cap'n Samms. The other portion of Kiawah that Raynor had retained was left for his daughter. George and Dorcas Raynor had a daughter named Mary who eventually wed King Roger Moore. Roger Moore was the son of South Carolina Governor James Elizie Moore. Roger, along with his brothers Nathaniel and Maurice, migrated to the Cape Fear region of North Carolina and founded Old Brunswick Town. This is the same Roger Moore who built Orton Plantation. Roger and Mary Moore had one known son George Moore who was likely named for his grandfather George Raynor. When George Raynor died his daughter Mary and his wife Dorcas inherited his properties. Mary also died young and her husband Roger Moore inherited his wife's share of Raynor's estate. Roger Moore sold part of his father-in-laws Johns Island property on November 2, 1720 to Alexander Hext/Hixt. Following the death of her husband George Raynor, Dorcas Davis Raynor (1672-1715) later married Samuel Eveleigh (1672-1738). When Dorcas died Eveleigh sold the Raynor properties that he had inherited through his wife.
Captain George Raynor and Josiah Raynor of New York were two different men but may have been related as I believe that George Raynor of South Carolina, who may have been named John George Raynor, was also a descendant of the Raynors of New York. It is my belief, based on my Raynor family research that Josiah and George were cousins and both descendants of Robert Reynere of England. Braynordavis ( talk) 00:51, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
It seems like a longstanding unstated norm on Wikipedia that it is good practice to familiarize yourself with a discussion before participating in it. I recently wrote an essay, WP:Read before commenting ( WP:READ), to state this explicitly, and I propose that it be integrated into this guideline by adding the following bullet in the "Good practices for talk pages" section directly under the "be concise" bullet:
- Read before commenting: Familiarizing yourself with a discussion before participating makes it easier to build consensus.
What do you all think? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 09:01, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
Quite a barrier to entry if the discussion is 100,000 words over 6 months. :-) North8000 ( talk) 13:42, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Check out Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Thursday font change. At 13:30 today, I posted a CSS rule to undo the font change. As late as 17:02, people were still asking how to do it. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 19:17, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Guess I'll go ahead and comment: I don't see that this addition is needed and my thoughts on the matter are more so in line with WhatamIdoing's. While I don't strongly oppose the addition, I do strongly oppose the "and harder to make a fool of yourself" piece. That's not the tone we use in our policies and guidelines, and this shouldn't be the start of using such a tone. I find that piece inappropriate, and I would have reverted it by now if I didn't think that EEng would revert me. I'm surprised it's lasted this long in the guideline. I mean, Moxy and RexxS, are you also okay with it? If I felt inclined, I would (as EEng knows) start the dreaded RfC on it. But I'll settle for leaving a post at WP:Village pump (policy) for more opinions. If most others aren't concerned about it, I won't be either. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 19:59, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Note: subheading added by {{u| Sdkb}} talk at 04:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Regarding this, this, this and this? Ridiculous. Guess it's RfC time after all, with good advertising for it. Let's see what the wider Wikipedia community thinks about it. Either leave it out or reword it. Or RfC time. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 23:57, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
And regarding this and this, lovely WP:Harassment. Harassment is, after all, one of the things you are known for. With the harassment I face daily, especially from WhenDatHotlineBling and My Royal Young, you have your work cut out for you, though. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 04:27, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Harassment is, after all, one of the things you are known for. You may be in too much of a hurry to understand something (as, for example, in this link [6] which you just posted as "evidence" of harassment), and you may not like my call-a-spade-a-spade approach, but that doesn't mean you're being harassed. So the next time you say something like that you better have actual evidence or you'll be at ANI so fast it'll make your head spin.
You added SportingFlyer as a cover– Welcome to crazytown. E Eng 22:28, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Familiarizing yourself with a discussion before participating makes it easier to build consensus (and harder to embarrass yourself).
Familiarizing yourself with a discussion before participating ______________________:
Editors who have familiarized themselves with a discussion are more likely to make useful contributions to it, or something along those lines? Newyorkbrad ( talk) 06:59, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Editors who have familiarized themselves with a discussion are more likely to make useful contributions to it. Zero talk 13:30, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.– J.S. Mill) I completely agree about the obviousness, which is what makes Levivich's point above, about turning it into something people can smile at (and so remember), so good. E Eng 16:51, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
makes it easier to build consensus, which is just a vague platitude (sorry, Sdkb), but starting with Isaacl's suggestion, how about
... you can avoid repetition, or falling into misapprehensions the discussion has already cleared up, thereby better respecting others' time.
