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February 2019

Please comment on Talk:Pamela Geller

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Pamela Geller. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

The Sustainability Initiative

The Sustainability Initiative

Hello SMcCandlish: 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 09:40, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Will take a look at it. I hope this will address the problem of WMF's server farm being powered by coal engines and child labor.  ;-)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #028, 04 Feb 2019

Here's a quicky status report:

Old-style portals: 1,018

Single-page portals: 4,367

Total portals: 5,385

But of course, there has been more going on than just that...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is up and running!

Dreamy Jazz Bot has been approved and is now up and running.

What it does is places missing links to orphaned portals. It places a link in the See also section of the corresponding root article, and it puts one at the top of the corresponding category page.

We have thousands of new portals that have yet to be added to the encyclopedia proper, just waiting to go live.

When they do go live, over the coming days or weeks, due to Dreamy Jazz Bot, it will be like an explosion of new portals on the scene. We should expect an increase in awareness and interest in the portals project. Perhaps even new participants.

Get ready...

Get set...

Go!

Another sockpuppet infiltrator has been discovered

User:Emoteplump, a recent contributor to the portals project, was discovered to be a sockpuppet account of an indefinitely blocked user.

When that happens, admins endeavor to eradicate everything the editor contributed. This aftermath has left a wake of destruction throughout the portals department, again.

The following portals which have been speedy deleted, are in the process of being re-created. Please feel free to help to turn these blue again:

New portals since the last issue

Keep up the great work

Until next time,    — The Transhumanist   09:16, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

DYK for William Hoskins (inventor)

On 12 February 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article William Hoskins (inventor), which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that William Hoskins, the co-inventor of modern billiard chalk, also invented the electric heating coil, used to create the first electric toasters? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/William Hoskins (inventor). You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, William Hoskins (inventor)), 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.

– Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

My first DYK in something like a decade. And I got someone else to actually do the DYK process-y stuff. I am now becoming a WikiMiddleManager, and expect my hair to recede and my shape to get flabby any moment now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:07, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm just glad I didn't make an absolute hash of it! Glad you can't get fired from wikipedia. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:07, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Nah, good stuff! I'm so happy you took that page "live" at all. I feared I would sit on it until I was 90. I'm not sure why I couldn't quite find the motivation to polish and post it. I think I was always hoping for more "earth-shaking" sources to show up about what an impact his work has had on the modern world (and the page doesn't do that justice yet, but we don't have the secondary sources for it, so far). PS: I saw you had a couple more pool-io DYKs in the pipes. I tried an "Alt. 2" on one of them (Mosconi cup guy) after someone proposed editing it into bland paste.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:36, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

It's nice to see you back! My philosophy is that the article will always get more chance of being expanded in mainspace. The sourcing isn't fantastic, but I doubt something will just appear.

Yeah, I went quite crazy last month on pool articles, including a few dyks. Thanks for clearing up John. It's obviously very weird to have someone represent both sides in the Mosconi Cup, and he won it so many times as coach!

I did quite a bit of work on the Euro Tour, and discussed getting some images released with someone from the tour, but that appears to be a dead end, sadly; which is a little frustrating, as there are so few images for pool bios and tournaments.

Let me know if you have anything else you could do with being released. I did look at your draft of Ground Billiards, but I struggled a bit, and I've been working on getting some snooker articles up to GA. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:29, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals update #029, 13 Feb 2019

Where we are at:

Single-page portals: 4,704

Total portals: 5,705

The Ref desks survived the proposal to shut them down

You might be familiar with the Ref desks, by their link on every new portal. They are a place you can go to ask volunteers almost any knowledge-related question, and have been a feature of Wikipedia since August of 2005 (or perhaps earlier). They were linked to from portals in an effort to improve their visibility, and to provide a bridge from the encyclopedia proper to project space (the Wikipedia community).

Well, somebody proposed that we get rid of them, and the community decided that that was not going to happen. Thank you for defending the Ref desks!

Here's a link to the dramatic discussion:

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Indefinitely_semiprotecting_the_refdesk#Proposal_II:_Shut_down_the_Ref_Desks

The cleanup after sockpuppet Emoteplump continues...

The wake of disruption left by Emoteplump and the admins who reverted many (but not all) of his/her edits is still undergoing cleanup. We could use all the help we can get on this task...

Almost all of the speedy deleted portals have been rebuilt from scratch.

For the portals he/she restarted (many of which were done mistakenly, overwriting restarts and further development that had already been done), and/or tagged as the maintainer, see https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User:Emoteplump&oldid=881568794#Additional_Portals_under_my_watch

10,000 portals, here we come...

We're at 5,705 portals and counting.

New portals since issue #28

Let's take a closer look at these...

