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Cancionero de Palacio

Hi, thanks for informing of the problems you found in the article; I tried to address them the best I could, although I'm not an expert in the subject and had just translated the article from the Spanish version "as is". regards, Capmo (talk) 07:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

pay per click

Because the article was deleted for Copyvio?? Béria Lima msg 09:05, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Note to self: Assuming Beria is responding to the following comment of mine about Pay per click on User_talk:Ripchip_Bot:
Just wondering why your bot removed an interwiki link to the it article (diff) from Pay per click.
as a look at his Talk page shows plenty of complaints about User:Ripchip Bot.

However, the article was not deleted, it's still there.
Mathglot (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

should these articles be in WP?

In this section I'll list articles I've come across that I believe might not meet the criteria for inclusion, but I'm uncertain and need advice about guidelines from an Admin. If not relevant, then I assume they should then be nominated for deletion.

Lists of terms

This help request has been answered. If you need more help, please place a new {{help me}} request on this page followed by your questions, or contact the responding user(s) directly on their user talk page.

I need some advice on whether to nominate an article for deletion, and secondly, whether I should modify a Help page to include a clarifying statement about glossaries/lists of terms.

First, are articles consisting solely of a glossary of related terms relevant for WP? I tend to think not.

list of terms

Case in point for this Help request, this article: Commonly used terms of relationship and comparison in dentistry

There's no doubt that I found this page useful, looking up the meaning of words like distal and buccal, but I question whether it belongs in WP. Guidelines WP:NOT#DICT and WP:NOTDICDEF don't specifically address the case of a page of definitions, but the latter does say this:

Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide. and
Each article in an encyclopedia is about a person, or a people, a concept, a place, an event, a thing etc.

It seems to me that the referenced article is in fact a jargon list, and is not about some person/concept/event, etc. and as such should perhaps be folded into "tooth" or "dentistry" or perhaps split into constituent atoms and moved to Wiktionary.

Furthermore, based on the title ("Commonly used terms...") it seems clear that this article is not intended as a stub of a future article about some topic to be developed later. Should I nominate it for deletion?

As a secondary point, perhaps a senior admin would like to edit the WP:NOTDIC Help page itself, to add, if appropriate, something like,

An article is not a list of terms relating to some field. A clue might be articles that are named something like,
  • "List of terms relating to..."
  • "Glossary of ... terms"
or similar. These should be (included in the main article/broken up and moved to Wiktionary/other??)

I hesitate to modify Help pages, but if you agree that the above recommendation is in the spirit of the current WP:NOTDIC page I'd be happy to add it if you wish. Thanks.
Mathglot (talk) 21:49, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Quick follow-up note: if it turns out that glossary pages are in fact not appropriate, maybe someone could point me to a "list of desired bots" help page, so someone could write a bot that would trawl for topics with suspicious-sounding glossary-like titles, and store the article name on a page to be examined manually later by Admins for appropriateness.
Mathglot (talk) 21:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't know the answers here. But the place for the discussion would be Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not, and a search in that page's archives shows that the question has been discussed before (Link to search results). If you read through some of those you will understand the reasoning behind the current wording at WP:NOTDIC.
To find a list of article titles beginning with "Glossary of", you could use Special:PrefixIndex. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:11, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

E.g.,

Mathglot (talk) 18:37, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I should have mentioned Portal:Contents/Glossaries and Portal:Contents/Lists, which are intended to be reader-friendly introductions to these parts of Wikipedia. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:44, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

articles about a single book

{{HelpMe}} Should articles about a single book be kept, when all references are to the book itself?

This seems to violate WP:PRIMARY. Example: The Solitaire Mystery. Seems to me this article should be nominated for deletion.

articles about a single book

Secondarily: the talk page for the Solitaire Mystery mentions that it is part of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels, and I wonder if the whole category should be eliminated, or at least drastically thinned out. Plenty of famous novels like Moby Dick, say, will have lots of secondary sources, and could be kept.

But The Solitaire Mystery seems way out of that category, and every line of it is original research.

Should I report this for deletion, and if so, how? I don't think that just adding a citation request banner will help much.

Mathglot (talk) 22:46, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I think you have 3 choices, besides adding banners, as you said may not do much.
  1. Merge with the author WP:MERGE
  2. Proposed a deletion WP:PROD, if no one objects it goes 7 days later - although any editor can just object and remove the PROD
  3. Finally got for Articles for Deletion WP:AFD, where a discussion page will be used for editors to support or object. After a week an admin will decide if there is a consensus for deletion.
 Ronhjones  (Talk) 00:05, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Afd Added to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2012_January_27. Mathglot (talk) 00:24, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Translation of 95 year old philosophy.

Greetings,

I am trying to get a team together who would finally translate "Sistema di logica come teoria del conoscere" into English. I thought Wikipedia's list of Italian-to-English translators might be a good group to 'hit up' on this subject. If personal assistance cannot be provided, perhaps suggestions or helping point me in the right direction of who might be willing to help? Best regards & thank you. Nagelfar (talk) 05:22, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Auto-confirmed status - do I have it/why not

{{HelpMe}}

I tried to edit Pope Francis to make a one-word edit to one section, and was blocked by a banner saying the page was semi-protected, and I needed autoconfirmed status in order to edit it.

The description at User access levels, says:

A number of actions on the English Wikipedia are restricted to user accounts that pass certain thresholds of age (time passed since account creation) and edit count. Users who meet these requirements are considered part of the pseudo-group 'autoconfirmed'.

But I easily pass these criteria. Is there a 'special' or other place I can look to see if I have autoconfirmed status, and if not, why not? Mathglot (talk) 21:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The red banner doesn't mean you can't edit, it is just notifying you of the protection reason. If that doesn't work, go to WP:PERM and request the "manual confirmation" permission, explaining why in the reason :) gwickwiretalkediting 22:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Quarteto Novo

Created the en topic from the pt on Pi day, 2013. Working on both to improve them. The pt one needs references in pt.

Mathglot (talk) 17:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Also created the fr one on March 13.




Vemma

Added this to List of multi-level marketing companies but it will get speedily deleted according to the instructions there:

Vemma is a premium liquid nutrition company founded in 2004 and receiving financial page attention on Bloomberg, WSJ, and elsewhere.

  • Vemma has been recognized with numerous industry awards[2]...

See Talk:List_of_multi-level_marketing_companies Mathglot (talk) 00:08, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Vemma Nutrition Company". eReleases. May 2013. Retrieved 2013-04-25.
  2. ^ "Vemma(R) Recognized With Eight Awards in Two Prestigious Competitions". Bloomberg. May 2013. Retrieved 2013-05-25.

