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Happy New Year!

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Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year}} to user talk pages.
Awesome North America ! -- GreenC 15:17, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Notice regarding a user script

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Hi. Recently, a request was made for someone to revise the User:Bility/convert24hourtime.js user script. I (DannyS712) took up that challenge, and have fixed the bug with the "thanks" button, fixed the bug regarding blocked users, fixed the bug regarding converting the times when examining a diff, and even added the feature to convert times when looking at logs. I have some more features planned, but I thought that, since you are currently importing Bility's script, you may want to know that a less buggy version is available at User:DannyS712/12Hours. This is intended as a one-time note. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 20:07, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:00, 13 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I need your help

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Please sir, I need your help with User:GreenC/WaybackMedic 2.5. I am trying to fix Dean Ambrose but my potato computer apparently has loading issues and so I need your help. Also, this is random, what are your thoughts on Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia? Which side are you more inclined to? Thanks? ImmortalWizard(chat) 22:07, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Sustainability Initiative

Hello GreenC: An invitation for you to check out the Sustainability Initiative, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia projects. If you're interested, please consider adding your name to the list of supporters, which serves to express and denote the community's support of the initiative. Thanks for your consideration! North America1000 10:28, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Done -- GreenC 15:24, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bot error

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Your bot made an error at Talk:Josh White, in this edit - now reverted. I've no idea how or why it happened.... Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:57, 9 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ghmyrtle, hey thanks for the heads up. It did it for 13 pages (fixed). Pretty sure what caused it (fixed) and will keep an eye out. -- GreenC 14:27, 9 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bring it back!

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Hi GreenC. Please bring back the page https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/List_of_cult_films to the way it was, before being categorized by alphabet. that was better and more accessible. thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kayhamed (talkcontribs) 08:31, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's not more accessible. Pages this long cause problems with some browsers or systems, and some people in some countries report they don't work at all. Can't keep making lists longer and longer forever there comes a time they need to be split. -- GreenC 14:49, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

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The Technical Barnstar
For your work to ensure that thousands of links to Highbeam remain accessible to editors and readers - thank you! Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 09:54, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Is this something you can handle with one of your bots? Nemo 10:59, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nemo, yes will do. -- GreenC 14:34, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Nemo 20:01, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
 Done -- GreenC 12:58, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Much better. I still see some 500 URLs of the kind http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/ (like [1]) which are still broken, any chance for those? (I see they're mostly bare external links, which maybe you left alone intentionally, but also some in cite templates.) Nemo 18:25, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have a list of the articles or some example articles? Not finding with URL search. -- GreenC 18:45, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. These were the top results of Special:Search/insource:"http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/" for me: special:diff/887209551, special:diff/887209622, special:diff/887209651, special:diff/887209777. Nemo 07:20, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The bot is a dead link fixer. If it finds a dead link, it adds an |archiveurl= if one exists otherwise adds a {{dead link}} tag. Example. It will never delete the source URL entirely as you did here. Understand this could be done in certain cases because of DOI, but the bot has no way of verifying the content in the |archiveurl= can be replaced with the content in the DOI. That would be up to manual edits. -- GreenC 13:25, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see now. I thought you were using some normal replace (with replace.py or others) for this case. All the archived URLs are broken too, because they were taken in 2012 or later. URLs like [2] return a 403. Nemo 07:24, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Nemo bis: The URL [3] is located in this article where GreenC bot made this edit which added this archive. Seems ok? -- GreenC 15:00, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not really, that URL will need to be removed as it's redundant with the DOI anyway (and even someone with subscription cannot proceed from that archived URL to the full text). Nemo 15:29, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The bot can save dead links or mark them dead is what it did. To do those other things, start a consensus discussion and take the support result to BOTREQ. This isn't the only domain, highbeam.com is dead and has similar redundancy with DOI, do em all at the same time. -- GreenC 16:23, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also you mentioned something about "mostly bare external links" I'd be interested how to find those, if they were not already converted to archive URLs or had a {{dead link}} tag added. -- GreenC 14:44, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't check that, because I don't think it matters. We're talking of URLs which are complete garbage and don't add any information, don't aid the identification of the target in any way. It's like having links to an URL shortener which died a decade ago and was never archived, or URLs composed of random characters, or C:\ links which were "valid" only on the original editor's computer in the first place. They should just be removed altogether.
The eventual fix is for someone to search the work by its title, usually manually, but that's done normally by scanning references and bibliography for unlinked/untemplated lines anyway, not by looking for warnings. Nemo 07:24, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I understand what you are saying. Unfortunately it's beyond the scope of what the bot was designed or approved for to delete entire domains. Removal of an entire domain because it contains useless information is a subjective call, it would mean in some cases deleting a whole citation even though an archive URL exists and returns some info such as an abstract - if that info is useful or not is WP:CONTEXTBOT. -- GreenC 15:00, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I found another 3000 or so pages with URLs beginning http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL which, based on a random samples checked with lynx, are all broken... These should be removed as well. Nemo 18:25, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Can work in this. Will wait to see what happened with the above first in case there is a code change. -- GreenC 18:45, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thanks. Nemo 07:20, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For now I think at a minimum they should be archived or marked dead, since they are dead, and archives do exist with some content (abstract, citation etc). Later on, if there is consensus to selectively (such as a DOI exists) or entirely delete the domain, or some other solution. I've never seen a discussion of this kind before where an entire domain is deleted but would be interested in what happens, it's an interesting question really. -- GreenC 15:00, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well it's not an entire domain, just an URL format for that domain. Nemo 15:34, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Either way deleting tons of URLs. Gotta have consensus. -- GreenC 16:23, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

IABot - CAS

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hi! IABot indicate domain "research.calacademy.org" as unavailable. Please, edit IABot for replase domain "research.calacademy.org" to "researcharchive.calacademy.org". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mazapura (talkcontribs) 12:10, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I tried it out on the links listed here and it doesn't really work. Either way the links are dead. Not sure what would be done. -- GreenC 12:57, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

third opinion

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i would need a third opinion on whenever italy should be included as totaliatarian, as most acedemic sources consider italy NOT totalitarian, can you please give a third opinion on Talk:List of totalitarian regimes 83.185.94.196 (talk) 14:54, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is a [test] section title

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test

Reverted edits on Internet Hall of Fame

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Dear GreenC, Can you explain why you revert this edit ? (actu | diff) 23 mars 2019 à 21:42‎ GreenC (discussion | contributions)‎ m . . (14 284 octets) +1 135‎ . . (Reverted edits by Franck.schneider (talk) to last version by GreenC) (annuler | remercier) Balise : Révocation
The chapter "Advisory Board" appears twice in the article. It's obviously a mistake. I do not understand why you have removed my edits. I contribute more on wikipedia in french and little in english. Thank you for your explanation, then, I could delete this duplicate chapter. Kind regards, --Franck.schneider (talk) 15:09, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, sorry. The diff at first looked like a vandalism. -- GreenC 15:30, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your BRFA (12)

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Hello GreenC, your recent BRFA (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/GreenC bot 12) has been approved. Please review the closing notes before executing. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 15:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux and Underlying lk: Thank you, Xaosflux! Ideally, longer term, the data would be kept fresh on Wikidata with another automated process so users will not see a reason to revert back to static in wiki (though they are free to do so for any reason). What do you think of that eh bien, mon prince? -- GreenC 20:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenC: I already wrote Wikipedia:Uploading metadata to Wikidata to explain the updating process, but it still needs a human to download the Statistik Austria figures and turn them into a csv format that QuickStatements understands; I don't think it can be automated more than that.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 21:00, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

NoRef bot

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Hi. I saw this edit you made - what do you mean by "Template filter added"? My point was that if there are citation needed tags, they should probably be removed when tagging the article as unreferenced, not that the article should be skipped. (Though your option is more conservative) - am I misunderstanding your comment? --DannyS712 (talk) 02:10, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@DannyS712: In this case you are right it should be removed but the bot has no way to determine it was a stray. I believe evidence of a cite needed tag shows someone has made a critical review of the article, so an automated banner might not be advisable. -- GreenC 16:02, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenC: oh, okay --DannyS712 (talk) 16:03, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
An article you created or have contributed to has been nominated for deletion
Hello!
Click the image for an important message.
Like, it's April Fools' Day today, you know? North America1000 09:47, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So...
 