1) Creating new portals

Portal creation, for subjects that happen to have the necessary support structures already in place, is down to about a minute per portal. The creation part, which is automated, takes about 10 seconds. The other 50 seconds is taken up by manual activities, such as finding candidate subjects, inspecting generated portals, and selecting the portal creation template to be used according to the resources available. Tools are under development to automate these activities as much as possible, to pare portal creation time down even more. Ten seconds each is the goal.

Eventually, we are going to run out of navigation templates to base portals off of. Though there are still thousands to go. But, when they do run out, we'll need an easy way to create more. A nav footer creation script.

Meanwhile, other resources are being explored and developed, such as categories, and methods to harvest the links they contain.

2) Expanding existing portals

The portal collection is growing, not only by the addition of new portals, but by further developing the ones we already have, by...

• Improving and/or adding search parameters to better power the Did you know and In the news sections.
• Adding more selected content sections, like Selected biographies.
• Adding and maintaining Recognized content sections, via JL-Bot.
• Adding pictures to the image slideshow.
• Adding panoramic pics.
• Categorizing portals.

More features will be added as we dream them up and design them. So, don't be shy, make a wish.

3) Converting old portals

By far the hardest and most time-consuming task we have been working on is updating the old portals, the very reason we revamped this WikiProject in the first place.

There are two approaches here:

A) Restart a portal from scratch, using our automated tools. For basic no-frills portals, that works find. But, for more elaborate portals, as that tends to lose content and features, the following approach is being tried...

B) Upgrade a portal section by section, so little to nothing is lost in the process.

4) Linking to new portals

Or "portal deorphanization"...

Dreamy Jazz Bot is purring along.

And a tool in the form of a script is under development for linking to portals at the time they are created, or shortly thereafter.

5...

See below...

New WikiProject for the post-saved-portal phase of operations...

Saved portals, are portals with a saved page.

What is the next stage in the evolutionary progression?

Quantum portals.

What are quantum portals?

Portals that come into existence when you click on the portal button, and which disappear when you leave the page.

Or, as Pbsouthwood put it:

...portals that exist only as a probability function (algorithm) until you collapse the wave form by observing through the portal button (run the script), and disappear again after use...

Introducing...

Wikipedia:WikiProject Quantum portals (see it's talk page).

Keep on keepin' on

...'til next time,    — The Transhumanist   08:38, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Notification

Hello SMcCandlish, I hope you are, and have been well. I mentioned you in this discussion but my alerts notification did not show that mention as having been sent? I am curious, since this marks the first time it has ever happened to me: have you set your preferences in some way that blocks others from sending you an alert that your name has been mentioned? If not, I'll pursue a technical answer, if so, a technical solution. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 11:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@John Cline: I've not done anything to block pings. Pings are rather "brittle". If there's a typo in the ping template, or you don't put the ping and a new sig in the same save it won't work. E.g., if you forgot to ping or didn't ping right the first time, you can't just go back and add the ping, you need to self-revert the original post, then re-add it with the [fixed] ping and a new sig. Or, if people have already replied, then add a new post-script with a ping template and sig.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:03, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

PS: It also doesn't work to add the ping and a new sig to an existing post.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:38, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you SMcCandlish, your reply is filled with good information (some of which I knew, and some I've learned thereby) and the post script seemed, most plausibly, to explain. It seems, however, that something else has occurred when considered in concert with the following, previously unmentioned, nuance: a second ping, within the same posting, was delivered as yours, inexplicably, should also have been? If you are befuddled by this, as I remain, I'll next seek that technical explanation of earlier mention. Thank you again.--John Cline (talk) 20:26, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm at a loss to 'splain that one. I have long considered that the ping system isn't just a bit mis-featured, but actually has some outright bugs in it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:30, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Here's one that has me stumped

Here it is:

Vernal is to spring, as

Autumnal is to fall, as

________ is to summer, as

________ is to winter.

What goes in the blanks?

All I can come up with is "Summer" and "Winter", respectively. Are there corresponding adjectives besides these?    — The Transhumanist   03:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Not common, but the Latinate names are estival (summer) and hibernal (winter). --Izno (talk) 03:27, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

British-wise it's aestival, and you can be extra fancy-pants with æstival.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:45, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Fame (no fortune)

Hello. Finally I got my chance to help get your essay up and running for the next issue of the Signpost. I edited it slightly so if you see something you don't like it, feel free to edit anything you want.