Familiarize yourself with the entire discussion so you can avoid repeating points already made, thereby making the conversation more effective.isaacl ( talk) 00:13, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect
Wikipedia:BOTTOMUP. The discussion will occur at
Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 11#Wikipedia:BOTTOMUP until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.
YorkshireLad
✿
(talk) 14:12, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
There is an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice#Does this page reflect community consensus that would create a new policy and would change our existing policy regarding when editors are allowed to delete other editor's comments. I am not implying that this change would be good or bad; that's for the community to decide. More input from experienced editors would be helpful. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 05:37, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
References
|
---|
References
|
I would like to request that an uninvolved editor apply Template:Hidden archive top to this thread per WP:FORUMSHOP, WP:BATTLEGROUND, and the basic principle that this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, not a place to fight over reference desk policies. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 04:20, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
Sigh. It has recently come to my attention that the edits made to implement this: Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines/Archive 13#Summary so far might not work as intended. The intention was to escape the nebulous and ill-defined "rule of thumb" language and to make it clear user talk pages are not bound by restrictions such as 75K length or stale discussion incidence. In other words, that it's nobody's business if I let my own user talk page grow to contain, say, hundreds of entries in the TOC, or if I create, say, a byzantine indexing system that pushes that TOC well below the first screenful, or if I, say, end up having a user talk page several magnitudes bigger than a mere 75K.
Disclaimer: Let it be clear that my own personal opinion is for our policies and guidelines to be clear and concise. If they say talk pages should not contain many stale discussions, or if they say talk pages should not (much) exceed 75K, then it should be possible to gently nudge or template transgressors, and eventually start automatic archiving for them. However, consensus was strongly against this. So I'm settling for the next best thing, to have the guideline at least be clear and upfront about this. There should be no doubt in the readers mind our guideline lets you have any kind of user talk page you wish (as regards length and organization only, of course). Language like "rule of thumb" can be interpreted differently by different editors (is it something to act upon, or is it merely air talk there to impress visitors with no actual significance?) and is therefore something to avoid.
I believed I achieved this with the latest bouts of edits, but maybe I did not? Before making any changes I'd like to first determine if that is so, or if the current guideline accurately reflects this intent. CapnZapp ( talk) 09:33, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
This is still not getting anywhere. Either the guidelines on talk page length (75K, stale discussions) apply to user talk pages, or they don't. Consensus clearly is against enforcing the guidelines, so the logical conclusion is to rewrite the guideline making it clear they don't apply to user talk pages. We don't have guidelines just for them to be ignored. We especially don't have them to give new users something to believe in, while secretly they don't apply to users experienced enough to know which guidelines that can safely be ignored. The guideline needs to clearly explain to the reader what applies equally to everybody. This can be anything, as long as its written down, so it can be read and known and challenged. If the consensus is somehow for the limitations (75K, stale discussions) to apply, while also letting users off the hook, fine. But then this needs to be addressed openly and explicitly. In other words, there needs to be an explanation for how both of these things get to be true at the same time, and that this explanation is easy to understand. That is, "consensus" needs to assume responsibility for the incongruity here. "Consensus" needs to be held accountable, which it just isn't unless words are put to the page.
If you think you can get a straight answer out of these guys Bsherr, feel free to try, because I couldn't. All I can do is update the actual guideline, since that is so far the only thing that gets them out of the woodwork so they can be forced to engage in consensus-building discussion. That is, I'm not trying to oppose you with my change, I'm merely attempting to jump-start a discussion that "consensus" clearly does not wish to have. If you want to fight for your interpretation, that's fine, but then you also need to explain to me how exactly your statement (3) works, so we can explain it to the reader, and not just assume it is understood. CapnZapp ( talk) 09:51, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Johnuniq, at this stage I'm not trying to change the guideline. I'm merely trying to make it (much) more clear that while it is permissible to warn users (especially new users), there is no actual enforcement. CapnZapp ( talk) 18:27, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Bsherr, you're explaining to me your position. I'm not asking for a personal explanation - I want the guideline to be clearer, so no explanation is needed. How would you suggest we phrase this in the guideline so the next reader understands it? CapnZapp ( talk) 18:28, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
Phil Bridger: Did you read my post (starting with This is still not getting anywhere
). Do you still believe I'm looking for excuses to "beating up any particular editors"?