Keep

 

on

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Is it legal for readers to download images from Wikipedia articles and use them for personal uses, such as prints, desktop wallpaper, or editing? 2600:1:F1A8:AC53:F50F:EE64:20F7:849E (talk) 15:55, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That is a question which depends on the individual licenses of each image. While in principle all Wikipedia text is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and can be used free of charge for any purpose, images are identified as being subject to any of several licenses. Therefore it is advisable to check the image information page for the source and/or licensing information. Clicking on the image will lead you to the image information page. Most images are usually free to use as long as you give the proper credits and follow the terms of the license indicated on the image description page.
For more information please see: Terms of Use#7. Licensing of Content, Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content and Reusing content outside Wikimedia
If the licensing conditions of one image do not suit you, it may be possible to contact the author of that image for alternate conditions. See in the description page if the author's name is present.
Please note: Neither the Wikimedia Foundation, nor the authors of articles on Wikimedia sites, nor the volunteer editors provide legal advice. It is your responsibility, if you intend to reuse content from Wikimedia sites, to determine how the licenses of the content that we host apply to your intended uses. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:37, 27 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the spirit of WP:AGF, I'm going to assume it's a coincidence that you're now making the same arguments about primary sources I made, which you so vehemently disagreed with, on pages that I've created. That's fine, but in this instance, you're mistaken; the content on William Hersey Hopkins is largely derivative of a book, which qualifies as a WP:SECONDARY source. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 21:04, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No idea, you made so many arguments and linked to so many CAPS I don't remember. William Hersey Hopkins by all appearances has a problem, it has 7 citations with 6 are to a primary source. Further discussion on article talk. -- GreenC 21:44, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I addressed your arguments on the talk page. Hopefully we're done here. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 11:56, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BRFA 14

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Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/GreenC bot 14 was approved. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:31, 27 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, SandDoctor! -- GreenC 13:14, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Access to IP address

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In this you phrase your message such that it suggests it is obviously and self-evidently impossible for a bot to have access to its invoking user's IP address. I am aware of no factor in the web stack in general, Mediawiki as a platform, or WMF wikis as an environment that would make this so. I would expect that, say, Toolserver takes steps to clean the environment so that something like IA Bot's management console isn't passed the client's IP in CGI variables, but I've never seen that actually documented anywhere (not that I've been looking for it); and nothing but policy (i.e. no technical measure) would prevent it from capturing the IP through JavaScript or similar client-side chicanery. Most non-toolserver based bot architectures I can think of off the top of my head would have even more ready access to the IP. What am I missing? --Xover (talk) 15:48, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Only a few highly placed admins can access IP logs, they have WP:CHECKUSER rights. Typically only for security issues like WP:SPIs. I once modified a Lua external link templates to redirect to a page on Toolforge (which then redirected to the target page) and this allowed the web server on Toolforge to log the incoming IP. They all show up as internal WMF IPs (BTW I wasn't doing this to gain IP information but to gather usage stats). User privacy is a very serious concern, so is Checkuser access. I've never heard of anyone gaining access to IP logs, but if they did and were caught, my guess is they would be immediately and permanently banished to the 9th level, one should be careful. -- GreenC 16:10, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Right, but there you're talking about the Mediawiki-internal edit logs. I am aware of nothing (technical) that would prevent https://tools.wmflabs.org/citations/ from capturing the client IP address. The page is running non-WMF client-side JavaScript, so if the bot's operators through deliberate choice or some bug propogated that data to the edit summary there would be no technical measures to prevent that. Using the Gadget or the user script is the same story: they are executing in the user's browser, has access to the client's IP address before Mediawiki ever sees it, and there is no technical measure preventing them from using it. That's why Interface Admin rights were separated from regular sysop rights, and requires 2FA: if you can edit user scripts or css/js in the Mediawiki:-namespace, you can execute code in the end user's browser. I agree that user privacy is a very serious issue, and I agree with your assessment that even negligent (nevermind deliberate or malicious) access to this information would be likely to have dire consequences (not everyone agrees, it seems).
But, in any case, then I conclude that there isn't anything that is actually preventing Citation bot from seeing the IP that you are aware of. In fact, in order for it to insert the IP of non-logged in users into the edit summary it must have the client IP address, it just doesn't use it when it has a username available. --Xover (talk) 17:04, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know enough about JS. Looking at the source it is PhP but there is one JavaScript here that contains something about saving username, but it's 5 months old, and the IP stuff is more recent. -- GreenC 17:16, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(trying the editing interface on a phone for the first time. apologies if I mess anything up)
Yeah, I’m pretty sure those changes are serverside and running on toolforge/toolserver (not sure about the name; there’s been changes recently and I’m not watching the area very closely). The Gadget lives at mediawiki:Gadget-citations.js, and it hasn’t been substantially changed in a while either. But judging by a quick scan of its code, all it does is forward a request to the server side running on toolserver which is where all the logic lives. Which is just as I would have expected (it’s a typical way to design an app like this). And getting the client’s IP address when it’s executing your javascript is nearly trivial for someone determined (there’s no built-in facility for it in the language, but there’re tons of loopholes I’m not going to describe per WP:BEANS).
But just to be painfully clear: I have absolutely no reason to suspect, and do in no way mean to imply, any kind of malicious behaviour on the part of Citation bot! The only reason I’m digging into this is the sheer level of derision in response to my message (some was on my user talk page), and that even you—whom I know as someone who is both technically competent and who manages to stay polite and constructive even when everyone else involved (feel free to include me in that category if you like ;) ) have resorted to sniping and bickering—appeared to take the obvious impossibility as granted. I like to consider myself reasonably competent in technology, so I just had to dig a bit to see if I had misunderstood something pretty fundamental. I’ve never previously looked at how Citation bot is implemented, so it was always possible it was done in some novel way that obviated or severely mitigated this risk, for example. --Xover (talk) 18:17, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On IP leakage we are probably in WP:BIKESHED territory, the important thing is to get the bot working ASAP. Still, it is an interesting question. Looking at this thread it would not be simple (see post by Shog9) because dealing with local IPs (192.168.0.x) and third-party IP tracing services and browsers that support WebRTC etc. I doubt Citation bot is doing those sorts of things, probably it requests the User:name through an API and if it's an IP user it gets that, otherwise the name. -- GreenC 19:55, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, definitely in bikeshed territory. As mentioned, I only pursued it to make sure I hadn't misunderstood anything.
I can state categorically that the Citation bot gadget does not engage in any such methods to obtain the IP: it's just asking Mediawiki for the username using mw.config.get('wgUserName'), documented at mw:Manual:Interface/JavaScript#User-specific. I haven't checked the scripts in the other frontend at the toolserver, but would assume it similarly just gets the username (from the form field, since toolserver isn't Mediawiki). What's happening server side would take more digging: the toolserver docs are woefully poor in regards what API is available for Mediawiki instances, so I'd have to look at the bot's source to see what it's actually doing.
Regarding getting the bot working again, it seems clear that anything from me now gets interpreted as an attack regardless of content, so I'll not be contributing to that effort. My previous message on that topic pointed to OAuth and explained why that's the most reasonable way to comply with the policy: they can heed that if they choose. --Xover (talk) 06:51, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Batting average - Thanks!