Best Regards, Barbara ✐✉ 14:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

@Barbara (WVS): Oh, ha ha, I'd almost forgotten about that one. I don't mind it being edited a bit, but there should be a link somewhere to the "canonical" version, e.g.: "This essay is available as a template that will use your username and other customization options.", or even just "The original version of this essay is at User:SMcCandlish/It.". PS: I'm seeing broken wikimarkup at both top and bottom of that Next_issue page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:41, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

That sounds like something I don't know how to do. I'll let you when I'm done and then could you do what want me to do? Best Regards, Barbara ✐✉ 21:30, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Actually, I think the code gibberish I'm seeing toward the top of the piece is an intentionally commented-out Signpost template, and at the bottom it's a truncation of template-related material from my original (which I would just replace with an explicit cross-reference like I suggested; I can just go add one).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:53, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I am going to snoop around all your subpages-for entertainment tonight. Best Regards, Barbara ✐✉ 21:39, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

@Barbara (WVS): Don't take everything seriously! There's some very goofy ancient stuff in there that I keep just to laugh at myself, like this silliness from 2007. Most of my actual essay material is catalogued at User:SMcCandlish/Essays. Some of it's been influential, like WP:SSF (which needs to be compressed to about 1/3 its present size), and some of it's been completely ignored, like WP:Consensus venue (though it probably isn't actually wrong). There's some pretty new stuff in there, like WP:Don't teach the controversy and WP:Reducing consensus to an algorithm. Of them all, I think the serious one that needs more attention than it gets is WP:Race and ethnicity, because the average person's (goes double for the average American's) pseudoscientific "understanding" in this area is intimately bound up with a lot of perpetual WP:BIAS, WP:POV, and WP:DRAMA issues.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:53, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

After all the negative comments I have experienced late last year I will have to take your word on that. My 'job' is to find funny stuff we can all laugh at. I have been banned, scolded and threatened with a review from Arbcom. Quite the let down, needless to say. If you find something in your rounds that is funny, let me know. I would like to try creating an essay but the humour article is similar in function. Thanks for your honest and transparent comments. Best Regards, Barbara ✐✉ 22:42, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

"Been there, done that". I ended up taking an entire-year wikibreak once, and have had several long but not that long ones since then. As for humor stuff, much of what I do in essay-subspace is in that vein, at least in part. There's a lot of other good material out there; I don't mean to blow my own horn. It's even a bit easier to find these days; I did a lot of work re-organizing and properly tagging in the Category:Wikipedia essays tree.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:53, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, as I was somewhat expecting, the essay was twisted by various busybodies into "meaning" what it doesn't mean at all. I'll say here what I said at MfD: Feel free to delete the Signpost thing. It wasn't intended for that venue, but someone who edits it wanted to include it [see above]. I had my misgivings, predicting that various of the too-easily-offended would willfully misinterpret it, which is exactly what's happened. It wasn't transphobic in the faintest. A number of ranty editors utterly missed the point. It's about Wikipedia editors engaging in language-change activism trying to push non-mainstream stylistic strangeness, including a) fake pronouns like zie and hirm, b) unusual trademark stylizations, and c) excessive honorifics. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the off-site usage or the values of those who engage in it. It's about and only about encyclopedic usage. If you want to go change WP:MOS to say "It's okay to exactly mimic the appearance of logos, to write of Jesus and Mohammad with "Our Lord" and "Peace Be Upon Him" before and after (respectively) their names, to inject made-up pronoun shenanigans like ze and xir into our articles", well, good luck with that. Never going to happen.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:55, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

In this sentence...

Nine days after far-right advocate Jeremy Joseph Christian allegedly stabbed three men on the Portland TriMet transit system, Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017, which was met by thousands of counter-protesters.

the phrase "Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017" is not in any way, shape, or form parenthetical. A parenthetical phrase is conceptually an aside, this is not, it's the absolute core of the sentence, You and Curly Turkey are dead wrong, but I'm tired of this shit, so...

Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:37, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: You're misunderstanding: ", 2017," is structurally parenthetical in the same way that ", Jr.," is in "Sammy Davis, Jr., died in 1990". You're not getting the meaning of "parenthetical" here (it's about the orthographic layout and the function of the punctuation, not about the priority of the semantic content; different meanings of "parenthetical" or "parenthesizing" or "bracketing"), and you mistook the term for being applied to the entire "Gibson hosted a rally on April 2, 2017" clause, which isn't any kind of sensible interpretation.

Look, I don't have time for he-said-she-said semantics rehashing, nor for re-re-re-arguing the original issue with you. Just go read any general-English style guide from a major publisher, like Chicago Manual of Style or New Hart's Rules AKA Oxford Guide to Style AKA Oxford Style Manual. Direct quote (reformatted to suit this medium) from CMoS (16th ed., sect. 6.17, "Commas in pairs"), since I have that handy in digital form:

• 'Whenever a comma is used to set off an element (such as “1928” or “Minnesota” in the first two examples below), a second comma is required if the phrase or sentence continues beyond the element being set off. This principle applies to many of the uses for commas described in this section [No, I'm not pasting in the entire section]. An exception is made for commas within the title of a work (third example): June 5, 1928, lives on in the memories of only a handful of us.; Sledding in Duluth, Minnesota, is facilitated by that city’s hills and frigid winters.; but Look Homeward, Angel was not the working title of the manuscript.'