CapnZapp (
talk) 18:32, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
It appears that everybody is fine with the guidelines clearly saying you should archive and such, while at the same time being fine with this to be trivially ignored. This reeks of hypocrisy to me, since if you don't know better you get the impression the guideline is to be followed, but if you try to act upon it you're the one getting admonished. It's a clear case of double standards. Wanting to have the cake while eating it (newbs fixing their talk pages while I don't have to). Other guidelines don't work this way. If the consensus is that it's a recommendation only that you can freely choose to not follow, that is of course fine - but it is also spelled out for everyone to realize. But not in this case. Read the guideline and walk away with a completely different impression than if you "just know".
That's it. If anyone care to bring this up to a higher level, to break this local cabal of a consensus that flies in the face of what Wikipedia usually is, feel free. CapnZapp ( talk) 18:29, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
WP:BOTTOMPOST says: "The latest topic should be the one at the bottom of the page, then the next post will go underneath yours and so on. This makes it easy to see the chronological order of posts."
"Latest topic" isn't defined, and could be interpreted one of two ways:
I propose that we codify that both ways are acceptable.
The reason the second version is important is because sometimes a topic is still actively being discussed while several new topics below it are dead and aren't being discussed any more. In that case, the topic that's actively being discussed is stuck in the middle (or top) of the Talk page, and it isn't apparent when perusing the Talk page that there's an active discussion there. I think there's an expectation that the most recent activity will be at the bottom, or near the bottom of the Talk page, but that doesn't happen when active discussions get orphaned in the middle. As an example, see WP Talk Verifiability. The active discussion topic "RfC: Let's define self-published sources" has seven topics below it that have been dead for as long as five weeks.
I'm not suggesting to make it a requirement to move active topics to the bottom of the pages, but it should at least be acceptable. I've tried to move the active RfC to the bottom of the Talk page, which I think is in keeping with the spirit of WP:BOTTOMPOST, but another user keeps reverting me, claiming his interpretation of WP:BOTTOMPOST is the only correct one. But it's not really defined, so I'm putting the question to the community.
So, on the question of both methods being acceptable, Support, Oppose, or Tweak? - MichaelBluejay ( talk) 05:01, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
Example: Talk:Ayurveda#A lead paragraph without the whitewashing I made a proposal for a lead paragraph. put it on hold until an RfC closed, then made the edit. The section was in the middle of the page, but I knew that as soon as I made the edit there would be a lot of discussion, so I moved it to the bottom. This should be a judgement call. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 11:27, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
As an example, see WP Talk Verifiability., they fail to disclose a number of key facts: (a) which particular edits at WT:V this relates to (for the record, they are: 1 & 2 and my revert; 3 and my revert); (b) this was discussed at my talk page a few days ago, where Izno ( talk · contribs) also commented; and (c) it is related to an ongoing RfD (since closed as delete -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 19:20, 20 August 2020 (UTC)).
EEng, regarding this? Why tell editors to post at the bottom and not state why we are telling them that? Do you really believe that is the best route, or are you reverting just to revert me? You really think I need to provide diffs of newbies wondering why they are being told to post to the bottom or repeatedly posting to the top after being told to post to the bottom...when many of us have experienced this?
And, Francis Schonken, regarding this? My reason was not "Oh, I talked it over with Johnuniq, and our opinions trump others' opinions." It's that Johnuniq is the one who initially removed that part, I asked him about it via email, and he was clear that he went overboard on that matter and he agrees that this piece should stay. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 03:50, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
What valid reason is there to remove this long-standing short piece from the guideline? Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 03:52, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
without telling them why– What are you talking about? My text [10] was
Start new topics at the bottom of the page, where they are most visible. Use the "New section" button (at the top of the page) to do this.
What valid reason is there to remove this long-standing short piece– The reason is that this page is 30% longer than it needs to be because of all the soporific blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, so nobody reads it and the rules we're trying to inculcate slumber here unspied upon, magnificently impotent. That's why. E Eng 04:14, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Start new topics at the bottom of the page: If you put a post at the top of the page, it is confusing and can easily be overlooked
Start new topics at the bottom of the page where they won't be be overlooked
Consider the situation where there is an active talk page with many sections. You see a thread in the middle of the page that has not had a new comment in weeks. You wish to add a comment. Your options are:
Did I miss any?
