This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on my current talk page
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. LizRead!Talk! 02:02, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
I was brought to ANI a month ago because an editor was upset that they didn't receive a notice when I tagged the category they created for CSD C1 deletion as an empty category. I've since been told that I need to change my Twinkle preferences to allow for this notification for CSD C1. Since you respond to requests for Wanted Categories, it is likely that you might receive a few CSD C1 notices from me. Please feel free to delete these notices and I apologize in advance if Twinkle papers your talk page with them. LizRead!Talk! 02:07, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, @Liz. I'm used to getting these notices, for exactly the reason you note, and I usually ignore them ... but I do prefer to get them, because they sometimes they indicate that a category may have been emptied out-of-process.
I had similar issue with Twinkle. I didn't get complaints, but I spotted that the notifications were not being made, and tweaked my settings. I think that some change must have been made to Twinkle's default behaviour.
Anyway, thanks again for your good work on the thankless task of cleanup. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 02:13, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
[Rants by banned user removed. Fut.Perf.☼ 19:55, 26 July 2019 (UTC)]Reply
I will not pass judgement unless I have seen the context. And I don't have time to examine the context. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 10:45, 26 May 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)
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Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
If you are watching Strauss's user page, you may have noticed that I expressed annoyance at JJMC89 for reverting the non-close close of the 25 music portals. Because it wasn't really a close, I didn't think that involved applied. The background is that in the 1980s in the United States, there were financial institutions known as non-bank banks. They paid higher interest rates than regular banks, but were not protected by government bank insurance. This sort of usage has vaguely caught on in North American English, so that there can be things like non-paper papers. Maybe the usage is an Americanism. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:37, 10 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. LizRead!Talk! 22:39, 10 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I'm here to ask for your input regarding a matter as you are an admin and the talk pages of the relevant pages are empty and both pages have few people editing them. I have added the matter to the page 2019 in the United Kingdom a few days ago - as it is a related page - but have yet to hear any respones. I have also seen you have been very good at being able to go around fixing pages that have been consisttantly formatted incorrectly e.g. updating links to UK party leadership elections.
The page 2019 in Wales and the page 2019 in British music have their dates linked. I have tried to remove these date links due to it breaking the MOS:OVERLINK and WP:DATELINK rules. However another editor is reverting me arguing the dates should be linked simply because the previous years have done so. However, I'd argue if something does not follow Wikipedia's rules it should be corrected, just because something is wrongly done elsewhere in a consistent fashion does not make it correct.
Your thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time. Helper201 (talk) 12:40, 11 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
I think that on this occasion, you may have missed a wee nuance in the relevant policy.
You are right about the broad principle. WP:DATELINK does say that in general, month-and-day articles should not be linked. That was decided in a series of RFCs in 2008/09, with much drama (including an arbcom case).
However, WP:DATELINK does provide an exception: "in intrinsically chronological articles (1789, January, and 1940s), links to specific month-and-day, month-and year, or year articles are not discouraged".
The examples which you give seem to me to fall within that exception. I just took a look at 2019 in Wales, where I see that your edit[1] removed links which seem to me to be relevant in the context. The prime point of each line is that an event occurred on a particular date, and the date link points to an article which list more events on that date, so that seems appropriate to me.
So I think that Deb was right to revert your edit.[2]
You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated files}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.
This bot DID NOT nominate any file(s) for deletion; please refer to the page history of each individual file for details. Thanks, FastilyBot (talk) 01:01, 12 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. CptViraj(Talk) 04:20, 12 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
@CptViraj: Indeed. It took me a few seconds to find the sub-cats which should populate it. Before rushing to speedy delete a category, it's better to check why it became empty, and whether it could be populated. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 05:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Would it be possible to look at the portal deletion nominations again shortly? I realize that you are also working on other things besides portals, and, besides, the WMF Office business has gone crazy. You had said a few days ago that you would look at Portal:Civilizations. Other than that, things are calmer than usual, but there has been some discussion that could use your perspective. I have nominated one country portal for deletion as completely out-of-date, and SmokeyJoe has said it is worse than useless,with which I agree, and I have nominated three unmaintained little-viewed US state portals for deletion. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:49, 12 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
I spent a few hours yesterday coding an AWB module which displays the links in the edit summaries, precisely to allow easy identification of cases where a blue link is turned red. This wasn't needed for the general elections (where the canonical name is consistent) , but it is important for the by-elections, where the canonical name is not always predictable.
It also shows up cases such as "Spouth Devon" which have been broken to start with.
It allows me to go back through my contribs, and check the edit summaries to fix any which need fixing. I do this in batches. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:22, 14 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hi BrownHairedGirl,
Noticed the wiki category created by Bryce Cameron, Coffee Table Book. There is also an index of several publications listed with this category, a directory of sorts.
Representing several fan club members of West Coast Midnight Run™ we thought you may want to add the title of the publication to your Coffee Table Book page. The publication is along the lines of an art book/coffee table book with strong qualities influenced by lifestyle and entertainment magazines. We invite you to look them up and contact their editors for more information if they qualify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:A886:7500:9842:2D27:82F4:E21C (talk) 04:12, 15 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
This person is actually an LTA, My Royal Young. He's trolling people, as usual. Just thought you might wanted to know. LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk) 21:14, 15 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
The long section for comments at WP:VP/P has me thinking about a different way of doing these, where the section is divided by subsections which each have a well-written summary of the argument. Are you going to compress the arguments from the given comments into something short? -ApexUnderground (talk) 14:56, 16 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Ah, I see. I certainly won't do it; too much effort. And anyway, attempts to summarise are best left to the closer. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:22, 16 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion
At least when a bot does huge numbers of changes very fast I can hide it from my watchlist. At the moment my watchlist is pretty much useless owing to your bot-like, but not bot, edits. There is no need to update these links. DuncanHill (talk) 13:51, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Sorry about that. They are all tagged as minor, so you can hide them from your watchlist.
I am am aware of the general aversion to changing such links, but the reason I am doing these ones is that they are a tightly bound set of topics, and canonicalising the links helps readers by ensuring that the differentiation between visited and unvisited links works clearly, and helps editors by making it easier to track what-links-here and track MOS:REPEATLINKs in each article.