That's just from the segment specifically about the "micro-issue" of commas an American-style dates and in multi-element geographical names (I'm almost willing to bet cash you wrongly try to delete those commas, too). The chapter goes into the entire class of these constructions in more detail (the "many of the uses for commas described in this section" that I didn't over-quote), including apposition phrases, titles appended after names, etc. WP really doesn't care that some news publishers have their own house styles that drop a lot of punctuation, including various commas (presumably where you got the idea from); WP is not written in news style as a matter of policy.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:56, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

You might have noticed BMK is now blocked for editwarring at Joey Gibson (political activist)‎‎. That's not over this issue, which was not reported, but over a separate editwar with another editor at the same article, which was reported to WP:ANEW. Just so you don't end up thinking you're somehow "involved" in his block. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 12:20, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Good, on several levels. Someone editwarring multiple ways all at once needs to have a "time out", heh. But more importantly, I don't like it when MoS stuff rises to "dramaboard" levels. I never go that route over MoS stuff myself unless the personage in question is being grossly disruptive over a long period of time. It perpetuates the false notion that MoS is some kind of hotbed of drama. (It hasn't been one in a long time, because the problem editors who were making it one way back when, mostly 2008–2014, have all left, either because they got tired of trolling, or because they got indeffed for other reasons.) MoS obviously is a continual source of debate, but it's generally sane and civil.

Anyway, this was part of why I posted something about WT:MOS not being a dramaboard, and people having to make a case at a venue like ANI. They would actually have to marshal a buttload of diffed evidence to prove an intractable problem, and no one's likely to do that over a minor incident of comma peccadillo-mongering, especially when CMoS citations and the like will probably just put the matter to bed. Besides, it's more productive to just disprove a claim than to have "the Man" muzzle the claimant. >;-) Even the two RM regulars I was kinda-sorta thinking should be T-banned from MoS stuff have notably chilled out over the last 6 months because their arguments just keep failing. It would have been nice to not have had to spend 2+ years deflating their constantly recycled (WP:IDHT) arguments, but in the end it's better to have the editors around since they're otherwise productive.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:58, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Whoops—sorry, I made a mistake. BMK was indeed involved in another dispute at Joey Gibson (political activist)‎‎, but the block was for editwarring at Ben Shapiro. Hard to keep them all straight ...

If I wanted sanctions against BMK, I would've reported him to WP:ANEW. He uses IAR as justification with such frequency and forcefulness that I wanted to be sure whether it was legit. I would never consider taking it to ANI. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:43, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

6:00 am inspiration

I think it might be a good idea for those who watch the various MOS pages and are active on their talkpages to stop answering general style questions and instead refer them to the language refdesk. My reasoning is that a lot of the negativity directed towards the MOS and its "regulars" comes from seeing the talkpage of a style guideline being used for answering style questions that are not covered by said guideline. This gives the answers the appearance of consensus-based legitimacy and any critisism of that is, I think, totally valid. The talkpages should be for improvement-based suggestions and clarification of existing guidance. No?

I'm sending this to several people so please respond on my talkpage. Thanks. Primergrey (talk) 14:35, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

@Primergrey: In theory. But I think it'll be kind of like cold fusion. :-) There's so much to cover, I put it in an essay page, User:SMcCandlish/Why MoS talk pages have so much churn, since I find myself saying several of these things in more than one place over time. In short, I sympathize with the idea, but it's not likely to be practical, and the motivation for it's a little off, because critics of MoS's talk page being used for questionably-on-topic discussion are generally not the same people who are critics of MoS existing, of MoS saying what it says, or of MoS's frequent editors as individuals; the talk criticism is a severable one, and more often made by its regulars, not against them. The main problem with the "do it differently, or less" idea is that we generally can't tell why a question is being asked unless the asker is very explicit about it. It's easier and quicker to just answer and move on than to try to explore someone's rationale for asking. (Also, RDL may be doomed.)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:28, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm only talking about that which is not covered. The only appropriate context to discuss these is in a proposal for their inclusion. No? Primergrey (talk) 22:41, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

It's a forgiveness vs. permission matter. People won't !vote for "include off-topic discussions here". They're just tolerant of it happening from time to time. Maybe we should be less so, and quicker to refer someone elsewhere.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:09, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Aurora, Illinois shooting

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Aurora, Illinois shooting. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Trick shots (WalkinAlmanac)

Hey Thanks for contacting me back. The main information source for billiards is the WPA.ORG. The WPA (World Pool Association) is to pool like the NFL is to football. This source is the governing body of Professional billiards. Artistic Pool (trick shots) ,8 & 9 ball are each separate divisions. The WPA-APD is World Pool Association Artistic Pool Division, WPA-APD.ORG. There is other sources like A to Z etc..