So, which unpopular option do you want to pick? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 14:43, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
hard to see how your theory or my theory could be confirmed– Right, but I'm not proposing an elaboration of the already-complex guidelines in order to solve a problem merely conjectured. E Eng 03:22, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
1 or 2, but not 3. Simple. CapnZapp ( talk) 18:12, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
same thing discussed in several sections" concern, since your link effectively inactivates the old section - any editor that find the old section can (and probably should) follow your link before placing his or her comment. Note: this is exactly the same as when you find an archived discussion you want to revisit - you're instructed to start a new section on the active talk page. If you want/need to repost parts of the previous discussion, you copy (or link to) it, you never move it.
While the guideline says "The latest topic should be the one at the bottom of the page, then the next post will go underneath yours and so on. This makes it easy to see the chronological order of posts", I seriously doubt that anyone would report a violation if the person doing the splitting kept the two sections together where the one section used to be -- especially if it was split into a subsection.
Despite the above wording allowing the moving of part of a section, and contrary to what some editors on this page have implied, I could find no language that specifically allows or disallows moving an entire section section. (Feel free to correct me if I missed it.) I am unconvinced that we need to modify the existing guidelines to address this. We already have ways of dealing with disruptive edits without trying to specify all the ways someone can be disruptive. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 09:52, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
moving stuff around should be done rarely and only by experienced editorsand
That can't be codified in a guideline. Specifically that it can't and is not codified in our current guidelines. This should not change. Yes, exceptions occur. No, that still doesn't mean "Moving parts of a section is already permitted" - I've explained how a split/fork does not suggest/encourage movement of existing content. Thanks, CapnZapp ( talk) 09:39, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Some talk page archives (which are subpages, i.e. "Talk:Foo/Archive 1") have their subject pages (i.e. "Foo/Archive 1") as redirects to their base pages (i.e. "Foo"). The argument in favor is that this provides a convenient manner of linking to the base page rather than a red link. The arguments against are that this pollutes search results, that the most relevant breadcrumb trail back to the base talk page is already part of the interface, and that this creates a lot of redirects with little utility. For occurrences in the article namespace, there has been a consensus at WP:RFD to delete. (See Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 November 2#Neutral country/Archive 01, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 November 10#Mainspace archive subpages, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 January 27#Mainspace archive subpages, etc.) There is also an RfD concluding in deletion for a similar redirect in the Help namespace (with an ironic topic) ( Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 July 3#Help:Archiving a talk page/Archive 1). I recently commenced an RfD for one in the Wikipedia namespace ( Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 September 23#Wikipedia:Template index/Cleanup/Archive 1), but it occurs to me that it would be useful to form a consensus about a uniform practice, and then to document it in an appropriate guideline. So, should these redirects be created or not (and should this vary by namespace)? -- Bsherr ( talk) 15:21, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
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DNMB ( talk) 00:15, 28 December 2020 (UTC) Hi, I need help put back in order Bobbie Shaw Chance references. Thanks. ( DNMB ( talk) 00:15, 28 December 2020 (UTC));
I know in general we aren't supposed to edit archive pages. There is one that should have a {{reflist-talk}}
that doesn't have one, so the references come out in the wrong place. Is it too strange to edit, so they come out right?