Talkback

I dream of horses If you reply here, please leave me a {{Talkback}} message on my talk page. @ 00:23, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

A page you started has been reviewed!

Thanks for creating Vemma, Mathglot!

Wikipedia editor Falkirks just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:

I have passed your page as reviewed although it could use some work filling sections and such. Great start!

To reply, leave a comment on Falkirks's talk page.

Learn more about page curation.


Quenelle

Hi Mathglot,
I saw you gave me a small quenelle on my talk page ;-)
Feel free to correct my mistakes. I'm struggling with the references...
The Figaro says that the quenelle means "you got it in the ass" (l'équivalent de tu l'as dans le cul"), which is very similar to the English expression "up yours". :This is not perfect, this is a translation, but I think it is an honnest description of what the Figaro wrote. Blaue Max (talk) 09:51, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Fukushima

Dear Mathglot, thank you for your kind comments on my talk page. In fact my mother tongues are English and Italian, but I have been living in a French-speaking area for 30 years, so indeed I probably mix things up at times. But the origin of the misuse of the term "important" in the bit you spotted was not me, it was that the original report was in French and I used the original word when I made the Wikipedia entry, which was of course a mistake. Thank you for having corrected it.--Gautier lebon (talk) 10:10, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Vemma

Hi Mathglot,

Your version is very good. Congratulations. I don't edit wp:fr so I prefer reporting you some "mistakes" here on your talk page:

Extended content
Vemma a cinq gammes de produits : Vemma, Verve, Thirst, Bod-e, et Next, toutes basées sur la formulation nutritionnelle de base, nommée «Vemma» elle aussi.5
No real mistake but in French, you have to add spaces between brackets: «Vemma» -> « Vemma ». On wp:fr, the editor does it automatically. In English, the "note" is added after the point. In French, don't ask me why, it is added just before...-> "nommée «Vemma» elle aussi.5" becomes "nommée « Vemma » elle aussi5."
"Plusieurs des produits de la société contiennent de la caféine, dont quelques boissons dans la gamme «Verve» étant similaire au niveau de caféine trouvé dans des boissons énergisantes."
"Plusieurs des produits de la société contiennent de la caféine, dont quelques boissons dans la gamme «_Verve_» présentant un niveau de caféine similaire à celui présent dans les boissons énergisantes.
La gamme «Verve» est la boisson officielle des Suns de Phoenix, une franchise de basket-ball de la NBA dans l'Arizona.8
"dans l'Arizona" -> "en Arizona"
La société vend ses produits à travers de ses distributeurs indépendants
La société vend ses produits au travers (ou via) des distributeurs indépendants
connus dans la société comme «affiliés» mais autrefois connu sous le nom de «partenaires de la marque»
auxquels on fait référence dans la société en tant qu'« affiliés » mais qui autrefois étaient connus en tant que « partenaires de la marque »
Les affiliés gagnent un pourcentage de leur propres ventes de produit, ainsi qu'une partie de recettes provenant de la réseau de distributeurs qu'ils construisent.
Les affiliés gagnent un pourcentage de leurs propres ventes de produits ainsi qu'une partie des recettes provenant du réseau de distributeurs qu'ils construisent.
En 2014, la société commençait à décrire leur modèle en tant que marketing d'affiliation,
En 2014, la société décrivait son modèle en tant que marketing d'affiliation
... sans pour autant avoir changé le façon de remunérer les distributeurs qui vendent les produits aux consommateurs.
rémunérer - qui vendaient
Des critiques affirment que le simple changement de nom de leurs distributeurs en «affiliés» ne change rien par rapport au modèle d'entreprise, et que Vemma est toujours un MLM parce que leur régime de rémunération n'a pas changé.13
de leurs distributeurs -> de ses distributeurs
au modèle d'entreprise -> au modèle d'entreprise
leur régime -> son régime -> son système
Dans une action juridique aux États-Unis en 1999, la Federal Trade Commission a enjoint la société mère, New Vision International, de ne plus s'engager dans certaines pratiques publicitaires qui leur étaient reprochés auparavant.
-> "qui leur étaient reprochées auparavant" -> "qui leur avaient été reprochées".
Said that way in using "auparavant", it would mean at the time of the lawsuit it was not "reproché" any more.
La plainte de la FTC accusait New Vision des «actes ou pratiques injustes ou trompeuses,
...accusait New Vision d'actes
et de la fabrication de la publicité mensongère»
et de publicité mensongère (not "fabraction de" and not "de la")
Dans leur Décision et Ordonnance,
-> Dans sa décision
la FTC a ordonné
ordonne (Present tense because it is a generality that still lasts today. In French the present is usually used when the perfect past is used in English).
New Vision de cesser de faire des allégations de l'efficacité de leurs produits pour la santé,
-> de cesser de vanter les mérites de leurs produits pour la santé.
"allégations" has a negative sense.
et les a obliger
"et les a obligés" -> "et les oblige"
En novembre 2013 en Californie, Vemma Nutrition Co. a été le cible d'un recours collectif qui accuse la société des pratiques commerciales frauduleuses en le renouvellement automatique des charges sur les cartes des credit des clients sans autorisation.
la cible ... accusant la société ... de pratiques ... du fait qu'elle débitait automatiquement les cartes de crédit sans leur autorisation.

Pluto2012 (talk) 21:29, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Pectinidae

Hello Mathglot. I wanted to ask you to take a look at the subsequent discussion on the talk page of this newly split article. Thank you for your participation. Invertzoo (talk) 13:16, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Pectinidae

An article that you have been involved in editing, Pectinidae, has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. KDS4444Talk 16:28, 5 August 2014 (UTC) KDS4444Talk 16:28, 5 August 2014 (UTC)


Michaelmas

Hi, I'm not sure why you're stuck on this. I understand that the timing of the letter wasn't tied to the holiday, but referring to an event in an Episcopal seminary on "September 29" is like saying something happened on "December 25" - correct, but clunky and strange-sounding.