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Thanks for all your help, I see the job has run through and there are only 73 links to Batting average left. Some of these are valid links, others have section links that we didn't spot in the initial testing. I saw only one false positive, there was a link back from Batting average (cricket) to the parent page that was changed, but I have changed that back. Spike 'em (talk) 08:29, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent. Doesn't sound too bad. There were 15,377 page edits and 21,453 link conversions. Would be curious which one's it missed (the section links) but also probably no big deal since it won't run again. It did convert 343 section links mostly of the form [[batting average#Cricket|average]]. -- GreenC 13:22, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The most common one I found was [[Batting average#Qualifications for the batting title|something]]. There were a number that I couldn't figure out why they were missed though, for example Jack Redmond, which hadn't been updated since 2016. Did you use a pre-generated list, as others I can understand only if your list was from about 2 weeks ago (e.g. players who have greatly expanded since then)? Anyway, as you said, it did generally work as expected and I knew there would be a bit of a tidy-up needed. I also realised there were a few redirects from Batting Average which I did via AWB. Spike 'em (talk) 14:03, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ah I see what happened, instead of dynamic matching "#any string" it was hard-coded for "#cricket" or "#baseball" or "#major league baseball". This method worked, except when not. I did a search for all possible "#string" and found those but something was missed in the search. Should have made it dynamic. For Jack Redmond looks like there was a problem during the API upload step, probably a maxlag timeout. That was the only timeout. Yeah I didn't think about the changes since the list was created. Well you got it cleared and if you think it ever would run again drop me a note! -- GreenC 14:30, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I'll try to remember to have a look in a couple of months, as it depends whether article creators notice the change in usage. Spike 'em (talk) 14:49, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Caucasian categories name change

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Hello Do you think you can help me post a proposal for the category rename for the category People of Caucasus descent. With this rename, we can explain at the top of the page that while in the United States, the term "Caucasian" denotes people of white descent, Caucasian also refers to people of the Caucasus region.

As for the American people of Caucasus descent, I think in that place it would be good to explain the bad grammar of the title there. However for the just people of caucasus descent, it must be renamed to people of Caucasian descent, with an explanation at the top, because people form the Caucasus are called Caucasian. We have to learn to maybe deamericanize Wikipedia a bit, sinc ewe are not an Americans only place. thanks.

Nahom 199.101.62.21 (talk) 01:08, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Question about IABot

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Hello. Since CP678 seems to be away for a bit and I know you know a lot about it, I'm wondering why the rio2016.com domain is whitelisted. Do you know why it is like that? Can it be switched to dead perhaps? Dat GuyTalkContribs 13:36, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Dat Guy, there is a mix of sub-domains but mostly www.rio2016.com which redirect to www.olympic.org/rio-2016 .. there are about 9,000 URLs in 5,000 articles. I agree they should be considered dead. Possibly they were auto whitelisted due to the redirect. I've set them to status "Blacklisted" and started a bot job but IABot is not working well at the moment and stuck with a large queue of unprocessed jobs. Only CP can fix that. I could process these with WaybackMedic if you think it's urgent, pls request at WP:URLREQ. -- GreenC 14:11, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

France pops for the bot

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It's the turn of France; diff and query. Many thanks!--eh bien mon prince (talk) 00:23, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies

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I am so sorry. I totally see why it felt like that was what I was saying, and I sincerely apologize. It was completely inadvertent and not intended to be linked to the rest of the conversation, was only intended to be a clarification of my advice not to edit directly. It was just stupidity on my part not to see how that could have been interpreted. --valereee (talk) 19:11, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee: It is no problem, it was sort of subtle and I couldn't tell if you were sending a message so I wanted to clarify before they took it the wrong way as tacit approval to remove some things. But you clarified and I was wrong in my interpretation so my apologies also but it wasn't bad faith or anything just wanted to clarify. I'm also happy to see new perspectives with this article, it is controversy (NTE) on top of controversy (global warming) with a COI, so pretty complicated. -- GreenC 21:28, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I never thought it could be bad faith on your part! In retrospect I totally understood that it could be interpreted that way, it just didn't occur to me at the time. I wrote the first bit, then realized that I hadn't mentioned that there were some exceptions for COI editors being asked not to edit directly (and I hate the thought of a basically well-intentioned COI editor finding really ugly vandalism and feeling like their hands were tied until someone showed up), so I went back and added that part. If I'd just mentioned it in passing as an aside during the original post, it probably wouldn't have been so ambiguous. Communication is so difficult lol --21:45, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Iran? What do you mean? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xx236 (talkcontribs)

hah copy-paste typo. -- GreenC 14:33, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your BRFA

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Hello GreenC, your recent BRFA (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/GreenC bot 16) has been approved. Happy editing, — xaosflux Talk 13:56, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of unreffed articles with ELs?

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Hello! I've been going through some of the 180,000 articles in Category:All articles lacking sources, and noticed a large number of them appear to have one or more external links that are serving as references. These are particularly easy to deal with since I just check if the info in the article is at the link, and if so change it to a reference. Any chance you could easily generate a list of all articles in Category:All articles lacking sources that have any external links in them? It would just be helpful for those of us working on the category, so we can move quickly through the low-hanging fruit. No need for a bot to do any tagging/untagging. If it's a hassle, then no worries I can ask elsewhere. Thanks for all of your help with the unreffed bot (which hopefully can move forward at some point? I can check more of your test edits later today)! I hope all is well! Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 19:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ajpolino, sounds like a good idea. It should be possible to turn around and report on a positive rather than negative. There is a large number so generating a list becomes awkward, overwhelming and outdated. Suggestion: a system to control the bot on-demand. I did this for Template:Cleanup bare URLs/bot. Basically the end user says "show me 5 articles that have this problem" and the bot goes looking and adds a new argument to the {{unreferenced}} template eg. |status=haslinks). This adds the article to a tracking category and the bot won't run again until the tracking category is mostly empty. Let me know what you think. -- GreenC 14:35, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me! Good point; hadn't considered the unwieldiness of a list of tens of thousands of blue links. Whatever is easiest for you sounds good to me! Thanks! Ajpolino (talk) 14:52, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for deletion of Module:Gutenberg