Gah4 (
talk) 00:34, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
Flyer22 Frozen and I are having a disagreement at Talk:Transsexual about the normal order of replies to a given talk page comment. My belief, based on 6 years of participating in discussions on Wikipedia, is that replies to the same comment, at the same level of indentation, are generally added one beneath the other chronologically, to preserve the natural flow of discussion. Flyer22 Frozen disagrees. Who's right? — Sangdeboeuf ( talk) 06:27, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
{{
small}}
). If it's a regular post that is fairly likely to generate a reply to it, I'll almost always bottom-post it (quoting with {{
tq}}
as seems needed, if the thread is long and my reply is a screenful or more away from what I'm replying to). In this specific instance, it looks like Flyer was making a substantive point, while the other was just providing some trivial one-liner update, so the injection might subjectively have been considered reasonable. I would not have done it at the same indent level, but one deeper: OP says yadda yadda. -PrimoPoster
::I interject! -InternetLoper
:The original first reply. -QuickOnTheBall
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 07:41, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
OP says yadda yadda. -PrimoPoster
::I interject! -InternetLoper
:::Reply to Loper. -PrimoPoster
::::Reply to Primo. -InternetLoper
:::::Reply to Loper. -PrimoPoster
::::::Reply to Primo. -InternetLoper
:The original first reply. -QuickOnTheBall
::Some stuff. -PrimoPoster
:::Some more stuff. -QuickOnTheBall
::::Even more stuff. -PrimoPoster
This seems like it could seriously break the flow of discussion, especially if the lower sub-thread actually came first. —
Sangdeboeuf (
talk) 08:30, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
:*
markup that should have been **
, and so on; they can tell by overall familiarity and previous problem-solving with it, like people who live in San Francisco can tell where they are even when the fog is thick. FWIW, I have repeatedly pestered the MW devs, at every version of their bug-tracking system over the years, to reparse talk pages to stop treating :
and *
as list markup and do something else with them. There are a lot of potential solutions, but the devs just DGaF about this.Geekery: One approach would be using <article>
, or trusty ol' <div>
with some classes. For intentional "lists proper", like examples of article text one is working on with a list in it, a <notalk>
wrapper could make that material be parsed the same way it is in main or project space. And there could be an __ISTALK__
magic word that forced the parser to treat a non-talk page, like ANI or VPPOL, as a talk page for parsing purposes. (There's already some more internal way of doing this, and that's why ANI has a "New section" button in addition to "Edit"; but there's no reason it shouldn't be doable just with an in-page bit of code, I would think). None of this is terribly difficult; there's just no will at WMF to do anything about talk pages being a "user-hateful" experience for the visually impaired.
PS, if I may ramble about technically related matters: Similarly, the parser needs to stop ever, on any page, treating :
or ;
as
d-list markup, unless they actually form a valid d-list. According to the HTML specs, any <dt>
must be followed by another (for multi-term entries) or by a <dd>
; and a <dd>
must be preceded by another (for multi-definition entries) or by a <dt>
; ergo, any purported d-list that does not have both at least one <dt>
(;
) and at least one <dd>
(:
), in that order, is not a valid <dl>
, and instead should be re-parsed as <div>
s with styling to produce boldface or indentation, respectively. This is actually a pretty simple coding job, but after just shy of 20 years, it's clear we're never going to get it, at least not without major staffing and priority changes on the development side. There are many other "basic HTML standards-compliance screwups" going on in MW that many of us have flagged for repair since the mid-2000s, with no action on them.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 20:59, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
"This seems like it could seriously break the flow": Sure, and this is why it's not advisable to do it with anything likely to generate responses. E.g., I just did an "injection" a few minutes ago [13], a one-liner note that requires no reply and isn't likely to generate one. If it did, then it would be sensible to refactor it back into the conventional article flow (adjusting the indent level), and if that put it way below another long branch of the thread, maybe refactor one's initially injected comment to have a
quotemaking the context clearer (especially if that once-injected post was pretty context-free in its content, having at the time been immediately after the OP); this post is itself an example of that quote-for-context style. :-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:59, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
[N]ot advisable to do it with anything likely to generate responsesseems to rule out the idea of interjecting with a
substantive point, as you said Flyer22 Frozen did here. Substantive replies often generate more replies, that's kind of the point. — Sangdeboeuf ( talk) 22:30, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
So, isaacl, going by your "uncollaborative" logic (which would apply to a whole lot of people who are actually being collaborative at various talk pages), the editor who made this post should not have placed it there? It should have been after my second post? And when replying to you right now, this post should be where it is instead of being ahead of SMcCandlish's post with correct indentation...even though placing it ahead of SMcCandlish's post with correct indentation would be clearer and I would not have needed to address you by your username? No need to ping me if you reply. In fact, please don't. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 07:49, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
For another example, we can look at this section of Jytdog's talk page ... If I wanted to reply to Roxy the dog, I would do so right beneath Roxy the dog's post with correct indentation ... And for those even higher up, I obviously would not reply to them all the way at the bottom.This is exactly what both Isaacl and I have been saying with regard to level of indentation. No one is suggesting that all new comments should go at the bottom of the page or thread.