Extended content

It would not be "original synthesis" to name the elephant in the room and note that the event took place on Christmas Day, even if it were not a "Christmas event". (And given that we are already seeing calls to re-hire the "Michaelmas 8" it's hardly my own personal lark). Anyway by your logic, the entire reference would have to go, but you left in the line about it being the traditional first day of the year (i.e. of Michaelmas term): if you're going to do that, you might as well go whole hog; simply removing the word 'Michaelmas' would not bring the article into compliance, assuming you're right about OR. (If anything, I would expect the opposite: that September 29 is Michaelmas in the Episcopal Church is easily verifiable and citeable; I could conceivably see the "traditional start date" as synthetic, at a stretch, which was why I tweaked to the wording to "gives its name"). Yes, North American institutions normally start the academic year after Labour Day, even those (like my own and GTS) which hew to the traditional terminology: I don't seem to see the significance in that that you do but still, that's why I tweaked that so as to avoid OR. You seem to be prepared to grant all of that and yet adamant about removing the one word that could be confirmed by looking at a calendar. This really does not need to be contentious and I'm frankly a little baffled. Carolynparrishfan (talk) 15:03, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

My response here.Mathglot (talk) 01:12, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Everybody (in the West) reading the article knows what day Christmas Day is; try taking an opinion poll two blocks away from the Seminary and ask them what Michaelmas is, much less what day it falls on. I venture to say a tiny minority would ever have heard of the word.

You would have a relevant point if we were talking about an event that occurred two blocks from a seminary, rather than in a seminary. I certainly would not argue that Episcopal seminaries are a "minority" and a "certain group." But that is the "group" we are dealing with. Michaelmas is undoubtedly a relatively arcane word outside of seminary circles: good thing that's who we're talking about, eh?

You're quite right, by that logic it should go, but I left it in there because it's fairly minor

Okay, so you admit your decision about what to leave in and what to take out was arbitrary. That's progress, at least.

The September 29 date here has nothing to do with Michaelmas--it's merely coincidental and due to the timetable of the flow of events occurring at the seminary.

Absolutely. No one is contesting that it was a coincidence: the St Valentine's and St. Bartholomew's Day massacres weren't designed to coincide with those saints' days either, and the Ash Wednesday bushfires had "nothing to do" with the beginning of Lent, other than happening on it. That's just how it went down. You are confusing coincidence with triviality: the lack of causal relationship doesn't change the fact that these events happened - and were noted to have happened - when they did. Coincidence ≠ "nothing to do with": it didn't "have to do" with Michaelmas; it was Michaelmas.

the "one word that could be confirmed by looking at a calendar" should either be removed (since it was nowhere in the source you gave and thus "failed verification") or it should be sourced

So you would be fine with it it I simply provided a link to the Episcopal calendar, the one which is in effect at GTS and according to which September 29 is (coincidentally) Michaelmas? (Since the word "Michaelmas" was indeed in the source provided, I continue to be mystified by the definition of "failed verification" you're using, and the use of such counterfactual statements to defend it: if the source referring explicitly to Michaelmas was unsatisfactory for some other reason, just say so).

I think you are misconstruing disagreement as contentiousness.

I understand perfectly well what a disagreement is, and I am not able to locate one here. We seem to be on the same page that GTS is an Episcopal institution, that the firings occurred (coincidentally, to be sure) on September 29, that September 29 is Michaelmas in Episcopal schools (and others which follow the traditional "Oxbridge" calendar). So yes, the only difference is in your bizarre contention that putting two and two together is OR. If there were an actual disagreement, that would be another matter, but as far as I can tell you have not questioned the factual accuracy of anything I've said, only the sum of its parts. As I say, perhaps you thought I was trying to make a bigger point than I was: to be clear, no one thinks that this was "timed" to coincide with the holiday it did. (Or rather, no encyclopaedic source does: there was plenty of online speculation that the faculty walkout was indeed calculated to force the board's hand when it did).

That's another Guideline, in fact, assuming good faith on the part of other editors is one of the Five Pillars and a fundamental guiding principle of Wikipedia

As you note, I have been around the block, and I am well aware of the Pillars thank you. This has nothing to do with good faith: it is entirely possible to raise a frivolous, nitpicky, and, yes, ornery or contrarian objection in perfectly good faith and I don't doubt that you have done so. Blowing smoke up my ass about the venerability of my edit history while insinuating I don't know the MoS is not going to impress me.

I'm not disagreeing with you based on my own personal opinions about whether "Michaelmas" is a good way to describe September 29th in the context of an Episcopalian institution

Then we should have no problem. Michaelmas is "a good way to describe September 29 in the context of an Episcopalian institution." That can easily be verified in ways that don't transgress OR. That does not, however, seem to be good enough for you.

I am much less active on WP than I used to be. I really am not prepared to go to the wall for this: if it is really important to you to pretend "September 29" is a normal way for a non-robot to refer to a calendar date in a university setting, then so be it: I've done my bit, and I'm not the one who is going to look silly. The events in question unfolded very quickly, and most of the "Rehire the Michaelmas 8" material seems to have been removed from the web almost as quickly as it arose. (Indeed, finding coverage at all on sources that would pass muster under WP:RS was tricky). I am just trying to give you a heads up that "September 29" sounds as silly "in the context of an Episcopalian institution" as "December 25" or "October 31," whether you like the analogy or not. What you do with that information is up to you: I don't have a dog in this fight anymore; do what thou wilt. Over and out.

Carolynparrishfan (talk) 06:41, 28 October 2014 (UTC)


Lou Fant Reply

I'm glad you were able to make those additions to the Lou Fant page. I wish I knew more about him. AlbertBickford (talk) 22:05, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Secreto a voces

The article Secreto a voces has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

not relevant to the English Wikipedia.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. KDDLB (talk) 19:53, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Question

Would you please translate the entry "pt:Críticas à Rede Globo" for the wiki-en? Thankfully. 177.182.54.27 (talk) 14:21, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

No. You recently asked dozens or hundreds of users to translate the Portuguese Wikipedia article pt:Críticas à Rede Globo into English. Please stop, and read the guidelines at Wikipedia:Translation. For more details, see the discussion at pt:Discussão:Críticas à Rede Globo#Tradução para Inglês - atenção!. Cross-posted from User_talk:177.182.54.27. Mathglot (talk) 04:24, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Otto von Sadovszky photo permission

Still waiting on OTRS for a word on the photo of Otto von Sadovszky. Mathglot (talk) 12:02, 17 December 2014 (UTC) Edited by Mathglot (talk) 22:17, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Serge Guinchard

Discussing a rewrite proposal on the Talk Page. Mathglot (talk) 04:20, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

/* Notre-Dame de la Garde */ reply

Your help is welcome. Please see my answer on the translation project page. I have not done much with it in some time and realized, when I checked an old disambiguation message before deleting it, that I took it off the list when I started work on it, but then did not finish it. I therefore put it back on. As I mentioned over there, I will try to come back to it if you do not pick it up and nobody else does either but I have no particular personal interest in this landmark, although I can see its importance. I do have other unfinished translation projects I am more invested in though, a town I have lived in for example. Bottom line, have at it and do not worry about edit conflicts. Should be semi-ok as far as translation goes, just in need of re-write, up to Exteror:side wall but I have no particular pride of authorship. Feel free. Elinruby (talk) 20:14, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

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Notability for articles about a single book

Ideally, I'm looking for a response from a "Guideline guru" or "Notability Nabob" about this question about notability of articles about a single book; if you don't feel that's your bailiwick, I'd love it if you could kick it to someone that you think fits the bill, but I'll gladly take any advice offered.