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Module:Gutenberg has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the module's entry on the Templates for discussion page. * Pppery * it has begun... —Preceding undated comment added 00:13, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 6

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Elizabeth Holmes Lead

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Rather than reverting your edit I wanted to start a discussion. To start, I am not sure you are using "pithily" correctly in this context. "Pithily" as I understand it, means "brief, forceful, and meaningful in expression; full of vigor, substance, or meaning; terse; forcible" 1, there is nothing "pithily" about this wording, in fact, it makes the sentence bulky, seems to editorialize or express an opinion, and does not fit with the linear fashion of the lead. For example, "unlikely" claims is not brief when the nature of the claim need not be explained when the rest of the lead explains the veracity of the claim. Similarly, I also find "surprisingly" out of place for the same reasons. Next, with "surprisingly" could not other words be used to describe the claims, such as revolutionary or groundbreaking? People called what the company was doing revolutionary at one point, and then there was surprise later according to other sources. This is the problem with using this type of wording in this context. For these reasons I think these two words should be removed. I would like to hear your thoughts as I came back to this article a couple times before making this edit as each time I read it the wording of the lead seemed to be out of place for how we normally write our BLPs. Thanks! KnightLago (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is pithily because to emphasize these things correctly another way would require a much longer or multiple sentences. To remove those words underplays the severity of the situation which would be a form of bias. When the article previously had only 'claims' other editors were adding in things like "fraudulent claims". It _must_ be clarified what kinds of claims these were, and how outside the bounds of expectations they were. To call them "revolutionary claims" in the first sentence of the lead section is in hindsight laughable, and not much different than 'fraudulent claims' depending on your perspective of time, so that would require further clarification introducing more complexity. The first sentence is a summary then it goes into further detail as you read on which is how Wikipedia is meant to operate. -- GreenC 18:47, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I could use some help from someone with template editor rights.

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See this. I just nominated some templates for TfD, but they're template editor-protected so I can't add the appropriate notices. Retro (talk | contribs) 00:04, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, it was already done a few minutes before I posted this. Retro (talk | contribs) 00:18, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Help copy edit for article. Thanks you. 27.72.88.186 (talk) 06:28, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Richard Haine

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On 21 June 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Richard Haine, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Dickie Haine flew in the RAF's first night fighter patrol of World War II? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Richard Haine. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Richard Haine), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Maile (talk) 00:01, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Response

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GC, I would kindly request that you retract your recent off-topic personal attack against me at ANI, and not attempt to engage me in discussion about users with whom I am IBANned. My past interactions none of the editors you named were relevant, except insofar as Thirteen was engaged in blatant trolling, name-calling and harassment of me (per the diffs) and Andrew was engaged in hounding, revenge-reverting, and so on of me (per the diffs -- technically the hounding was in a permalink archive thread linked in an unrelated context). I ... am frankly quite disappointed to see you make such a remark, since you and I have collaborated positively in the past, including in one of the cases of fringe content I referred to in my ANI post (and self-promotion I referred to in my MFD post). Hijiri 88 (やや) 14:54, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

GreenC, I just wanted to notify you that I have mentioned this post from Hijiri at ANI and have thus technically mentioned you in the thread. Lepricavark (talk) 01:17, 22 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A star

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The Civility Barnstar
Keep up the great work! I appreciate your efforts on the project! Lubbad85 ()(Edits) 20:00, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Lubbad85: Thank you :) -- GreenC 21:14, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"three people have reverted you now"

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[4] Umm ... what? I hadn't edited that page in more than a month.

Anyway, I don't see any reason for any prior reverts, or your revert, except "no consensus".

Hijiri 88 (やや) 01:16, 25 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, should have said three people reverted the content (not you). Followed up on talk page there. -- GreenC 01:23, 25 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 7

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~negative or not it is some one else's opinion on a living person ~ and it does not belong in a wiki BLP ~ ~mitch~ (talk) 18:49, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

also where in the source does it say she was mocked ~ ~mitch~ (talk) 18:50, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you on the "awkward moment" but not the mocked part ~ ~mitch~ (talk) 18:52, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're good. It was a BLP problem in how the text was worded, but the source/story not BLP. -- GreenC 19:39, 1 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A beer for you!

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~ I was drunk ~ sorry ~ WP:LOL ~mitch~ (talk) 00:59, 6 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Did you think "IT" was going to be that big of a discussion ~ LOL ~

Yeah wonder why.. -- GreenC 23:08, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Typo correction

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Hope you don't mind this correction to your RFC. Marquardtika (talk) 00:57, 7 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

can you please help me

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there is currently enough well sourced entries so we can restore the categories, or this article will look like a mess Gooduserdude (talk) 16:13, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

also there is considerable scholarly sourcing that italy, japan and libya were totalitarian, the part where they are not could be created into a "criticism of the totalitarian concept" section, because some scholars doubt that such type of states even exist anywhere Gooduserdude (talk) 16:21, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The article doesn't look like a mess. The columns are sortable so you sort it any way you want (click the arrow at the top of the column). Sortable single table are almost always more beneficial vs. multiple tables that breaks the sorting ability. I have no idea about italy, japan and libya, it was not possible to determine the changes as you were changing the table layout and making content changes in the same diffs. This is how many people try to hide controversial edits, not saying you intended that. -- GreenC 16:53, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WebCite Village Pump proposal

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Hello GreenC. I liked your proposal on the Village Pump. Please don't take the following as an accusations or slight, but rather as an appreciation for transparency and the desire to avoid any appearance of impropriety.
Given your prior payment for editing from the Internet Archive project, would it not be a good idea to add a note about this to your proposal? WebCite and the Wayback Machine are competing services, even if the Internet Archive is a non-profit organization.
Again, no accusation is intended. Have a great day! Hecato (talk) 16:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

My status with IA changed very recently and is honestly quite limited and was not for the express purpose of this project though I suppose anything I do has a connection. -- GreenC 16:45, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hecato: this is done. -- GreenC 17:25, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Hecato (talk) 17:33, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bot stop

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Hello GC. For the first time since it started {{Cleanup bare URLs/bot}} hasn't responded to my request for it to tag articles. It usually does this within a few minutes so I am letting you know what has happened. Thanks for your time. MarnetteD|Talk 19:23, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@MarnetteD: Someone hit the bot's emergency stop button for a separate process and I forgot to turn it back on. I need to make a separate stop button for tagbot. Should be good now. -- GreenC 20:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks GC :-) MarnetteD|Talk 21:03, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Elizabeth L. Gardner

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On 12 July 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Elizabeth L. Gardner, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Elizabeth L. Gardner served as a WASP during World War II and was the subject of an iconic photo (pictured)? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Elizabeth L. Gardner. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Elizabeth L. Gardner), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

valereee (talk) 00:02, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese holidays and Module:Calendar date/events

