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Reference errors on 2 July

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Started a discussion?

Have you started a discussion on your removal of country links? When you use AWB, you are supposed to point to some discussion if you are doing wholesale link changes. I was requested to do that myself. It is not enough to quote policy, but I don't see that either in your summaries. Alaney2k (talk) 18:00, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

These edits are in accordance with Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking#What_generally_should_not_be_linked. No discussion is needed, the guideline has been settled policy for a long time. Which particular links are you concerned about? Colonies Chris (talk) 18:04, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
You are not putting that (a link to OLINK) in your edit summaries. Also, wholesale changes using AWB are supposed to be cleared in a discussion page somewhere. Because using AWB is technically using a robot. I'll find that. Thirdly, I don't believe that OLINK means remove country links entirely. As it says "What generally should not be linked". So you might end up in wasting your time. If you don't have a discussion or something to back your changes, they can be reverted. Get a discussion going so you can point to that for authority. Alaney2k (talk) 18:08, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any requirement to OK AWB changes in advance, as long as they're in line with policy. And it's not a bot - it's a semi-automated tool; every single edit is under manual control. Colonies Chris (talk) 18:13, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
See WP:BOTASSIST. I think that is the one. You need something to indicate clear consensus on your changes. I am not making this up. I am still looking for the reference in my talk page archives. Alaney2k (talk) 18:20, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
See this discussion. I was changing [[Canada|Canadian]] to [[Canadians|Canadian]] which I figured was non-controversial. Alaney2k (talk) 18:29, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't see the relevance - the task you were undertaking may or may not have been useful - clearly opinions differ - but it isn't directly sanctioned by an MoS guideline, unlike my unlinkings. Unlinking common terms such as major countries is one of many gnoming tasks I've been doing, both manually and with AWB, for many years, with only rare objections. I see no need for any general discussion on the principle. Colonies Chris (talk) 18:42, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

You are picking and choosing what you adhere to. If you want to quote policy, then you should follow it. You should indicate in your AWB edits where your consensus comes from. Alaney2k (talk) 19:00, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
As I said, it's rare for anyone to question these edits, because most editors are familiar with the relevant MoS guidelines. If a question arises, I'm always happy to explain the reasons behind the changes. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:13, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Diacritics reminder

   All player pages should have diacritics applied (where required, according to the languages of the player in question).
   All North American hockey pages should have player names without diacritics, except where their use is likewise customary (specifically, in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and the Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey).
   All non-North American hockey pages should have diacritics applied (where required).

From Wikipedia:WikiProject Ice Hockey#Wikiproject notice. This compromise has been in effect for several years. --Parkfly20 (talk) 18:49, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Noted. Colonies Chris (talk) 18:52, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

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Reference errors on 6 July

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July 2016

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  • On 3 April, the U.S. began Operation Steel Tiger over the Laotian panhandle and the Vietnamese [[[[Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone|DMZ]] (DMZ) to locate and destroy enemy forces and materiel being

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AWB editing errors

Hi, I just wanted to leave you a friendly note that I noticed that some of your edits using AWB are breaking image file names in articles. Please see here and here for a couple examples. I understand the convention to use en dashes ("–") instead of hyphens ("-") in certain circumstances. However, if you're going to change them in articles, please also change time in the image file names. Otherwise, it makes the images show as red-links and causes a backlog at Category:Articles with missing files. Cheers! - tucoxn\talk 15:55, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks - sorry those slipped through. Fixed now. Colonies Chris (talk) 16:24, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Hi again. I noticed another, more recent, instance of your use of AWB changing hyphens to en dashes and breaking image links. This one was a day after you responded to my comment above. I really hope you'll go through your edits and be more careful next time you use semi-automated editing. It's causing more work for the rest of the community. Thanks for your help! - tucoxn\talk 16:02, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

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Flags of the Nguyen dynasty's administrative units
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Removing state from City, State