I would like very much to work on a undated piece on billiards. However I need a few days to learn how to navigate the site. I will not try to publish or post any without you seeing it first. ~Cary WalkinAlmanac 05:23, 22 February 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by WalkinAlmanac (talk • contribs)

That's a very good source, too, especially for basic stats. It's a primary source, and we prefer secondary sources for most things (WP:PSTS), but the best source for something like who won a tournament sanctioned by WPA, or what the WPA rules say, is apt to be WPA itself; it's a special kind of case where a primary source is of great value. (By contrast, WPA can't tell us how influential WPA is, or whether a fairness complaint someone made about them is valid, etc.; they have a vested bias in their answer. :-)

Lee Vilenski is apt to be more available to help for the time being. And, yeah, it can take a while to get up-to-speed on all of Wikipedia's ways. Lots of rules and norms, but given that it's the no. 5 most-used Website in the world, and no. 1 as a general information source, one can see why! PS, on formatting stuff here: If you try to indent a paragraph on a wiki talk page by introducing a bunch of leading space, it will actually produce weird results (monospaced font like a code block). Indenting the first line of paragraphs isn't a style we use anyway. Also, the way to sign your posts is with ~~~~, which auto-generates the date and links to your user and talk pages. If you want it to also include "~Cary", you can edit the signature string in Special:MyPage/Preferences.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Just jumping on here WalkinAlmanac - I am more than willing to help you get to grips with editing wikipedia. I did do a little bit of work with the main Trick Shot article, as well as create Jimmy Caras yesterday. I'm actually off next week (I'll be in Sweden), but I can give tips or whatever after that. There's loads of nuance to editing on wikipedia; and it takes a long time (SMcCandlish knows a lot more than I do in regards to this, I've only been editing for 18 months or so), to get used to it. If you want, create WP:Draft articles so you can't get anything wrong. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:14, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Civility Barnstar
	For being endlessly patient, civil, and understanding in an XfD you opened, and giving everyone thorough, policy-and-guideline–backed responses. Softlavender (talk) 04:10, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Your responses, often multiple to individual editors, are an example for us all. Softlavender (talk) 04:10, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm trying, but this is a real challenge. It's so politicized, and I frankly agree with the indignant side on the background merits (the author of the page has in fact been hounded). It just doesn't have anything to do with the MfD about that particular page; the problems with it are not confined in any way to that particular dispute between the editor and his hounders (whom ANI seems quite willing to block). Him getting himself blocked with a WP:OUTING incident doesn't help. [sigh]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:06, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Template:Cleanup-Html listed at Redirects for discussion

 Done

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:Cleanup-Html. Since you had some involvement with the Template:Cleanup-Html redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. -- Beland (talk) 19:24, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Hello SMcCandlish. I noticed your !vote in this discussion and wanted to share an observation, regarding it, with you.

While I am certain that you acted with no ill intent, the levity used in closing your comment is ill informed and actually perpetuates one of the most common myths associated with Dyslexia that exists. The disorder has nothing to do with juxtaposing letters within words or any similar tendencies as they approach the ultimate myth of mirror writing. It is a cognitive disorder that affects one's ability to process language whereas a dyslexic might be seen writing it as dislexick, they would never be seen writing it as lysdexic.

I say this only because you are so well respected in this community that your word is accepted by observers in numbers untold as the unequivocal truth and this time you have not held yourself to the required standard of such high esteem. Thank you for understanding.--John Cline (talk) 07:26, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I know; I am mildly dyslexic. (Ever noticed my typo rate?) I just like to joke about it, including playing on misunderstandings. (Though it's different for different people, and transpositions are actually common, though more often among adjoining letters and ones with a similar shape – is it coelocanth or ceolocanth?) Lysdexics of the world untie!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:57, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

emdashes at Singular they

 Done

Shouldn't something about "an em dash is conventional" be addressed in the MoS? I "fixed" these because I assumed they were MoS-incompliant, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would gnome them away. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: Done, along with some block-quotation notes we've needed for a long time, though it may not "stick" without the usual bureaucracy and drama I mean discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:59, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Books & Bytes, Issue 32

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 32, January – February 2019

• #1Lib1Ref
• New and expanded partners
• Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
• Global branches update
• Bytes in brief

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:30, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