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Hey, an editor created a ton of Chinese holiday-related date templates, such as Template:Double Ninth Festival, Template:Zhongyuan, etc., but didn't actually use them. Should these events be added to Module:Calendar date/events? --Gonnym (talk) 12:08, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Gonnym, great find. As an experiment I added {{Buddha's Birthday}} as the last entry in Module:Calendar date/events and it works out of the box including date format changes. Given the number, it will need a new local chinese_events code block, I'll add that now. -- GreenC 14:38, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A question regarding your implementation of ROSH HASHANAH - why is the module calling a template with the dates, instead of using a sub-module like it does with the other events? --Gonnym (talk) 14:49, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Added Buddha's Birthday [5]. Most of the Jewish holidays use the template {{Hebrew year/rhdatum}} as the calculator. -- GreenC 14:59, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've added a few others but I don't have citations for them. I've created {{Calendar date/infobox}} to reduce the boilerplate code needed in the infobox, but it has |cite= set on as default (I'll add an option to disable), which I think is best, but this causes a citation error when |cite= is used when the event has no source. Could you change the code so when there is no citeation it does not return a citation at all (instead of an empty reference)? This way, by default, if there is a source, it will show it, if there isn't it won't. --Gonnym (talk) 19:11, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly I don't believe the infobox template is a good idea. It is essentially a fork of another template requiring its own documentation and maintenance and arguments. If you follow WP:TFD this is a common case where functionality would be merged into a single template ie. {{Calendar date}}. If those shortcuts were merged into the main template module, would it be a good idea? A default |holiday= based on page name could work, but it also creates problems if/when the page is renamed, thus locking in the name against what exists in the events file is also a good idea. With the cites sometimes it applies to all years, and sometimes it only applies to the current year, flexibility is needed on a case basis. Shortcutting {{CURRENTYEAR}} to "current" might be included in the module as a sort of alias. Possibly when it sees this date alias it defaults to |format=infobox as another shortcut. The docs would then have a special section for use in infoboxes describing these shortcuts. -- GreenC 12:44, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure how you see it as a fork, but if you want to merge the template (with all of its current features) into the main one, I'm fine. The whole point is to minimize the amount of boilerplate code needed in the actual infobox.
Compare:
|date{{NEXTYEAR|2}}   = {{Moveable date |holiday=holiday |year={{NEXTYEAR|2}} |format=infobox |cite=}}
|date{{NEXTYEAR|2}}   = {{Calendar date/infobox|year=next2}}
I don't see any issue with the template taking the page name and using it for the holiday. Again, less boilerplate code in article. If it gets disambiguation, nothing changes. If the page name completely changes, then |holiday= is there exactly for that (or again, fix the core issue. Add an alias field to the module entry so that known aliases can work). There are a finite amount of names for any holiday - these are not thing that can really change. I don't understand your point about the cite. If it's empty just don't return an error. How on earth does that seem like the more correct thing to do? My template has a |cite= parameter which can be set to do whatever we want it to do, but there is no reason why an article should have an error when there is no data. Just quietly handle it at the backend. --Gonnym (talk) 21:27, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also, just a question, if you do merge the templates, how will you distinguish between an infobox format and a non-infobox format without needing the user to write that? --Gonnym (talk) 21:30, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is two templates accomplishing the same result we try to avoid. Re: cites, for example the cite in Buddha's Birthday, the given citation in the Events module, it only applies to the current year, not last or next year. There is no way to do it using the new template as it requires all or nothing and can't be cited just for the current year. BTW the new template doesn't work at Buddha's Birthday, unless |event= is set. No idea why, another complication. I mentioned above one possible solution for reducing use of |format=infobox though I don't really like it as it will cause confusion when someone tries it outside the infobox. The original template is simple for people to understand, it is plainly laid out and descriptive without resorting to opaque features to make it work, and retains flexibility not every infobox has the same requirements. It is not that verbose or causing a problem, only used in a few dz articles, it is shorter and simpler than most cases of {{cite web}} not burdensome. -- GreenC 04:25, 25 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion you started on deprecating webcitation.org...

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I went to the Village pump to see if there was an explanation as to why webcitation.org was not accepting new archive requests. I found the discussion you initiated -- which seems to have been moved to the Village pump archive prior to closure.

I discovered webcitation.org years prior to discovering archive.org.

One point I didn't see mentioned in the discussion was that there are webpages where archive.org reports the page was barred from archiving by the copyright holder, where webcitation.org would go ahead and archive it - even though it too, in theory, honours norobots directives.

So, did I miss a decision?

Some years ago, in an earlier discussion, I suggested that the cash-rich wikimedia foundation should financially support the archive sites we like best - or partner with them. If it costs the remaining rump of whatever organization maintains their servers five figures per year maybe it would be cheaper and safer for the WMF to pay that ongoing cost.

Is there some reason why the WMF software can't automatically try to archive every url placed in a new {{cite}} template?

Am I correct that archive sites freely try to archive web-pages under fair use, and have a policy of excising pages from the archive if the copyright holder complains they don't want the page archived?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 00:19, 25 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hi, I'll try to answer. Per WP:RFC not every RFC needs to be closed indeed most never are. In this case since WebCite came back online and other things changed midstream it seems like at this point we won't be having any new WebCite URLs added. Moving away from WebCite where possible would still be a wise decision that the RfC consensus seems to support. If you strongly disagree we can ask for an admin close but based on the results I don't see how it would be any different. There are no bots actively converting URLs at this point, but if you really care about an article, it would be wise to consider the long term viability of WebCite given their history.
Per WP:LINKROT, newly added URLs are automatically archived at archive.org within hours, but those archive URLs are not added into articles until after the link actually dies (typically). Robots.txt policies keep changing at archive providers and many of them no longer honor robots.txt or they have other methods. The most permissive archive provider is archive.today they will take anything and are basically tied with WebCite for the second-largest archive on Wikipedia. -- GreenC 04:40, 25 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the prompt reply. If (1) there had been no rfc; (2) webcitation.org was up and running again; and (3) I found a reference that archive.org wouldn't archive, but webcitation would archive, I'd place the webcitation url in the cite template.
  • On the premise that the WMF is very cash rich, as non-profits go, what do you think about the WMF partnering with one or more archive organization, pay some of the costs, and in return, not have to worry that they will suddenly run out of money?
  • You wrote above of the possibility of "bots converting URLs" at some point in the future. I see a couple of wrinkles with this.
  1. Just the other day I went searching for an archived version of a deadurl. My human judgement was definitely required as archive.org had multiple copies of the page, but only the ones closest to the references' accessdate actually substantiated the points the reference was being used to substantiate. While, most of the time, any of the archives to a page will do, instances where the version magtters, and requires at least a few moments of focussed attention from a contributor familiar with why the reference is being used, are not that uncommon.

    Sometimes the last archived versions of a page boil down to 404 - page not found.

  2. What should the conversion bot do when the preferred alternate archive organization didn't archive the page in question, so there is no alternate URL? Should it keep the version supplied by the deprecated archive server?
  • Here are two features I would like to see in archive.org:
  1. I'd like archive.org to be able to provide something like a diff, maybe not as detailed, so we could tell when the intellectual content of two archived pages were basically identical.
  2. I'd like archive.org pages to be able to be searched, just like a regular webpage. Sometimes archive.org will tell you it doesn't http://website.com/subdirectory/article A.htm archived, and it will ask if you want to see everything under http://website.com/subdirectory/ This is useful when the article in question was archived, but under a different name. Currently, determining if this was the case requires a human to do a brute force search of each possible alternate name. Sometimes there are thousands of choices.