To minimise the number of edits, I have organised it so that a large set of links are done in one pass: all UK general elections, European elections, Scottish Parl & Welsh Assembly elections, and referendums. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 14:12, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Hiding minor edits has drawbacks - 1) it's a common camouflage used by vandals, and 2) a lot of good-faith editors wrongly tag things as minor when they are not. I don't think the marginal gains you posit justify the disruption to watchlists. DuncanHill (talk) 14:24, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
The intrusion to watchlists is short-lived; this job is already half-complete. But the gains are permanent. Now that the titles of election articles have been brought into line with the norms for other pages, they are likely to remain stable for a long time. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 14:40, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
I agree that this task should go forward. It yields an overall long-term benefit to the project. bd2412T 14:47, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Well then how much longer is it going to go on for? Hours? Days? Weeks? DuncanHill (talk) 14:50, 9 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Brilliant job - well done. Emeraude (talk) 10:44, 10 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
This is a minor thing but actually rather helpful IMO, thanks for taking the time to do this (even if it has flooded my watchlist for a few days). Mélencron (talk) 23:18, 17 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, @Mélencron. Now that I have sorted out my methodology, I have almost finished all the UK and Ireland elections. When I have finished them, I plan to do France and Israel and India. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:33, 17 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello BHG. enjoyed reading your profile page, especially the correspondence highlighted in this section. I noticed that there was a typo (intentional?), in case you wanted to change it. Vauxhall Bridgefoot (talk) 11:38, 18 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
That edit summary is the product of a custom module which I wrote to assist in identifying the effects of each edit. It links the before-and-after titles, which allows an at-a-glance check of whether the change has created a redlink.
I guess the custom format is designed to assist only you, which is fine since it's most likely to be of interest to you. For the use-case you describe it seems to me you don't actually need the before title to see whether the after-title is a redlink. Is there some other reason you want to include it? jnestorius(talk) 13:18, 20 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
@jnestorius, this format assist anyone who wonders what has been done, and esp whether the change has created any redlinks.
Including the old title makes it v easy to fix any redlinks which do occur, simply by moving the old title to the new one. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:20, 20 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Of course any edit summary is to "assist anyone who wonders what has been done"; but it should also assist them to see why it has been done if that is not obvious; and if several types of thing have been done it should not give undue emphasis to one type. I guess my broader question may be, are you making numerous edits whose primary purpose is to bypass a certain subset of redirects, namely those of format "Foo election, YYYY"? If that is your primary purpose, it seems to violate WP:NOTBROKEN. If that is not your primary purpose, I cannot tell what your primary purpose is, and your edit summaries are not communicating what it might be. jnestorius(talk) 14:06, 20 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
@jnestorius, this is a cleanup exercise after the RFC last year which changed the WP:NC-GAL convention for election names from "Foo election, YYYY" to "YYYY Foo election". I weakly opposed the change, largely because of the large amount of cleanup it would involve, but there was a clear consensus to change the convention, and I accept that consensus. Now I am trying to make it work by doing that cleanup.
This run of edits has three primary purposes:
To fix the use in running text of [[Foo election, YYYY]]. It is much more readable to have [[YYYY Foo election]].
To fix the now-pointless redirects of [[Foo election, YYYY|YYYY Foo election]]. The wikicode is much more readable as [[YYYY Foo election]].
To fix the broken links caused by changes in naming format. This is complex, but surprisingly widespread, so I'll try to explain it without to much verbosity by giving two examples of the permutations I have encountered which raise issues requiring standardisation:
By-elections
General elections usually involve many many links to a single title. In the case of Ireland, there have been 32 general elections to Dáil Éireann since 1918, but 131 by-elections to the Dáil. In the UK, there have been 56 general elections since the UK was established in 1801, but 4,167 by-elections.
It's relatively easy to use redirects to cover most permutations of general election title: a dozen redirects in each case covers over 99%.
However, doing that with a large set of target articles gets very problematic. For example a biographical article may contain a long-standing link to "ThisTown by-election, 1927" ... but if the by-election article is now created, it should be at "1927 ThisTown by-election", and all the redlinks will remain red. Alternatively, an editor may encounter the redlink in the biog and mistakenly create the page at the old-style "ThisTown by-election, 1927".
With UK by-elections, there is further complication in that the place name may have variations: e.g. Midlothian used to be known for some purposes as Edinburghshire, and there are variants such "Western CountyName"/"West CountyName".
So canonicalsiing the year format significantly reduces the chance that a redlink will remain red after article creation, by removing the major variant in naming format.
Re-named series
The development of naming conventions has often led to several changes in naming practice for article. For example:
Editors start creating articles on the local elections to FooBar Council, using the format "FooBar Council election, YYYY". Redlinks are created as appropriate, both from lists of elections and from other articles such as biogs, timelines etc.
Other editors conclude that greater specificity is needed, so they rename the articles to "FooBar Borough Council election, YYYY". Redirects are of course automatically created from the old titles .... but that leaves redlinks to the articles which did not exist.
Then the WP:NC-GAL renaming happens, and the articles are renamed to "YYYY FooBar Borough Council election". So now we have three naming formats to contend with, giving permutations:
"YYYY FooBar Borough Council election" (the new canonical name)
"FooBar Borough Council election, YYYY"
"FooBar Council election, YYYY"
"YYYY FooBar Council election"
In some cases, there are even more permutations, e.g. the article currently named 1986 Southwark London Borough Council election could also be titled as "1986 Southwark Council election", "1986 Southwark Borough Council election", "1986 Southwark London Borough Council election", "1986 London Borough of Southwark Council election", etc. Allowing for the possibility of years at the end instead of the beginning doubles the number of variants, which means more redlinks; and in practice it quadruples the number of variants, because the links may be written with or without a comma, e.g. "Southwark Council election, 1986" or "1986 Southwark Council election 1986". It's a trivial matter for AWB to pick up both variants and standardise them.
When I started on this job a fortnight ago, I was initially doing a very restricted set of use cases. But the more examples I encountered, the more I realised that there was no advantage in doing only a sub-set, when each edit could resolve a much wider set of issues.
So the effect of what I am doing is to fix a set of redirects, some of which may be broken, but where identifying only the broken ones is massively more work than just standardising the lot. AWB just handles text patterns, and can't identify whether a link is red, so unless someone wants to handcode a whole bot which does squillions of system calls to identify only redlinks, this is the neatest way of doing it.
As to WP:NOTBROKEN, it doesn't adequately address the myriad complex issues raised by a change in naming convention for a broad set. If we interpreted it as forbidding any change other than to redlinks, then the job would be impossible and we would leave all these unresolved. I think that would be very bad for Wikipedia, both for readers who encounter redlinks and for the editors who try to fix them manually.
I hope that makes sense. User:BD2412 has also done a lot of work on these article sets, so may want to add something. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:53, 20 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the explanation. A couple of points:
There is a high ratio of edits of the form [[Foo election, YYYY|alias]] to [[YYYY Foo election|alias]] (example). If I understand correctly you accept that this is redundant but that it's quicker to do it mechanically (albeit unneccessarily) than to spend time calculating whether it would be redundant?
Is it the case that you are using the edit summaries to recheck your own work? In which case this check is limited by the length of the edit summary, edits like this one which exceed will have some changes omitted which thus cannot be checked in this manner.