Extended content

Pardon the length of the question, it concerns a basic guideline and its application to thousands of articles, and I need to lay out an example to explain what I'm talking about.

The question at issue

The basic question is: What are the criteria for the Notability of a book title, e.g., Denying History, being included in Wikipedia as its own article? I'm well aware of WP:N and WP:GNG; the question amounts to, how are these guidelines properly applied to single-book articles?

The underlying thought, or fear, that I have is that there are many thousands of such book articles on WP that ought to be deleted as non-notable and that because of the magnitude of the problem, it may be too late or impossible to do anything about it given the volunteer resources here. Nevertheless, I'd still like to know in theory what the experts on Notability would think is the right thing to do here.

Using Denying History as an illustration

As an illustration of the problem: I came across the article Denying History. This article about a single book has been around since 2008, and consists mostly of a few quotes from Publisher's Weekly and CNN about the authors, and of the content of the book. I fail to see how this is remotely sufficiently notable to have an article about it per WP:GNG. [Disclosure: I'm very opposed to deniers personally so my tendency would be to keep anything that invalidates their point of view; I chose this example precisely because it would "hurt" my cause to apply the rules the way I think they ought to be applied here and delete the article.]

The book is good, but that's not enough to be Notable; the author articles are enough

I'm not questioning the quality of the book. It's sounds really interesting. It got good reviews. But it seems to me that we could fill up WP with millions of book reviews, how is this in any way encyclopedic or helpful to users of WP? Perhaps the book should appear in a List of ... article, if it contributed, say, to research on Holocaust Denial; more likely (imho) the book itself should simply be cited direclty in the articles about the Holocaust; there is no need to have an article about it. I want to stress here, that I'm not picking on Denying History as a particularly egregious example of a book article needing deletion, I think it's merely typical of many, many others. The book authors each have their own article (Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman) and it would be largely sufficient to include the book reviews from the Denying History article there, if it was deemed notable (I would deem the text of the reviews not worth including. Indeed the sentence in Michael Shermer about Denying History says nothing about the reviews, the Grobman article quotes one review and footnotes it.) That's sufficient mention of this book; the article should be deleted as Not Notable. And if Denying History is Not Notable, then many thousands of other articles are in the same boat.

Some books clearly deserve their own article

Now, I think that it's clear there are books that rise to the level of notability: Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Paine's Common Sense, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax but not every bestseller nor book of the year or Booker or Pulitzer prize winner deserves to have its own article, imho. (Perhaps they belong on a List article.) There are books that have an important and enduring effect on literature, science, politics, culture and other fields of human endeavor, and they deserve an article to explain their influence on humankind. But how Denying History is in this category, is beyond me.

What's the scope of this problem?

Since I wondered whether Denying History was an aberration or typical, and how many other books like this one might have their own articles, I clicked through the Category:University of California Press books that Denying History belongs to, and found 32 books in the category, not one of which I would deem notable enough for an article on WP, with the possible exceptions of The Mysterious Stranger and The Teachings of Don Juan both of which (I might argue, to be proven with reliable sources) had a lasting impact on society. In no wise is Denying History of this caliber of Notability.

I'm pretty sure I'm on the losing side of this argument, or this category wouldn't already have 32 books in it apparently unchallenged and without Afd nominations.

Thinking about notability: Denying History vs. Pentagon Papers

So let's look specifically at Denying History as an example, as I'm not going to make Afd arguments for all 32 of the books in the same publisher category. Under WP:GNG I see no evidence that there is "Significant Coverage" about Denying History, all coverage is in the nature of book reviews by a few sources. It did not break out onto the front pages of newspapers, the way, say, Daniel Ellsberg's The Pentagon Papers did--that book had Significant Coverage, and lasting impact still today. There are literally hundreds of thousands of perfectly respectable, good, or excellent titles that have multiple reviews by respected reviewing sites, but never break out into the news cycle or influence anybody much beyond the readers of the book, and did not revolutionize their field or have lasting impact outside their contribution (in the case of non-fiction) to the body of knowledge about a subject.

WP:GNG and Notability--just move the content, if encyclopedic, to another article; also: improper <ref> links

The last line in WP:GNG says,

If a topic does not meet these criteria but still has some verifiable facts, it might be useful to discuss it within another article.

and imho that's precisely what should happen with Denying History. Instead, there are other articles, such as Holocaust denial that have a <ref> in the Intro paragraph at the top that references the book not with a {{cite book}} template as it should, imho, along with a page number, but rather the <ref> links to the Wikipedia article Denying History itself. Imho, this reference is improper and should be changed to reference the book itself. I'm concerned that there will be an ocean of WP articles on books out there, with a couple of three paragraphs each consisting mostly of a few book reviews, and then other WP articles will cite these book articles, instead of properly citing the book itself. Is one WP article considered a Reliable Source to support another WP article? I don't think that's how it's supposed to be done.

Is it just too big a problem to tackle?

Now, clearly it would be a huge undertaking to go through all the "book" articles on WP and nominate hundreds, perhaps thousands of them for deletion, and frankly, I'm not expecting that to happen. But that makes me uneasy, because I think it is the right thing to do, and the fact that so many of these articles exist, improperly imho, are like "facts on the ground" which cannot be extirpated anymore simply because they are too numerous. I'd like to at least get a statement from an Admin or above who considers themself to be a "Guideline" or "Notability" guru to comment on what the right thing to do here really is, and if so, whether there's any hope of achieving it.

So now what?