    There was a great web-site I cited hundreds of times, http://casr.ca - the "Canadian American Strategic Review". I am glad that, at some point, I archived every reference I used from that site. The site's web-pages were richly interlinked. So I also archived every page those the pages I referenced linked to. It is a good thing I did because, a year or two later, the two academics who ran it, announced they were packing it in. Their valedictory message told readers their articles could be found on archive.org. While there are about 1000 pages, it is only a fraction of the pages they made. Their earliest pages had been made, and ported from a subdomain of sfu.ca Simon Fraser University.

    I'd like to be able to search among the excellent pages I hadn't used as references. I don't know a convenient way to do that.

    Also, for some reason, at some point after they closed down their servers, all the images on their archived pages broke. Is this what they are supposed to do? Would they have remained available if I had explicitly archived the actual urls of key images?

WP:Link_rot#Automatic_archiving -- good to know. Thanks!
If this feels like too many questions for you alone, but you can think of a venue where other might weigh in...
Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 16:42, 25 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If WMF is outsourcing the archival function to third parties, but it needs to pay them for this service, then WMF should seriously consider doing archiving in-house as a sister project. Then we can have full control customized for Wikipedia which creates new feature possibilities currently not possible. But WMF is not paying anyone that I know of more like reciprocal peers benefiting each other. Re: other questions, one way is to capture the WebCite page at archive.org thus the original page is preserved as it originally existed at WebCite. Wayback does not support full-text search it would be like Google with trillions of pages requiring massive parallelism to get a timely result, non-trivial and exspensive. It is possible to search on words in URLs though. -- GreenC 22:06, 25 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

DYK nomination of Albert W. Hicks

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Hello! Your submission of Albert W. Hicks at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 23:40, 28 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bestsellers

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Hello--this is my first time trying to write on a talk page so I hope it works! NPD has owned BookScan in the U.S. since 2016. BookScan operates elsewhere (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Mexico) under Nielsen. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3 Link 4 Hope this is helpful, won't touch the page but it should really be updated by someone Stephbook (talk) 09:17, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 8

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A barnstar for you!

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The Citation Barnstar
For your great work on the Images of England conversion. It has been a pleasure working with you! --Trialpears (talk) 12:30, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Precious anniversary

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Precious
Three years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:31, 4 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Albert W. Hicks

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On 12 August 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Albert W. Hicks, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that The Twilight Zone episode "The New Exhibit" features axe-murderer and last pirate of New York, Albert W. Hicks? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Albert W. Hicks. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Albert W. Hicks), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

— Maile (talk) 00:02, 12 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Johannes Klencke revert

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Hello, you quite rightly reverted an edit I made regarding Klencke's gift of the atlas to Charles II (I somehow missed the previous instance of this in the article, mea culpa- nevertheless I feel mention of the baronetcy warranted retention, but that's by the by) along with restoring a "cited quote"; since I can't locate the citation, would you mind letting me know whence this mention of Klencke being called a "nutty professor" by Vossius originates? I'm intrigued by the extent to which it seems entirely anachronistic! Many thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.206.151 (talk) 20:33, 17 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Also, just for the record, it seems the article originally gave "foolish professor", which only increased my suspicion regarding someone altering the content to include a dubious pleasantry- indeed, the alteration from "foolish" to "nutty" was undertaken by Gregbard, a now-blocked account. See https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Johannes_Klencke&type=revision&diff=434337994&oldid=434199123 At any rate, provision of the source from which Vossius's comment originated would clear up the issue, I'm sure.

Appears to be sourced from nl:Isaac Vossius (cite #4) and with Chinese whispers he became a 'nutty professor'. -- GreenC 02:21, 18 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Saket Modi

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Hi GreenC,

I see that the Saket Modi's page has been redirected to Lucideus by you.

I did a lot of research about him online and wrote the content following Wikipedia Guidelines.I really have no clue as to why my edit request got declined. I think he's eligible to have an article on Wikipedia as he has been featured in several main stream media.

I would appreciate it if you help me with this.

Thanks in advance — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2409:4040:416:10E7:43B2:182A:782A:DDF1 (talk) 18:45, 22 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The article has had non-stop problems with WP:COI, WP:SOCKS, WP:PROMOTION, WP:SPA and back and forth vengeful editing in relation to Trishneet Arora. Very disruptive. I didn't make the redirect it was done by User:Winged Blades of Godric per WP:NOPAGE [6]. -- GreenC 19:20, 22 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Hi Green

I would really appreciate it if you could help me with this..thanks in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:204:380:BD46:B05D:6FED:9E0D:53FB (talk) 06:34, 24 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A VisualEditor bug drowning in the vast and mighty Green Sea

I'm honestly amazed that you were able to solve that impossible puzzle and I wanted to thank you for it. Those <sups> masquerading as refs have been such a headache!

Cheers  :)

Thjarkur (talk) 18:06, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thjarkur: Thanks! This was a challenge and possibly the strangest bot I ever made. Turned out most of it was not too difficult (API calls etc), but retrieving the wikitext of a citation based on its displayed citation number is non-trivial. Even Parsoid wasn't much help (I am a beginner at Parsoid maybe someone more experienced could make it work). I came up with a solution using a 25-year old Japanese unix tool w3m that converts a web page to plain-text .. it's a hack but worked well for this problem. -- GreenC 18:39, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also thorughly impressed. I was briefly looking at how I would implement it, but found nothing. Really cool hack! --Trialpears (talk) 19:33, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. An API command to retrieve cites-by-number might be a request in the upcoming wishlist. -- GreenC 13:15, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

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What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
I'm impressed with how you cleaned up the old New Zealand charts URLs quickly and efficiently. Well done! MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 21:39, 31 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You are welcome, MrLinkinPark333, thank you. -- GreenC 13:21, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Greenbot gave me more work to do

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The new Cleanup Listing for Wikiproject Jazz came out today. Greenbot dumped a lot more work into my lap. Can you explain these? For example, 1267 articles are labeled "deprecated parameter" and "CS1 errors: missing periodical". I looked at some of the articles, but they don't have the usual red linked error messages, nor do they suggest missing periodicals. Cite news is used on many of them and the refs looked OK to me. This page says "The error message suggests a periodical parameter that matches the template, but there is no requirement to use the suggested parameter; any one of these periodical parameters may be used" and then gives the list. I don't understand the problem or why suddenly today these errors have appeared, if they are errors.
Vmavanti (talk) 14:21, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Vmavanti, I'm not Greenbot but do run User:GreenC bot. It looks like this list is created by User:CleanupWorklistBot if that is the one. To help with your question, the warning is only generated for {{cite journal}} and {{cite magazine}}. It shouldn't be happening for {{cite news}}. More help at Help talk:Citation Style 1. -- GreenC 14:34, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
[edit]

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Baillie Gifford Prize, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Frances Wilson (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 07:29, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

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The Technical Barnstar
For your work on the WP:BOTREQ page. Thank you for taking time to do this! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 06:55, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Martin Armstrong

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Green C:

Your write up of Martin Armstrong continues to mischaracterize what really happened in this case. Instead of obtaining the real and accurate facts, you cite to news articles written for sensationalism. You inaccurately report about the note transactions with the Japanese companies and the so-called Ponzi scheme. You also inaccurately portray the nature of reason for the contempt proceedings. A witness came forward in 2012 who was a former officer inside the MCC in NY who has filed an affidavit in court that he was told to hold Armstrong until he broke or fessed up to the charges. Armstrong was placed in the hole for 8 days to break him physically, mentally and spiritually. That led to the so-called scripted plea, which he was required to read verbatim as written by the DOJ.