February 2019

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, articles should not be moved, as you did to Aurora, Illinois shooting, without good reason. They should have a name that is both accurate and intuitive. Wikipedia has some guidelines in place to help with this. Generally, a page should only be moved to a new title if the current name doesn't follow these guidelines. Also, if a page move is being discussed, consensus needs to be reached before anybody moves the page. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you.
Hello. It appears your talk page is becoming quite lengthy and is in need of archiving. According to Wikipedia's user talk page guidelines; "Large talk pages become difficult to read, strain the limits of older browsers, and load slowly over slow internet connections. As a rule of thumb, archive closed discussions when a talk page exceeds 75 KB or has multiple resolved or stale discussions." - this talk page is 100.7 KB. See Help:Archiving a talk page for instructions on how to manually archive your talk page, or to arrange for automatic archiving using a bot. If you have any questions, place a {{help me}} notice on your talk page, or go to the help desk. Thank you. --Jax 0677 (talk) 20:58, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Yeah it's probably due for archiving. But what about WP:DTTR? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:08, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Aurora, Illinois, shooting

Hello. Was your recent move a result of closing the RM discussion on the talk page? (I assume you know the RM was happening as you have commented on that talk page several times in recent days.) But you did not close the discussion and you did not cite the discussion in your move summary, which makes me wonder. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

You did not reply to my question. Although the page move has now been reverted I would still like to know if you knew the RM discussion was ongoing when you decided to move the article? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:19, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

@MSGJ: I had no idea! I was just doing routine MOS/NC cleanup, and didn't think to see if an RM was actually open right that moment. I don't move pages in mid-RM on purpose, of course.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:57, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

We thank you

February

The Hidden Valley, Negev
... with thanks from QAI

Thank you for article improvements in February! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:23, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

ce

You sure about that? Also, while I'm here, "verh dispassionately". I suspect you meant very. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:41, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Damn, I need coffee. Fixed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:51, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour

Resolved

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Fæ (talk) 15:05, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

MfD nomination of User:SMcCandlish/It

Resolved

 – Commented over there. It should be kept, but I don't care much.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:49, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

User:SMcCandlish/It, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:SMcCandlish/It and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:SMcCandlish/It during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Jc86035 (talk) 15:55, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Dude ...

that's the way dummies talk to each other, "You look like X" where X is selected from the collection of drivel that dummy A can confidently expect e shares with dummy B. Rarely is there ever a striking resemblance in fact, and usually it means A is trynna hit on B. 98.4.103.187 (talk) 16:14, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

A "dude" impersonator, who bears a striking resemblance to the actual "dude" North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:22, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

I grew up in the '80s in the US Southwest. "Dude" was every other word out of our mouths.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:20, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Pronouns

Please bear in mind that "I didn't intend it to be offensive" is not the same as "it wasn't offensive". DS (talk) 18:28, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Nope. Everyone owns their own emotions, and is responsible for their own reading comprehension. If people willfully demand to misread something so they can feel offended and get their day's "outrage" taken care of before breakfast, that's not my problem.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:37, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

You can't claim that people weren't hurt. You can only claim that you did not intend to do so. If you don't care about having hurt people, that's okay, but be open and honest about it. DS (talk) 22:11, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

@DragonflySixtyseven: I do care (and "offended" isn't "hurt" – let's not be hyperbolic). But it's a difficult issue to address. Attempts to deal with MOS:NEO problems in serious tones have a tendency to turn into WP:DRAMA. It's nearly impossible (as the current debate demonstrates) to keep this separate from general discussion (and ranting) about TG/NB matters. Sometimes there are truly massive and nasty amounts of rancorous debate, like the pile of RfCs running concurrently for something like 3 months at WP:VPPOL a few years ago. People cannot/will not stay focused on a question/issue, and wander all over the place into things like accusations of transphobia and of people trying to prevent referring to transwomen as "she" (who has ever advocated that on WP?), and into debates about "rewriting history" and using confusing constructions ("She fathered her first child in 1979", etc.), none of which relate to zie-style stuff at all. That VPPOL thread-pile directly spawned the failed proposal Wikipedia:Sexual harassment, and the failed proposal Wikipedia talk:Identity-based harassment, and the WP:TALKFORK RfC at Wikipedia talk:Harassment/Archive 5 (or maybe it was the other way around), plus another failed proposal (I forget the page name) that was just unbelievably bad, the author of which openly stated that harassment of women is necessarily worse that harassment of any other minority (I shit you not), and more ugliness on top of all of that, including editwarring at MOS:IDENTITY.

So, I tried humor for a change. That also turned into drama, but it was worth a try. I knew of course that some people would be offended. Some people will always be offended any time any approach of any kind is used to address something about which people have heated opinions. We can't stop discussing and stop trying different essay and proposal and RfC and whatever approaches just because some people will predictably get mad that it's not reflecting their viewpoint or sensibilities.