If there is an argument for deletion (is there?) what now? Do I go through the Afd FAQ and nominate it? What about the other 32? What about the thousands of others?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts. Mathglot (talk) 04:46, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

You have realized what many other people have realized, and what people seeking to promote themselves/their boss/professor/company/etc. often deny when they point out other stuff exists; that is, that there are many articles that shouldn't exist on Wikipedia, and there is simply no way we can get to them all. There are simply too little volunteers versus millions of articles. So, in other words, yes, this problem is too big to tackle.
There is a specific notability guideline for books, Wikipedia:Notability (books). Also, you can also read about the common outcomes of AfDs, though that isn't a guideline. However, a common outcome of book AfDs is apparently that "Books are notable (and thus kept) if well-known, and should be listed under the author if not.". Hopefully, reading through the two wikilinks I've provided, and yes, maybe the AfD FAQ, should answer your question. I dream of horses (t) (c) @ 06:49, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, I dream of horses for your thoughtful comments. I will look at the links and figure out what to do. Mathglot (talk) 06:54, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
No problem! I dream of horses (t) (c) If you reply here, please ping me by adding {{U|I dream of horses}} to your message. @ 06:58, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
(Pinging I dream of horses as a courtesy for the additions below; not requesting feedback at this time, but feedback always welcome.)
Just assembling some notes for myself here, in preparation for possibly doing a Wikipedia:Deletion process for Denying History. According to WP:NBOOK, the book would be notable if it meets any of the criteria in the five bullet items listed. It seems to me it very likely fails 1, 2, 3 and 5, and very likely fails 4 but in any case, the burden of proof of finding the college courses would be on those voting for Keep. I will now try to do some additional research, to turn "very likely fails..." into a stronger statement, and ignore #4. If I get to that point, I will open a WP:DELPRO#Deletion_discussion. Initial thoughts:
  • 1 subject of 2 published works - very doubtful, from initial searches.
  • 2 major award - searches on shermer denying history award (or prize) fail to turn up anything.
  • 3 signif. contribution to movie, art, political or religious event - No.
  • 4 subject of instruction at 2 schools - prob. not; maybe Israel? who knows; leave burden on Keepers to find this.
  • 5 author is so notable he is a constant subject of study - No.
Looks like a good candidate for deletion. Mention in deletion discussion that some existing (and notable) articles (such as Holocaust denial) refer to this article in their references; those refs should be recast to refer to the book itself, not the WP article up for deletion (regardless whether it's a Keep or a Delete). Also request that voters follow guidelines for this one article, and not rely on other stuff exists (and WP:INN) as an argument. Further suggest a merge of any useful content from Denying History into Shermer article, but imho none of the content is deserving of being retained. Further investigation t.b.d. to tighten this up and increase likelihood of achieving consensus for a Delete. Mathglot (talk) 07:45, 4 April 2015 (UTC) entry above edited to add WP:INN by Mathglot (talk) 08:00, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
Although I continue to believe in the validity of the case for deleting the article on the book Denying History, I am going to recuse myself from leading that effort, although I would still support someone else taking it up. The reason is, that this issue led me into looking at the article on Holocaust Denial, and soon after I did, I thought that it could be improved, and became involved with it as an editor. The Denial topic is sensitive enough that some editors there might misconstrue my involvement in recommending deletion of the Denying History article as a "position statement", even though it isn't. So I'll decline further involvement in this at this time, other than to add my own opinion on it if someone else decides to take it up. I believe many, if not most, articles about a single book on WP deserve to be deleted, except for the ones that are truly significant. The five-point list at WP:NBOOK is a good one which I support, and by those criteria, most single-book articles on WP would fall, in my opinion. So in that sense, deleting Denying History is only one among thousands, and there's no particular reason for me to concentrate on that one, especially if it touches on a controversial topic. (Having said that, I'm a bit uneasy about the fact that books about "controversial subjects" such as this one, may get a bit of a "free pass" among editors considering a delete process, just because they fear a pile-on by partisans. In reality, that is what has happened here, which is why I would welcome someone else stepping up to take this one on.) Mathglot (talk) 06:26, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to a chance encounter with a discussion about books by Hugh Walters at the merge templates page I have located a collection of 19 books that clearly do not merit individual articles under the Notability guidelines for books. A convenient list of these articles can be found in the Bibliography of the Hugh Walters article. According to my understanding of Book notability, not one of the 19 articles linked under the Bibliography should exist in Wikipedia. Mathglot (talk) 20:35, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Expand language template

Hi Mathglot,

Thanks for your contributions regarding the template:expand language. Your recent edits removing this template from the talk pages of articles that need translating are certainly bold, however, they are not constructive since you haven't moved the template to the article space, you've only deleted it. The template documentation does not specify placement, and if you read the template's talk page, you'll see that several attempts have been made in the past to gain consensus on where to place this template, and the suggestion to put it on the talk page since it's quite a large template and is distracting if placed within an article. I don't think that anyone would believe that a talk page needs to be translated, and the template specifically says that it's the article that needs to be translated. I would argue that the template is more for editors than for readers, so placing the template on the talk page is a good way of categorizing the page as needing additional translation without cluttering up the article. I won't revert your edit on the article Association Solidarité Féminine to avoid an edit war, but please refrain from removing the template from talk pages without placing it in the article, if that's what you think should be done. Perhaps you should start a new section on the template's talk page to gain consensus on the issue. Rystheguy (talk) 14:25, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Rystheguy,
Thank you for your comment.
We're about on the same page about this, as I had likewise already decided prior to receiving your comment above not to revert again if you did but to write to you about it. But instead you wrote me first, so a hat tip for the good faith, which I acknowledge as well. I do take your point about the "not constructive" part and I thought about that, and there's a case to be made there, but in my initial understanding I didn't agree, as I've seen previous discussions on analogous sorts of things where a person attempting to make constructive edits is taken to task for not fixing things 100% rather than just fixing some portion of it, and I guess I decided at the time that not having the template in the wrong place was half the battle, and there was no need to do all of the work at once, nor does it need to be all done by a single editor, me, in this case. Perhaps I was mistaken, but that's how I thought about it at the time. Going forward at least, I'll go ahead and do both halves and move it to article space if I find more of them.
Regarding template placement: we're agreed that nobody would think we are talking about translating the talk page. So why the confusion with this Template historically, with a certain significant minority of pages having been marked on the Talk page instead? I think I know why. Two reasons: First, the template document actually does specify placement, but it does a fairly weak job of it, and secondly, there is another translation-related template that is supposed to go on the Talk page when used correctly. Regarding the first point on the poor instructions:

To mark an article, tag it with
{{Expand French |Frencharticletitle |date=April 2015}}
This template places articles in the category Category:Articles needing translation from French Wikipedia.