The cache of hidden coins is another fabrication. What is written here do3es not accurately portray the real story. Read the oringal court documents, and not rely on more news paper reporting designed to sell papers. You were also not int the court chmabers as I was to hear what was actually told to the judge in Philadelphia. So, any claim that we should stick to the original source is nonsense. Your write up of Martin Armstrong continues to mischaracterize what really happened in this case. Instead of obtaining the real and accurate facts, you cite to news articles written for sensationalism. If you wish to discuss this openly and honestly with me, I am happy to do so. Otherwise, I intend to push this matter into arbitration. ArmstrongLawyer (talk) 17:22, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well I am happy to open discuss anything with you any time. Your post demonstrates a misunderstanding of how Wikipedia works and its policies so I hope you don't mind me presenting 15 years of Wikipedia experience with these matters:
1. Foremost, you should not be editing the article yourself because you have declared a WP:COI (Conflict of Interest) as "Armstrong's Lawyer".
2. As explained before Wikipedia is a secondary source encyclopedia. This is at WP:SECONDARY and WP:PRIMARY. This means we report what secondary sources say. Those links specifically say to not use court records. This is not me giving you a hard time, it what our policies say. If you believe the secondary sources are "sensationalism" then maybe they are unreliable sources (tabloids etc), as explained at WP:RS. In that case you would need to demonstrate why you believe a source is unreliable and come to a consensus about it. If there is no agreement you can appeal to the RS Noticeboard for wider community discussion.
3. Ultimately your problem is not Wikipedia, it is the sources. If those sources are so evidently wrong, why have you not appealed to those outlets. -- GreenC 18:17, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I liked this so much

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Hope you don't mind but I placed it at the top of my user talkpage (with proper attribution, of course). Very poetic if I do say so myself. Shearonink (talk) 04:52, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Shearonink It does have a poetic quality like after reaching the edge of the known world beyond lay dragons and black mountains. -- GreenC 23:37, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Here there be DRAGONS. Shearonink (talk) 04:14, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 9

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Jeff Halevy

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Please observe BLP and get consensus for inclusion of the material. In the meantime, please revert as required of BLP. Thank you. --Ronz (talk) 18:02, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nuts. Consensus was Keep in prior AfDs. You've been trying to delete it for almost 10 years wtf -- GreenC 18:06, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not deleting the article, or we'd be at AfD. Can we agree on that? --Ronz (talk) 18:16, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the cleanup work. --Ronz (talk) 19:19, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll eat crow when wrong :) -- GreenC 19:24, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 10

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Greenbot issue

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Why did Greenbot preform this on a redirect, thus creating a duplicate article? --Gonnym (talk) 12:31, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Gonnym: fixed. -- GreenC 14:12, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi GC. I know you'll see my ping but I thought I'd leave this link Talk:Atari Flashback series#Duplicate article as well. Seeing this thread by Gonnym I realize you might have already fixed things but I wanted to be thorough. Best regards. MarnetteD|Talk 22:01, 15 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Marnette, it is fixed forward but there may be old ones I posted a request for help how to find them Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Searching_Contribution_history. I'm guessing this is very rare based on the conditions for the bug (it would require a page not be a redirect as of May 2019, then converted to a redirect sometime after that, then the bot processing the page). -- GreenC 22:30, 15 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the explanation GC. It helps me (and others) to understand what happened :-) Enjoy your weekend. MarnetteD|Talk 22:36, 15 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well thank you! It seems there were but four which are fixed so it should be in the clear. -- GreenC 16:50, 16 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

IABotManagementConsole

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Hey!I am a Wikipedian from Taiwan.Can you do me a favor?I want to manage entire domains,but I am not in groups admin or root,don't have permission to do it.Can you help me change https://tw.appledaily.com from Alive to Subscription site?--Kevin Smith Chen (talk) 15:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Kevin Smith Chen I can, though when I test a page it's not subscription: [7] Is it only some pages? -- GreenC 15:31, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This website only free to read one article one day and no more.‘Apple Daily’ to charge for online subscriptions--Kevin Smith Chen (talk) 15:38, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ok thanks for the link I added as the "reason" and made the change. -- GreenC 15:42, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks!!!by the way,https://hk.news.appledaily.com/also need to change.😅😅--Kevin Smith Chen (talk) 15:47, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. That one is already subscription. -- GreenC 15:52, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you--Kevin Smith Chen (talk) 03:02, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

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Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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project/mbh/webcite result.txt

Links with "utf" or "ru" equal 5 or 6 may contain only partially broken text. Links with utf and ru <= 4 very likely contain completely broken text. MBH (talk) 06:25, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes I've been working on it. It takes some time to find new archives and upload to IABot. Do you want a list of the new archive replacements? -- GreenC 15:49, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@MBH: the new archive links are done uploading to IABot database. It had about a 88% success rate meaning about 12% it was unable to find a replacement archive and it kept the WebCite link in place (I don't believe it is possible to delete an archive URL). There will be some soft-404s because there are too many to check manually, the bot has sophisticated soft404 checkers but some always get through without manual checks. There will be problems with content drift in some cases, where the content of a page is tied to the snapshot date and replacement archive is not the same date and thus has different content (sports scores or weather for example). The bot tries to get the snapshot date as close as possible to the original but often it is not exactly the same. Despite all these problems, most of them are fine and it is overall a big improvement. If you need any data let me know, thanks for your work identifying the broken pages. -- GreenC 13:44, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts++ Newsletter – Issue 11

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Cheers

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Damon Runyon's short story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a fun read if you have the time. Right from the start it extols the virtues of the hot Tom and Jerry

This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.

No matter what concoction is your favorite to imbibe during this festive season I would like to toast you with it and to thank you for all your work here at the 'pedia this past year. Best wishes for your 2020 as well GC. MarnetteD|Talk 11:46, 18 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@MarnetteD: Well perfect. Never heard of this author or story before. I needed a rest from the computer so found this old time radio production [8]. Also watched a video, the acting, set and demonstration how to make a hot Tom and Jerry are memorable. -- GreenC 01:01, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am glad you found those GC! My small local theater was run by Ed Baierlein and his wife Sallie Diamond. At this time of year he would perform a series of readings related to the season. He would always finish with A Child's Christmas in Wales but the others would change from year to year. Dancing Dan was one of my favorites and he would perform it in a full Runyonese accent. Sadly those hows stopped 8 or nine years ago so it is nice to have the alternatives that you found. Many thanks and best regards. MarnetteD|Talk 02:02, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Season's greetings

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Happy Holidays

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Thank you for continuing to make Wikipedia the greatest project in the world. I hope you have an excellent holiday season. Lightburst (talk) 22:53, 21 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

                                                 Happy holidays

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Happy New Year!
GreenC,
Have a great 2020 and thanks for your continued contributions to Wikipedia.


   – 2020 is a leap yearnews article.
   – Background color is Classic Blue (#0F4C81), Pantone's 2020 Color of the year

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2020}} to user talk pages.