I'm bummed that people not in that "give me zie or else" micro-camp have also been offended. I should probably have declined the request to turn it into a Signpost piece. I should probably also have made it clearer in the original essay that the issue isn't "he" or "she" or "they" (accepted English usage) in agreement with expressed identity, nor is it mocking the concerns of TG/NB people; the issue is stuff that isn't recognizably English, and which most TG people don't use, and which RS do not use (in their own voices). I didn't develop it further enough to make it very clear that it's also about how closely neo-pronoun fandom mirrors attempts to over-stylize trademarks, to inject religious honorifics (and military ones, and others, like overuse of post-nominals and gentry titles in mid-sentence, etc.), to over-capitalize specialist terms, and various other "style warrior" problems Wikipedia suffers. It all comes down to "Wikipedia will write in my group's style, the One True Way, or we'll never stop fighting."

For the more average editor, would an explanatory intro have mattered? Probably not. Are they mostly reacting to claims that it's transphobic without bothering to check? Sure looks that way. I decline to be held responsible for people choosing not to distinguish between "hate speech against TG/NB people" and "raising an issue observed among some editors, which has something to do with TG/NB people". There's a form of guilt-by-association happening here. "This [attempt at] humor involved TG/NB people somehow, ergo it must necessarily be against them and against the entire left/progressive political wing, ergo you are a transphobe fascist." It's just fallacious. (And so very wide of the mark. And right-wingers can be Wikipedians, too, last I checked, though I am not one.) PS: WP:Never offend anyone, in any way, for any reason isn't a thing here (in or out of mainspace). We'd have to delete all kinds of stuff, starting with MOS:DOCTCAPS and Historicity of Jesus.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:24, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

While I understand your point of view, the piece appears to have been reviewed and published with the conscious knowledge that it would be more offensive than most other humour pieces in the Signpost (the linked edit was after Headbomb's initial post to the newsroom talk page).

I also think that turning the MOS into a humour piece, particularly on this sort of sensitive and thorny topic, probably made it worse than if it had been based on something else. (Also, that it's mostly in the form of a proclamation, among other things. The MOS would, I guess, be allowed to be sort of blunt and unfeeling because of its purpose and its reliance on sources, and turning it into a proclamation completely changes the context. The explicit use of "come out" doesn't help.) Regardless of what the MOS or any other style guide should say, if someone told me in person that they preferred the use of certain pronouns, I wouldn't go looking for usage across reliable secondary sources to ascertain which pronouns to use when referring to them. Jc86035 (talk) 07:41, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jc86035: I don't pay much attention to the Signpost and have no idea what its editorial policies and procedures are, nor any control over them. So, "appears to have been reviewed and published with the conscious knowledge that it would be more offensive than most other humour pieces in the Signpost" is something to take up at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost. I will "take the hit" for allowing an editor of Signpost to use this piece, against my better judgement; I did have a feeling it would be misinterpreted or (more to the point) latched onto by "outrage addicts" as the source of their daily dose.

This is only incidentally related to MoS, and much more about WP:NPOV and WP:NOT, the actual policy authority from which all of MoS's material on tone and encyclopedic appropriateness is derived. If you're just telling me "You should have predicted this backlash for multiple reasons", I do concede on that. The fact that it's about X doesn't erect a magical wall against misinterpretation of it as being about Y, especially given a couple of wording flubs like "trans-" (should have used "post-") and "come out" (should have used something grandiose, given the fictional cult-leader context, like "self-actualized").

Regarding "if someone told me in person that they preferred the use of certain pronouns, I wouldn't go looking for usage across reliable secondary sources to ascertain which pronouns to use when referring to them" – that's fine for your interaction (including on our talk pages), and if such a declaration is self-declared in print then it's good enough for WP:ABOUTSELF purposes, but we do in fact have a duty otherwise, in the encyclopedia content, to do that RS research. See, e.g., Talk:Rose McGowan for an example of why. Random editors making identity claims about third parties are not facts we can report, they're just claims made by random editors. And none of that relates to whether WP should ever use xie in its own voice.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:31, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I have spent a lot of time trying to reconcile a notable person's pronoun preferences with a reasonable interpretation of common English usage and the MOS in a specific article. This goes back years. Personally, I have no dog in this fight. I am a happily married white heterosexual male with a wonderful wife, two great sons, and a delightful little granddaughter. I am just a guy who believes in fairness and respect. Your "humor" piece offended me. It offended me deeply. What the hell were you thinking? It strikes me as utterly unfair and disrespectful. You are not mocking the powerful, which is productive when the mockery is actually amusing and edifying. Instead, you are mocking the weakest and most marginalized and most defenseless among us. That is called "punching down" and it is contemptible and vile behavior. Maybe you might want to kick a sleeping homeless person while you are at it. This is repellent. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 08:06, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