If you miss the fact that an article is the antecedent of it in the first sentence, you might not realize they meant the article itself, although that is what it says. Secondly, the doc mentions that the template automatically places the article into a specific category behind the scenes. The implication here, weakly stated again to be sure, is that wherever you put the {{Expand French}} template will end up in that category--and that is in fact, the case; if you tag the Talk page, then it is the Talk page, and only the Talk page, that is placed into that category. And since we all know that that's clearly not the intent, either the doc should be changed to match current behavior in a clearer manner, or the template code should be changed (and the instructions, to match) so that marking the talk page causes the article category to be affected, and not the talk page itself.
The second reason that there's been some confusion up to now, imho, is not due to the Expand French template itself, but rather due to confusion with the proper usage of another template by WP translators, namely {{Translated page}}. The Wikipedia:Translation essay specifies rules about crediting the foreign WP source of an article to avoid copyright violation, and recommends usage of the {{Translated page}} Template on the article talk page (emphasis added). This template is currently in use on many thousands of article Talk pages, establishing copyright source of the corresponding article. I myself have used this template a number of times and am familiar with it, and am aware that it goes on the talk page. Translator-editors of WP articles would be forgiven for not remembering which page what template is supposed to go on, especially when some templates belong in one namespace, and some in the other.
I think that this situation can be remedied by having clearer instructions, especially on {{Expand French}}, and I've made a small contribution in an initial attempt to do that. Further clarification might help if it were added to the translation essay as well, and I may take a stab at that.
Regarding discussion of placement on the template talk page, I did read it, but Talk page comments by an editor about their recollection about what may have happened in past Rfc's are hardly a guideline, and the fact is that currently, the template adds the page on which it appears to the translation category--that is the current reality, and the template is in use on thousands of article-space pages (per 'what links here') in exactly that way. If an Rfc has decided to the contrary, they will have a big job ahead of them to fix a lot of legacy pages, but I don't believe that is the case. However, I don't really have a dog in this race, I'm just trying to apply the rules, and the documentation of the rules, as they now exist, and if they change them, then so be it, those will be the new rules and then we'll apply those rules (though I hope they don't flip them back and forth too often, to keep us all sane).
In the meantime, I'm more concerned about the general case than I am about any given page. I've reverted my last change to Talk:Association Solidarité Féminine, however I believe the template should probably be moved to article space, as you have suggested.
To further improve the situation, I'm thinking about a clarification on the Wikipedia:Translation page. Given that the proper usage of some Translation-related templates requires they be placed in article space, and others in Talk page space, the essay might avoid confusion in Template usage by including a short sub-section listing the most popular templates used by translators, and what page they belong on. When listing them, they should be quoted using the {{tl}} template (rather than <code><nowiki>Template name</nowiki></code>) for easy access. Mathglot (talk) 21:03, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Hi Mathglot,
Thank you for your thorough reply. I guess I don't feel too strongly about where the template is placed, and I agree that it's probably best to keep things consistent, so I've moved the template to the article space in Association Solidarité Féminine. My original concern was more that, if the template was deleted from talk pages rather than moved to the corresponding articles, then there would be no way for someone else to do the rest of the work since the pages would no longer be categorized as needing expansion, so it would be impossible to keep track of what needs to be done. Anyways, it's no longer a problem. Thanks for all of your edits on Wikipedia, you've done a lot of good stuff. Take care, Rystheguy (talk) 14:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Rystheguy, I've moved all the others into article space. (A handful were already there, not of recent date, meaning they were in both talk and article space for some time.)
Also, thanks to the edit on "List of F authors" that de-orphaned Andre Rogerie; you beat me to it by a hair, as he is now linked in from a couple of solid articles. (His status as "author" being technically correct, but a bit of a stretch. ;-) ) Mathglot (talk)

Bold edit to Holocaust denial

You should have at least have waited for other comments on the relevant talk page. You appear to be saying that the list is superfluous, as some individuals are covered in the article and in a seperate dedicated article, and that is worthy of debate. It would be very good to hear the opinions of others. We are now at the discussion stage of WP:BRD. I accept that your edit was done in good faith, and I retract my POV claim in the summary. Regards Irondome (talk) 00:16, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@Irondome:, thank you for your comment about the change to Holocaust denial. If you look at WP:BRD, it's an ordered sequence of 1. Bold, 2. Revert, 3. Discuss. I did part 1, and since I realized it might be debatable, I provided a very detailed justification for it. I also asked in the summary, and in the Talk, for a justification of any revert. But you did not provide one :-( . Therefore, I do not agree that we are in the Discussion step, rather we're in the proper application of the Revert step. The guideline does not say Revert willy-nilly, it gives specific suggestions about it:
Note that WP:BRD has this to say about Revert:

Revert an edit if it is not an improvement, and it cannot be immediately fixed by refinement. Consider reverting only when necessary. BRD does not encourage reverting, but recognizes that reverts will happen. When reverting, be specific about your reasons in the edit summary and use links if needed.

I have trouble understanding the explanation of the edit summary as given in the revert: "no consensus, just a pov wall of text". In what way was any of my explanation POV? What was my point of view, in your opinion? I don't see any point of view one way or the other, I'm not sure what you are talking about, I was just trying to explain duplicate content and justifying it with links and diffs. Is there a POV in there, somewhere, and if so, what is it?
The WP:BRD doesn't say to Revert without reason. I grant your good faith in Reverting and I believe you have some reason for it, but I'd like to know what it is. I gave very detailed reasons for my edit, and I would hope that you could respond in kind. I would ask you to substantiate your Revert with your reasons according to the guideline. I assume you believe that this change (the deletion) was not an improvement. Given my talk page discussion, what was the problem with it?
As your Revert seems arbitrary and unbstantiated, I may revert it back again in time. I will not revert you a 2nd time however, although I would be annoyed by an additional unsubstantiated revert. However I would like to give you (or anyone) a reason to support your revert, before I do anything further. I look forward to your comments. Further discussion probably belongs on the article talk page, but feel free to respond where it seems most helpful. Mathglot (talk) 00:42, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
I have created a discussion space on the relevant talk page, which you neglected to do, perhaps due to enthusiasm. My reasoning for reversion was simple. You did not allow due time for comment before going ahead with such an ambitious edit. The forum is now open for consensus to be reached, based on your closely argued text, as it appears to be. However, we must reach agreement there. We appear to be mutually AGF, which is excellent, but I would sugget you do not delete the section again, without community input. Remember, an edit is not a fait d'accompli, but is subject to reversion and discussion. I think you appear to be missing that aspect of BRD. The onus is on you to justify your edit, through establishing consensus. I look forward to an interesting discussion. Regards Irondome (talk) 00:51, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
On 00:51, 23 April 2015 @Irondome: said,

I have created a discussion space on the relevant talk page, which you neglected to do, perhaps due to enthusiasm.