More generally, I would propose adding a page explaining what you've just explained to me, and changing your edit summary template to include a link to that explanation. If you add a redirect (e.g. [[WP:ELLINKS]]) to the explanation it would take up less space than the "cleanup, Election links" text it could replace, thus not exacerbating the limitations of point #2
Yes, it's vastly quicker to do these changes it mechanically than to spend time calculating whether some of the set of changes on any given page would be redundant. Note that the module I am using does an unlimited number of changes on any given page, so any evaluation process would need to evaluate any link. Also, it's a slight overstatement to describe replacing one bluelink to redirect with a direct bluelink as "redundant". The basic logic is that it's not usually a sufficiently important change to do it alone, but if done, the change has some small advantages (visited link marking for readers, duplicate link tracking for editors).
Yes, I use the edit summaries to check every edit to make sure I don't turn a bluelink red, and fix it if I do. And yes, I am constrained by the length of edit summaries (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T199347, grrrr). That's why I also have a counter in the summary to help identify pages which need to be viewed.
I could in theory create a WP:ELLINKS page, but it seems like a disproportionate amount of work. I have now done about 50,000 edits on this task, and you are the only to express detailed concerns ... while I am getting lots of thanks notifications. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs)
Having corrected these links for U.S. presidential election articles by year, I believe that this task can be carried out for most of the related links by a properly programmed bot. My biggest concern would be that there are some quirks, like series of elections where the name of the country or constituency changes for some period during the history of the election, or elections carried over multiple years (the 1788–89 United States presidential election caused some hiccups in my process). The thing to do is start with a proper list of cases needing the change, and then sort that list between those that can be changed with a very simple formula, and those that need an adjusted formula (or modification by hand) to accommodate quirks of that sort. As for the edit summary, I specified in mine that this was one-time change to make it easier for later processes to parse the links. bd2412T 17:11, 20 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
However, I rapidly realised that doing that brought its own problems:
In many cases there are multiple types of election links on any given page. A dedicated run for each type of election means multiple edits to each page, beating up watchlists very badly.
That defined-target approach work well for cases where there are a lot of links to a single target, e.g. the 3793 links to 2012 United States presidential election and its redirects. However, it simply isn't viable in sets like by-elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, where there are several thousand articles, nearly all of which have only about a dozen incoming links other than from navboxes. Same for the hundreds of local council elections, many of which have changed names multiple times in the last century. It's simply not feasible to try to define the canonical outcome in each case.
The defined target approach only works if there is very careful selection of pages to edit. It requires knowing which pages try to link to which election, and that doesn't work with redlinks. So for example, there are about a thousand UK by-elections on which an article has yet to be written, and maybe ten thousand local council elections. It's simply not feasible to use whatlinkshere on every variant of every name for each of those elections: a hundred thousand whatlinkshere .
Of course, the results are not perfect, which is why I don't think that my approach is suitable for a bot. I monitor for the exceptions, whereas a bot is supposed to be error-free. But the accuracy level is high enough to make this approach workable: I estimate that less than 1% of my edits turn a bluelink red. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:13, 22 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
How does changing one redirect for another, as here, help? Also, I am seeing rather more new redlinks popping up in my watchlist than I would hope for. With the best will in the world, given both the enormous number of edits and the shortness of the edit summaries, I find it hard to believe that these will all be picked up and fixed by you. I did above ask how long it would go on for, and it has already been going on much longer than you suggested at that time. I have a watchlist filled with multiple passes of renaming categories or changing links - see for example here. How many more weeks will it take? DuncanHill (talk) 17:23, 20 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
It appears that you were busy on other matters for about a week and now have changed your primary focus to be the cleanup of election articles, but that you are also keeping up with the portals. I am surveying the portals in a somewhat random way to see which ones need attention. As you can see, I have nominated a few portals, mostly lightly populated US states, for deletion, and the ones that have been nominated recently either have been deleted or are waiting for final close on deletion. We still have a few large bundles that are stalled. When they are closed somehow, and I think that Procedural Keep is an honorable resolution, we will know better how to proceed further, but I think that the pace of the portal cleanup has slowed down.
Everything went berserk about ten days ago with the decision by the Office to ban Fram, and at this point I am waiting to see what the next major step is in the area of governance, and whether this is the beginning of a new phase for governance, or whether Fram is a one-off that accomplishes nothing other than to anger editors.
Enjoy 17 hours of sunlight (through the clouds) for a little while. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:27, 23 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I have had had my nose firmly pressed against the election grindstone. My head was too full of portals, and a marked deterioration in the already low standards of reasoning by the portal platoon was doing my head in, so I needed a change of scene.
Sorry I have I have been uncommunicative. I kinda went into single-task mode, but it was v rude of me to not even reply to your msg above. You have been doing great work continuing to assess and MFD the worst of the abandoned portals, and it's great to see that your diligent analysis has led to more junk being deleted. It's depressing to see how much of the remainder is in very poor shape.
Thanks too for telling me about Fram. I had missed all the drama, and have done some catch-up reading at WP:FRAMBAN. Wow! What a mess. AFAICS, either
WMF has acted with appalling heavy-handedness or
WMF is setting a record for the worst-ever communications
Either way, this ban of a v productive and outspoken editor by some secretive process is scary. No defence, no appeal, just flick the switch.
WMF seems to have gone from one extreme to the other. A few years ago, when the community was unwilling to restrain some utterly outrageous editors, I took a prolonged Wikibreak; I wasn't sure whether I wanted to continue editing that environment. I had some brief private communication with WMF staff who showed no willingness to intervene to uphold the Terms of Use ... yet here we have a much less troublesome editor with a far greater positive side to the balance sheet, who has been simply zapped with such minimal engagement that the community has no clear idea of why this happened. We have lost several fine admins, and the community is shaken.
If the WMF had positive intent, that has not been reflected in the outcome. If they wanted to exert a chilling effect of the community, they have succeeded. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Can you find the right person to answer this question: How do I stop Huggle from adding IP talk pages to my watchlist? InterstellarityT 🌟 12:50, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
I don't use Huggle, so I have no idea how to do that.
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I am unsure of the rules for this sort of thing (I only use AWB for things I already know there's approval for), but could I run WP:ELLINKS on the articles in my watchlist and a few more Connecticut-related ones? –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 03:35, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
I can't answer that question for you. I can just tell you some the issues to bear in mind when making your decision.
I published the code for the sake of transparency, so that other editors could examine precisely what I am doing. I hadn't given any consideration to others using it, but since it's on a Wikipedia page, it's licensed for re-use. So anyone is entitled to use it and/or hack it as they wish
The bottom line is that WP:ELLINKS is on the edge of WP:NOTBROKEN. In some cases its use amounts to a minor violation of NOTBROKEN; in other cases its fine. So there is always a possibility that someone could object, but I note that the discussion above is broadly positive, and I get lots of thanks notifications for my WP:ELLINKS edits. So make your own call on how close to the wind you want to sail.
I have not attempted to perfectly generalise this module or to document its quirks and failings. It's good enough for my own use, and I don't intend to polish it for publication.
As with any code, I recommend that it be run only if you either have confidence that it has been polished and checked (which has not happened here), or you understand what the code is doing and have satisfied yourself that it does what you want, without errors.
