User talk:JASpencer

A kitten for you!

You do hard work improving the encyclopaedia.

Yaa114 (talk) 22:06, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

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L'Esprit public: please incubate developing articles in Draft space

Hello, and thank you for your many translations from French Wikipedia. Please be sure to comply with English Wikipedia's policies and guidelines regarding new articles, in particular, the requirement that the topic be WP:Notable, in Wikipedia's sense of the wordd, and that the article comply with WP:Verifiability policy. The fact that an article exists in French Wikipedia is not sufficient evidence of either notability, or verifiability. Please start your translations in Draft space, which is a protected area where you may develop articles in peace, and nobody will bother you about not having enough references, or unclear notability. Once an article is in mainspace, however, all Wikipedia policies and guidelines apply, and articles may be moved or deleted if they are not compliant.

You recently created L'Esprit public as a translation from the French L'Esprit public (revue). Thank you for starting this, but as of revision 1268352315 of 09:41, 9 January 2025, it demonstrated neither notability nor verifiability; clearly, it was not yet ready to be displayed as an article in mainspace, so I moved it to Draft space, in this edit of 10:39 9 January. You then recreated the article in Main space with a copy-paste, effectively starting a brand new page with rev. this revision of 10:57, and started to edit it.

This created a problem, because now we had your original article with a history of a couple dozen edits in Draft space, and another copy you created in main space, with one two revisions in its history. This can get very problematic due to the issue of parallel pages with different histories. To prevent this situation from getting even worse, I swapped the two: restoring your original draft to mainspace again (rev. 1268362398), and moving the brand new, history-less copy-paste article to draft (rev. 1268362381), and also did post-move clean-up on both, undoing all the changes I made for Draft space. So everything is back to the way you had it in the first place, but the current situation is untenable.

You are now back to the original page you wrote, back in main space, with its original history. The problem is, the original problem of questionable notability and insufficient sourcing still remain, and this article belongs in Draft space and not in mainspace until those problems are resolved. If you keep creating new copies of it in mainspace when it gets move to draft, that is an even bigger problem. So I need to ask you this: can you commit to adding sufficient sourcing to L'Esprit public now in mainspace to demonstrate notability and verifiability? Because if not, I plan to move the article back to Draft space again very soon. I would consider a third recreation of the article in main space after that as disruptive.

To avoid these problems in the future, please start all translations of articles like :fr:Nom_de_l'Article in Draft space, as Draft:Article_name. There, you will not be bothered, and will have as much time as you need to develop it. For right now, please add sufficient sourcing to demonstrate notability of L'Esprit public asap. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 11:51, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Being in the French Wikipedia, or any other major language Wikipedia, on the face of it is a strong prima facie argument that the subject is notable. And that applies particularly if it's about a subject within that language. Of course there may still be the need for a notability tag, but the burden of proof is on the person questioning the notability.

I think there are further reasons why this particular article is notable, but I will address them in that article. JASpencer (talk) 12:08, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

In response to this:

Being in the French Wikipedia, or any other major language Wikipedia, on the face of it is a strong prima facie argument that the subject is notable.

Absolutely not, and if you continue to use that as your indication of notability, in the absence of notability requirements of English Wikipedia, you risk having your editing priviliges at English Wikipedia suspended.

In response to:

the burden of proof is on the person questioning the notability

Again, absolutely not. You appear to be operating under a misunderstanding of English Wikipedia policies and guidelines. The burden of proof of notability is entirely on you and if you fail to meet this guideline, any editor may challenge you and bring your article to WP:AFD for possible deletion. A much milder, and friendlier step is simply to move the article to Draft space, where you have all the time you need to demonstrate WP:Notability. This is what I attempted to do, but you caused a significant problem by recreating another copy of the article in Main space, lacking the original history. Please do not do that. I urge you to use Draft space for all your translations, unless notability is clear from the first version. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 12:18, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Moving to the draft space creates lots of problems and I'd far prefer the notability tags. Draft space certainly isn't taken as a friendly move, however it's intended.

I'm fine with a challenge to notability, it improves the article. But these are articles that are already judged to be notable on a Wikipedia site. I know that some of our sister Wikipedia sites have had issues with either bias or lack of editor involvement, but French Wikipedia doesn't have a problem with either of those.

Please can you let me know if you take this to an Admin noticeboard or other forum.

JASpencer (talk) 12:36, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I reject your claim that taking an article to Draft space creates problems; on the contrary: it avoids all sorts of problems, with virtually no down side. If you see problems in Draft space, please enumerate them. Notability tags are available, and I use them sometimes, when it is clear to me that the topic is, in fact, notable, but the article does not demonstrate it. If the article does not appear to be notable, there is no reason in the world not to move it to Draft space. You ought to be happy at that outcome: nobody will bother you about it, as long as it remains in Draft space. But you may get pushback, if you move it to mainspace.

I must emphasize to you that English Wikipedia and French Wikipedia have different policies and guidelines: what is notable on French Wikipedia may not be notable on English Wikipedia, and it is absolutely crucial that you understand this point. It is not a question of bias, nor lack of editor involvement; it is a matter of different policies here and at fr-wiki. Please do not rely on what you know about fr-wiki policies, as they simply do not apply here. If you do so, you are likely to get tripped up by that assumption, and I see some signs of that happening already. Please familiarize yourself fully with English Wikipedia policies, especially regarding WP:V and WP:N, and forget everything you know about French policy when creating articles at English Wikipedia. A judgment by some French editors (sometimes only one French editor!) that some topic is notable at fr-wiki, has absolutely zero weight here at en-wiki.