Editors do stuff like that all the time without issue.Obviously it was an issue this time, hence this discussion. — Sangdeboeuf ( talk) 01:47, 3 December 2020 (UTC) (edited 01:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC))
SMcCandlish, you stated, "Flyer was making a substantive point, while the other was just providing some trivial one-liner update." Exactly. That is why I made the choice I did in that case. Flyer22 Frozen ( talk) 07:54, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
{{
reply to}}
template may be used, which (if used properly) generates a bell notification. If the user concerned desires not to receive those, the variant {{
no ping}}
is available, as demonstrated at the start of this post. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 16:09, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
{{
noping}}
template, if the user name is written without linking to the user's page. For conciseness, I didn't choose to highlight that the text in your 2 December post is in alignment with this (although you did in fact link to my hypothetical user page); my apologies.
isaacl (
talk) 02:55, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
The process of enabling talk page archiving on a Wikipedia users own talk page can be time consuming such that it leads to the reason why not many long talk pages utilize talk page archiving. By default, sections on a users talk page should automatically go to archive if they are not edited for 15 days. Each archive should have a maximum of 30 sections. This would make the talk pages of all Wikipedia users look neat, without the need of manually activating and starting a talk page archive. Aceing_Winter_Snows_Harsh_Cold ( talk) 02:00, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
References
Hello, I recently edited the Wikipedia page /info/en/?search=Imagine_Dragons that provides information about a band named Imagine Dragons.I made a minor edit,nothing controversial whatsoever,but my edit was deleted by another user and I got a message by them saying that I am "engaged in an edit war".That user did not send me a message to voice their opinion and say why they disagree,but they just deleted my edit and messaged me to threaten that I could be "blocked from editing" if I tried to edit that page again.Isn't Wikipedia supposed to be a site in which users cooperate to provide a plethora of information?Threatening another user that you will subtract their right to enrich the information furnished does not strike me as a very democratic act that encourages the collaboration of worldwide users towards the goal of rendering accurate information.I would like to ask how can a user be entitled to delete another user's edit and what can I do to defend my equal right to edit.
Thank you
Just browsing wiki ( talk) 18:22, 23 December 2020 (UTC)Just_browsing_wiki
I have added more independent references into the article "Intelligent laser speckle classification "against its deletion consideration. Orunab ( talk) 01:18, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
Hi, I would like to change the article associated with ‘gympie pyramid’. Today I added two youtube links, one about the pyramid itself and the other related to polygano walls in South America, as one wall like that was associated with the pyramid. I also deleted two web links, which are not existing. Changes were reversed today. So here we are, I am knew to the editing and find this article needs a general overhaul as most written is not relevant, some is wrong and some missing. Hope I can bring my ideas here forward and get a change granted. Chris Wikigetsme123 ( talk) 09:21, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
Hi. If another editor keeps on refactoring over my objection, moving my comment on a talk page not his own to a prior discussion I opened on an unrelated article (higher on the page, so less likely to be seen), and refuses to stop--saying it is ok for him to do that, how can I best address this? Thanks. -- 2603:7000:2143:8500:6960:9DFE:CAD2:CC8E ( talk) 18:57, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
I've started a discussion about disallowing "font gimmicks" site-wide as part of the MOS at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Font gimmicks. This page mentions them under Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Layout so I figured page watchers might be interested. Woodroar ( talk) 00:48, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
At WP:UNC, it mentions usernames in old signatures' usernames can be changed for privacy reasons (although they will still be in the old revisions of the page). This isn't mentioned in the Editing own comments section, which can lead to confusion. Should a note about this be added to the section? -- Pithon314 ( talk) 22:28, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
Omitting timestamps from one-message sections may leave those sections unarchived for a long time, as archiving bots depend on discussion dates to know whether it is time to archive them. An undated talk section won't get archived until someone either dates the signature or manually archives it. ( DIFF)
Example:
This signed but not dated unsigned comment (§ Hokkaido's required to redirect municipalities) remained at the top of the talk page on 12 January 2021, even though several more recent discussions had already been archived by
Lowercase sigmabot III. I
dated the unsigned edit 10:53, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
and then
manually archived that one section to where the bot would have put it if it had been properly dated. –
wbm1058 (
talk) 16:49, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
subst:
is more "optional" than the date. –
wbm1058 (