So the code is there, with no guarantees, and with the usual AWB rule that you take full responsibility for every edit you make. If this module blows up your house, kills all babies within a ten-mile radius, and triggers a new ice-age, that is your responsibility.
If you do decide to run it:
To maximinise the number of characters available for edit summaries (before the risibly low length limit is hit), setthe AWB default editsummary to just a single space.
Make sure to run it with AWB genfixes enabled
Please clean up any bluelinks converted to redlinks. The aim of this exercise is to reduce the number of redlinks, not to create more.
Watch out for pages where the number of links converted exceeds the number displayed in the edit summary. See e.g. this edit[4], where the the edit summary begins "WP:ELLINKS (9/11)". That summary indicates that 11 matches were found, and that 9 titles were changed. But the summary displays only 3 titles, so some some checking is needed.
Beware that this can make a real mess of links to sub-articles about elections. So e.g. "Ruritanian local elections, 1975" gets converted to "1975 Ruritanian local elections", which is good. However, "Bipartisan orgies in Connecticut elections, 2012" gets converted to "2012 Bipartisan orgies in Connecticut elections", which is wrong: it should be "Bipartisan orgies in 2012 Connecticut elections". I have coded the module to ignore certain types of phasing which occur in such titles, but I can't cover every possibility, so you may need to modify the regex beginning Match bannedPhrases in the function processElectionName to add any new cases you discover.
Very detailed answer which helps a lot! You've given me a lot consider. I'll probably have test it out first in my sandbox to make sure I do it right since it seems like there's a lot of pitfalls I didn't originally think of. Thanks BrownHairedGirl (as always lol). Also, I totally clicked on that article because I am so easily gullible. Cheers! –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 16:40, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Glad that helped, @MJL ... and that the hoax worked. <evil grin>
Sandbox testing is a great idea, so that you see the effects. Also note that it has a diagnostics mode to help show what it does, which you may find helpful when sandboxing. To turn it on, just change bool diagnose = false to bool diagnose = true, and it will dump a pile of diagnostics at the bottom of the article text. Obvs, don't save a real article like that! --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:51, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
... it only leads to trouble, and in my last edit summary autocorrect turned "soz" into "son", which isn't what I wanted to call you! ---Sluzzelintalk 20:32, 24 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
No prob at all, @Sluzzelin. I thought it was funny
The way these edits go, they turn some bluelinks into redlinks. I check my edits after a batch of anywhere between 50 and 5,000, and fix where needed. I don't rely on anyone else to clean up after me ... but if another editor is kind enough to cleanup after me, I'm v grateful.
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Subject: Cherished World Champion voting system
I propose the following voting system as a much fairer alternative to our present one,
Its name refers to the hope that Britain should set a good example to the rest of the world in its democratic practice, to help shame the dictatorships and biased systems of the world into putting their people's needs first before their own pathetic and malevolent selfishness.
My late father's initials were C.W.C. Clarence Wilson Clough and he strongly believed in fairness.
At the next Election.......
Firstly a citizen's manifesto should be compiled as a result of unbiased questions suggested and approved by the public and parliament.This could be filled in on-line or even at the polling stations during elections (refreshments being greatfully provided to the willing participants for their voluntary effort!)
When it comes to voting the only change would be that the voting paper would have an empty box at the bottom in which the voter could put a number.
The number would refer to a name on display in the polling station,and perhaps as many as 50 candidates would be standing as national representatives with their numbers next to them,(a bit like dishes are printed out in a Chinese takeaway restaurant.)
These representatives would represent a constituency of opinion, and in picking one, the voter would automatically abstain from being able to vote for their local choice.
Every Vote Will Count!
When the votes are counted there will be four kinds of representation
One : The person with the most votes will be the local M.P.
Two : The unsuccessful local candidates will be able to vote on behalf of the voters who chose them in each debate in the House of Commons.(This would be via an internet connection to the speaker).They would enjoy this privilege no matter how few voted for them,they would not however be allowed to speak or act as an M.P.in any other way (unless perhaps the legitimate M.P.hired them as a locum, in the case of ill health e.t.c.)
Three: Any individual will be able to vote on their own behalf if they register with the speaker via the speakers office (as opposed to picking a representative.)
Four: The national representatives will be able to vote on behalf of everyone who voted for them and take part in the life of the House of Commons (just like the traditional/geographical M.P.'s).
Finally,votes will be proportional with support i.e.(If 6 million people vote for a national candidate they would have a vote 100 times greater than a local M.P. who only got 60,000 votes.)
These votes would be individually recognised by a kind of credit card voting system on the floor of the commons.(A graphic display of the vote could also be exhibited to interest children and adults with learning difficulties.)
The speaker would vote for or against any motion according to the electronic poll her or his computer would register, (as a result of the contact of the unsuccessful local candidates) and individual (one vote voters).
I hope you are interested in my system, I would be very happy to discuss it with you or see it surpassed by a better or fairer idea
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The New Zealand Barnstar of National Merit
For making my Kiwi watchlist go bananas.
this WikiAward was given to BrownHairedGirl by Schwede66 on 03:43, 26 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
You can't get much further apart and still both be on islands of terra firma, let alone on islands where English is spoken. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Adding the Silverfern Ribbon to your New Zealand Barnstar for your continuing diligent work. NealeWellington (talk) 07:19, 26 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
What is meant by this category? What in particular is broken about these portals, and does it affect whether deletion is in order? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi BrownHairedGirl, I saw you were recently active and was wondering if you could unblock this account. I've verified their identity in OTRS. Thanks! --Cameron11598(Talk) 18:05, 27 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I agree with your general conclusion that usually sub-national entities are not the sorts of broad subject areas that can support portals. There are exceptions, such as Portal:California and Portal:Texas, which at least are viewed more than some national portals. A Texan could point out that Texas was a nation briefly. However, Vermont was also a nation briefly, and its portal has been nominated for deletion. As you know, I have nominated three national portals for deletion, two of which have been deleted. I think that the Sun never sets on the areas of the portals that we have deleted. But I am also looking at some underutilized portals with entirely different sunsets because they are worlds. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:18, 29 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
So, I started the article for Katherine Hughes (activist). It was listed on DYK earlier this month, but I wish I had more content in the article that was related to the hook. It seems that a lot of Katherine's work related to Irish activism was done by a pseudymn: Caitlín Ní Aodha. There's probably more sources out there that refer to that name instead of hers, but I'm not really sure where those sources might be. Since you've edited a lot of articles about Ireland, I was wondering if maybe you had a secret list suggestions about where I might be able to find reliable sources. Clovermoss (talk) 23:20, 29 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Congrats on making such a good start on an article about such a fascinating character. I can see why you want to find out more!
I'm a bit stuck on where to go for sources. The secretive nature of her work means that my usual suggestions of newspapers probably aren't much use. And the problem is compounded by the sad fact that after the Irish revolution, women were largely squeezed out of public life and written out of history.