North America1000 22:20, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Template:France metadata Wikidata

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Hi GreenC, happy new year. I've tried to update the Template:France metadata Wikidata, because the INSEE has published its new figures (see also https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81204110) but I have the impression that something isn't right. Could you have a look at the template, please? Thanks, --Edelseider (talk) 17:13, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Edelseider: Not sure that will work because the data is pulled from Wikidata. @Underlying lk: populated Wikidata with the data from the French website. To use new data, Wikidata would be updated, when done the template changed. -- GreenC 17:45, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently, Underlying lk (talk · contribs) isn't active anymore. What should I do? --Edelseider (talk) 18:02, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
NB: I saw what I did wrong, I had overlooked two "2016"! Now it works! have a nice evening, or day. --Edelseider (talk) 18:07, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A stray symbol by InternetArchiveBot/GreenC bot

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Hello,
Thank you for your answer in User talk:Cyberpower678/Archive 68#A stray symbol by InternetArchiveBot. You said "It's not happening now and I can't replicate the diff as the bot is cfg and running for a different task."
Now, is it possible for you to configure the bot to rerun the original task on a page equivalent to the old version of the article where the problem occurred?
Regards --NicoScribe (talk) 15:23, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The bug is replicate-able [9]. Now I need to find out why it happens for that page and not others. -- GreenC 20:48, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks! --NicoScribe (talk) 22:08, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I traced this problem back to a standard library at which point I gave up and worked around it by stripping trailing NUL characters in the upload file, which was being inserted for unknown reason. Fixed now. [10] -- GreenC 22:10, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

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The Technical Barnstar
Thanks for your help! --evrik (talk) 16:10, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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Hi GreenC,

In this revision GreenC bot labeled six citation links dead when they are all still live. They're all teamusa.org links so maybe it has a problem with that domain. This is actually the second time it's done this on this page, I reverted the change the first time because the links are still live and it added a 5-year old archive link which isn't helpful. Also, it removed all 'url-status=live' elements from citations and I'm wondering why?

Thanks, A202985 (talk) 22:19, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

When the bot sees an empty |archive-url= parameter, it checks if the URL is live or dead, and if dead fills in the archive. This is in response to an old bug in IABot that was deleting archive URLs but leaving an empty |archiveurl= (bug long since fixed). Not sure why it thinks those links are dead off hand. Probably best to remove the empty |archiveurl= for now (done), and I will look into disabling this "fix". -- GreenC 04:13, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bot changes

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Hi! Back in December at my talk page, you and others raised some concerns about my bot, at first about how it removes www. from links it modifies but then about other concerns. In response to the regex concern, I made a new regex (and a new request because I wanted some people to make sure I didn't mess this up) that will not remove the www or add it. However, could you help with the other concern, about IP adresses? Here is the relevant thing that you said:

If you can predetermine a given domain hostname (eg. "www") has a working https, and the http and https versions resolve to the same IP (or IP routed block) then a blind conversion should be safe. If they go to different IPs, they may be serving different content from different servers (this is not common but it happens) or some other unknown unknown that needs a closer look - like they did a migration from one server to another and didn't migrate all of the paths creating 404s in the ssl space.

How can I check if two versions of a site use the same IP address? What can I use to view the IP address of a site and confirm this with minimal risk of inaccuracy? Thanks, DemonDays64 (talk) 05:48, 20 January 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)[reply]

Well a simple nslookup from the shell or any number of ways with any number of programming languages, but if your using pure AWB search/replace, that isn't possible. If it were me, I would program the bot in a preferred language then use AWB's external script feature to run it. That way AWB handles all the login authentication and upload changes, and your bot script has freedom to do what you need without being limited to only regex search/replace, which is limiting. -- GreenC 02:53, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
So on my talk page you meant that if I can predetermine a domain has HTTPS and that if I can check every time that the HTTP and HTTPS versions go to the same IP "then a blind conversion should be safe", rather than that I can blindly do so and only check that they go to the same IP once? What would be wrong with just checking what IP a domain goes to once, then just sticking with it and doing regex find-and-replace? Thanks, DemonDays64 (talk) 03:33, 21 January 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)[reply]
Oh I see that might work. The problem is there can be a lot of variability in hostnames. Like MSN had well over 500 hostname variations. But if your sticking with a few hostnames only like www then it wouldn't matter it can be predetermined manually. -- GreenC 03:47, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenC: ok great! Yes, I only will edit the "s" into http://example.com and http://www.example.com. If I saw http://en.example.com, it would not be edited under the rule for the previous two.
So, now that you understand the change, how would one check to be totally safe that http://www.example.com and https://www.example.com have the same IP and http://example.com and https://example.com have the same IP, like you said to do? Thanks! DemonDays64 (talk) 03:57, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Windows or Unix command: nslookup example.com. Via web https://centralops.net/co/NsLookup.aspx set the "Query type" to "A - IPv4" -- GreenC 04:14, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think your userbox is inaccurate.

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It said that you were on for 16 years, but your account says you have been on since 2009, so, maybe you should fix the userbox? New3400 (talk) 16:24, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The userbox is accurate. -- GreenC 02:30, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How?New3400 (talk) 00:39, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to go around asking people personal questions. Why is that? Just curious. -- GreenC 01:11, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your question, ways. -- GreenC 01:39, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, it's my personality. If I offended you, I'm sorry. New3400 (talk) 14:05, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You did not offend me. The first thing I thought when you asked this question was "What is this, RfA?" because only there would anyone ask probing personal questions like that. Then, sure enough, I see you participating in an RfA. Found it a curious coincidence. -- GreenC 15:40, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, ight. Do you have some tips for afd and rfa? New3400 (talk) 18:52, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Vaclav Smil

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Dear GreenC, I was surprised to see you revert my – I think - quite reasonable edits on Vaclav Smil's page. How can something like his comment on a biographical detail ("That was not a minor sacrifice, you know?" Smil says.") be of relevance? Even more I was surprised by you restoring the whole Bill Gates chapter (which is not even correctly cited). And seriously, what does it mean anyways if Bill Gates says something about an author? Is Bill Gates an Energy specialist? Then there are Smil's habits that don't make any sense at all if not put in the context of how he approaches individual lifestyle changes – which, again, don't say much about him at all. "Thick isolation" and "meat only once a meat" is nothing special at all. Plus: Who, except he himself, knows and has to know how many books he reads? What does it add to his wiki page?

To me rewriting the whole (questionable!) ScienceMag article into a wikipage seems to be something only Smil might find worthwhile. And I don't understand how an accomplished Wiki editor like you can support that. I'm really (unsarcarsticly) curious about your explanation.Helleba (talk) 13:57, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

First I wrote most of that article and I have no connection to Smil so you can set aside your worries about COI. Second, this is a biography article and the article does what biographies are do which is tell us about Vaclav Smil and paint a picture of the person. His connections to Gates are well known and his statement about Gates helps us understand his relationship to Gates better. His statements about his position on immigration is quite interesting as it tells us he didn't really want to immigrate, it was a big sacrifice, it informs us he liked his home country and left under duress. This is a key biographical point for any immigrant. Smil is famously reclusive and your removal of that information shows you know very little about him, this is part of his notability. You are deleting things about a person who you obviously know little about. -- GreenC 15:27, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

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The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
Fraud hurts us - and investors, too. Thank you for pointing that out. Bearian (talk) 14:30, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]