talk) 17:14, 12 April 2021 (UTC)WP:TALKOFFTOPIC says collapsing "normally stops the off-topic discussion, while allowing people to read it by pressing the 'show' link." In short, the guidance says, "don't collapse an on-going off-topic discussion." What should be done to keep a discussion section from becoming unwieldy when editors are simultaneously discussing (a) a content dispute and (b) editors' behavior on that talk page during that dispute? (Asking for a friend.) Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 17:03, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
In short, the guidance says, "don't collapse an on-going off-topic discussion."This isn't quite true. There are two very important qualifiers - I mentioned this below, but "involved" and "over the objections of other editors" are carrying a lot of weight there. I feel that normally, if nobody has attempted to shut down a discussion, you can take a stab at collapsing it provided it isn't glaringly obvious that someone will object (often, for particularly trivial tangents, it's reasonable to hope that everyone involved will be embarrassed they were contributing to it and wander off.) When a hatting is likely to be more contentious, you should wait for outside editors to do it. But there's absolutely several cases where you can collapse an ongoing off-topic discussion. -- Aquillion ( talk) 07:22, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
I've just learned about the hat template. I'm wondering whether the "normally stops the off-topic discussion" phrase is based on {{ hat}}/{{ hab}}, which has language specifically ending discussion. In contrast, {{ Collapse top}}/{{ Collapse bottom}} does not contain that language. Is there some reason to not modify the text at WP:TALKOFFTOPIC to permit the collapse templates for an on-going off-topic discussion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Butwhatdoiknow ( talk • contribs) 18:23, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
Current text:
Proposed text:
Rationale: While the "hat" pair specifically states that the discussion is closed, the "Collapse" pair does not. Allowing an involved editor to employ Collapse allows the off-topic discussion to continue without further cluttering up the on-topic conversation. Any objection? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 05:40, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
As explained above, (1) there is no proscription against contributing to a collapsed discussion and thus (2) the phrase "this normally stops" means "this normally has the effect of stopping." To explicitly state this in the guidance I suggest changing:
to:
This text clarifies that, for example, a Collapse with an "On-going discussion of editing etiquette" title will not normally stop discussion. Thoughts? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 21:14, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
it may make sense to move off-topic posts to a more appropriate talk page. If a conversation is off-topic but worth continuing, I think it is usually better to continue it on the appropriate talk page, where others who are interested might better notice it. Collapsing a conversation has the usual effect of suppressing participation, so should only be the preferred option when that is actually your intention. -- Bsherr ( talk) 19:50, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Based on the discussion above (including concerns raised about prior proposals) my current proposal is to change:
to:
This change is intended to incorporate Bsherr's explanation (above) that "there is no proscription against contributing to a collapsed discussion, the intent is to state only that collapsing a discussion usually has the behavioral effect of discouraging further contributions to the discussion." Any substantive objection to this change? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 06:02, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Simplified, the first three sentences of WP:TALKOFFTOPIC say this:
If the intent of these three sentences is to say that a Collapse is always a Hat then I'll be happy to propose a re-write that says that. If the intent is to say that a Collapse is "normally" a Hat but sometimes it may be something else then I'll be happy to propose a re-write that says that. But which is it? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 04:06, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
@ EEng: I reverted your changes to the part about user access levels. I have personally found the link to Special:ListUsers helpful, and it seems like we'd want people to see directly that they can't get away with misrepresenting their credentials, so to speak. While I agree that users shouldn't brag, I'm not sure that needs to be a WP:RULE, nor should it be specific to talk pages. It might go at Wikipedia:Etiquette if anywhere. -- Sangdeboeuf ( talk) 18:08, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
As I didn't find anything in the guidelines as to what to do when the talk pages have obscenities / vulgarity / crude humour, I looked into the archives and found this "unresolved" thread from user
Kaldari:
/Archive 8#WP:TPG being cited to protect vandalism from being removed.
Although the last post there asked for help in resolving a discussion at
Talk:Rubyfruit Jungle, I could not find the discussion there as it had been removed, and not archived. What I got from
its history was that it was resolved as: "irrelevant obscenities and crude humor" is vandalism and should be removed from talk pages.
Was this resolution incorporated back into the talk page guidelines? I would like to know if I can delete the comment from 133.87.57.32 at
Talk:Bernhard_Caesar_Einstein#Question?, or the guidelines won't let me.