I haven't come across her, so I can't be much help. I did find two of her books: Father Lacombe and Archbishop O'Brien. I don't advise going to WikiProject Irish republicanism. There's been no significant activity there for many years. Scolaire (talk) 10:25, 30 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Look at that! BrownHairedGirl is all over my watchlist this morning!
Thanks very much for your work in cleaning up Canadian election links in the various and sundry articles you've worked on over the past few days.......Cheers! PKT(alk) 12:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, PKT. Once I finally got AWB module working, it hasn't been too big a job to apply WP:ELLINKS to various countries. The Canadian set has been quite easy to work on, because the articles are nearly all in fairly good shape, without too many random redirects in use. Congrats to you and everyone else who has built and maintained them.
Good work on cleaning up a huge number of NZ articles too, from "New Zealand foobar election, YYYY" to "YYYY New Zealand foobar election". I stopped counting at 55 edits by the last week of June, but I see many more since (all on my watchlist). Good work. Akld guy (talk) 23:48, 30 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
In a related matter, the account throttle has been restored to six creations per day as the mitigation activity completed.
The scope of CSD criterion G8 has been tightened such that the only redirects that it now applies to are those which target non-existent pages.
The scope of CSD criterion G14 has been expanded slightly to include orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as set index articles or lists).
The Wikimedia Foundation's Community health initiative plans to design and build a new user reporting system to make it easier for people experiencing harassment and other forms of abuse to provide accurate information to the appropriate channel for action to be taken. Community feedback is invited.
Miscellaneous
In February 2019, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) changed its office actions policy to include temporary and project-specific bans. The WMF exercised this new ability for the first time on the English Wikipedia on 10 June 2019 to temporarily ban and desysop Fram. This action has resulted in significant community discussion, a request for arbitration (permalink), and, either directly or indirectly, the resignations of numerous administrators and functionaries. The WMF Board of Trustees is aware of the situation, and discussions continue on a statement and a way forward. The Arbitration Committee has sent an open letter to the WMF Board.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:28, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:31, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Thanks for the cleanup you do on articles. I have learned about some of the formatting mistakes I make from watching your edits. AWB looks intimidating to me, but I hope to help with your election link cleanups as I come across them in the future. Take care and all the best. Wallyfromdilbert (talk) 23:22, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I added nationalities (mostly from the user page, or from evidence in the RfC) to User:Oculi/sandbox3. The closer is from Queensland; all 12 of the Aus/NZ contributors were of one mind (10 post-canvas). UK editors were about 50:50 (although post-canvas all but 1 from the UK were opposes). Oculi (talk) 11:40, 2 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
I was surprised to see the overall number of contributors so low, but that's often the way with RFCs. They can look much busier than they actually are.
So it's not surprising that a small number of antipodeans could sway the balance.
I guess that the RFC outcome will stand until someone does a re-run. Meanwhile the categorisation problem remains unresolved
So far there seems to be no traction for sanctioning @Number 57 for this act of stealthy votestacking, let alone desysopping him as he deserves.
The lessons from this are clear, but depressing: if you don't like the way an RFC is heading, do some stealthy votestacking to tilt it your way ... and when challenged about this flagrant sabotage of consensus formation, accuse the objectors of sour grapes. It's a scumbag's approach to a consensus-based project, but those who choose to behave like scumbags can see that works and that they'll get away with it. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 12:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Given that most of the opposers were Aus/NZ/UK, it might be that adding (a) except Aus/NZ, or (b) except Aus/NZ/UK/Ireland (no 'z' border) would have passed even with canvassing. In practice whatever happens one would need to rename Category:Organisations based in the United Kingdom which I expect would be controversial even post-RfC. I think a problem with RfCs is that the later contributors don't read the rationale as it is too many screens away. Perhaps new comments should be at the top. (c) might be 'except the Commonwealth of Nations' - one could easily set up Category:Organisations based in the Commonwealth of Nations. (Nigeria is the only one I've noticed with 'z'.) Oculi (talk) 10:43, 4 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:19, 7 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I have a question. What event and what day is celebrated in the Republic of Ireland as an Independence Day from England? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:12, 4 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Sorry for slow reply. I was offline for a few days and missed this.
The short answer is that we don't have a single day to celebrate independence, because our independence was a gradual and often painful process which is still unfinished, and nearly all of the landmarks are at best bittersweet. Some of them are very divisive.
The major landmarks are:
The 1916 Easter Rising. A failed rebellion which triggered later events, though there are heated debates around how to view the violence it unleashed. It's our main celebration, on Easter Sunday every year, but there is a significant (tho dwindling) minority of people who refuse any part in it.
The Irish Free State was established on 6 December 1922. Even its defenders proclaimed it merely as the best stepping stone we could get; but for its opponents it was treachery of the highest order. So we don't celebrate that anniversary.
The Statute of Westminster 1931 was a hugely significant step on the path to independence, but it was a legal technical matter whjich never really caught the public imagination.
The Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936, which came into effect on 12 December 1936, was another huge step, the result of some v cunning politics. But because it retained acknowledgement of the British Crown, it is bittersweet and not popularly celebrated.
The adoption in 1937 of Bunreacht na hÉireann was another huge step, which gave us our own President (tho it was equivocal on whether the President was actually head of state). But it too has many points of controversy, so its anniversary is not celebrated.
The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 was the point where we finally declared ourselves a Republic and were recognised as such. However, that too is controversial, because it's only a 26-county Republic. For many Republicans, it was and remains wrong to have applied the label to a state which excludes the 6 counties of Northern Ireland ... so we don't celebrate that.
The result is best summarised as a contested, unfinished history which doesn't give easy answers or make neat stories for unequivocal celebrations. Some people would like it neater, but the older I get the more I have come to value the fact that our past and present are always having a difficult dialogue with each other, and sometimes an angry debate. This provisionality stops us getting too cocky, too monolithic, too assured of our own virtue.
I look at countries which tell themselves a simpler story, and I don't like how a dominant official story represses so many ugly realities. In France, a story of a great revolution of high ideals represses the ugly reality of a centralised rationalism which has too often been cruel and inhuman. In the UK, the official whiggish narrative of a nation bound by progress denies the reality of several centuries of violently pillaging the planet. In that big area south of Canada which celebrates the day you posted, I see a narrative detached from the realities of the genocide of a continent, and subsequent global violence.
I fear that if we in Ireland ever allowed oursleves a single, uncontested official story, that we be'd even worse. So I like that fact that we have lots of big buts in the stories we tell of oursleves, and little that we can celebrate without explicit reservations. I think it helps stop us from, as we say, losing the run of ourselves.
As ever, YMMV. Hope you had a great day on the 4th, whatever you were celebrating.
Thank you for the long answer and the emphasis that history is usually bittersweet. As you can guess, I partly agree and partly disagree with your comments about the region between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel, but what we had in the Maryland and Virginia area was unpleasant division on Thursday resulting from official imposition of an even more partisan and divisive narrative than is usual here on that day, an attempt to celebrate enforced uniformity in a nation whose strength is its diversity. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:43, 7 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I see you created the page for Celtics assistant coach Jay Larranaga, however, his name according to his official work, as well as multiple other online sources, his last name does not have a tilde over the "n." Would it be possible for you, as an admin, to fix this?
abuses mass-messaging facilities for purposes other than those to which users signed up
... then I reserve the right to respond.