Chris - Could I ask that you stop removing State (eg changing "Chicago, Illinois" to "Chicago") in cases where a consistent City, State format has been established? Really, I am mostly referring to infoboxes (example - Ben Wilson (basketball)) and roster templates (example - 1987–88 Indiana Hoosiers men's basketball team) for basketball articles. While MOS allows this change for big cities, it doesn't require it. With things like infoboxes and lists it doesn't look right to have City, State for 90% of the entries and City only for the rest. Also, with basketball being a world sport we have a number of editors from out side the US who may not know where cities like Cincinnati are. I think you and another editor have had some back and forth on this, but I am just asking if you could hold off doing this for basketball articles in these cases (other sports may view this practice differently). Rikster2 (talk) 13:41, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rikster2 - first of all, thanks for your consideration in reverting only those city/state items where you're raising an issue, and not just reverting my entire edit. I'd suggest that if a reader doesn't know where Cincinnati is (and I'm sure many don't), they probably don't know where Ohio is either. And that goes double for Chicago, which is much better known than the state it's located in. I really question the value placed on this type of consistent appearance - I doubt very much whether it helps our readers. However, I will try to steer clear of making those changes to further basketball-related articles. Please note though, that I've made similar changes to many many articles over the last few months, with only a tiny number of objections. Colonies Chris (talk) 15:06, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
There is some value in that a reader may, for example, scan a roster to get a sense for the geographic diversity of the school's players by looking at the state and removing it makes it harder, etc. But the real issue is an aesthetic one. It's a case where a project has adopted consistent look and feel in things like templates and infoboxes - choices supported by MOS. That's all. Rikster2 (talk) 15:33, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
I am going to second @Rikster2: here. It isn't necessarily required to list the state or province because any user can click on the link, but when it comes to tables and infoboxes it looks really odd to have some only listing cities. Yosemiter (talk) 18:18, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

AWB edits tour pages

Hi, I've noticed that you have recently been making edits to tour pages with AWB, removing wiki links to country pages, among other things (for example, several Black Sabbath tour pages such as The End Tour). I have no issue with the wiki links being removed, but it seems to be inconsistently applied. On The End Tour page, all links have been removed except for Czech Republic, Latvia and Chile. Can you you please ensure that these edits are consistently applied across pages you are editing Or is there a rational behind the links left untouched? Thanks. Liambarrett1986 (talk) 14:18, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Liambarrett1986 -
The rationale comes from Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking#What_generally_should_not_be_linked "The names of major geographic features, locations, languages, nationalities, and religions". So I always unlink, for example, USA, UK, France, Italy, Japan, and quite a few others. Of course opinions may differ about what constitutes 'major locations'. Czech Republic, Latvia and Chile are probably lesser known, so I leave them linked. Colonies Chris (talk) 14:27, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 23 July

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Reference errors on 24 July

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De-overlinking/boxing articles