Huh, what? You seriously did not see the quite lengthy Talk entry just above yours, entitled Deleted section Notable Holocaust deniers with eight subsections? It was hard to miss, considering that the Edit summary for the original change also linked to it. How could you possibly miss that? I truly don't know what to say.
Irondome said,

My reasoning for reversion was simple. You did not allow due time for comment before going ahead with such an ambitious edit.

Please read WP:BRD again. There is no requirement to discuss before an edit, otherwise it wouldn't be Bold would it? The guideline says, Bold editing is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia. No editor is more welcome to make a positive contribution than you are. When in doubt, edit! If that was your only reason, then your revert was improper. You could still have other, valid reasons for the revert, the guideline says what they are in the next section. So, I would still like to know if you have a valid reason, since so far, I don't see one.
Irondome said,

The forum is now open for consensus to be reached, based on your closely argued text, as it appears to be.

Um, this sounds a bit preachy and WP:OWN. The article is open to be improved by anyone, and is not owned by anyone. You don't get to decide when things go to discussion about changes you apparently don't approve of. Please cite a guideline, or stop making policy on the fly.
Irondome said,

However, we must reach agreement there. We appear to be mutually AGF, which is excellent, but I would sugget you do not delete the section again, without community input.

Based on what guideline? Neither you, nor anybody else, gets to decide arbitrarily when things go to discussion other than by following a policy or guideline. To me, it sounds like you are preemptively blocking a bold edit, based on a claim that prior agreement is necessary for such a claim. If that is the case, please quote the guideline to me. Your comment to wait for prior agreement before making a change goes against WP:BOLD and sounds like the Wiki equivalent of censorship to me. If there is a policy that supports prior agreement, I will of course follow it, otherwise I plan to revert your reversion, unless you can give a reason for it. As I have previously said, I will not revert a second time, even if you, or someone else, reverts again, even if against policy or unsubstantiated. Mathglot (talk) 01:43, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
You appear to have an unfortunate battleground mentality. The onus is on you mate to gain consensus. You did not mention in your lengthy justification for your edit anywhere the possibility of community discussion. You basically attempted to push it through. And stop WP:WIKILAWYERING. It gets tedious. The bizarre claim of ownership is remarkable. I merely did what you should have done and created space for debate. I have assumed good faith, but your pointy attacks concern me regarding your attitude. Now we await the judgement of the community on your edit. Its a community. I hope you grasp that. Message ends Irondome (talk) 01:56, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
@Irondome:, The onus is on you mate to gain consensus. Although I've linked and quoted guidelines to you to support my position, you make statements like this without any support. I think I've already said this, but if you read WP:BRD you will see that the first step does not require consensus. As far as community discussion that's a core principle of WP and always holds; it's not necessary to repeat every guideline in the justification for a particular edit. But if you want a direct statement about it: yes of course I agree that community discussion is core to the principle of Wikipedia, no one ever said the contrary, so I don't know why you mentioned this, except perhaps if you think consensus is required before making any change, but that is incorrect.
Battleground mentality? I leave that up to others to judge. I've made a change in line with WP policy, which I think is a definite improvement to the article. (Did you notice that there were ancillary edits to over a dozen other articles on individuals who were Holocaust deniers, in order to bring the category content in line with the list in the article, in those cases where the bullet list and the category content were out of sync? The reason for that was to discover any "missing" entries in the category list, that might be lost if the article section was deleted without comparing them; it turned out there were 19 such "missing" entries, they were examined, and a bunch of articles were edited in order to bring the two in line. All this was done to ensure that deleting the deniers section was "safe" in the sense of not losing any information that was previously there. If you allow the delete to go through, no information about any single Holocaust denier would be lost because every single one of them is listed on the Category page. All of that was done before deleting the section, so you cannot say I didn't due my due diligence in preparation for the delete. Read the discussion above, links and data are provided showing exactly what was done here.) I initiated a detailed discussion on the Talk page in support of my change. To date, I haven't heard any specific criticism of it based on the content from you (or anyone else to date) except for your complaint that I didn't discuss it beforehand, for which "reason" you reverted it. I reject that criticism as invalid and not supported by policy, and ask that you self-revert, or provide a reason. Whether you do or don't choose to do so, doesn't of course prevent a discussion from happening on the talk page to achieve consensus, or for any other reason, and I'm happy to see that go on, but not as a precondition to a change. Indeed, some other editor might even restore the section if you self-revert, for reasons of their own, which I am happy to discuss if/when that happens. But I do wish you would provide a reason for your revert, or else undo it.
You basically attempted to push it through. And stop WP:WIKILAWYERING. It gets tedious. I don't know what to say to this, other than it seems like a good thing for someone to say if they can't really find anything in the guidelines or don't wish to. Look at the four main bullet points at WP:WL and you will see that none of them apply. A charge of Wikilawyering can be made when someone is actually Wikilawyering, and it can also be made when someone is attempting to avoid basic WP guidelines by preemptively making such an accusation. If it comes to it, others can make up their own minds about that. I have but one purpose with respect to this (or any) article on Wikipedia, which is to improve the article. As I've said before, I think removing the list of 65 names in section Holocaust deniers is an improvement for the reasons noted, and I even tried to deal with some alternatives to deletion in the Talk page discussion. I haven't seen where you have criticized any specific, individual point in the long discussion I made to support it. All I see, is a Revert from you, a failure to provide any justification for your revert, and now, accusations such as WikiLawyering and Battlegrounding. Seriously? This all feels rather over-the-top to me. What's so troublesome or annoying about just justifying the revert? I don't get it. I'm HAPPY to see my change reverted, if that will improve the article. I have no wish to argue, or wikilawyer with you or whatever, but you can't just keep saying "we do it this way, just because" without regard to WP policies and guidelines. That's just not the way it works. I don't even really understand where the disagreement is between us, really, as I don't know your position, other than you just don't wish to see the delete happen for some reason.
I have assumed good faith, but your pointy attacks concern me regarding your attitude. I have trouble understanding what you mean. I think you meant to say 1. that I'm attacking you (I'm not, I'm just trying to improve the article) and 2. that I have some sort of "concerning" attitude--does that mean, bad attitude? I wish you would come out and say so, if you think I have a bad attitude, then at least if it were true I would wish to correct it. (I apologize if I misunderstood you, that was my reading of that statment; please let me know if I was wrong about that.) Somehow by requesting that you provide a revert reason I seem to be annoying you. That is not my intent. I believe deleting the Denier list improves the article for the reasons stated, and as you say, consensus will ultimately be the decider on this point. But I wish you would adhere to Wiki policies to explain your action as it very much feels to me like you're doing whatever you want by demanding consensus before I change anything. It just doesn't work that way. Everybody gets to contribute to the article, nobody owns it, and no one person gets to decide which edits of other people belong, and which ones don't. Your revert wasn't proper, but I haven't reverted back, so far, even though that would be appropriate. Even so, and in the face of an improper revert, I see no reason not to hear from other editors before I consider reverting back, so let's have a go at that approach and see what happens. It's very unlikely that I would revert you in the face of any well-argued, cogent discussion of why keeping the list of Holocaust deniers in the article is a good idea. Let's see what happens in the next few days or week or so. One of the WP recommendations when things seem to heat up is to back off and take a breather, so I plan to do that, and recommend you consider it as well. If you still assume good faith, then you must agree that the point here is to improve the article, and it doesn't matter who "wins", right? I am happy to cede the last word here to you. Happy editing! Mathglot (talk) 03:19, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
I have no animus to you whatsoever, and I hope we can work productively in the future. My principal objection, as I have stated several times now, is that you did not wait for consensus from other colleagues before removing a large and well established section. You wrote a well argued defence, and then proceeded with the edit. I have not encountered this before, without it leading to some initial misunderstandings. I am defending my reversion on that basis. In fact I find your argument compelling, and would be inclined to support. But it does need discussion first. We need to establish whether the section removal is a net loss or gain to the article, and we can only do that through discussion. I hope you understand my position. I, like you, am only here to improve the project. Now, I hope we can go forward together on this in a positive and collaborative fashion. I have a busy and stressful remainder of the day, but will be available this evening. Regards Irondome (talk) 11:09, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Please can you help with the page Arab slave trade