You have done all 4 in rapid succession. If you don't like me being involved, the solution is simply for you to cease your serial misconduct. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
There are other errors in the personal attack besides the ones that you refuted, but I will address them when I !vote, and I am doing analysis on the related portals first. He seems to say that these are the only religions with 100 million followers on the African continent. There are more than five hundred million African Christians and more than five hundred million African Muslims, but you knew that. There have been Christians and Muslims in Africa since the founding of both religions, since Joseph took Mary and the child Jesus to Egypt and since Muhammad sent followers to Ethiopia, but you knew that. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:00, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, @Robert. One of the most fascinating aspects of the portal platoon is that the depth of their anger often seems to be exponentially related to their detachment from facts. Whether it's fact about topics, facts about the history of page, facts about policy, or whatever ... the more wrong that portalista is about that, the greater their anger. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:40, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Well, well. At this point I think that I will step back from the argument and let the MFD run its course. His anger isn't helping him, but .... Robert McClenon (talk) 14:54, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
You can paraphrase that, and it applies to other editors. Some of them have their portal, and some of them want ownership of 67 miscellaneous portals, and some of them just think that you and I are being oppressive because a reasoned explanation can't be dismissed with a handwave but requires a reasoned reply or no reply. I haven't recently dealt with an editor who saw the moon setting in the east. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:56, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
And I haven't yet nominated a portal where the sun and the moons rise in the north, or something like that. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:05, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Moved from Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/2019 July 9#Template:Featured portal
Moving note: I have moved this here because I now believe I made an error in appending this comment to the TfD and then asking you to respond elsewhere. I would request that this not be moved back to the TfD discussion because it is unrelated to the template being discussed. Retro (talk | contribs) 16:18, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
For the same reason that I have collapsed the above section, I must also strongly request that you strike your first two paragraphs in your original reply to Cactus.man as being unproductive for furthering this discussion. We should not have to stoop to ad hominem and references to unrelated discussions to dispute other's arguments; doing so is disruptive to the goal of achieving a workable consensus by leading to acrimony and pointless arguments. Even if they started it, that doesn't mean you have to continue it.
If you think this request is unreasonable, I would be happy to discuss this further on my or your talk page (i.e. not here). Retro (talk | contribs) 00:54, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Retro, I am utterly sick of the lies and intemperate rants and ad hominem attacks repeatedly spewed out by portalsistas. (One of them even claimed a day or so ago that posting a reasoned rationale is "oppressive"). So when someone like Cactus throws it at me again, I will respond.
If you ask me to strike my post, but make no such request to the perma-rage editor to whom i was responding who who described my reasoned rationale as UTTER BOLLOX, then something is badly awry in your reasioning. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 03:47, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
My intent was not to call you out as the sole wrong party and blame you for the discussion going off track, but I can understand how my comment came across this way.
I would like to reiterate something I said in my original comment: Even if they started it, that doesn't mean you have to continue it. This philosophy is further substantiated in policy with WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND, which states something similar:
Every user is expected to interact with others civilly, calmly, and in a spirit of cooperation. Do not insult, harass, or intimidate those with whom you have a disagreement. Rather, approach the matter intelligently and engage in polite discussion. If another user behaves in an uncivil, uncooperative, or insulting manner, or even tries to harass or intimidate you, this does not give you an excuse to respond in kind. Address only the factual points brought forward, ignoring the inappropriate comments, or disregard that user entirely. If necessary, point out gently that you think the comments might be considered uncivil, and make it clear that you want to move on and focus on the content issue. If a conflict continues to bother you, take advantage of Wikipedia's dispute resolution process. (emphasis mine)
I would encourage you to reflect on this. Your frustration is understandable, and discussions can get heated, but I hope you can understand how your prior comments were not related to the template being discussed and so are not productive towards continuing the discussion.
I emphasize again this is not me blaming you for the discussion going off track, and I have now posted a similar request at Cactus.man's talk. Retro (talk | contribs) 16:18, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Retro:, I believe that you mean well, but unfortunately you have not handled this well. If you read the discussion, you can see that half of Cactus's initial !vote was a sweary personal attack on me. Unfortunately you chose to go several rounds of reproaching me for my response, before tackling the problem at source. That does not assist resolution. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:52, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
I do not consider "utter bollocks" to be a significant swear, and it was used as part of a paragraph explaining why he disagreed with the nomination. Using all caps in this way is a bit ridiculous and in my eyes, reflects poorly on the commenter, but there was some semblance of substance in the point made (that there was explanatory title text). If you feel using this phrase is significant enough to warrant sanctions, you are welcome to bring it to WP:ANI, but continually responding to it at the TfD discussion is not productive for that discussion.
As for "going several rounds of reproaching me for my response", I dispute this characterization: in my original action, I hid Cactus.man's comment and corresponding thread and commented about yours. After your comment, I realized how this came across for you, and clarified my intention here, and further commented on his talk page.
Everything I have discouraged is not related to the template being discussed: this is my fundamental point. Retro (talk | contribs) 17:23, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
The problem is that the second half of Cactus's initial post was angry personalised at me, rant unrelated to the template. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:31, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
A relatively high percentage of portals were created by blocked or banned users. They were typically blocked either for disruptive editing and battleground editing, or for sockpuppetry. Sockpuppet masters were usually either blocked for disruption or are trolls. So maybe there is a correlation between creating portals and being too stubborn to fit in to Wikipedia. Just a thought. --Robert McClenon (talk) 20:19, 10 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Would you oppose, be neutral to, or support an unblock of Legacypac as having served enough time? I don't expect him to apologize. The question is what you would think of allowing him to edit.
I'm a great believer in the principle that justice needs to be independent: guilt should be assessed, and punishment decided, by the community rather than bu the victim. So as the target of his attacks, I think it's best that I refrain from comment on the sentencing.
I also don't expect him to apologise. It's just not the way he rolls.
The final incident which led to his block was the culmination of a month or so of sniping because he is not comfortable with the sort of reasoned discussion which admits complexity or nuance, and in which facts may change. That is a part of a pattern I have seen with LP at several other venues (including AFD & CFD): he makes his mind up early in a simplistic binary way, and once he has assigned something to a category he doesn't change his mind even if it becomes clear that he has been mistaken about something possibly crucial. This makes him a disruptive type of force in some broadly-predictable circumstances. That seems to me to be the main issue which the community needs to consider: if he returns, how can he avoid the types of situation which he handles badly, and which led him down a path to that final blocakble event?. But as above, I will make observations, but I shouldn't be part of that call.