Greetings. I've been fully aware of WP:OVERLINK for many years, but I strongly disagree with the way your bot/script is going around applying it with much inconsistency for boxing articles. For the sake of tables, I believe any and all cities should be linked on the first instance (thereby still semi-adhering to WP:OVERLINK), whether they are commonly known locations or not. As you've alluded to, determining the common'ness of each and every city isn't straightforward. Therefore, why not just be consistent about it and link every city in a table once? It's not exactly breaking a WP rule to have one lone link to London, etc., even if 99% of readers know what it is. Please don't get me wrong, though—I do like to be stringent in my own way with WP:OVERLINK, especially when it comes to linking things more than once. A sea of linked "London"s is certainly not my aim! ;-) Mac Dreamstate (talk) 21:52, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Mac Dreamstate - I don't really understand your thinking here. If 'London' is so well known that it doesn't merit a link in text, why should it be linked even once in a table? Colonies Chris (talk) 23:23, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Because most other cities are linked too, and tables work differently than prose. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 23:24, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
The key question is what's most useful for our readers. Since they aren't going to be clicking on 'London', there's no point in linking it, unless the slight incongruity of having some major cities unlinked while the others are linked (on first mention) is going to cause them so much confusion that they have trouble absorbing the information. I can't see the point of linking a city only on first mention in a table - I doubt very much whether a reader who's found a particular fight they're interested in, which took place in a city that's not linked because an earlier fight in the table took place in the same city, would look backwards through the table to find the first occurrence. And if the table is reorderable, they might have to look either backwards or forwards to find that one link. I suspect that probably noone ever uses these city links anyway, because if they really want to know about the location, they'll be clicking on the venue, not the city. There's a strong case for not linking cities at all unless the venue is a redlink. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:43, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
OK, fair point. So how would you suggest determining the well-known'ness of a city? The part regarding "major geographic locations" at WP:OVERLINK is too vague for my liking—I prefer concrete rules and for things to be set absolutely in stone (as in charts, tables and stuff), rather than a cop-out of "Just use common sense and try not to skirt too far around this MOS". I'm all for never linking a country, ever, but cities.. See, this has already got me thinking too much.
Obviously places like London, Washington D.C., Tokyo or Berlin are well known, but then it gets to a point where one has to weigh things up: Ottawa, Bonn, Turku, Swindon, Bay St. Louis.. I have no problem linking them, but I neither have a problem with linking New York City, Melbourne, or Toronto. Granted, deduction of cruft for readers is fine, but it shouldn't mean a headache for editors either. Why not just one or the other—ALL cities linked, or NO cities linked; no faffing about trying to figure out if a location is well known enough. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 00:03, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
In prose, I don't see that this is much of a problem: reasonable people can disagree over whether a specific location is lesser-known enough to merit a link, but it doesn't make a great deal of difference to the overall look and on the whole there's not a lot of disagreement among editors about it. However, I appreciate that in tables, a ragbag of mixed links and non-links can look a little scrappy - not a real problem, but aesthetically unpleasing. Where the table has links to more specific locations (i.e. venues), I'd be for solving this problem by leaving the city unlinked always - even when most people would agree that it's not well known e.g. Bolton Arena, Newport Leisure Centre, Gila River Arena (unless, as I said, the venue is so obscure it doesn't have an article). However, this is a controversial view that I certainly wouldn't try to put into effect without starting a discussion first. (And I would link the venue in every row it occurs, not just on first use, and regardless of how well-known it is e.g. Madison Square Garden or Wembley Arena would always be linked too). Colonies Chris (talk) 10:15, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Wars

I would also like to point out that many people are woefully uninformed about history, so delinking wars like World War II is pretty unhelpful.--Prisencolin (talk) 21:20, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

We assume a certain basic level of intelligence and background knowledge in our readers - otherwise we'd be linking every single thing. The occasional reader who really doesn't know about World War II can easily paste it into the search box. Colonies Chris (talk) 21:33, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
Sorry for jumping in here. But why should we actively make it harder for our readers to find out information they may not know, even if it might be a small percentage of them? It honestly seems to be counter productive to how Wikipedia works. --MorbidEntree - (Talk to me! (っ◕‿◕)っ♥)(Contribs)(please reply using {{ping}}) 22:21, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
There has been much debate over the years about how much we should link. The end result of that long deliberation is the guidance given in WP:OVERLINK. It's based on the principle that we link only those things that a reasonably well-informed reader might find helpful within the context - so we don't generally link "United States" or "Christianity" or "telephone", for example, unless they are particularly relevant to the subject of the article - e.g. an umbrella article on Telecommunications might well link "telephone", as a reader might be looking for more detailed coverage of that particular form of telecommunication, but an article on Blondie's song "Hanging on the Telephone" would assume that a typical reader understands what a telephone is. Colonies Chris (talk) 22:33, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

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Reference errors on 28 July

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Reference errors on 30 July

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