Bottom line: this is English Wikipedia, follow en-wiki P&G. P.S. I have no reason to escalate this to a noticeobard, unless you double or triple down after having been informed about a problem. Everybody makes mistakes, and that's how we all learn. If I had to take it to a noticeboard for some reason, notification is required, so of course, I would. But I have no reason to expect it will come to that, so you're good. Mathglot (talk) 13:01, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Use sentence case for section headings

All section headings in English Wikipedia use sentence case, per MOS:SECTIONS. See for example, this edit of mine, correcting section headings in title case. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 12:02, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Use English for article titles where possible

In deciding whether and how to translate a foreign name into English, follow English-language usage, as described in article title policy. A descriptive title in another language such as "Journaux confisqués pour collaboration" should become a descriptive title in English, such as, "Newspapers confiscated for collaboration". However, since it is clear that the original article, fr:Journaux confisqués pour collaboration is actually only about French newspapers, and not newspapers worldwide, per WP:PRECISE it should be called "French newspapers confiscated for collaboration". Even French organizations and institutions require English names, if reliable English sources use English to refer to it; so, for example, we have the articles, National Assembly (France) (not, 'Assemblée nationale (France)'), Senate (France) (not, 'Sénat (France)'), Treaty of Verdun (not, 'Traité de Verdun'), and so on. Always use English, if English sources have a way to talk about it. If no English sources write about the topic, use English for descriptive titles, and French where no English sources are available. Mathglot (talk) 12:34, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Fair point JASpencer (talk) 12:37, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Maurice network

 Courtesy link: Draft:Maurice network

I see you've been doing some articles related to the WW II French Resistance. One network you've mentioned in one of your translations is the Maurice network and neither we, nor French Wikipedia, have an article on it (search fr-wiki for réseau Maurice)). If you are interested, it would be great to have an article on this here (then later somewhat can translate it into French). For starters, you can find detailed information about it at the Musée de la Résistance en ligne, and there are several more references listed at the bottom of that page so we don't end up with just one source.

I'm not sure if you have created articles from scratch before; if it's been a while, please see Help:Your first article which covers all the essential points. One additional thing to keep in mind, is a warning about literal translation or even WP:CLOSEPARAPHRASE; if you just translate or paraphrase from that page, it may be considered a WP:COPYVIOLATION, and subject to deletion and/or WP:REVDEL. Everything you write using that source should be a summary and neither a direct translation, nor a close paraphrase. That's a very important point.

Here's a trick I use sometimes, to avoid copyvio: I read a whole paragraph of the original French source, then I close the book and just think to myself about what it said; like running through my head what I just read. My memory is nowhere near good enough to remember a whole paragraph, so inevitably I will remember just the gist of it, and the main points. That is *exactly* what we want in an article–not a translation, but a summary with the main points. So, try that, and see if it works for you. If you use Draft space (and please do), then you don't have to worry about getting anything wrong; just write whatever you remember, no matter how spotty, or with blank spaces or forgotten names; write it as is. Later, after you've got your first summary draft done, you can go back to the original, and fill out all those names and places you couldn't quite remember, and fill them in after the fact. I'll just start writing something like, 'Jean Martin de la Something was born in Faubourg-de-something in 1894(or was it 49?) and married and had ?4 children...' you get the point, just write what you remember, and avoid the temptation to go look at the source again; that's 'cheating!' This is kind of a way to trick yourself into not violating copyright, but it works. At least, for me it does. Btw, if you have a photographic memory, this won't work! Hope this helps, Mathglot (talk) 07:26, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have a look at this when I go back to the French Resistance. JASpencer (talk) 08:47, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I've started this up now. JASpencer (talk) 14:24, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

I helped out with a number of edits, which no doubt you've seen by now. Mathglot (talk) 22:30, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

This is a worthy topic, and deserves to be an article; it just needs a few more good, solid citations, and then you could move it to mainspace. I added some find-source links to the Talk page. Mathglot (talk) 09:34, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 13

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Nomination of International Monarchist Conference for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article International Monarchist Conference is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Monarchist Conference (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Fram (talk) 15:47, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Please take care when copy-pasting from the rendered page

JASpencer, please take care when copying content from the rendered page and pasting it into another article, because some visible elements you see on the page, such as bullets before bullet list items, are not copied over. You can see the effect of this in the last paragraph of section Clark-Darlan Accords § Content, which ought to be a list of six bullet items listing privileges the American government acquired in exchange for recognizing Vichy, but it is just a mish-mash of running text in the English article. Can you please fix up that paragraph, and be careful copying off the rendered page.

Also, a little more due diligence would be good: the fact that the page looks like that now makes me think you just saved whatever you wrote without even looking at it to see if you'd made a typo or something. Please always use the Show preview button before you publish your changes, so you can see how it looks beforehand, and then you'll still get another chance to make more changes, if you need to, before saving it. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 05:17, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 25

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Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Commissioner of the Republic

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