In principle, yes, I'll do the followup. But I have a lot else on my desk right now, so it may take a while. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
No problem; no hurry. Thanks for adding it to your list. – FayenaticLondon 17:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
IZAK, you continue to massively over-complicate a series of quite simple issues:
New Christian is a socio-legal category applied in Iberia by the theocratic regimes there. It covers Conversos and their descendants, whatever their previous religion.
Because of the ambiguity of the term "New Christian", the category on Wikipedia was named Category:New Christians (conversos), to include all the people who converted and their descendants
Your conversion of Category:New Christians from a redirect to a full category grouped together several unrelated concepts: Swedenborgians, forced converts in Iberia, and some chunks of the American right. That was classic WP:OC#SHAREDNAME
If you feel that the term "coverso" does not clearly includes those of Muslim origin, we can consider renaming Category:New Christians (conversos) to some more inclusive term. But please don't lose focus on the fact that its intent is to cover all those in the legal category of New Christian.
The recently closed CFD discussion was marred by your repeated diversion down byways about anti-semitism etc. Of course, this whole saga was driven by vicious anti-semitism plus anti-islam in one toxic package, but that's not what these categories are recording: they are recording the social status assigned in Iberia to converts and their descendants. Those converts and their descendants cover a spectrum of faith positions: some were true converts, some remained culturally of their own religion, and some remained whole-heartedly of their original faith. These categories don't try to engage with those nuances, and repeatedly bringing that into the discussion is a diversion. Those issues can be covered by other categories. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 20:46, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
@BrownHairedGirl: I agree with most of your points, such as when you say "Your conversion of Category:New Christians from a redirect to a full category grouped together several unrelated concepts: Swedenborgians, forced converts in Iberia, and some chunks of the American right. That was classic WP:OC#SHAREDNAME" and that is why I created New Christian (disambiguation) instead. But, we still have to find a way of including the "Muslim" Moriscos into this category scheme. Thanks, IZAK (talk) 21:03, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, @IZAK. Just to clarify: the intent of Category:New Christians (conversos) is that it should include both those of Muslim descent and those of Jewish descent. If I understand correctly, you reckon that the current naming doesn't adequately include muslims. (Tho of course, pls correct me if I misunderstand you; I am trying to understand, and am not trying push you into a corner).
I reckon number 3 is the best, because it is succinct, has the right scope, and seems NPOV. But pls lemme know what you think. I hope that if we chew this over we can get one or more idea to bring back to CFD. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:45, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thinking, thinking, thinking. I prefer Category:New Christians (moriscos and conversos) (its also NPOV) because in that era the "great rivalry" if one can call it that, both spiritually and Geo-politically, was between Christendom and Islam, with the Jews caught in the middle. That was the main struggle. And it went well beyond Iberia, since it carried on and into the colonies in Latin America and the New World. There were even Moriscos and Conversos in North Africa. Your preference limits it to "place" which is too broad and avoids the religious issues that were at the core of this historical struggle over centuries. Hope this helps. IZAK (talk) 21:59, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
But @IZAK, the whole point of this category is that it is about the laws promulgated by the Iberian regimes. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:16, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
@BrownHairedGirl: Yes, but those laws had effects that went well beyond Iberia, such as, for example, I am lately reading and editing in the History of the Jews in Brazil article, and basically all of Latin America was under the direct rule of Spain and Portugal. New Christians in the New World would be accused of being hidden Jews (Marranos) like in Brazil and then sent to Lisbon in Portugal for trial and execution. So we see that Iberia was connected to the rest of the world where Spain and Portugal ruled. IZAK (talk) 22:26, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Indeed, IZAK. The Iberian empires, which I reckon is implicit in "Iberia". Anyway, I don't think we're going to agree on that ... so how about I do a CFD noting the inadequacy of present title, and proposing renaming one or other of these two, as options A and B? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:31, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your help with New Christian (disambiguation). No offense meant but I have been away for a couple of years, guess you can call it a WP:BREAK, and am not aware of every last scintilla of WP rules. IZAK (talk) 21:12, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
I did. But I missed being away. My own PC is outdated and defunct. I am using a smart phone for Email and web browsing. But then I discovered the "joys" of using the local library's great computer connections to the web where I am now, for now. IZAK (talk) 21:22, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
I think smartphones are the work of the devil. I had one, and hated it. To make the damn thing do phone calls, I first had to tap a symbol called phone, which infuriated me: I resented having to tell my phone to actually be a phone. I don't want an identity crisis in my pocket.
So I was much relieved when the wretched thing climbed into the clothes washer and ended its short life. I retreated to a phone phone, with buttons, which cost me only €1.99 and does a much better job. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:51, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
I got a cheap Android and I love it. My wife has an expensive Apple iPhone and is hooked on that. I even managed to do a few tiny edits on WP with my Android smartphone, but it cannot do heavy duty editing. All over the world they are ruthlessly removing public phones, especially in the USA so it's essential to have your own mobile phone, and a landline of course as well. IZAK (talk) 22:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
@BrownHairedGirl: Thanks for the new CfD. Best wishes and have a great weekend. IZAK (talk) 23:39, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Please correct the area wise rank of haryana in india 22 to 21 in starting of page — Preceding unsigned comment added by 106.198.250.96 (talk) 18:17, 13 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago16 comments3 people in discussion
Why are you doing this? The correct form (per the W3C, WHATWG, and MDN) is <br>. This doesn't change the output, so I don't know what the value is in adding the XHTML-style, self-closing <br/>. Is there something I'm missing? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:53, 12 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Unclosed tags break syntax highlighting, which is a pain for those of us who use it. S99% of times I encounter the problem, it's caused by <br>. So when I'm doing an AWB run for other purposes, I add a line to close the <br> tags as <br />. I have it flagged as a minor edit, so the page will be skipped if that's the only change.
Syntax highlighing in... what? Your other changes (e.g. adding a hatnote to the top of the article and removing a deleted portal) are obviously correct and very helpful. Thanks for that. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:05, 12 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
To turn it on, go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, skip down to the "editing" section, and the it's the third item: "Syntax highlighter: Alternative to the default coloring of wiki syntax in the edit box (works best in Firefox and works almost all of the time in Chrome and Opera)".
So long as you have a reasonable powerful PC, I highly recommend it. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:16, 12 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the tip. I find syntax highlighting confusing and distracting, so I'm going to pass but I'll see if I can tinker with the code at that tool and fix this tag issue. Thanks as always for your work here and taking the time to educate me. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:42, 12 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
You're welcome, Justin. And if you manage to fix the syntax highlighter with a change which is accepted, please let me know, and I will remove the BR fix from my AWB run.
I have had mixed experiences with syntax highlighter tools, but this one is really good. I highly recommend trying it; it's especially valuable when editing templates.
@Koavf:mw:Help:Extension:Linter/self-closed-tag defines several HTML5-valid self-closed tags such as <br/>, <hr/>, <wbr/> (but it's not clear whether Linter flags these if unclosed), and a few more in the Notes section.