@Cullen328: This has all been addressed in exhausting detail, above, at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour, and at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour, and at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:SMcCandlish/It, so I'm not going to go over it all again here. Your decision to willfully misinterpret this as an attack on non-binary people, no matter how many times it's made clear that it isn't one, is a WP:IDHT decision you are making for your own personal reasons. This is a confusion between wikt:inference and wikt:implication; it's a common error but it is an error. The only people being mocked in this are editors who refuse to abide by WP:NPOV, WP:NOT#ADVOCACY and the MoS elements derived from them, to mangle English with fake words, with trademark over-stylization, with aggrandizing epithets, and with other non-encyclopedic abuse of language. (Well, it also mocks self-righteous, exploitative cult leaders because they deserve it.) The fact that non-encyclopedic language is sometimes used in regard to genderqueer people is entirely incidental, and criticizing it is not an attack on the genderqueer. You can believe otherwise all you want, but belief on your part cannot change fact about what the essay actually says, or retroactively manufacture discriminatory intent on my part.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:35, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Hey, I don't shout but let me try: WHAT THE HECK?!! I was offline for a couple of days and the whole encyclopedia dissolves into chaos. I am speechless, and if groveling in abject humility helps, then I will do it. I haven't read all the comments but I will. Best Regards, Barbara ✐✉ 16:18, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

@Barbara (WVS): It is what it is. When drama addicts (like the blatantly and non-neutrally canvassed [1][2] horde who invaded Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-02-28/Humour) think they have found a syringe full of purest outrage they can get high on, they will not drop it, even if it's actually empty.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:35, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I think we should have a new network TV show: The Outragists... I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:38, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I think what is the most frustrating about this entire incident is the insistence that it is the responsibility of another person NOT to be offended as if the authors had no responsibility for their hurtful words. Granted, some people are more easily offended than others but you have multiple people, people who you likely otherwise respected, stating that this article was not okay. And you dismiss their objections as, just what? Being overly sensitive or touchy? Can the authors not accept any responsibility for the words you've written? Are any objections to the content of the article just chalked up to oversensitivity? That seems like cowardice, not to face the possibility that the words you wrote actually hurt other people. Why be an adult and take responsibility when you can blame other people for feeling hurt? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:47, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

@Liz: This is a perennial major socio-political matter – across our entire trans-national Western culture – that has raged for over a century, and it will not be settled here and now. You'll find it in everything from hate-speech laws to examinations of the psychological effects of "everyone's a winner" messaging in our school systems. There are those convinced that everyone is responsible for their own reactions and perceptions (and that owning your own mind is part of being human and growing up and being a productive member of society, or else), and those who are convinced that everyone else is responsible for how they feel (and that they have a true right to be happy and that anyone who makes them uncomfortable is harming them and must be punished or muzzled – cf. what you said above: "the words you wrote actually hurt other people"), Plus, of course, there are many nuanced positions in the middle, where almost all of us actually live.

At any rate, I have not denied any responsibility for what I wrote. I've already revised my userspace copy to remove various "trigger terms". I've consistently (on all these pages, and at ANI) denied that Barbara_(WVS) had anything to do with the actual content – it's 100% me. I've conceded that inclusion in the Signpost was probably bad idea. And I've stated flat-out that I'm well aware that anything that addresses or even comes close to TG/NB people and pronouns is inevitably going to piss off some subset of people. But I cannot be held responsible for people willfully misreading it to mean what they want it to mean (including their utter bullshit claims like "This says you can't use singular they" or "This says you can't use she for a transwoman" or "This says nonbinary people are wrong for using something like zie in their own lives")just so they get to have their ranty-pants funtime on the Internet. I'm not the Internet whipping boy, and WP is not a flame forum for "the sport of debate". Awareness that some will take offense about any criticism of anything that touches in any way on TG/NB or LGBT+ matters does not somehow require me to remain silent. Nor does a majority of LGBT+ people holding one view require one of their number who disagrees to remain silent (though, in point of a fact, a majority of LGBT+ people are not supportive of using fake words like zie in formal writing; many are not even willing to do this conversationally and will simply speak around it).

You can't seriously hold the position that "Granted, some people are more easily offended than others" and simultaneously deny that people have plenty of (how much? that's up to interpretation) responsibility for the offense they choose to take over something that doesn't say anything like what they claim it says. That combination is just cognitively dissonant and oxymoronic.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:18, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

I read the Signpost humor piece & enjoyed it immensely. Best laugh I had, in quite a while :) GoodDay (talk) 04:58, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

@GoodDay: I have a suspicion that there is nearly a 1:1 correlation between people who do/don't find the humor in this (and do/don't get the point), and people who do/don't appreciate the stand-up work of call-out-the-bullshit comedians like George Carlin and Lewis Black. For some people, it is not possible for something to be funny if anyone could possibly be offended by it for any reason (even an unreasonable one).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:25, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Ben Shapiro said it best - "Facts don't care about feelings". GoodDay (talk) 05:29, 2 March 2019 (UTC)