Hi, sorry to bother you but I see that you like edit controversial articles. If you don't mind would you help improving Arab slave trade's page, and maybe comment in the talk page. Thanks in advance. Rupert loup (talk) 11:13, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Rupert loup: I actually don't like to edit controversial articles very much, at least not the controversial parts. I'll have a look at it, but probably won't contribute, beyond relatively uncontroversial style, grammar, or organizational changes. Mathglot (talk) 17:31, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
I was just asking, thank you for taking the time to see it. Regards. Rupert loup (talk) 17:52, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Isaac Schneersohn

Thanks for the thanks, though that has now been removed from WP:PNTCU as closed. As for the {{cite book|imprint=}} attribute, I didn't think this was valid but deliberately left it there, not knowing the best way to deal with it. I should really put the external links into cite templates as well. I did reword some of the quotes a bit, but I assumed these were Wikipedian translations rather than being quoted from some sourced translation (usually I would give both the original and the translated text, in those cases, and perhaps we should re-introduce the original French there too.) Si Trew (talk) 18:27, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Marcel Kittel

Could you please tell me what was not proper English with "He did ride the Ster ZLM Toer, but could not finish in the top-10 of a stage. At the end of June, it was announced that Kittel would not participate to the Tour de France, since his fitness level was not good enough." ??? Mattsnow81 (Talk) 18:38, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi @Mattsnow81:, nothing too serious in that sentence, except for the preposition to (en anglais, participate veut la préposition in et non pas to; voir discussion). I know that it's participer à in French, but it's participate in in English, as strange as that may seem to French ears. By the way--be very cautious when using search engine hit counts to try to justify conclusions about grammar and spelling: despite millions of hits for "participate to", it is incorrect. (If you're not convinced, check the hit count for seperate and then look up the proper spelling in a dictionary.) English is spoken widely as a second language, and examples of "participate to" are errors written by non-native speakers, often French speakers. A more minor issue in this sentence was the use of hyphen, the rules are subtle and even native speakers often get this wrong, and in many cases it's more of a stylistic issue than one of proper grammar anyway so I wouldn't worry about it. Remaining issues were less about "incorrect" grammar, than the fact that the sentence sounded translated rather than written by a native speaker, so I made minor revisions for that reason, even though the original grammar was not incorrect. Your English ability is advanced, and the problems are fairly minor. Watch out for faux amis (dispute a race), prepositions (...on in the race), and transitivity, e.g. abandon is transitive in English and requires a direct object (C.O.D.) e.g., abandoned the race , whereas dropped out does not).
HTH, et bonne continuation! Mathglot (talk) 20:56, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Thank you, I learned something Mattsnow81 (Talk) 12:37, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

H-Net

yes i'm the historian who set up H-Net back in 1990s.  :) Rjensen (talk) 14:12, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

@Rjensen: Wow, cool! I don't hang there as much as I used to--the internet kind of exploded since then (WP included!) and there are lots of claims on one's attention now, but it was and is a great idea and great site. Thank you for creating it. I wonder if Linguist-list was inspired by it. Mathglot (talk) 17:33, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Template:Current

I'm not sure that you understand how Template:Current is meant to be used. It is added in the early stages of a new event, when the article is being edited by many editors, and is subject to frequent change. That is no longer the case with Death of Sandra Bland, and the template is no longer appropriate. WWGB (talk) 09:15, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments @WWGB:. Template:Current is meant to be used when Information about an event is still changing rapidly, and where the last updates to the article may not reflect the most current information. With dozens of news articles appearing in the last 24 hours and around 30 edits to the article in the last 72 hours I think that qualifies as rapidly changing. If you disagree, please remove the banner again, and explain in the Edit Summary with a bit more explanatory text than the derisive "please see Template:Current for appropriate use of template" which leaves one in the position of trying to mind-read your intent, and comes off as rather haughty. I won't revert a 2nd undo with a reasonable policy-sourced explanation. Thanks. Mathglot (talk) 09:44, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
No offense, but if someone told me to "please see Template:Current for appropriate use of template", I could probably make it to bullet 2 of its guidelines, which includes the following words: "the template may optionally be used in those extraordinary occasions that many editors (perhaps a hundred or more) edit an article on the same day". And I wouldn't even resent being made to do so. WWGB should not have been expected to copy-and-paste those words into his edit summary, even if they would all fit there. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:21, 2 August 2015 (UTC)


Talk:Death of Sandra Bland

Can you withdraw the request? There won't be one !support vote within one week. --George Ho (talk) 19:08, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Note on verse translation and poetic license

Should it rhyme? See Village Pump discussion about verse translation and poetic license. Mathglot (talk) 05:51, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

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