@BrownHairedGirl: could you also add <hr/> & <wbr/> to your piggybacked minor changes? I have an ever-growing list of 'global' minor changes that I will add these two to too. ~Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:06, 13 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Tom.Reding, The solution I suppose is to just use templates (e.g. {{hr}}, which I just inserted for a horizontal rule]. We aren't to be using (X)HTML tags in wiki code anyway. One may say, "well, what if we have 2,000 line breaks in a page and we can't have that many templates?" but you should probably ask yourself why we have so many line breaks in the first place. I would recommend replacing the HTML tags with templates and I'll do that myself in the future. Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:50, 13 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
BrownHairedGirl, The page you linked does not say anything about not using templates. A Ctrl+F of the page only mentions the word "template" in regards to {{nowrap}} and horizontal lists. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:07, 13 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Indeed. It does recommend the slash in <br />, but doesn't suggest templates. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:21, 13 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
BrownHairedGirl, Sure but only due to syntax highlighting, not because it's actual HTML best practice. If the highlighters could parse the non-XHTML forms, then this problem would not be an issue. I'm not 100% clear on why these are unable to understand self-closing tags without slashes but as your user script notes this is an outstanding bug that should be fixed. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:04, 13 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Justin, if you can fix the syntax highlighters, then all this will be moot. In the meantime, we need this workaround.
The reason is probably that self-closing tags without the slash are much harder to process. Feel free to do the extra programming to handle them. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:12, 13 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
To answer your question, and to gently suggest that WP:SOFIXIT applies here. If you don't like my solution, I have pointed you to an alternative. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:24, 13 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hi BHG, this an urgent message could you go to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Duplicate_categories_by_User:Shadowbryan25 and it's about User:Shadowbryan25 have misuse edits by add the people from categories. For more details please go to the administrators' noticeboard and go to "Duplicate categories by User:Shadowbryan25" and investigate Shadowbryan25's edits. If you see a People from category remove it immediately. I hope you are the one to investigate. Thank you. 24.80.117.27 (talk) 02:03, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
No like, you were in the right venue though. Per WP:TFD#NOT, Userboxes should be listed at Miscellany for deletion, regardless of the namespace in which they reside. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 18:08, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
I thought WP:Twinkle must have had a brain fart. But when I had closed the MFD, I saw that User:TenPoundHammer had tagged the template for speedy deletion, so I just went ahead and did that. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:11, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
[Thank you for the ping] Huh, I probably wouldn't have wanted to see it speedied since some of the users who transcluded it are still around, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'll let them be their own advocates on that one. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 18:22, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Maybe, MJL. If anyone objects, I'll undelete it and we can have the MFD discussion. But I am not expecting much upset about the deletion of a user box relating to a long-abandoned and now-deleted portal. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:41, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Besides irony or rebellion, I can't imagine either. That sounds like the best plan though. –MJL‐Talk‐☖ 18:48, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Irony might be fun, MJL. Rebellion would definitely be fun, esp today.
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi. I didn't notice it at first reading, but it seems that there is an out of place word "ignore" in your edit. It's very rare to find a closer who will ignore actually uphold WP:NOTVOTE. —andrybak (talk) 18:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
After a message from User:Retro suggesting that I strike it, I slept on it overnight and, after further reflection, I do agree that it's a bit too personalised and unnecessarily strident. I hope you'll accept my apology, because it was not meant to be personal in any way. The only mitigation (if one can even justify that term) I have is that, unfortunately, you seem to have become the official spokesperson for the PDT (that's my joke acronym for the "Portal Deletion Team", to counter "Portal Squadron"), and any situation where I become exasperated and want to make a point about the activities of the PDT, your Username seems to emerge from my keyboard. Witness the "Sloppygate incident". It's not much of an excuse, I know, but it's genuinely what happens. I'll try to be more careful in future.
So I hope you can accept my apology and take it as an olive branch of good faith. It's hard enough working here without racking up enemies and acrimony.
We all have bad days, and since that's what this was, let's just put it behind us.
I have a backronym for the PDT: Portal Dissection Toilers. I had hoped that months ago we would be long past finding stuff like Portal:IndyCar, but in the last few days I collected a set of over a dozen more portals which my first two-minute check showed as probably being MFD candidates. So now I am going through them one by one, making notes and then polishing them to take to MFD one at a time if they fail. This phase takes me between an hour or two per portal to get to an MFD, but rarely less than 30 minutes even if I find something which makes me reconsider an immediate MFD. So that's at least a whole day's work just on this set.
Robert McClenon was dong some PDT work too, but has taken a break. After all those 36-hour days, I fear that he may have been busted by the European Union's Working Time Directive cops, and currently be languishing in a cell under the Berlaymont. We can't break him out, because the people around my way who might have taken on the job decommissioned their toolkits under the GFA. So he may be detained indefinitely. Please pray for the redemption of his mortal soul
Thanks again, and hope you have a great weekend ... and if that doesn't work out, enjoy the picture of heaven.
Sounds nasty, Robert. I hope the damage wasn't too dramatic, and the fix not too hard on the hands or the pocket.
And I am v relived to hear that you have no been taken prisoner. I won't have start the "Free The Berlaymont One" campaign after all . --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:15, 12 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
All is okay now. The short had earlier been interfering with my watching of association football, which of course is played wearing shorts. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:33, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Football before the shorts fad.Glad to hear it's fixed, Robert. But this idea of football being played in shorts is just a fad. It will never catch on. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:57, 14 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
I was at a new job at a strange location, and hadn't been given timesheets for the past two two-week pay periods, and needed to fill them out and turn them in. Something was said to the effect that we had standard timekeeping and that it wasn't necessary to fill in the timesheets, although I was concerned that I hadn't worked full hours and was wondering how vacation would be charged. I was given a sort of pay stub that took the place of a pay check, and was told that I could deposit it at an ATM in the same manner as a pay check. I then put the stub, which was a small piece of paper that was torn off, into the ATM. Apparently either the ATM or the bank knew how much it was worth. At this point the ATM screen was covered with some sort of greasy crud that would have to be cleaned off with a household cleaning spray, and I think it was cleaned off.
Then there was talk about how thousands of visitors were coming to the island, which happened every now and then for some sort of festival or gathering, and made it a difficult place to be. I thought that the alternatives would be to live on the large island of Great Britain and drive to and from the small island that sometimes was overcrowded with visitors. The island, where the work was being done, was in the Strait of Dover and was a waypoint on the channel crossing between England and France. The island was part of England, but was not part of the big island that is Great Britain. The other side was France, but the problem with living there was that would involve crossing the international border to drive to and from work. It occurred to me that I should have my household goods kept in storage rather than delivered. I would be able to go home and find a job in the United States at the next opportunity for home vacation, and then I could have the household goods delivered to a more permanent location in the United States.
Es war ein Traum.
This island wasn't one of the Channel Islands, because they aren't part of England.
It has been pointed out to me that one problem with living on the French side is that I don't know French. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:32, 15 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
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