- Jay
(Talk) 14:37, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
Insulating Ceramic Rocket Stoves
For rocket stoves in general, a narrow gap between an insulating stove liner and the cookpot helps insure almost complete combustion. 'Transfer the heat efficiently by making the gaps as narrow as possible. <ref>
https://www.bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/Still/Rocket%20Stove/Principles.html<ref> For an insulating ceramic rocket stove, this consists of curved insulating bricks formed into a cylinder, such that the cook '...pot fits down inside with only a narrow gap all around...'<ref>
https://ceramics.org/ceramic-tech-today/international/reducing-air-pollution-insulating-ceramic-rocket-stoves<ref>
The bricks are insulating, giving a highly energy efficient stove, and these are composed of 50/ 50 by volume, clay and a combustible material, e.g., charcoal, that burns out when the bricks are fired.<ref>
https://morebooks.de/store/gb/book/environmental-health-and-development-for-all/isbn/978-620-2-51414-9<ref> The bricks start out as pre-mixed powders of clay and charcoal, then wetted and formed into the bricks, using purpose-made molds, as shown. Powders are used because this maximizes the bonding between adjacent particles, thus maximizing the strength of the bricks. <ref>
https://morebooks.de/store/gb/book/environmental-health-and-development-for-all/isbn/978-620-2-51414-9<ref>
The bricks are placed together using a mortar mix of 50/ 50 by volume, pre-mix powders of clay and sand, which is then wetted. The clay brings about a bond between the bricks. The sand prevents this mortar from shrinking away from the bricks. In general, as powders, '...the strength of the agglomerates is because of adhesion between the particles. <ref>
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080347202501027<ref>
In establishing a scientific basis for the insulating ceramic rocket stove, there is an important need to address it's affordability to those impoverished, e.g., of daily income US$1 or $2. All over the developing world there are low-income potters who produce, e.g., water containers and cook pots that are affordable within their communities. Once these potters are trained in model and mold making, <ref>
https://morebooks.de/store/gb/book/plaster-of-paris-techniques/isbn/978-620-0-78788-0<ref> they will be able to fabricate these insulating rocket stoves, affordable to their neighbors. Women potters in Burkino Faso, for example, could be easily trained to produce these stoves. <ref>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qXo8X48DI<ref>
FahnbullehV (
talk) 13:50, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
Dear All
Why was the text under Ensana hotels article declined? It is just a descriptive text of our company. This is a sister company of Danubius hotels that has a page already.
Thanks for the info.
Br Lukas Bek — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukas Bek ( talk • contribs) 18:01, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
A sentence in wp:TALKOFFTOPIC currently reads:
This text could be read to suggest that involved editors may end discussions in some other way (
expressio unius est exclusio alterius). To avoid this outcome I suggest changing the text to:
Any concerns regarding this change? Butwhatdoiknow ( talk) 22:08, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
This is my first edit to Wikipedia. My apologies if I did it wrong. Should I have included the link here? I'm still learning! Chemkatz ( talk) 22:40, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing on 21 March 2019 changed a WP:TALKHEADPOV phrase "Keep headings neutral: A heading should indicate what the topic is ..." to "Keep headings neutral: A heading on an article talk page should indicate what the topic is ..." with edit summary = "That recommendation does not apply to the thousands of instances of "A barnstar for you!" on user talk pages". True, but the WP:TALK introduction says about the guidelines of the page: "They apply not only to article discussion pages but everywhere editors interact, such as deletion discussions and noticeboards." I believe that the edit was going too far and I do not see that there was consensus at the time. I propose that we should change to "Keep headings neutral: A heading on a talk page, other than a user talk page, should indicate what the topic is ...". Disclosure: recently I referred to WP:TALKHEADPOV on WP:RSN, I was wrong, but changing now obviously can't affect current headings. Peter Gulutzan ( talk) 18:50, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
It's probably in there i just skimmed the page — Preceding unsigned comment added by VeraCruz776 ( talk • contribs) 18:20, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
I first submitted my name only and without attached text it was declined within second, indicating that no on read anything. I then submitted the text which was also rejected immediately meaning that no one had read or reviewed the content. Your website is cumbersome and difficult to navigate and does not ultimately tell you where you are in the review order. Please explain how a submission is automatically rejected before being read? Is there a real person I may speak with? My words are true and accurate and I remain sincere.
Cheers, and thanks, Dana Dana Skye Nicholson ( talk) 01:07, 17 October 2021 (UTC)